The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Part 1 (1/2)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

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 balancedand 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 ad the veil from men's motives and actions But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted teht throw a doubt upon all his mental results Grit in a sensitive instruh-power lenses, would not beemotion 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 e 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 Bohes in Baker Street, buried a from week to week between cocaine and ay 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 Fros: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff edy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had acco fans of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of ht--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 h Baker Street As I passed the well-remembered door, which , and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Hol 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 rooerly, 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 ain He had risen out of his drug-created drea the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own

His lad, I think, to see me With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved ars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner Then he stood before the fire and looked ular introspective fashi+on

”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 ain, I observe You did not tell o 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 irl?”

”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 caed ine how you deduce it As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and ain, I fail to see how you work it out”

He chuckled to hiether

”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 soes 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 particularlyspecientle of iodoforht forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to shohere he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active hing at the ease hich he explained his process of deduction ”When I hear you give your reasons,” I re always appears to me to be so ridiculously sih at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process And yet I believe that ood 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”