put his broad back up against it, he recognized the uselessness of resistance.“Pretty sort o’ treatment this!” he cried, stamping his stick. “I come here to see a gentleman, and you two, who I never saw here in my life, seize me and treat me in this fashion!”“You will be none the worse,” I said. “We shall recompense you for the loss of your time. Sit over here on the sofa, and you will not have long to wait.”He came across sullenly enough and seated himself with his face resting on his hands. Jones and I resumed our cigars and our talk. Suddenly, however, Holmes’s voice broke upon us.“I think that you might offer me a cigar too,” he said. We both started in our chairs. It was Holmes sitting close to us with an air of quiet amusement.“Holmes!” I exclaimed. “You’re here! But where is the old man?”“Here is the old man,” said he, holding out a heap of white hair. “Here he is—wig, whiskers, eyebrows, and all. I thought my disguise was pretty good, but I hardly expected that it would stand that test.”“Ah, you rogue!” cried Jones, highly delighted. “You would have made an actor and a rare one. You had the proper workhouse cough, and those weak legs of yours are worth ten pound a week. I thought I knew that glint of your eye, though. You don’t get away from us so easily, you see.”
Notes:Originally subtitled: The Problem of the Sholtos.The sign of four symbol means the number four in Sikhs. Three of the four were Sikhs.Mary Morstan later becomes Watson’s first wife.Ballarat, where Watson said he had seen something of the sort left by prospectors. Referring to the dugout grounds at Pondicherry Lodge. Also mentioned in Boscombe Valley story where John Turner had been known as the bandit “Black Jack of Ballarat.”Miss Morstan’s pearls came from a chaplet tipped with pearls which the major had always meant to send her. On his deathbed he directed his sons to do so after his death. “You, my sons, will give her a fair share of the Agra treasure.”Aurora, Mordecai Smith’s steam launch, “She was trim a little thing as any on the water. She’s been fresh painted, black with two red streaks.” — “A black funnel with a white band.”— “We shall have to catch the Aurora, and she has a name for being a clipper.”“All is well that ends well,” said Holmes. “But I certainly did not know that Aurora was such a clipper.” — “Smith says she is one of the fastest launches on the river, and that if he had had another man to help him with the engines we should never have caught her.”Strand newspaper heading of murder. “Mysterious Business at Upper Norwood.”“ About twelve o’clock last night Mr. Bartholomew Sholto of Pondicherry Lodge, Upper Norwood, was found dead in his room under circumstances which point to foul play. As far as we can learn, no actual traces of violence were found upon Mr. Sholto’s person, but a valuable collection of India gems which the deceased gentleman had inherited from his father has been carried off. The discovery was first made by Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who called at the house with Mr. Thaddeus Sholto, brother of the deceased. By a singular piece of good fortune. Mr. Athelney Jones, the well-known member of the detective police force, happened to be at the Norwood police Station and was on the ground within half an hour of the first alarm. His trained and experienced faculties were at once directed towards the detection of the criminals, with gratifying results that the brother, Thaddeus Sholto, has already been arrested, together with the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernstone, an Indian butler named Lal Rao, and a porter, or gatekeeper, named McMurdo. It is quite certain that the thief or thieves were well acquainted with the house, for Mr. Jones’s well-known technical knowledge and his powers of minute observation have enabled him to prove conclusively that the miscreants could not have entered by the door or by the window but must have made their way across the roof of the building, and so through a trapdoor into a room which communicated with that in which the body was found. The fact, which has been very clearly made out, proves conclusively that it was no mere haphazard burglary. The prompt and energetic action of the officers of the law shows the great advantage of the presence on such occasions of a single vigorous and masterful mind. We cannot but think that it supplies an argument to those who would wish to see our detectives more de-centralized, and so brought into closer and more effective touch with the cases which it is their duty to investigate.”
A Scandal in Bohemia
“THE WOMAN”
Publication & Dates:Strand, July 1891The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes. (1st story) 1892Illustrations: Sidney Paget (10)Conan Doyle’s 3rd storyHolmes 16th case
Story Introduction: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 of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with the 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 the 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 me 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 formally 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.A woman outwits HolmesCase Information
Date:“one night it was on the 20th of March, 1888.”
Duration:3 Days
Crime:Fear of blackmail.
Client:Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, hereditary King of Bohemia. Thirty years old at this time.A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six inches in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His dress was rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad taste. Heavy bands of Astrakhan were slashed across the sleeves and fronts of his double-breasted coat, while the deep blue cloak which was thrown over his shoulders was lined with flame-coloured