













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