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The adventures of Sherloch Holmes

   I. A Scandal in Bohemia

  II. The Red-headed League

III. A Case of Identity

  IV. The Boscombe Valley Mystery

   V. The Five Orange Pips

  VI. The Man with the Twisted Lip

VII. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

VIII. The Adventure of the Speckled Band

  IX. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb

   X. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor

  XI. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet

XII. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

ADVENTURE I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

I.

To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard

him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses

and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt

any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that

one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but

admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect

reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a

lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never

spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They

were admirable things for the observer--excellent for drawing the

veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner

to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely

adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which

might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a

sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power

lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a

nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and

that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable

memory.

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us

away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the

home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first

finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to

absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of

society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in

Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from

week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the

drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still,

as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his

immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in

following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which

had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time

to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons

to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up

of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee,

and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so

delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland.

Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely

shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of

my former friend and companion.

One 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), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I

passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated

in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the

Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes

again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers.

His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw

his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against

the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head

sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who

knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their

own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his

drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new

problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which

had formerly been in part my own.

His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I

think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly

eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars,

and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he

stood before the fire and looked me over in his singular

introspective fashion.

"Wedlock suits you," he remarked. "I think, Watson, that you have

put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you."

"Seven!" I answered.

"Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more,

I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not

tell me that you intended to go into harness."

"Then, how do you know?"

"I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting

yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and

careless servant girl?"

"My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly

have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true

that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful

mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can't imagine how you

deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has

given her notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work it

out."

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands

together.

"It is simplicity itself," said he; "my eyes tell me that on the

inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it,

the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they

have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round

the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it.

Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile

weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting

specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a

gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black

mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, 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

him to be an active member of the medical profession."

I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his

process of deduction. "When I hear you give your reasons," I

remarked, "the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously

simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each

successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you

explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good

as yours."

"Quite so," he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing

himself down into an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe.

The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen

the steps which 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 you have seen. That is

just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps,

because I have both seen and observed. By-the-way, since you are

interested in these little problems, and since you are good

enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling experiences, you

may be interested in this." He threw over a sheet of thick,

pink-tinted note-paper which had been lying open upon the table.

"It came by the last post," said he. "Read it aloud."

The note was undated, and without either signature or address.

"There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight

o'clock," it said, "a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a

matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of

the royal houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may

safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which

can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all

quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do

not take it amiss if your visitor wear a mask."

"This is indeed a mystery," I remarked. "What do you imagine that

it means?"

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before

one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit

theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself.

What do you deduce from it?"

I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was

written.

"The man who wrote it was presumably well to do," I remarked,

endeavouring to imitate my companion's processes. "Such paper

could not be bought under half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly

strong and stiff."

"Peculiar--that is the very word," said Holmes. "It is not an

English paper at all. Hold it up to the light."

I did so, and saw a large "E" with a small "g," a "P," and a

large "G" with a small "t" woven into the texture of the paper.

"What do you make of that?" asked Holmes.

"The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather."

"Not at all. The 'G' with the small 't' stands for

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