A Scandal in Bohemia
ITo Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldomheard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes sheeclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not thathe felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions,and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise butadmirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfectreasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but asa lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He neverspoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. Theywere admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing theveil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasonerto admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjustedtemperament was to introduce a distracting factor which mightthrow a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitiveinstrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, wouldnot be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such ashis. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that womanwas the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had driftedus away from each other. My own complete happiness, and thehome-centred interests which rise up around the man who firstfinds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient toabsorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form ofsociety with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgingsin Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating fromweek to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness ofthe drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He wasstill, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupiedhis immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation infollowing out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries whichhad been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From timeto time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summonsto Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up ofthe singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, andfinally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately andsuccessfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signsof his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readersof the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.
One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888—I wasreturning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returnedto civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street.
As I passed the well-remembered door, which must alwaysbe associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the darkincidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desireto see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing hisextraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as Ilooked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouetteagainst the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with hishead sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. Tome, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and mannertold their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out ofhis drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some newproblem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber whichhad formerly been in part my own.
His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, Ithink, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindlyeye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars,and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Thenhe stood before the fire and looked me over in his singularintrospective fashion.
“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that youhave 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 tellme 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 gettingyourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy andcareless servant girl?”
“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainlyhave been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is truethat I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadfulmess, but as I have changed my clothes I can’t imagine how youdeduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has givenher notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work it out.”
He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous handstogether.
“It is simplicity itself,” said he; “my eyes tell me that on theinside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, theleather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they havebeen caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped roundthe edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it.
Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vileweather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slittingspecimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a gentlemanwalks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark ofnitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the rightside of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope,I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an activemember of the medical profession.”
I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explainedhis process of deduction. “When I hear you give your reasons,” Iremarked, “the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculouslysimple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successiveinstance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain yourprocess. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.”
“Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwinghimself down into an armchair. “You see, but you do not observe.