The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Page 2

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, the leather is scored by
six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone
who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to
remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that
you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly
malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. As to your
practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform,
with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a
bulge on the right side 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
active member of the medical profession."
I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his

process of deduction. "When I hear you give your reasons," I remarked,
"the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I
could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your
reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process. And yet I believe
that my eyes are as good as yours."
"Quite so," he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself
down into an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe. The
distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps
which lead up from the hall to this room."
"Frequently."
"How often?"
"Well, some hundreds of times."
"Then how many are there?"
"How many? I don't know."
"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just
my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have
both seen and observed. By-the-way, since you are interested in these
little problems, and since you are good enough to chronicle one or two
of my trifling experiences, you may be interested in this." He threw
over a sheet of thick, pink-tinted note-paper which had been lying open
upon the table. "It came by the last post," said he. "Read it aloud."
The note was undated, and without either signature or address.
"There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o'clock," it said,
"a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very
deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the royal houses of
Europe have shown