sherlock holmes

SHERLOCK
HOLMES

S
I R ART H U R IG NAT I U S
C O NA N DOY L E
1859–1930
T H E ADV E N T U R E S OF
SHERLOCK HOLMES Published by
PDF R E EBO O K S .O R G
Public domain. No rights reserved.

Contents
A Scandal In Bohemia3
The Red-Headed League21
A Case Of Identity38
The Boscombe Valley Mystery51
The Five Orange Pips69
The Man With The Twisted Lip83
The Adventure Of The Blue Carbuncle100
The Adventure Of The Speckled Band115
The Adventure Of The Engineer's Thumb133
The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor148
The Adventure Of The Beryl Coronet164
The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches182
2

Adventure I
A Scandal In Bohemia
I
T O
Sherlock Holmes she is always thewoman. I have seldom heard him
mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and pre-
dominates 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 nely ad-
justed 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 rst nds himself master of his own establishment, were
sufcient 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 erce 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 ofcial 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 nally of the
3

ADVENTURE I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA
4
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 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 gure 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 arm-
chair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene
in the corner. Then he stood before the re 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 trie 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.