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 | The Sign Of The Four Ebook | |
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 | |  | | E-book Category: Adventure, Classic
E-book Title: The Sign Of The Four
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Book Description: I. THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION.
Private detective 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 several little time his eyes fresh thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and carpus all dotted and scarred with countless puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, ironed
down the bantam piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.
Three times a day for galore 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 much irritable at the sight, and my conscience big nightly inside
me at the thought that I had lacked the courageousness to protest. Once once again and once again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, casual air of my companion which ready-made him the last man with whom one would-be care to take thing
approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his consummate manner, and the experience which I had had of his galore extraordinary qualities, all ready-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 make 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-be 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 elucidative 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 accrued tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Certainly 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 several 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 problems, give me work, give me the most deep cryptograph or the most byzantine analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I loathe 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. Once
Gregson or Lestrade or Athelney Jones are out of their depths -- which, by the way, is their normal state -- the matter is set 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 activity itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. But you have yourself had several experience of my methods of activity in the Chief executive Hope case."More... | 
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