Sherlock Holmes vs. Moriarty

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11.

Why Toronto?

"The public library there maintains the largest collection of Holmes-related literature in the

world.

"Initially, it was willed to them on the understanding the collection was to be increased from duplicates and original works."

Perhaps no other fictional character has had so much written about him, or said about him, as Holmes. Theories abound. The previously mentioned disillusionment of the defective is only one.

However, Novorsky was delighted to shatter one of the most recent allegations that Holmes and Watson had a homosexual relationship.

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There is an older theory that Watson was a woman," he said, "another has it that Holmes and Mrs. Hudson had an affair, there is nothing to prove she was not really an attractive woman.

Then, if you read the books in a certain sequence, it indicates that Watson had three wives at different times."

Three years ago, when Mrs. Hud-

son's Lodgers held a convention, decorum dictated that Holmes should be invited.

A letter was sent to his last known address in Baker St. Back came a regretful answer from the Abbey National Building Society, a British savings and loan association, that shares the address with the detective.

"I'm told the Abbey National receives between 15,000 and 20,000 letters a year for Holmes." said Novorsky, "and a secretary is employed fulltime answering them."

No doubt the attendant publicity has made the cost cost of postage worthwhile.

Most people, it seems, win with Sherlock Holmes, with the possible exception of actor Basil Rathbone.

"He made two Holmes films for 20th Century Fox of which we approve," said Novorsky, "but we avoid, like the plague, the ones he made with Nigel Bruce for Universal just before and during World War II.

"They were bad for him, too. In 1946 he was so much identified with those Holmes roles that he couldn't get another part."