Chapter I The Science of Deduction
Chapter II The Statement of the Case
Chapter III In Quest of a Solution
Chapter IV The Story of the Bald-Headed Man
Chapter V The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge
Chapter VI Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration
Chapter VII The Episode of the Barrel
Chapter VIII The Baker Street Irregulars
Chapter IX A Break in the Chain
Chapter X The End of the Islander
Chapter XI The Great Agra Treasure
Chapter XII The Strange Story of Jonathan Small
內容試閱：
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 velvetlined armchair 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 least 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 unravelling it.”
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