The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes
by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle

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Title: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Release Date: March, 1999 [EBook #1661] [Most recently updated:
November 29, 2002]
Edition: 12
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ***

(Additional editing by Jose Menendez)

THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by SIR ARTHUR
CONAN DOYLE

I. A Scandal in Bohemia
II. The Red-headed League
III. A Case of Identity
IV. The Boscombe Valley Mystery
V. The Five Orange Pips
VI. The Man with the Twisted Lip
VII. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

VIII. The Adventure of the Speckled Band
IX. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb
X. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
XI. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
XII. 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
reasoner 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 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 clues, 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