“No, no. No crime,” said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. “Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the pace of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such.”
“So much so,” I remarked, “that of the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime.”
from “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” by Arthur Conan Doyle,
the one Sherlock Holmes tale set in the holiday season
