Off in the distance a shot was heard and another drunk by another drunk. Then another and another, until an entire fusillade had punctured the drunk like a hot ice pick through melted butter. "Ah," said the Mysterious Stranger as she blew the gunsmoke from the muzzles of her twin customized ivory-handled M1911A1 .45 caliber semiautomatic pistols, "that finishes The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg. Mark well that I shot him in twain."

And she moseyed off into the yellow-grey fog that sat like a cat on Baker Street and swallowed the feeble attempts of the gaslights to dispel the gloom of the early London evening and muffled the clip-clop of the horses' hooves as the pulled ennui-soaked rakes and soiled doves in hansom cabs to unknown and unspeakable dissipations.