Sherlock Holmes pastiches old man,' solving the case of the missing parrot belonging to a nine-year-old Jewish refugee boy from Germany. While readily solving the mystery, 'the old man,' as well as the rest of the characters in the novella, fail to see what the parrot's incessant muttering of random German numbers really means. Caleb Carr was approached to pen a tale for the anthology "Ghosts of Baker Street". Carr's short story grew to become a full length novel which became 2005's "The Italian Secretary". An example of Sherlock Holmes pastiche is found in "The Curse of the Nibelung: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery"
Minor Sherlock Holmes characters "The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes" written by William Gillette. In 1903 Charlie Chaplin began his career by playing Billy on stage in both the four-act play and Gillette's spoof. Billy has appeared in the films "Sherlock Holmes" (1922), "Sherlock Holmes" (1932) and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939). In the episode of the TV series "Sherlock" entitled "The Abominable Bride", Billy makes an appearance played by Adam Greaves-Neal, who previously played an original character named Archie in "The Sign of Three" (though presumably Archie drew some inspiration from Billy). Inspector Bradstreet is a detective who appears in three short