The Sign of the Four | Page 3

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The Sign of the Four
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


Chapter 1
The Science of Deduction

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel- piece 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 shirt-cuff. 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 arm-chair 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 last 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