Meeting Number 18!

​Meeting number 18 was conducted on Tuesday, October 23, 2018, and began at 7pm as usual. Attending was Henry, Ben, Beth, Bill, Barb, Rick, Barry, Michelle, Pat, and myself (Tom).

Notes from the October meeting:

The quote was taken directly from the story entitled "The Dancing Men", and was guessed correctly by 7 of our members (Beth, Bill, Rick, Barb, Barry, Michelle, and Pat. Credit must also go to Ben Steelman, who also picked the correct story for this quote, and showed great enthusiasm as he loudly announced the name! Following the quote, Tom read two character descriptions, and even told the club the names of the characters... but he did ask members to guess the name of the story. Unfortunately, no one could recall that the two characters in question came from "Case of Identity".  

The mystery this month was entitled House Trap, and was quite a puzzler! Turned out that Beth was on the right track by guessing that Harold in the story was the Bank Robber. Pat and Michelle were able to add that the reason the police were present was that it was a setup to catch Harold in the act of trying to collect missing money that actually did not exist! 

Instead of a story this month, club member Ben Steelman and gave a fascinating presentation on Basil Rathbone. Everyone enjoyed learning about Rathbone's life, and that he was not only the most popular Sherlock Holmes in history, but also very popular in Hollywood because of the great parties he gave! Thank you Ben, for a great presentation!

Plans for the November meeting:

Before we concluded the October meeting, we decided the next meeting would be on November 13th (only about 3 weeks away).  The story to discuss will be "The Beryl Coronet", and will be presented by Pat. The quote to be identified is shown below:

 "One day -- it was in March, 1883 -- a letter with a foreign stamp lay upon the table in front of the colonel's plate. It was not a common thing for him to receive letters, for his bills were all paid in ready money, and he had no friends of any sort. 'From India!' said he as he took it up, 'Pondicherry postmark! What can this be?' He opened it quickly and we both looked inside. I began to laugh at the contents, but the laugh was struck from my lips at the sight of his face. His lip had fallen, his eyes were protruding, his skin the color of putty, and he glared at the envelope which he still held in his trembling hand, 'K. K. K.!' he shrieked, and then, 'My God, my God, my sins have overtaken me!'

The mystery to solve at the November meeting is shown below. If you can't get it, don't blame me... you said you wanted one that was considered "Difficult"!