But among the hilarious experiments of that holiday (which seemed more like a week’s holiday than a day’s) one experiment towers supreme, not because it was any sillier or more successful than the others, but because out of this particular folly flowed all of the odd events that were to follow. All the other practical jokes exploded of themselves, and left vacancy; all the other fictions returned upon themselves, and were finished like a song. But the string of solid and startling events⁠—which were to include a hansom cab, a detective, a pistol, and a marriage licence⁠—were all made primarily possible by the joke about the High Court of Beacon.