In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the remarkable mentalqualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have endeavoured, as far aspossible, to select those which presented the minimum ofsensationalism, while offering a fair field for his talents. It is,however, unfortunately impossible entirely to separate the sensationalfrom the criminal, and a chronicler is left in the dilemma that he musteither sacrifice details which are essential to his statement and sogive a false impression of the problem, or he must use matter whichchance, and not choice, has provided him with. With this short prefaceI shall turn to my notes of what proved to be a strange, though apeculiarly terrible, chain of events.
It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like an oven, andthe glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of the house acrossthe road was painful to the eye. It was hard to believe that thesewere the same walls which loomed so gloomily through the fogs ofwinter. Our blinds were half-drawn, and Holmes lay curled upon thesofa, reading and re-reading a letter which he had received by themorning post. For myself, my term of service in India had trained meto stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer at ninety was nohardship. But the morning paper was uninteresting. Parliament hadrisen. Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of theNew Forest or the shingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account hadcaused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion, neither thecountry nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. Heloved to lie in the very center of five millions of people, with hisfilaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to everylittle rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of naturefound no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when heturned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down hisbrother of the country.
Finding that Holmes was too absorbed for conversation I had tossed asidethe barren paper, and leaning back in my chair I fell into a brownstudy. Suddenly my companion's voice broke in upon my thoughts:
"You are right, Watson," said he. "It does seem a most preposterousway of settling a dispute."
"Most preposterous!" I exclaimed, and then suddenly realizing how hehad echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in my chair andstared at him in blank amazement.
"What is this, Holmes?" I cried. "This is beyond anything which Icould have imagined."
He laughed heartily at my perplexity.
"You remember," said he, "that some little time ago when I read you thepassage in one of Poe's sketches in which a close reasoner follows theunspoken thoughts of his companion, you were inclined to treat thematter as a mere tour-de-force of the author. On my remarking that Iwas constantly in the habit of doing the same thing you expressedincredulity."
"Oh, no!"
"Perhaps not with your tongue, my dear Watson, but certainly with youreyebrows. So when I saw you throw down your paper and enter upon atrain of thought, I was very happy to have the opportunity of readingit off, and eventually of breaking into it, as a proof that I had beenin rapport with you."
But I was still far from satisfied. "In the example which you read tome," said I, "the reasoner drew his conclusions from the actions of theman whom he observed. If I remember right, he stumbled