Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and chuckled.


“’Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You

have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything

of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and you have a quick eye for

colour. Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself

upon details. My first glance is always at a woman’s sleeve. In a man it

is perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser. As you observe, this

woman had plush upon her sleeves, which is a most useful material for showing

traces. The double line a little above the wrist, where the typewritist presses

against the table, was beautifully defined. The sewing-machine, of the hand

type, leaves a similar mark, but only on the left arm, and on the side of it

farthest from the thumb, instead of being right across the broadest part, as

this was. I then glanced at her face, and, observing the dint of a pince-nez at

either side of her nose, I ventured a remark upon short sight and typewriting,

which seemed to surprise her.”


“It surprised me.”


“But, surely, it was obvious. I was then much surprised and interested on

glancing down to observe that, though the boots which she was wearing were not

unlike each other, they were really odd ones; the one having a slightly

decorated toe-cap, and the other a plain one. One was buttoned only in the two

lower buttons out of five, and the other at the first, third, and fifth. Now,

when you see that a young lady, otherwise neatly dressed, has come away from

home with odd boots, half-buttoned, it is no great deduction to say that she

came away in a hurry.”


“And what else?” I asked, keenly interested, as I always was, by my

friend’s incisive reasoning.


“I noted, in passing, that she had written a note before leaving home but

after being fully dressed. You observed that her right glove was torn at the