Chapter 4 From the years 1894 to 1901 inclusive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a very busy man. It is safe to say that there was no public case of any difficulty in which he was not consulted during those eight years, and there were hundreds of private cases, some of them of the most intricate […]
Chapter 3 Holmes had been seated for some hours in silence with his long, thin back curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly malodorous product. His head was sunk upon his breast, and he looked from my point of view like a strange, lank bird, with dull-grey plumage and a
Chapter 2 “From the point of view of the criminal expert,” said Mr. Sherlock Holmes, “London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty.”“I can hardly think that you would find many decent citizens to agree with you,” I answered.“Well, well, I must not be selfish,” said he,
Chapter 1 It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The public has already learned those particulars of the crime which came out in the police investigation, but a good
Chapter 12 Sherlock Holmes was in a melancholy and philosophic mood that morning. His alert practical nature was subject to such reactions.“Did you see him?” he asked.“You mean the old fellow who has just gone out?”“Precisely.”“Yes, I met him at the door.”“What did you think of him?”“A pathetic, futile, broken creature.”“Exactly, Watson. Pathetic and futile.
Chapter 11 Sherlock Holmes had been bending for a long time over a low-power microscope. Now he straightened himself up and looked round at me in triumph.“It is glue, Watson,” said he. “Unquestionably it is glue. Have a look at these scattered objects in the field!”I stooped to the eyepiece and focused for my vision.“Those
Chapter 10 When one considers that Mr. Sherlock Holmes was in active practice for twenty-three years and that during seventeen of these I was allowed to cooperate with him and to keep notes of his doings, it will be clear that I have a mass of material at my command. The problem has always been
Chapter 9 It is a most singular thing that a problem which was certainly as abstruse and unusual as any which I have faced in my long professional career should have come to me after my retirement and be brought, as it were, to my very door. It occurred after my withdrawal to my little
Chapter 8 Mr. Sherlock Holmes was always of opinion that I should publish the singular facts connected with Professor Presbury, if only to dispel once for all the ugly rumours which some twenty years ago agitated the university and were echoed in the learned societies of London. There were, however, certain obstacles in the way
Chapter 7 Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch box with my name, John H. Watson, M. D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate
Chapter 6 It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his reason, it cost me a bloodletting and it cost yet another man the penalties of the law. Yet there was certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge for yourselves.I remember the date very
Chapter 5 Holmes had read carefully a note which the last post had brought him. Then, with the dry chuckle which was his nearest approach to a laugh, he tossed it over to me.“For a mixture of the modern and the mediaeval, of the practical and of the wildly fanciful, I think this is surely
Chapter 4 I don’t think that any of my adventures with Mr. Sherlock Holmes opened quite so abruptly, or so dramatically, as that which I associate with The Three Gables. I had not seen Holmes for some days and had no idea of the new channel into which his activities had been directed. He was
Chapter 3 It was pleasant to Dr. Watson to find himself once more in the untidy room of the first floor in Baker Street which had been the starting-point of so many remarkable adventures. He looked round him at the scientific charts upon the wall, the acid-charred bench of chemicals, the violin-case leaning in the
Chapter 2 The ideas of my friend Watson, though limited, are exceedingly pertinacious. For a long time he has worried me to write an experience of my own. Perhaps I have rather invited this persecution, since I have often had occasion to point out to him how superficial are his own accounts and to accuse