The Complete Sherlock Holmes 9781937994303, 9781610589734

Citation preview

The

Complete

Sherlock Holmes

The

Complete

Sherlock Holmes SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

C ONTENTS

introduction

xi a study in scarlet

part i (being a reprint from the reminiscences of john h. watson, m.d., late of the army medical department) i. mr. sherlock holmes ii. the science of deduction

5 10

iii. the lauriston gardens mystery

16

iv. what john rance had to tell

23

v. our advertisement brings a visitor vi. tobias gregson shows what he can do vii. light in the darkness

28 33 39

part ii the country of the saints i. on the great alkali plain ii. the flower of utah

47 53

iii. john ferrier talks with the prophet

58

iv. a flight for life

62

v. the avenging angels vi. a continuation of the reminiscences of john watson, m.d. vii. the conclusion

68

74 81

the sign of the four i. the science of deduction

87

ii. the statement of the case

92

iii. in quest of a solution

96

iv. the story of the bald-headed man

99

v. the tragedy of pondicherry lodge

105

vi. sherlock holmes gives a demonstration

110

vii. the episode of the barrel

116

viii. the baker street irregulars

123

ix. a break in the chain

129

x. the end of the islander

135

xi. the great agra treasure

141

xii. the strange story of jonathan small

145

the adventures of sherlock holmes a scandal in bohemia

163

the red-headed league

179

a case of identity

194

the boscombe valley mystery

206

the five orange pips

222

the man with the twisted lip

235

the blue carbuncle

251

the speckled band

265

the engineer’s thumb

282

the noble bachelor

296

the beryl coronet

310

the copper beeches

326

the memoirs of sherlock holmes silver blaze

345

the yellow face

361

the stockbroker’s clerk

373

the “gloria scott”

385

the musgrave ritual

398

the reigate squires

410

the crooked man

423

the resident patient

435

the greek interpreter

448

the naval treaty

460

the final problem

482

the hound of the baskervilles i. mr. sherlock holmes ii. the curse of the baskervilles

497 501

iii. the problem

508

iv. sir henry baskerville

514

v. three broken threads

522

vi. baskerville hall vii. the stapletons of merripit house

529 535

viii. first report of dr. watson

544

ix. the light upon the moor

549

x. extract from the diary of dr. watson

560

xi. the man on the tor

566

xii. death on the moor

574

xiii. fixing the nets

583

xiv. the hound of the baskervilles

590

xv. a retrospection

597

the return of sherlock holmes the empty house

605

the norwood builder

619

the dancing men

634

the solitary cyclist

651

the priory school

664

black peter

684

charles augustus milverton

698

the six napoleons

709

the three students

722

the golden pince-nez

734

the missing three-quarter

749

the abbey grange

763

the second stain

778

the valley of fear part i the tragedy of birlstone i. the warning

799

ii. sherlock holmes discourses

805

iii. the tragedy of birlstone

810

iv. darkness

816

v. the people of the drama vi. a dawning light

823 831

vii. the solution

839 part ii the scowrers

i. the man

851

ii. the bodymaster

857

iii. lodge 341, vermissa

867

iv. the valley of fear

877

v. the darkest hour

884

vi. danger

892

vii. the trapping of birdy edwards epilogue

898 904

his last bow wisteria lodge

909

the cardboard box

928

the red circle

942

the bruce-partington plans

955

the dying detective

974

the disappearance of lady frances carfax

984

the devil’s foot

997

his last bow

1013

the case-book of sherlock holmes the illustrious client

1027

the blanched soldier

1043

the mazarin stone

1056

the three gables

1067

the sussex vampire

1078

the three garridebs

1089

the problem of thor bridge

1099

the creeping man

1116

the lion’s mane

1129

the veiled lodger

1141

shoscombe old place

1149

the retired colourman

1160

the life and times of sir arthur conan doyle

1171

suggested reading

1182

I NTR OD U C T I O N In November of 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle sat down at his desk and dashed off a quick note to his mother. The thirty-two-year-old author was hard at work on a fresh batch of Sherlock Holmes stories, rounding out a prior group of six that began appearing earlier that year in a new publication called The Strand Magazine. The stories were an instant sensation, with eager readers lining up at the newsstands for each new issue of the magazine. Now, finding himself pressed to continue the adventures of his “unofficial consulting detective,” Conan Doyle delivered a piece of surprising news to his mother. “I have done five of the Sherlock Holmes stories of the new series,” he wrote. “I think that they are up to the standard of the first series, & the twelve ought to make a rather good book of the sort. I think of slaying Holmes in the sixth & winding him up for good & all. He takes my mind from better things.” By all accounts, Mrs. Doyle received this news with horror—“You won’t! You can’t! You mustn’t!” she is reported to have said—and her dutiful son relented for a time. “He still lives,” Conan Doyle told her, “thanks to your entreaties.” Soon enough, however, his weariness with his famous creation could no longer be denied. In December of 1893, Sherlock Holmes was consigned to a spectacular death at Switzerland’s Reichenbach Falls, along with his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty, apparently never to return. “Poor Holmes is dead and damned,” Conan Doyle declared. “I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards paté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.” Needless to say, Sherlock Holmes did not go gentle into that good night, but came raging back in 1901 to face a further series of perils, including a spectral hound, a sinister air gun and an exotic Asiatic poison. In the years to come Conan Doyle would see his detective ascend to even greater heights of renown. A popular stage play written by the celebrated American actor William Gillette helped to fix the iconic image of the pipe-smoking, deerstalker-wearing sleuth in the public imagination. Gillette appeared as Holmes some 1,300 times over the course of more than three decades. Conan Doyle was delighted with his interpretation. His only complaint, he told Gillette, was that “you make the poor hero of the anaemic printed page a very limp object as compared with the glamour of your own personality which you infuse into his stage presentment.” In the 1920s the English actor Eille Norwood appeared as Holmes in an astonishing forty-seven silent films, even learning to play the violin so as to inhabit the character more convincingly. Once again, Conan Doyle expressed hearty approval: “His impersonation of Holmes amazes me,” he declared. Even the death of Conan Doyle in 1930 did not bring about any noticeable slowing of the detective’s exploits. Though the “official” adventures—the fifty-six short stories and four longer tales known as “The Canon”—had come to a close, Sherlock Holmes would continue to enjoy a robust career in books, movies, television programs, musicals, stage plays and even a ballet. Beginning in 1939, the British actor Basil Rathbone created an indelible impression in a series of fourteen films, accompanied by Nigel Bruce’s affable if xi

xii introduction

rather buffoonish characterisation of Dr. Watson. In the coming years the role of Sherlock Holmes would draw an illustrious array of actors on stage, screen and radio, including John Gielgud, Ronald Howard, Douglas Wilmer, Robert Stephens, John Wood, Nicol Williamson, Christopher Plummer and Ian Richardson. In 1984, Britain’s Granada Television launched a distinguished series of programs featuring Jeremy Brett in a mercurial, darkly brilliant reimagining of the role. The series was noted not only for its lavish production values but also for its efforts to adhere to the spirit of the original stories. Now, as the fame of Sherlock Holmes stretches into a third century, the detective is enjoying yet another renaissance, fueled by a new movie franchise and modern-day television adaptations on both sides of the Atlantic. “I hear of Sherlock everywhere,” as his older brother Mycroft once had occasion to remark. Along the way Sherlock Holmes has acquired a cult of followers whose devotion borders on the mystical. “Sherlockians” can be found in every corner of the globe, forming “scion” societies with names such as “Mrs. Hudson’s Lodgers,” “The Notorious Canary-Trainers” and “The Poor Folks Upon the Moor,” and discussing such matters as the depth to which a sprig of parsley might sink in butter on a hot day, or the true location of Dr. Watson’s strangely transient war wound. Ask a Holmes buff for news of the giant rat of Sumatra and he or she will answer, gently, that it is a tale for which the world is not yet prepared. According to one of the movement’s early founders, the protocol for forming a scion is wonderfully simple. All that is required, he explains, is a couple of Sherlockians, a copy of the Canon, and a bottle. In a pinch, he adds, you can dispense with one of the Sherlockians. “What is it that makes this subject inexhaustible?” asked the noted Sherlockian Edgar W. Smith in 1952. “There is nothing like it, to one’s knowledge, in all the field of literature. Not Robinson Crusoe, nor Mr. Pickwick, nor yet great Hamlet has been so honoured by the imp of the inquisitive . . . Ivanhoe and Hiawatha, Dr. Jekyll and David Copperfield, Hercules and George Babbitt—who cares if they were married once or twice, or how profound their knowledge of the Solar System may have been? We know just where Achilles had his wound, and we let it go at that . . . But Sherlock Holmes is different.” The secret of this enduring fascination rests with Conan Doyle, whose eventful life and storytelling gifts combined into a form of narrative alchemy seldom seen in the annals of literature. Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in a small flat at No. 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the second of Charles and Mary Doyle’s seven children, and the eldest son. Charles Doyle was a talented artist from a distinguished family of artists who were of Irish origin but had lived in England for many years. Charles came to Edinburgh as a young man to take a position with the city’s Office of Works. “My father was in truth a great unrecognised genius,” Conan Doyle would write, but Charles Doyle soon fell prey to the corrosive effects of alcohol, and more and more of the burden of supporting and raising the children came to rest on their mother. A remarkable woman in her own right, Mary Foley Doyle bore her burden with remarkable success. “My real love for letters, my instinct for storytelling, springs from my mother,” Conan Doyle would write. “In my early childhood, as far back as I can remember, the vivid stories she would tell me stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life.” Perhaps this was just as well, as the real facts were none too happy. In later years Conan Doyle would declare with characteristic cheer that he had been raised in “the hardy and bracing atmosphere of poverty,” but the remark glossed over a great deal of domestic

introduction xiii

turmoil. Though the family was far from penniless, Charles Doyle’s struggles with illness and alcohol worsened over the years, and his income could not always be relied upon. The Doyle family changed addresses at least six times before their eldest son was eleven. Throughout his life, Conan Doyle kept silent about his father’s unhappy decline, preferring instead to dwell on his remarkable artistic talent. “The world,” he would write, “not the family, gets the fruits of genius.” Somehow money was found to provide Conan Doyle with a first-class education at Stonyhurst, a prominent Jesuit boarding school in England, and upon graduation he was eager to contribute to the welfare of his large family by pursuing a degree in medicine. “Perhaps it was good for me that the times were hard,” he wrote, “for I was wild, fullblooded, and a trifle reckless, but the situation called for energy and application so that one was bound to try to meet it. My mother had been so splendid that we could not fail her. It had been determined that I should be a doctor, chiefly, I think, because Edinburgh was so famous a centre for medical learning.” “They were remarkable men,” Conan Doyle said of his medical school lecturers, “but the most notable of the characters whom I met was one Joseph Bell, surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary.” Bell, Conan Doyle came to learn, had powers of observation and diagnosis that were truly spellbinding. By the end of his second year, Bell plucked Conan Doyle from the benches of the lecture hall to serve as an assistant in his ward, giving the young student a chance to observe his methods at close quarters. “A clerk’s duties are to note down all the patients to be seen, and muster them together,” Conan Doyle recalled. “Often I would have seventy or eighty. When everything was ready, I would show them in to Mr. Bell, who would have the students gathered round him. His intuitive powers were simply marvellous. Case No. 1 would step up. ‘I see,’ said Mr. Bell, ‘you’re suffering from drink. You even carry a flask in the inside breast pocket of your coat.’ Another case would come forward. ‘Cobbler, I see.’ Then he would turn to the students, and point out to them that the inside of the knee of the man’s trousers was worn. That was where the man had rested the lapstone—a peculiarity only found in cobblers.” A particularly celebrated example of Bell’s abilities involved a patient who had given no information whatsoever before Conan Doyle brought him forward. “Well, my man,” Bell said, after a quick glance, “you’ve served in the army.” “Aye, sir,” the patient replied. “Not long discharged?” “No, sir.” “A Highland regiment?” “Aye, sir.” “A non-com. officer?” “Aye, sir.” “Stationed at Barbados?” “Aye, sir.” Bell turned to his bewildered students. “You see, gentlemen,” he explained, “the man was a respectful man but did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British, and the Scottish regiments are at present in that particular island.”

xiv introduction

“To his audience of Watsons,” Conan Doyle remarked, “it all seemed very miraculous— until it was explained, and then it became simple enough.” Though Joseph Bell remembered him as one of his brightest students, Conan Doyle considered himself no better than mediocre. “I took my fences in my stride and balked at none of them,” he said, “still I won no distinction in the race.” It was a typically self-effacing comment that made light of a good deal of effort and accomplishment in the face of difficult circumstances. His medical studies were punctuated by several unpaid assistantships, during which he gathered valuable practical experience, as well as an eight-month voyage as ship’s surgeon aboard an arctic whaler, which not only indulged his budding taste for adventure but also contributed a hefty sum to the family’s finances. In 1879, during one of his medical assistantships, nineteen-year-old Conan Doyle decided to try his hand at fiction. “It was in this year that I first learned that shillings might be earned in other ways than by filling phials,” he noted. “Some friend remarked to me that my letters were very vivid and surely I could write some things to sell.” At the time, the aspiring doctor was making considerable sacrifices in the name of literature. “I used to be allowed twopence for my lunch, that being the price of a mutton pie,” he recalled, “but near the pie shop was a second-hand book shop with a barrel full of old books and the legend ‘Your choice for 2d ’ stuck above it. Often the price of my luncheon used to be spent on some sample out of this barrel.” By this time Conan Doyle was already well versed in the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he judged to be “the supreme original short story writer of all time,” and he would occasionally “petrify our small family circle” by reading one of the master’s tales aloud. Now, borrowing heavily from Poe, he sat down and wrote a story called “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” a treasure-hunt yarn set in South Africa. To his delight, the story was accepted by Chambers’s Journal, one of the most prominent magazines of the day, bringing a generous payment of three guineas. “After receiving that little cheque I was a beast that has once tasted blood,” he would remark, “for I knew that whatever rebuffs I might receive—and God knows I had plenty—I had once proved I could earn gold, and the spirit was in me to do it again.” Dozens of other stories followed, along with a somewhat larger collection of rejection notices. “Fifty little cylinders of manuscript did I send out during eight years,” he wrote, referring to the mailing tubes in which he made his submissions. Unhappily, most of these literary parcels “described irregular orbits among publishers, and usually came back like paper boomerangs to the place that they had started from.” It could not have been easy to find time for literary efforts during these eventful years. Conan Doyle took a degree from Edinburgh in June of 1881, and after a brief, disastrous partnership with a fellow student in Plymouth, struck out on his own to establish a medical practise in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth on England’s Channel coast. Looking to “supplement my income by literature,” as he told his mother, he sat in his consulting room and wrote short stories while waiting for patients to arrive. One of these, “The Captain of the Pole-Star,” drew on his earlier stint aboard the arctic whaling ship, and brought a colossal ten-guinea payment. More often, however, his efforts drew further rejections. “Verily,” he complained, “literature is a difficult oyster to open.” Soon, the influence of Joseph Bell and his remarkable powers of deduction began to assert itself. “I used to rather pride myself on being able to spot a man’s trade or profession by a good look at his exterior,” Conan Doyle wrote in a story called “The Recollections of

introduction xv

Captain Wilkie,” also published in Chambers’s Journal. “I had the advantage of studying under a professor at Edinburgh who was a master of the art, and used to electrify both his patients and his clinical classes by long shots, sometimes at the most unlikely of pursuits, and never very far from the mark. ‘Well, my man,’ I have heard him say, ‘I can see by your fingers that you play some musical instrument for your livelihood, but it is a rather curious one—something quite out of my line.’ The man afterwards informed us that he earned a few coppers by blowing ‘Rule Britannia’ on a coffee-pot, the spout of which was pierced to form a rough flute.” It was an intriguing notion—a character who could make startling deductions at a glance—but it would be some time before the budding author developed it further. For the moment, he continued to cast in all directions. “I have got a lot of literary chickens hatched and flying about,” he told his mother in the summer of 1882, “but none of them have come home to roost yet.” Conan Doyle had come to consider himself “practically the head of a large struggling family” as his father’s health continued to deteriorate, and was eager to help provide for his younger siblings. Soon enough he would have children of his own to support. In 1885, at the age of twenty-six, he married Louisa Hawkins, the sister of a patient whom he had tended through a terminal case of cerebral meningitis. Their first child would arrive by the end of the decade. “It was about a year after my marriage that I realised that I could go on doing short stories forever and never make headway,” Conan Doyle noted. “What is necessary is that your name should be on the back of a volume. Only so do you assert your individuality, and get the full credit or discredit of your achievement.” His early efforts at producing a novel met with mixed success, however. One of them, a “personal-social-political” novel called The Narrative of John Smith, promptly went missing when he sent his only copy of the manuscript to a London publisher. “Of course it was the best thing I ever wrote,” he wrote. “Who ever lost a manuscript that wasn’t?” Undaunted, he worked “spasmodically” at a book entitled The Firm of Girdlestone, concerning the misfortunes of a medical student at Edinburgh University. The story, he admitted, “interested me extremely at the time, though I have never heard that it had the same effect upon anyone else afterwards.” In March of 1886, he took a deep breath and began work on a new short novel. “I felt now that I was capable of something fresher and crisper and more workmanlike,” he would recall, “and Poe’s masterful detective, M. Dupin, had from boyhood been one of my heroes. But could I bring an addition of my own? I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, of his eerie trick of spotting details. If he were a detective he would surely reduce this fascinating but unorganised business to something nearer to an exact science.” As he set to work, Conan Doyle fastened on the title of A Tangled Skein, and sketched out a pair of characters named Ormond Sacker and a “sleepy eyed young man” called Sherrinford Holmes. By the time he finished work some six weeks later, the title had been changed to A Study in Scarlet and the characters were renamed Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Even now, success remained just out of reach. Soon, A Study in Scarlet began to make the familiar “circular tour,” with several publishers issuing prompt rejections. Finally, at the end of October, Conan Doyle received an offer from the firm of Ward, Lock & Co., but it was not an especially flattering one: “We could not publish it this year,” they declared, “as the market is flooded at present with cheap fiction.” If Conan Doyle would not object to waiting until the following year, the publishers would offer £25 to purchase the copyright.

xvi introduction

“It was not a very tempting offer,” Conan Doyle wrote, “and even I, poor as I was, hesitated to accept it.” He wrote asking if a small royalty might be granted, but the publisher turned him down on the grounds that “it might give rise to some confusion.” Reluctantly, Conan Doyle agreed to the terms. “I never at any time received another penny for it,” he declared ruefully. The story finally saw print in 1887, followed by another short novel, The Sign of the Four, three years later. Still, Sherlock Holmes did not catch fire. Conan Doyle continued to write and publish, but “after ten years of such work,” he recalled in later years, “I was as unknown as if I had never dipped a pen in an ink-bottle.” When The Strand Magazine appeared on the horizon in 1891, Conan Doyle saw a fresh opportunity open up for him. “I felt that Sherlock Holmes, whom I had already handled in two little books, would easily lend himself to a succession of short stories,” he explained. “It had struck me that a single character running through a series, if it only engaged the attention of the reader, would bind that reader to that particular magazine.” It proved to be a canny decision. The magazine’s editor, H. Greenhough Smith, could scarcely believe his luck when the first of Conan Doyle’s stories crossed his desk: “What a God-send to an editor jaded with wading through reams of impossible stuff! The ingenuity of plot, the limpid clearness of style, the perfect art of telling a story! The very handwriting, full of character, and clear as print.” He added: “I realised at once that here was the greatest short story writer since Edgar Allan Poe.” The public seemed to agree. Sherlock Holmes created a sensation, seemingly overnight, and readers soon clamored for more. Conan Doyle took it in stride as each new issue of The Strand brought a rush of notoriety and an increased demand for his work. “Sherlock Holmes appears to have caught on,” he told his mother, in one of literary history’s great understatements. Soon enough, he would tire of his newly famous detective. Sherlock Holmes, he believed, belonged to a “different and humbler plane” of literature, and was quite inferior to the historical novels through which he hoped to gain a more exalted place in the literary pantheon. When asked to contribute a preface to a new edition of A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle wrote that “so elementary a form of fiction as the detective story hardly deserves the dignity of a Preface.” At a remove of more than one hundred years, we must respectfully beg to differ. This “elementary” form of fiction—the very word now inextricably linked to Baker Street—was the work of an innovative genius, breaking new ground and lighting the way for future generations of writers. Though the era of gaslight and hansom cabs has long passed, Sherlock Holmes can be read over and over again for the sheer joy of Conan Doyle’s writing. It is not that we have forgotten who killed Sir Charles Baskerville or who stole the Bruce-Partington Plans; we return to Baker Street to watch a genius at work. Once heard, the call is never forgotten: The singular worm unknown to science. The footprints of a gigantic hound. The curious incident of the dog in the night-time. “Come, Watson, come. The game’s afoot.” At the same time, the Sherlock Holmes stories present an extraordinary portrait of friendship, with two contrary elements thrown together to precipitate a reaction, much like one of the chemical experiments carried out at the detective’s acid-stained table. If Watson tended to undervalue his importance to Holmes—“He was a man of habits,” he declares in one story, “and I had become one of them”—the detective was in no doubt as

introduction xvii

to his companion’s true worth: “I am lost without my Boswell,” he declares in “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Watson, along with his readers, would learn in time that his friend was far more than a “brain without heart,” as he once described him. When the doctor receives a superficial bullet wound in “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs,” he is astonished and deeply moved by Holmes’s reaction: “You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!” It was worth a wound—it was worth many wounds—to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation. Over the years Conan Doyle has often been portrayed as “the man who hated Sherlock Holmes,” but this dismissive oversimplification does him a disservice. At times the author sickened of his famous creation—as evidenced by the early attempt to kill him off—but in his final years he was able to strike a conciliatory note: “I have not in actual practise found that these lighter sketches have prevented me from exploring and finding my limitations in such varied branches of literature as history, poetry, historical novels, psychic research, and the drama. Had Holmes never existed I could not have done more, though he may perhaps have stood a little in the way of the recognition of my more serious literary work.” Sherlock Holmes would undoubtedly have seen the matter differently, and the final word must go to him. As the great detective once had occasion to say: “Let me recommend this book—one of the most remarkable ever penned.”

Daniel Stashower is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars and is the author of Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. He is also a co-editor of several other books about Sherlock Holmes and his creator, including Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters.

A Study in Scarlet (1888)

PART I (Being a reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department)

C H A P TER I

M R . S H ER L O C K H O L M E S In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy’s country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties. The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines. Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawur. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the verandah, when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England. I was despatched, accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it. I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air—or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought: So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realised that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel, and to take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile. On the very day that I had come to this concluson, I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when some one tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognised young 5

6 the complete sherlock holmes

Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Barts. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man. In old days Stamford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed him with enthusiasm, and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy, I asked him to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom. “Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?” he asked in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London streets. “You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.” I gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time that we reached our destination. “Poor devil!” he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. “What are you up to now?” “Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.” “That’s a strange thing,” remarked my companion; “you are the second man today that has used that expression to me.” “And who was the first?” I asked. “A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital. He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could not get some one to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which were too much for his purse.” “By Jove!” I cried; “if he really wants some one to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer having a partner to being alone.” Young Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his wineglass “You don’t know Sherlock Holmes yet,” he said; “perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.” “Why, what is there against him?” “Oh, I didn’t say there was anything against him. He is a little queer in his ideas—an enthusiast in some branches of science. As far as I know he is a decent fellow enough.” “A medical student, I suppose?” said I. “No—I have no idea what he intends to go in for. I believe he is well up in anatomy, and he is a first-class chemist; but, as far as I know, he has never taken out any systematic medical classes. His studies are very desultory and eccentric, but he has amassed a lot of out-of-the-way knowledge which would astonish his professors.” “Did you never ask him what he was going in for?” I asked. “No; he is not a man that it is easy to draw out, though he can be communicative enough when the fancy seizes him.” “I should like to meet him,” I said. “If I am to lodge with any one, I should prefer a man of studious and quiet habits. I am not strong enough yet to stand much noise or excitement. I had enough of both in Afghanistan to last me for the remainder of my natural existence. How could I meet this friend of yours?” “He is sure to be at the laboratory,” returned my companion. “He either avoids the place for weeks, or else he works there from morning till night. If you like we will drive round together after luncheon.” “Certainly,” I answered, and the conversation drifted away into other channels. As we made our way to the hospital after leaving the Holborn, Stamford gave me a few more particulars about the gentleman whom I proposed to take as a fellow-lodger.

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“You mustn’t blame me if you don’t get on with him,” he said; “I know nothing more of him than I have learned from meeting him occasionally in the laboratory. You proposed this arrangement so you must not hold me responsible.” “If we don’t get on it will be easy to part company,” I answered. “It seems to me, Stamford,” I added, looking hard at my companion, “that you have some reason for washing your hands of the matter. Is this fellow’s temper so formidable, or what is it? Don’t be mealy mouthed about it.” “It is not easy to express the inexpressible,” he answered with a laugh. “Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes—it approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge.” “Very right too.” “Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a bizarre shape.” “Beating the subjects!” “Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes.” “And yet you say he is not a medical student?” “No. Heaven knows what the objects of his studies are. But here we are, and you must form your own impressions about him.” As he spoke, we turned down a narrow lane and passed through a small side-door, which opened into a wing of the great hospital. It was familiar ground to me, and I needed no guiding as we ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor with its vista of whitewashed wall and duncoloured doors. Near the farther end a low arched passage branched away from it and led to the chemical laboratory. This was a lofty chamber, lined and littered with countless bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. There was only one student in the room, who was bending over a distant table absorbed in his work. At the sound of our steps he glanced round and sprang to his feet with a cry of pleasure. “I’ve found it! I’ve found it,” he shouted to my companion, running towards us with a test-tube in his hand. “I have found a re-agent which is precipitated by hœmoglobin, and by nothing else.” Had he discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have shone upon his features. “Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Stamford, introducing us. “How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” “How on earth did you know that?” I asked in astonishment. “Never mind,” said he, chuckling to himself. “The question now is about hœmoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?” “It is interesting, chemically, no doubt,” I answered, “but practically—” “Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years. Don’t you see that it gives us an infallible test for bloodstains. Come over here now!” He seized me by the coat sleeve in his eagerness, and drew me over to the table at which he had been working. “Let

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us have some fresh blood,” he said, digging a long bodkin into his finger, and drawing off the resulting drop of blood in a chemical pipette. “Now, I add this small quantity of blood to a litre of water. You perceive that the resulting mixture has the appearance of pure water. The proportion of blood cannot be more than one in a million. I have no doubt, however, that we shall be able to obtain the characteristic reaction.” As he spoke, he threw into the vessel a few white crystals, and then added some drops of a transparent fluid. In an instant the contents assumed a dull mahogany colour, and a brownish dust was precipitated to the bottom of the glass jar. “Ha! ha!” he cried, clapping his hands, and looking as delighted as a child with a new toy. “What do you think of that?” “It seems to be a very delicate test,” I remarked. “Beautiful! beautiful! The old guaiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain. So is the microscopic examination for blood corpuscles. The latter is valueless if the stains are a few hours old. Now, this appears to act as well whether the blood is old or new. Had this test been invented, there are hundreds of men now walking the earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their crimes.” “Indeed!” I murmured. “Criminal cases are continually hinging upon that one point. A man is suspected of a crime months perhaps after it has been committed. His linen or clothes are examined and brownish stains discovered upon them. Are they bloodstains, or mud stains, or rust stains, or fruit stains, or what are they? That is a question which has puzzled many an expert, and why? Because there was no reliable test. Now we have the Sherlock Holmes’s test, and there will no longer be any difficulty.” His eyes fairly glittered as he spoke, and he put his hand over his heart and bowed as if to some applauding crowd conjured up by his imagination. “You are to be congratulated,” I remarked, considerably surprised at his enthusiasm. “There was the case of Von Bischoff at Frankfort last year. He would certainly have been hung had this test been in existence. Then there was Mason of Bradford, and the notorious Muller, and Lefevre of Montpellier, and Samson of New Orleans. I could name a score of cases in which it would have been decisive.” “You seem to be a walking calendar of crime,” said Stamford with a laugh. “You might start a paper on those lines. Call it the Police News of the Past.” “Very interesting reading it might be made, too,” remarked Sherlock Holmes, sticking a small piece of plaster over the prick on his finger. “I have to be careful,” he continued, turning to me with a smile, “for I dabble with poisons a good deal.” He held out his hand as he spoke, and I noticed that it was all mottled over with similar pieces of plaster, and discoloured with strong acids. “We came here on business,” said Stamford, sitting down on a high three-legged stool, and pushing another one in my direction with his foot. “My friend here wants to take diggings; and as you were complaining that you could get no one to go halves with you, I thought that I had better bring you together.” Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. “I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,” he said, “which would suit us down to the ground. You don’t mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?” “I always smoke ‘ship’s’ myself,” I answered.

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“That’s good enough. I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?” “By no means.” “Let me see—what are my other shortcomings. I get in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right. What have you to confess now? It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.” I laughed at this cross-examination. “I keep a bull pup,” I said, “and I object to rows because my nerves are shaken, and I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices when I’m well, but those are the principal ones at present.” “Do you include violin playing in your category of rows?” he asked, anxiously. “It depends on the player,” I answered. “A well-played violin is a treat for the gods—a badly-played one—” “Oh, that’s all right,” he cried, with a merry laugh. “I think we may consider the thing as settled—that is, if the rooms are agreeable to you.” “When shall we see them?” “Call for me here at noon tomorrow, and we’ll go together and settle everything,” he answered. “All right—noon exactly,” said I, shaking his hand. We left him working among his chemicals, and we walked together towards my hotel. “By the way,” I asked suddenly, stopping and turning upon Stamford, “how the deuce did he know that I had come from Afghanistan?” My companion smiled an enigmatical smile. “That’s just his little peculiarity,” he said. “A good many people have wanted to know how he finds things out.” “Oh! a mystery is it?” I cried, rubbing my hands. “This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. ‘The proper study of mankind is man,’ you know.” “You must study him, then,” Stamford said, as he bade me good-bye. “You’ll find him a knotty problem, though. I’ll wager he learns more about you than you about him. Good-bye.” “Good-bye,” I answered, and strolled on to my hotel, considerably interested in my new acquaintance.

C H A P TER I I

T H E S C I ENC E

OF

DEDUCTION

We met next day as he had arranged and inspected the rooms at No. 221b Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bedrooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows. So desirable in every way were the apartments, and so moderate did the terms seem when divided between us, that the bargain was concluded upon the spot, and we at once entered into possession. That very evening I moved my things round from the hotel, and on the following morning Sherlock Holmes followed me with several boxes and portmanteaus. For a day or two we were busily employed in unpacking and laying out our property to the best advantage. That done, we gradually began to settle down and to accommodate ourselves to our new surroundings. Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the dissecting rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the city. Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion. As the weeks went by, my interest in him and my curiosity as to his aims in life gradually deepened and increased. His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch, as I frequently had occasion to observe when I watched him manipulating his fragile philosophical instruments. The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often I endeavoured to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself. Before pronouncing judgment, however, be it remembered, how objectless was my life, and how little there was to engage my attention. My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily 10

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existence. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavouring to unravel it. He was not studying medicine. He had himself, in reply to a question, confirmed Stamford’s opinion upon that point. Neither did he appear to have pursued any course of reading which might fit him for a degree in science or any other recognised portal which would give him an entrance into the learned world. Yet his zeal for certain studies was remarkable, and within eccentric limits his knowledge was so extraordinarily ample and minute that his observations have fairly astounded me. Surely no man would work so hard or attain such precise information unless he had some definite end in view. Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning. No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so. His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he enquired in the naïvest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilised human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realise it. “You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.” “To forget it!” “You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort