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 his left shirtcuff. For some little time his
eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all
dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he
thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank
back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of
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 to day I had become more irritable at the sight,
and my conscience swelled nightly 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 upon the subject; but there was
that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the
last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a
liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience
which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me
diffident and backward in crossing him.
Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had
taken with 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 he had opened.
"It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would you
care to try it?"
"No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution has not got
over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra
strain upon it."
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, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the
mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment."
"But consider!" I said earnestly. "Count the cost! Your brain
may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological
and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may
at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black
reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the
candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss
of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember
that I speak not only as one comrade to another but as a medical
man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent
answerable."
He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his
finger-tips together, and leaned his elbows on the arms of his
chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.
"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems,
give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most
intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can
dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull
routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I
have chosen my own particular profession, 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 last and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson, or
Lestrade, or Athelney Jones are out of their depths — which, by the
way, is their normal state — the matter is laid before me. I
examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's
opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no
newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my
peculiar powers, is my highest reward. But you have yourself had
some experience of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope
case."
"Yes, indeed," said I cordially. "I was never so struck by
anything in my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure, with
the somewhat fantastic title of 'A Study in Scarlet.' "
He shook his head sadly.
"I glanced over it," said he. "Honestly, I cannot congratulate
you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and
should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have
attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the
same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the
fifth proposition of Euclid."
"But the romance was there," I remonstrated. "I could not tamper
with the facts."
"Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of
proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in
the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical
reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in
unravelling it."
I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been
specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was
irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line of
my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings. More than
once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street I
had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion's quiet and
didactic manner. I made no remark however, but sat nursing my
wounded leg. I had had a Jezaii bullet through it some time before,
and though it did not prevent me from walking it ached wearily at
every change of the weather.
"My practice has extended recently to the Continent," said
Holmes after a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. "I was
consulted last week by Francois le Villard, who, as you probably
know, has come rather to the front lately in the French detective
service. He has all the Celtic power of quick intuition but he is
deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is essential
to the higher developments of his art. The case was concerned with
a will and possessed some features of interest. I was able to refer
him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga in 1857, and the other
at St. Louis in 1871, which have suggested to him the true
solution. Here is the letter which I had this morning acknowledging
my assistance."
He tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign
notepaper. I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes
of admiration, with stray magnifiques, coup-de-maitres and
tours-de-force, all testifying 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 three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has
the power of observation and that of deduction. He is only wanting
in knowledge, and that may come in time. He is now translating my
small works into French."
"Your works?"
"Oh, didn't you know?" he cried, laughing. "Yes, I have been
guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects.
Here, for example, is one 'Upon the Distinction between the Ashes
of the Various Tobaccos.' In it I enumerate a hundred and forty
forms of cigar, cigarette, and pipe tobacco, with coloured plates
illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a point which is
continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes
of supreme importance as a clue. If you can say definitely, for
example, that some murder had been done by a man who was 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 a
Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird's-eye as there is between
a cabbage and a potato."
"You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae," I remarked.
"I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the
tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of
Paris as a preserver of impresses. Here, too, is a curious little
work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with
lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, cork-cutters,
compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers. That is a matter of
great practical interest to the scientific detective — especially
in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering the antecedents 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 practical application 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
armchair and sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe. "For
example, observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore
Street Post-Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that
when there you dispatched a telegram."
"Right!" said I. "Right on both points! But I confess that I
don't see how you arrived at it. It was a sudden impulse upon my
part, and I have mentioned it to no one."
"It is simplicity itself," he remarked, chuckling at my surprise
— "so absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet
it may serve to define the limits of observation and of deduction.
Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mould adhering
to your instep. Just opposite the Wigmore Street Office they have
taken up the pavement and thrown up some earth, which lies in such
a way that it is difficult to avoid treading in it in entering. The
earth is of this peculiar reddish tint which is found, as far as I
know, nowhere else in the neighbourhood. So much is observation.
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 sat opposite to you all morning. I see also in your open desk
there that you have a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of
postcards. What could you go into the post-office for, then, but to
send a wire? Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains
must be the truth."
"In this case it certainly is so," I replied after a little
thought. "The thing, however, is, as you say, of the simplest.
Would you think me impertinent if I were to put your theories to a
more severe test?"
"On the contrary," he answered, "it would prevent me from taking
a second dose of cocaine. I should be delighted to look into any
problem which you might submit to me."
"I have heard you say it is difficult for a man to have any
object in daily use without leaving the impress of his
individuality upon it in such a way that a trained observer might
read it. Now, I have here a watch which has recently come into my
possession. Would you have the kindness to let me have an opinion
upon the character or habits of the late owner?"
I handed him over the watch with some slight feeling of
amusement in my 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 occasionally assumed. He balanced the watch
in his hand, gazed hard at the dial, opened the back, and examined
the works, first with his naked eyes and then with a powerful
convex lens. I could hardly keep from smiling at his crestfallen
face when he finally snapped the case to and handed it back.
"There are hardly any data," he remarked. "The watch has been
recently 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 and impotent excuse to cover his failure. What data could he
expect from an uncleaned watch?
"Though unsatisfactory, my research has not been entirely
barren," he observed, staring up at the ceiling with dreamy,
lack-lustre eyes. "Subject to your correction, I should judge that
the watch belonged to your elder brother, 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
is nearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the
watch: so it was made 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 the hands of your eldest
brother."
"Right, so far," said I. "Anything else?"
"He was a man of untidy habits — very untidy and careless. He
was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived
for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of
prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died. That is all I
can gather."
I sprang from my chair and limped impatiently about the room
with considerable bitterness in my heart.
"This is unworthy of you, Holmes," I said. "I could not have
believed that you would have descended to this. You have made
inquiries into the history of my unhappy brother, and you now
pretend to deduce this knowledge in some fanciful way. You cannot
expect me to believe that you have read all this from his old
watch! It is unkind and, to speak plainly, has a touch of
charlatanism in it."
"My dear doctor," said he kindly, "pray accept my apologies.
Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how
personal and painful a thing it might be to you. I assure you,
however, that I never even knew 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 of
probability. 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 logical faculty. What seems strange to you is only so because
you do not follow my train of thought or observe the small facts
upon which large inferences may depend. For example, I began by
stating that your brother was careless. When you observe the lower
part of that watch-case you notice that it is not only dinted in
two places but it is cut and marked all over 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 who treats
a fifty-guinea watch so cavalierly must be a careless man. Neither
is it a very far-fetched inference that a man who inherits one
article of such value 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
a watch, to scratch the numbers of the ticket with a pinpoint upon
the inside of the case. It is more handy than a label as there is
no risk of the number being lost or transposed. There are no less
than four such numbers visible to my lens on the inside of this
case. Inference — that your brother was often at low water.
Secondary inference — that he had occasional 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 the key 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 at
night, and he leaves these traces of his unsteady hand. Where is
the mystery in all this?"
"It is as clear as daylight," I answered. "I regret the
injustice which I did you. I should have had more faith in your
marvellous faculty. May I ask whether you have any professional
inquiry on foot at present?"
"None. Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brainwork. What
else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such
a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls
down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What
could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of
having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert
them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no
qualities save those which 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
the name. Ask the young lady to step up, Mrs. Hudson. Don't go,
Doctor. I should prefer that you remain."