wandered on in a way which would have been impossible had there been
anyone in charge of it. Where, then, could the driver be, unless he
were inside the house? Again, it is absurd to suppose that any sane
man would carry out a deliberate crime under the very eyes, as it
were, of a third person, who was sure to betray him. Lastly,
supposing one man wished to dog another through London, what better
means could he adopt than to turn cabdriver. All these considerations
led me to the irresistible conclusion that Jefferson Hope was to be
found among the jarveys of the Metropolis.
"If he had been one there was no reason to believe that he had ceased
to be. On the contrary, from his point of view, any sudden chance
would be likely to draw attention to himself. He would, probably, for
a time at least, continue to perform his duties. There was no reason
to suppose that he was going under an assumed name. Why should he
change his name in a country where no one knew his original one? I
therefore organized my Street Arab detective corps, and sent them
systematically to every cab proprietor in London until they ferreted
out the man that I wanted. How well they succeeded, and how quickly I
took advantage of it, are still fresh in your recollection. The
murder of Stangerson was an incident which was entirely unexpected,
but which could hardly in any case have been prevented. Through it,
as you know, I came into possession of the pills, the existence of
which I had already surmised. You see the whole thing is a chain of
logical sequences without a break or flaw."
"It is wonderful!" I cried. "Your merits should be publicly
recognized. You should publish an account of the case. If you won't,
I will for you."
"You may do what you like, Doctor," he answered. "See here!" he
continued, handing a paper over to me, "look at this!"
It was the Echo for the day, and the paragraph to which he pointed
was devoted to the case in question.
"The public," it said, "have lost a sensational treat through the
sudden death of the man Hope, who was suspected of the murder of Mr.
Enoch Drebber and of Mr. Joseph Stangerson. The details of the case
will probably be never known now, though we are informed upon good
authority that the crime was the result of an old standing and
romantic feud, in which love and Mormonism bore a part. It seems that
both the victims belonged, in their younger days, to the Latter Day
Saints, and Hope, the deceased prisoner, hails also from Salt Lake
City. If the case has had no other effect, it, at least, brings out
in the most striking manner the efficiency of our detective police
force, and will serve as a lesson to all foreigners that they will do
wisely to settle their feuds at home, and not to carry them on to
British soil. It is an open secret that the credit of this smart
capture belongs entirely to the well-known Scotland Yard officials,
Messrs. Lestrade and Gregson. The man was apprehended, it appears, in
the rooms of a certain Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who has himself, as an
amateur, shown some talent in the detective line, and who, with such
instructors, may hope in time to attain to some degree of their
skill. It is expected that a testimonial of some sort will be
presented to the two officers as a fitting recognition of their
services."
"Didn't I tell you so when we started?" cried Sherlock Holmes with a
laugh. "That's the result of all our Study in Scarlet: to get them a
testimonial!"
"Never mind," I answered, "I have all the facts in my journal, and
the public shall know them. In the meantime you must make yourself
contented by the consciousness of success, like the Roman miser--
"'Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi simul ac nummos contemplar in arca.'"
THE SIGN OF THE FOUR
Table of contents
The Science of Deduction
The Statement of the Case
In Quest of a Solution
The Story of the Bald-Headed Man
The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge
Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration
The Episode of the Barrel
The Baker Street Irregulars
A Break in the Chain
The End of the Islander
The Great Agra Treasure
The Strange Story of Jonathan Small
CHAPTER I
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 shirt-cuff. 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 arm-chair 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
last 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 fingertips
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 unraveling 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 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-ma顃res 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 Tobaccoes.' In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of
cigar-, cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with colored 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 has 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, corkcutters, 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
