THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES

                               THE SIGN OF FOUR


                                  Chapter 1

                           THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION

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 shirtcuff.
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 velvet-lined 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."
     I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially
designed to please him.  I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotism
which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be devoted to his
own special doings.  More than once during the years that I had lived with him
in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion's
quiet and didactic manner.  I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my
wounded leg.  I had had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and
though it did not prevent me from walking it ached wearily at every change of
the weather.
     "My practice has extended recently to the Continent," said Holmes after a
while, filling up his old brier-root pipe.  "I was consulted last week by
Francois le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come rather to the front
lately in the French detective service.  He has all the Celtic power of quick
intuition, but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is
essential to the higher developments of his art.  The case was concerned with
a will and possessed some features of interest.  I was able to refer him to
two parallel cases, the one at Riga in 1857, and the other at St. Louis in
1871, which have suggested to him the true solution.  Here is the letter which
I had this morning acknowledging my assistance."
     He tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper.  I
glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with
stray magnifiques, coup-de-maitres and tours-de-force, all testifying to the
ardent admiration of the Frenchman.
     "He speaks as a pupil to his master," said I.
     "Oh, he rates my assistance too highly," said Sherlock Holmes lightly.
"He has considerable gifts himself.  He possesses two out of the three
qualities necessary for the ideal detective.  He has the power of observation
and that of deduction.  He is only wanting in knowledge, and that may come in
time.  He is now translating my small works into French."
     "Your works?"
     "Oh, didn't you know?" he cried, laughing.  "Yes, I have been guilty of
several monographs.  They are all upon technical subjects.  Here, for example,
is one 'Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos.'  In
it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar, cigarette, and pipe
tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference in the ash.  It is a
point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is
sometimes of supreme importance as a clue.  If you can say definitely, for
example, that some murder had been done by a man who was smoking an Indian
lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search.  To the trained eye there
is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white
fluff of bird's-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato."
     "You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae," I remarked.
     "I appreciate their importance.  Here is my monograph upon the tracing of
footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver
of impresses.  Here, too, is a curious little work upon the influence of a
trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters,
sailors, cork-cutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers.  That is a
matter of great practical interest to the scientific detective--especially in
cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering the antecedents of criminals.
But I weary you with my hobby."
     "Not at all," I answered earnestly.  "It is of the greatest interest to
me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your practical
application of it.  But you spoke just now of observation and deduction.
Surely the one to some extent implies the other."
     "Why, hardly," he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his armchair and
sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe.  "For example, observation shows
me that you have been to the Wigmore Street Post-Office this morning, but
deduction lets me know that when there you dispatched a telegram."
     "Right!" said I.  "Right on both points!  But I confess that I don't see
how you arrived at it.  It was a sudden impulse upon my part, and I have
mentioned it to no one."
     "It is simplicity itself," he remarked, chuckling at my surprise--"so
absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it may serve to
define the limits of observation and of deduction.  Observation tells me that
you have a little reddish mould adhering to your instep.  Just opposite the
Wigmore Street Office they have taken up the pavement and thrown up some
earth, which lies in such a way that it is difficult to avoid treading in it
in entering.  The earth is of this peculiar reddish tint which is found, as
far as I know, nowhere else in the neighbourhood.  So much is observation.
The rest is deduction."
     "How, then, did you deduce the telegram?"
     "Why, of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I sat
opposite to you all morning.  I see also in your open desk there that you have
a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of postcards.  What could you go into the
post-office for, then, but to send a wire?  Eliminate all other factors, and
the one which remains must be the truth."
     "In this case it certainly is so," I replied after a little thought.
"The thing, however, is, as you say, of the simplest.  Would you think me
impertinent if I were to put your theories to a more severe test?"
     "On the contrary," he answered, "it would prevent me from taking a second
dose of cocaine.  I should be delighted to look into any problem which you
might submit to me."
     "I have heard you say it is difficult for a man to have any object in
daily use without leaving the impress of his individuality upon it in such a
way that a trained observer might read it.  Now, I have here a watch which has
recently come into my possession.  Would you have the kindness to let me have
an opinion upon the character or habits of the late owner?"
     I handed him over the watch with some slight feeling of amusement in my
heart, for the test was, as I thought, an impossible one, and I intended it as
a lesson against the somewhat dogmatic tone which he occasionally assumed.  He
balanced the watch in his hand, gazed hard at the dial, opened the back, and
examined the works, first with his naked eyes and then with a powerful convex
lens.  I could hardly keep from smiling at his crestfallen face when he
finally snapped the case to and handed it back.
     "There are hardly any data," he remarked.  "The watch has been recently
cleaned, which robs me of my most suggestive facts."
     "You are right," I answered.  "It was cleaned before being sent to me."
     In my heart I accused my companion of putting forward a most lame and
impotent excuse to cover his failure.  What data could he expect from an
uncleaned watch?
     "Though unsatisfactory, my research has not been entirely barren," he
observed, staring up at the ceiling with dreamy, lack-lustre eyes.  "Subject
to your correction, I should judge that the watch belonged to your elder
brother, who inherited it from your father."
     "That you gather, no doubt, from the H. W. upon the back?"
     "Quite so.  The W. suggests your own name.  The date of the watch is
nearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the watch:  so it was
made for the last generation.  Jewellery usually descends to the eldest son,
and he is most likely to have the same name as the father.  Your father has,
if I remember right, been dead many years.  It has, therefore, been in the
hands of your eldest brother."
     "Right, so far," said I.  "Anything else?"
     "He was a man of untidy habits--very untidy and careless.  He was left
with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in
poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to
drink, he died.  That is all I can gather."
     I sprang from my chair and limped impatiently about the room with
considerable bitterness in my heart.
     "This is unworthy of you, Holmes," I said.  "I could not have believed
that you would have descended to this.  You have made inquiries into the
history of my unhappy brother, and you now pretend to deduce this knowledge in
some fanciful way.  You cannot expect me to believe that you have read all
this from his old watch!  It is unkind and, to speak plainly, has a touch of
charlatanism in it."
     "My dear doctor," said he kindly, "pray accept my apologies.  Viewing the
matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a
thing it might be to you.  I assure you, however, that I never even knew that
you had a brother until you handed me the watch."
     "Then how in the name of all that is wonderful did you get these facts?
They are absolutely correct in every particular."
     "Ah, that is good luck.  I could only say what was the balance of
probability.  I did not at all expect to be so accurate."
     "But it was not mere guesswork?"
     "No, no:  I never guess.  It is a shocking habit--destructive to the
logical faculty.  What seems strange to you is only so because you do not
follow my train of thought or observe the small facts upon which large
inferences may depend.  For example, I began by stating that your brother was
careless.  When you observe the lower part of that watch-case you notice that
it is not only dinted in two places but it is cut and marked all over from the
habit of keeping other hard objects, such as coins or keys, in the same
pocket.  Surely it is no great feat to assume that a man who treats a
fifty-guinea watch so cavalierly must be a careless man.  Neither is it a very
far-fetched inference that a man who inherits one article of such value is
pretty well provided for in other respects."
     I nodded to show that I followed his reasoning.
     "It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take a watch,
to scratch the numbers of the ticket with a pin-point upon the inside of the
case.  It is more handy than a label as there is no risk of the number being
lost or transposed.  There are no less than four such numbers visible to my
lens on the inside of this case.  Inference--that your brother was often at
low water.  Secondary inference--that he had occasional bursts of prosperity,
or he could not have redeemed the pledge.  Finally, I ask you to look at the
inner plate, which contains the keyhole.  Look at the thousands of scratches
all round the hole--marks where the key has slipped.  What sober man's key
could have scored those grooves?  But you will never see a drunkard's watch
without them.  He winds it at night, and he leaves these traces of his
unsteady hand.  Where is the mystery in all this?"
     "It is as clear as daylight," I answered.  "I regret the injustice which
I did you.  I should have had more faith in your marvellous faculty.  May I
ask whether you have any professional inquiry on foot at present?"
     "None.  Hence the cocaine.  I cannot live without brainwork.  What else
is there to live for?  Stand at the window here.  Was ever such a dreary,
dismal, unprofitable world?  See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and
drifts across the dun-coloured houses.  What could be more hopelessly prosaic
and material?  What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field
upon which to exert them?  Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and
no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth."
     I had opened my mouth to reply to this tirade when, with a crisp knock,
our landlady entered, bearing a card upon the brass salver.
     "A young lady for you, sir," she said, addressing my companion.
     "Miss Mary Morstan," he read.  "Hum!  I have no recollection of the name.
Ask the young lady to step up, Mrs. Hudson.  Don't go, Doctor.  I should
prefer that you remain."