[obi/Doyle/sign.of.four.txt]

                       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 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 extraor-
dinary 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, Wat-
son," he said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad
one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarify-
ing 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 prob-
lems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or
the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmo-
sphere. 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 Greg-
son, 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."