I'm reading Letters From Watson, which is a substack mailing list sending out the Holmes stories in chronological order. And right now we're on The Noble Bachelor. One thing that caught my eye was this exchange. The client has just told them everything he knows (which is not much) and Holmes announces that he knows what happened to the missing woman. Watson is mystified, and says:

"But I have heard all that you have heard."

"Without, however, the knowledge of pre-existing cases which serves me so well."

In other words, Holmes knows what's happened not because he is So Much Smarter Than Everyone Else, but because ... he's got experience with people going missing in weird circumstances.