J. B. VARNEY
Description
Malcolm Findley was a strange little man with a large, pale, half-bald dome of a bulbous head, a trailing mane of silver-white hair, and a pair of Bel
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gian-made golden pince-nez eyeglasses. He was also brilliant and this aspect of his personality so overshadowed the former that he was considered a colossus.
Born the eldest son of a poor fisherman on the Isle of Lewis in the windswept northwest of Scotland, he grew up in a stone cottage with a thatched roof that didn't blow away in the frequent gales only because it was held down by a net of hemp ropes weighted at the ends by stones. As a boy he taught himself to read and write by using the only book his parents owned, a Bible, which he then memorized. When he left home he told his mother not to worry over him saying, "I'll be a professor at university" and in five years he was.
When Sherlock Holmes first met Professor Findley the older man scolded the great detective for not using distilled water in his chemical experiments, calling it "slipshod work." Then he quoted one of Holmes' earliest monographs, en toto, on bicycle treads and used it as proof for the existence of a higher power. Now an old man, the Oxford Don of whom Holmes once said, "he understands," has vanished.
The only clue is a half-finished sentence on a chalk board. What has happened to the esteemed professor and can Sherlock Holmes find him? Once again, the game is afoot but this time Holmes and Watson don't even know where to start.
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