













The Sign of the Four


By

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle




Contents





Chapter I

The Science of Deduction

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece 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 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 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-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
Tobaccoes.'  In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-,
cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with  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
to me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your