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THE SIGN OF FOUR
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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 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
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 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 bold 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
jezail 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
