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  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

  by Arthur Conan Doyle

  March, 1999 [Etext #1661]

  The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

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  THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  A Scandal in Bohemia

  The Red-headed League

  A Case of Identity

  The Boscombe Valley Mystery

  The Five Orange Pips

  The Man with the Twisted Lip

  The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

  The Adventure of the Speckled Band

  The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb

  The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor

  The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet

  The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

  ADVENTURE I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

  I.

  To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard

  him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses

  and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt

  any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that

  one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but

  admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect

  reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a

  lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never

  spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They

  were admirable things for the observer--excellent for drawing the

  veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained teasoner

  to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely

  adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which

  might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a

  sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power

  lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a
br />
  nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and

  that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable

  memory.

  I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us

  away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the

  home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first

  finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to

  absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of

  society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in

  Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from

  week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the

  drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still,

  as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his

  immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in

  following out those clews, and clearing up those mysteries which

  had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time

  to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons

  to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up

  of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee,

  and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so

  delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland.

  Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely

  shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of

  my former friend and companion.

  One night--it was on the twentieth of March, 1888--I was

  returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to

  civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I

  passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated

  in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the

  Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes

  again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers.

  His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw

  his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against

  the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head

  sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who

  knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their

  own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his

  drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new

  problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which

  had formerly been in part my own.

  His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I

  think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly

  eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars,

  and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he

  stood before the fire and looked me over in his singular

  introspective fashion.

  "Wedlock suits you," he remarked. "I think, Watson, that you have

  put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you."

  "Seven!" I answered.

  "Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more,

  I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not

  tell me that you intended to go into harness."

  "Then, how do you know?"

  "I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting

  yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and

  careless servant girl?"

  "My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly

  have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true

  that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful

  mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can't imagine how you

  deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has

  given her notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work it

  out."

  He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands

  together.

  "It is simplicity itself," said he; "my eyes tell me that on the

  inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it,