Michael Dirda's Sherlock

he photo on the cover of Michael Dirdaâ??s On Conan Doyle: or, the Whole Art of Storytelling shows the creator of Holmes and Watson dressed in an elegant dark overcoat, sitting upright in a craftsman-carved wooden chair, enjoying a pipe and reading a manuscript (an early draft of The Hound of the Baskervilles?) in a room full of exotic and lordly trophies. A tiger-skin rug, head still intact, growls at his feet. He could be a member of parliament, or a general just back from India or the Veld.