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One evening while Sherlock Holmes and I were out for an after-supper walk, the screech of a police whistle sent us racing to what proved to be a fruit-seller's cart.
"Constable Wilkins, good evening," said my friend. "What's the trouble?"
"Evening, gentlemen. Just this fellow raising a false cry," Wilkins said. "Screamed that someone had lopped off one of 'is limbs, I hie meself over to stop the bleeding, and he's sound as a pound."
"I never said that!" The fruit-seller cried. "I was robbed!"
"You said your hand was chopped off!" Wilkins snapped.
My friend took in the entire scene and now covered his mouth. "Sir, tell me exactly what you said."
The man glowered at Wilkins. "I said, 'Police! Help! Stop that man, he's taken my hand!'"
I looked. The fruiterer had both hands.
"Watson," Holmes said, his voice trembling with laughter. "Constable. Please look at the cart. Tell me what you do not see."
Puzzled, Wilkins and I looked at everything; apples, grapes, cherries, plums, peaches… and a bare spot on the cart.
"Me most valuable stock," the fruit-man said bitterly. "Stolen in a flash."
The constable and I had nearly identical moments of realization.
"The collective term for this particular missing fruit," Holmes said, "is 'a hand of bananas.'"
"Yes," said the fruitman. "We have no bananas."