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The Adventure of the Diamond Necklace is a Sherlock Holmes parody written by G. F. Forrest published in 1905 in his Misfits: A Book of Parodies. As I pushed open the door, I was greeted by the strains of a ravishing melody. Warlock Bones was playing dreamily on the accordion, and his keen, clear-cut face was almost hidden from view by the dense smoke-wreaths, which curled upwards from an exceedingly filthy briar-wood pipe. As soon as he saw me, he drew a final choking sob from the instrument, and rose to his feet with a smile of welcome.

"Ah, good morning, Goswell," he said cheerily. "But why do you press your trousers under the bed?"

It was true — quite true. This extraordinary observer, the terror of every cowering criminal, the greatest thinker that the world has ever known, had ruthlessly laid bare the secret of my life. Ah, it was true.

"But how did you know?" I asked in a stupor of amazement.

He smiled at my discomfiture.

"I have made a special study of trousers," he answered, "And of beds. I am rarely deceived. But, setting that knowledge, for the moment, on one side, have you forgotten the few days I spent with you three months ago? I saw you do it then."

He could never cease to astound me, this lynx-eyed sleuth of crime. I could never master the marvellous simplicity of his methods. I could only wonder and admire — a privilege, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. I seated myself on the floor, and, embracing his left knee with both my arms in an ecstasy of passionate adoration, gazed up inquiringly into his intellectual countenance.

He rolled up his sleeve, and, exposing his thin nervous arm, injected half a pint of prussic acid with incredible rapidity. This operation finished, he glanced at the clock.

"In twenty-three or twenty-four minutes," he observed, "a man will probably call to see me. He has a wife, two children, and three false teeth, one of which will very shortly have to be renewed. He is a successful stockbroker of about forty-seven, wears Jaegers, and is an enthusiastic patron of Missing Word Competitions."

"How do you know all this?" I interrupted breathlessly, tapping his tibia with fond impatience.

Bones smiled his inscrutable smile.

"He will come," he continued, "to ask my advice about some jewels which were stolen from his house at Richmond last Thursday week. Among them was a diamond necklace of quite exceptional value."

"Explain," I cried in rapturous admiration. "Please explain."

"My dear Goswell," he laughed, "you are really very dense. Will you never learn my methods? The man is a personal friend of mine. I met him yesterday in the City, and he asked to come and talk over his loss with me this morning. Voila tout. Deduction, my good Goswell, mere deduction."

"But the jewels? Are the police on the track?"