Sherlock Holmes complete collection by sir arthur conan doyle

THE SIGN OF FOUR: Chapter 1 THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION

SHERLOCK HOLMES took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece,and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long,white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back hisleft shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon thesinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerablepuncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down thetiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sighof satisfaction.Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance,but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day today I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swellednightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest.Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul uponthe subject; but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of mycompanion which made him the last man with whom one would care totake anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterlymanner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinaryqualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had takenwith my lunch or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer."Which is it to-day," I asked, "morphine or cocaine?"He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which hehad opened."It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care totry it?""No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution has not got overthe Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain uponit."He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," he said."I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, sotranscendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondaryaction is a matter of small moment.""But consider!" I said earnestly. "Count the cost! Your brain may, asyou say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid processwhich involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave apermanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes uponyou. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for amere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which youhave been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade toanother but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to someextent answerable."He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his finger-tipstogether, and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who hasa relish for conversation."My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give mework, [90] give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricateanalysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then withartificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave formental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particularprofession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.""The only unofficial detective?" I said, raising my eyebrows."The only unofficial consulting detective," he answered. "I am the lastand highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson, or Lestrade, orAthelney Jones are out of their depths-which, by the way, is their normalstate-the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert, andpronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. Myname figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding afield for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. But you have yourselfhad some experience of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope case.""Yes, indeed," said I cordially. "I was never so struck by anything inmy life. I even embodied it in a small brochure, with the somewhatfantastic title of 'A Study in Scarlet.'"He shook his head sadly."I glanced over it," said he. "Honestly, I cannot congratulate you uponit. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated inthe same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge itwith romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you workeda love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid." "But the romance was there," I remonstrated. "I could not tamper withthe facts.""Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense ofproportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the casewhich deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effectsto causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it."I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been speciallydesigned to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotismwhich seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should bedevoted to his own special doings. More than once during the years that Ihad lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanityunderlay my companion's quiet and didactic manner. I made no remark,however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had had a Jezail bulletthrough it some time before, and though it did not prevent me fromwalking it ached wearily at every change of the weather."My practice has extended recently to the Continent," said Holmesafter a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. "I was consulted last weekby Francois le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come rather to thefront lately in the French detective service. He has all the Celtic power ofquick intuition, but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledgewhich is essential to the higher developments of his art. The case wasconcerned with a will and possessed some features of interest. I was ableto refer him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga in 1857, and the other atSt. Louis in 1871, which have suggested to him the true solution. Here isthe letter which I had this morning acknowledging my assistance."He tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper. Iglanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration,with stray magnifiques, [91] coup-de-maîtres and tours-de-force, alltestifying to the ardent admiration of the Frenchman."He speaks as a pupil to his master," said I."Oh, he rates my assistance too highly," said Sherlock Holmes lightly."He has considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the threequalities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power ofobservation and that of deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge, andthat may come in time. He is now translating my small works intoFrench.""Your works?""Oh, didn't you know?" he cried, laughing. "Yes, I have been guilty ofseveral monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, forexample, is one 'Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the VariousTobaccos.' In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar, cigarette,and pipe tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference in theash. It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, andwhich is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue. If you can saydefinitely, for example, that some murder had been done by a man whowas smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search.To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of aTrichinopoly and the white fluff of bird's-eye as there is between acabbage and a potato." "You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae," I remarked."I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the tracingof footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as apreserver of impresses. Here, too, is a curious little work upon theinfluence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of thehands of slaters, sailors, cork-cutters, compositors, weavers, and diamondpolishers. That is a matter of great practical interest to the scientificdetective-especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering theantecedents of criminals. But I weary you with my hobby.""Not at all," I answered earnestly. "It is of the greatest interest to me,especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your practicalapplication of it. But you spoke just now of observation and deduction.Surely the one to some extent implies the other.""Why, hardly," he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his armchairand sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe. "For example,observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore Street PostOffice this morning, but deduction lets me know that when there youdispatched a telegram.""Right!" said I. "Right on both points! But I confess that I don't seehow you arrived at it. It was a sudden impulse upon my part, and I havementioned it to no one.""It is simplicity itself," he remarked, chuckling at my surprise-"soabsurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it may serve todefine the limits of observation and of deduction. Observation tells methat you have a little reddish mould adhering to your instep. Just oppositethe Wigmore Street Office they have taken up the pavement and thrownup some earth, which lies in such a way that it is difficult to avoidtreading in it in entering. The earth is of this peculiar reddish tint which isfound, as far as I know, nowhere else in the neighbourhood. So much isobservation. The rest is deduction.""How, then, did you deduce the telegram?""Why, of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I satopposite [92] to you all morning. I see also in your open desk there thatyou have a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of postcards. What couldyou go into the post-office for, then, but to send a wire? Eliminate allother factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.""In this case it certainly is so," I replied after a little thought. "Thething, however, is, as you say, of the simplest. Would you think meimpertinent if I were to put your theories to a more severe test?""On the contrary," he answered, "it would prevent me from taking asecond dose of cocaine. I should be delighted to look into any problemwhich you might submit to me.""I have heard you say it is difficult for a man to have any object indaily use without leaving the impress of his individuality upon it in such away that a trained observer might read it. Now, I have here a watch whichhas recently come into my possession. Would you have the kindness to letme have an opinion upon the character or habits of the late owner?"I handed him over the watch with some slight feeling of amusement inmy heart, for the test was, as I thought, an impossible one, and I intended it as a lesson against the somewhat dogmatic tone which he occasionallyassumed. He balanced the watch in his hand, gazed hard at the dial,opened the back, and examined the works, first with his naked eyes andthen with a powerful convex lens. I could hardly keep from smiling at hiscrestfallen face when he finally snapped the case to and handed it back."There are hardly any data," he remarked. "The watch has beenrecently cleaned, which robs me of my most suggestive facts.""You are right," I answered. "It was cleaned before being sent to me."In my heart I accused my companion of putting forward a most lame andimpotent excuse to cover his failure. What data could he expect from anuncleaned watch?"Though unsatisfactory, my research has not been entirely barren," heobserved, staring up at the ceiling with dreamy, lack-lustre eyes. "Subjectto your correction, I should judge that the watch belonged to your elderbrother, who inherited it from your father.""That you gather, no doubt, from the H. W. upon the back?""Quite so. The W. suggests your own name. The date of the watch isnearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the watch: so it wasmade for the last generation. Jewellery usually descends to the eldest son,and he is most likely to have the same name as the father. Your father has,if I remember right, been dead many years. It has, therefore, been in thehands of your eldest brother.""Right, so far," said I. "Anything else?""He was a man of untidy habits-very untidy and careless. He was leftwith good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some timein poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, takingto drink, he died. That is all I can gather."I sprang from my chair and limped impatiently about the room withconsiderable bitterness in my heart."This is unworthy of you, Holmes," I said. "I could not have believedthat you would have descended to this. You have made inquiries into thehistory of my unhappy brother, and you now pretend to deduce this knowledge in some fanciful way. You cannot expect me to believe thatyou have read all this from [93] his old watch! It is unkind and, to speakplainly, has a touch of charlatanism in it.""My dear doctor," said he kindly, "pray accept my apologies. Viewingthe matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal andpainful a thing it might be to you. I assure you, however, that I never evenknew that you had a brother until you handed me the watch.""Then how in the name of all that is wonderful did you get these facts?They are absolutely correct in every particular.""Ah, that is good luck. I could only say what was the balance ofprobability. I did not at all expect to be so accurate.""But it was not mere guesswork?""No, no: I never guess. It is a shocking habit-destructive to the logicalfaculty. What seems strange to you is only so because you do not followmy train of thought or observe the small facts upon which largeinferences may depend. For example, I began by stating that your brotherwas careless. When you observe the lower part of that watch-case younotice that it is not only dinted in two places but it is cut and marked allover from the habit of keeping other hard objects, such as coins or keys,in the same pocket. Surely it is no great feat to assume that a man whotreats a fifty-guinea watch so cavalierly must be a careless man. Neither isit a very far-fetched inference that a man who inherits one article of suchvalue is pretty well provided for in other respects."I nodded to show that I followed his reasoning."It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take awatch, to scratch the numbers of the ticket with a pin-point upon theinside of the case. It is more handy than a label as there is no risk of thenumber being lost or transposed. There are no less than four suchnumbers visible to my lens on the inside of this case. Inference-that yourbrother was often at low water. Secondary inference-that he hadoccasional bursts of prosperity, or he could not have redeemed the pledge.Finally, I ask you to look at the inner plate, which contains the keyhole.Look at the thousands of scratches all round the hole-marks where thekey has slipped. What sober man's key could have scored those grooves?But you will never see a drunkard's watch without them. He winds it atnight, and he leaves these traces of his unsteady hand. Where is themystery in all this?""It is as clear as daylight," I answered. "I regret the injustice which Idid you. I should have had more faith in your marvellous faculty. May Iask whether you have any professional inquiry on foot at present?""None. Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brainwork. What elseis there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary,dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down thestreet and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be morehopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers,Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime iscommonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save thosewhich are commonplace have any function upon earth."I had opened my mouth to reply to this tirade when, with a crisp knock, our landlady entered, bearing a card upon the brass salver."A young lady for you, sir," she said, addressing my companion."Miss Mary Morstan," he read. "Hum! I have no recollection of thename. Ask the young lady to step up, Mrs. Hudson. Don't go, Doctor. Ishould prefer that you remain."