Uncle Bernac: A Memory of the Empire

I dare say that I had already read my uncle's letter a hundred times and I am sure that I knew it by heart. None the less I took it out of my pocket and sitting on the side of the lugger I went over it again with as much attention as if it were for the first time.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was both a doctor and a believer in spirits, which may partly explain why his Sherlock Holmes is one of literature's most beloved detectives: Holmes always approaches his cases with the gentility and logic of a scientist, but the stories are suffused with an aura of the supernatural. Narrated by devoted assistant Dr. John H. Watson, Holmes's adventures were so addictive that fans protested the master deducer's "death" in 1893 and Doyle had to resurrect him.