The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The complete Sherlock ...

1 The Adventures of Sherlock HolmesArthur Conan DoyleThis text is provided to you as-is without any warranty. No warranties of any kind, expressed or implied, are made to you as to thetext or any medium it may be on, including but not limited to warranties of merchantablity or fitness for a particular text was formatted from various free ASCII and HTML variants. See for an electronic form of this textand additional information about text comes from the collection s of contentsA Scandal in Bohemia ..1 The Red-Headed League ..17A Case of Identity ..31 The Boscombe Valley Mystery ..41 The Five Orange Pips ..55 The Man with the Twisted Lip ..67 The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle ..81 The Adventure of the Speckled Band ..93 The Adventure of the Engineer s Thumb ..107 The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor ..119 The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet.

2 131 The Adventure of the Copper Beeches ..145iiiA Scandal in BohemiaA Scandal inBohemiaTable of contentsChapter1..5 Chapter2..9 Chapter3..143A Scandal inBohemiaCHAPTER is alwaysthewoman. I have seldom heard him men-tion her under any other name. In hiseyes she eclipses and predominates thewhole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emo-tion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions , andthat one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold,precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, Itake it, the most perfect reasoning and observingmachine that the world has seen, but as a lover hewould have placed himself in a false position. Henever spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibeand a sneer. They were admirable things for the ob-server excellent for drawing the veil from men smotives and actions. But for the trained reasonerto admit such intrusions into his own delicate andfinely adjusted temperament was to introduce a dis-tracting factor which might throw a doubt upon allhis mental results.

3 Grit in a sensitive instrument, ora crack in one of his own high-power lenses, wouldnot be more disturbing than a strong emotion ina nature such as his. And yet there was but onewoman to him, and that woman was the late IreneAdler, of dubious and questionable had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriagehad drifted us away from each other. My owncomplete happiness, and the home-centred inter-ests which rise up around the man who first findshimself master of his own establishment, were suf-ficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes ,who loathed every form of society with his wholeBohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in BakerStreet, buried among his old books, and alternatingfrom week to week between cocaine and ambition,the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy ofhis own keen nature.

4 He was still, as ever, deeplyattracted by the study of crime, and occupied hisimmense faculties and extraordinary powers of ob-servation in following out those clues, and clearingup those mysteries which had been abandoned ashopeless by the official police. From time to timeI heard some vague account of his doings: of hissummons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff mur-der, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy ofthe Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finallyof the mission which he had accomplished so del-icately and successfully for the reigning family ofHolland. Beyond these signs of his activity, how-ever, which I merely shared with all the readers ofthe daily press, I knew little of my former friendand night it was on the twentieth of March,1888 I was returning from a journey to a patient(for I had now returned to civil practice), whenmy way led me through Baker Street.

5 As I passedthe well-remembered door, which must always beassociated in my mind with my wooing, and withthe dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I wasseized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, andto know how he was employing his extraordinarypowers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even asI looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice ina dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacingthe room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk uponhis chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me,who knew his every mood and habit, his attitudeand manner told their own story. He was at workagain. He had risen out of his drug-created dreamsand was hot upon the scent of some new rang the bell and was shown up to the chamberwhich had formerly been in part my manner was not effusive. It seldom was;but he was glad, I think, to see me.

6 With hardly aword spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved meto an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, andindicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the he stood before the fire and looked me overin his singular introspective fashion. Wedlock suits you, he remarked. I think,Watson, that you have put on seven and a halfpounds since I saw you. Seven! I answered. Indeed, I should have thought a little a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in prac-tice again, I observe. You did not tell me that youintended to go into harness. Then, how do you know? I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that youhave been getting yourself very wet lately, and thatyou have a most clumsy and careless servant girl? My dear Holmes , said I, this is too would certainly have been burned, had youlived a few centuries ago.

7 It is true that I had acountry walk on Thursday and came home in adreadful mess, but as I have changed my clothesI can t imagine how you deduce it. As to MaryJane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given hernotice, but there, again, I fail to see how you workit out. He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long,nervous hands together. It is simplicity itself, said he; my eyes tell methat on the inside of your left shoe, just where thefirelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almostparallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by5A Scandal inBohemiasomeone who has very carelessly scraped roundthe edges of the sole in order to remove crustedmud from it. Hence, you see, my double deductionthat you had been out in vile weather, and that youhad a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimenof the London slavey.

8 As to your practice, if a gen-tleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform,with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his rightforefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope,I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce himto be an active member of the medical profession. I could not help laughing at the ease with whichhe explained his process of deduction. When Ihear you give your reasons, I remarked, the thingalways appears to me to be so ridiculously simplethat I could easily do it myself, though at eachsuccessive instance of your reasoning I am baffleduntil you explain your process. And yet I believethat my eyes are as good as yours. Quite so, he answered, lighting a cigarette,and throwing himself down into an armchair. Yousee, but you do not observe.

9 The distinction is example, you have frequently seen the stepswhich lead up from the hall to this room. Frequently. How often? Well, some hundreds of times. Then how many are there? How many? I don t know. Quite so! You have not observed. And yet youhave seen. That is just my point. Now, I know thatthere are seventeen steps, because I have both seenand observed. By-the-way, since you are interestedin these little problems, and since you are goodenough to chronicle one or two of my trifling expe-riences, you may be interested in this. He threwover a sheet of thick, pink-tinted note-paper whichhad been lying open upon the table. It came bythe last post, said he. Read it aloud. The note was undated, and without either sig-nature or address. There will call upon you to-night, at a quarterto eight o clock, it said, a gentleman who desiresto consult you upon a matter of the very deepestmoment.

10 Your recent services to one of the royalhouses of Europe have shown that you are one whomay safely be trusted with matters which are of animportance which can hardly be exaggerated. Thisaccount of you we have from all quarters in your chamber then at that hour, and do nottake it amiss if your visitor wear a mask. This is indeed a mystery, I remarked. Whatdo you imagine that it means? I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake totheorize before one has data. Insensibly one beginsto twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories tosuit facts. But the note itself. What do you deducefrom it? I carefully examined the writing, and the paperupon which it was written. The man who wrote it was presumably wellto do, I remarked, endeavouring to imitate mycompanion s processes. Such paper could not bebought under half a crown a packet.