К оригиналу был эпиграф, который я оставил непереведённым, поскольку "Пять апельсиновых зёрнышек" Дойла уже переведены...
from "The Five Orange Pips" (1891):
All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten
against the windows, so that even here in the heart of
great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our
minds for the instant from the routine of life, and to
recognize the presence of those great elemental forces
which shriek at mankind through the bars of his
civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage. As evening
drew in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the
wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney.
Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the
fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, while I
at the other was deep in one of Clark Russell's fine
sea-stories until the howl of the gale from without
seemed to blend with the text, and the splash of the
rain to lengthen out into the long swash of the sea waves.