In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the
remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Sherlock
Holmes, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to
select those which presented the minimum of sensationalism,
while offering a fair field for his talents.
It is, however, unfortunately impossible entirely
to separate the sensational from the criminal, and
a chronicler is left in the dilemma that he must either
sacrifice details which are essential to his statement
and so give a false impression of the problem, or
he must use matter which chance, and not choice, has
provided him with. With this short preface I
shall turn to my notes of what proved to be a strange,
though a peculiarly terrible, chain of events.
It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street
was like an oven, and the glare of the sunlight upon
the yellow brickwork of the house across the road
was painful to the eye. It was hard to believe
that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomily
through the fogs of winter. Our blinds were half-drawn,
and Holmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading
a letter which he had received by the morning post.
For myself, my term of service in India had trained
me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer
at ninety was no hardship. But the morning paper
was uninteresting. Parliament had risen.
Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades
of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea.
A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone
my holiday, and as to my companion, neither the country
nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to
him. He loved to lie in the very center of five
millions of people, with his filaments stretching out
and running through them, responsive to every little
rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation
of nature found no place among his many gifts, and
his only change was when he turned his mind from the
evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of
the country.
Finding that Holmes was too absorbed for conversation
I had tossed side the barren paper, and leaning back
in my chair I fell into a brown study. Suddenly
my companion’s voice broke in upon my thoughts:
“You are right, Watson,” said he.
“It does seem a most preposterous way of settling
a dispute.”
“Most preposterous!” I exclaimed, and
then suddenly realizing how he had echoed the inmost
thought of my soul, I sat up in my chair and stared
at him in blank amazement.
“What is this, Holmes?” I cried.
“This is beyond anything which I could have
imagined.”
He laughed heartily at my perplexity.
“You remember,” said he, “that some
little time ago when I read you the passage in one
of Poe’s sketches in which a close reasoner
follows the unspoken thoughts of his companion, you
were inclined to treat the matter as a mere tour-de-force
of the author. On my remarking that I was constantly
in the habit of doing the same thing you expressed
incredulity.”
