title: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
description: <b>Arthur Conan Doyle</b> (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh, where he grew up and studied medicine, and began writing mysteries shortly after setting up his own practice. Doyle published fifty-nine Sherlock Holmes adventures in all, beginning with <i>A Study in Scarlet</i> in 1887.
zlib_text: The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
  1
  The Adventure of the
  Devil's Foot
  By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  
  The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
  2
  In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and
  interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate
  friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by
  difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity.  To his sombre and
  cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing
  amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the
  actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking
  smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation.  It was indeed
  this attitude upon the part of my friend and certainly not any lack of
  interesting material which has caused me of late years to lay very few of
  my records before the public.  My participation in some if his adventures
  was always a privilege which entailed discretion and reticence upon me.
  It was, then