The Sign of the Four

  The Sign of the Four

  By

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Contents

  Chapter I

  The Science of Deduction

  Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece andhis hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long,white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled backhis left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfullyupon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred withinnumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home,pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-linedarm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

  Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, butcustom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day today I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swellednightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage toprotest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should delivermy soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalantair of my companion which made him the last man with whom one wouldcare to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, hismasterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his manyextraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossinghim.

  Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had takenwith my lunch, or the additional exasperation produced by the extremedeliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out nolonger.

  "Which is it to-day?" I asked,--"morphine or cocaine?"

  He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which hehad 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 overthe Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strainupon 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 thatits 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 morbidprocess, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave apermanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes uponyou. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, fora mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with whichyou have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade toanother, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is tosome extent answerable."

  He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his finger-tipstogether and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one whohas a relish for conversation.

  "My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give mework, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricateanalysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense thenwith artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence.I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my ownparticular profession,--or rather created it, for I am the only one inthe world."

  "The only unofficial detective?" I said, raising my eyebrows.

  "The only unofficial consulting detective," he answered. "I am thelast and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson orLestrade or Athelney Jones are out of their depths--which, by the way,is their normal state--the matter is laid before me. I examine thedata, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim nocredit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The workitself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is myhighest reward. But you have yourself had some experience of mymethods of work in the Jefferson Hope case."

  "Yes, indeed," said I, cordially. "I was never so struck by anythingin my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure with the somewhatfantastic title of 'A Study in Scarlet.'"

  He shook his head sadly. "I glanced over it," said he. "Honestly, Icannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, anexact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotionalmanner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, whichproduces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or anelopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid."

  "But the romance was there," I remonstrated. "I could not tamper withthe facts."

  "Some facts should be suppressed, or at least a just sense ofproportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in thecase which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning fromeffects to causes by which I succeeded in unraveling it."

  I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been speciallydesigned to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by theegotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should bedevoted to his own special doings. More than once during the yearsthat I had lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a smallvanity underlay my companion's quiet and didactic manner. I made noremark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had a Jezail bulletthrough it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me fromwalking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather.

  "My practice has extended recently to the Continent," said Holmes,after a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. "I was consultedlast week by Francois Le Villard, who, as you probably know, has comerather to the front lately in the French detective service. He has allthe Celtic power of quick intuition, but he is deficient in the widerange of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developmentsof his art. The case was concerned with a will, and possessed somefeatures of interest. I was able to refer him to two parallel cases,the one at Riga in 1857, and the other at St. Louis in 1871, which havesuggested to him the true solution. Here is the letter which I hadthis morning acknowledging my assistance." He tossed over, as hespoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper. I glanced my eyes downit, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray"magnifiques," "coup-de-maitres," and "tours-de-force," all testifyingto the ardent admiration of the Frenchman.

  "He speaks as a pupil to his master," said I.

  "Oh, he rates my assistance too highly," said Sherlock Holmes, lightly."He has considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the threequalities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power ofobservation and that of deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge;and that may come in time. He is now translating my small works intoFrench."

  "Your works?"

  "Oh, didn't you know?" he cried, laughing. "Yes, I have been guilty ofseveral monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, forexample, is one 'Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the VariousTobaccoes.' In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-,cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with colored plates illustrating thedifference in the ash. It is a point which is continually turning upin criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as aclue. If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder hasbeen done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviouslynarrows your field of search. To the trained eye there is as muchdifference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluffof bird's-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato."

  "You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae," I remarked.

  "I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the tracingof footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as apreserver of impresses. Here, too, is a curious little work upon theinfluence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of thehands of slaters, sailors, corkcutters, compositors, weavers, anddiamond-polishers. That is a matter of great practical interest to thescientific detecti
ve,--especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or indiscovering the antecedents of criminals. But I weary you with myhobby."

  "Not at all," I answered, earnestly. "It is of the greatest interestto me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing yourpractical application of it. But you spoke just now of observation anddeduction. Surely the one to some extent implies the other."

  "Why, hardly," he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his arm-chair,and sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe. "For example,observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore StreetPost-Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that when thereyou dispatched a telegram."

  "Right!" said I. "Right on both points! But I confess that I don'tsee how you arrived at it. It was a sudden impulse upon my part, and Ihave mentioned it to no one."

  "It is simplicity itself," he remarked, chuckling at my surprise,--"soabsurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it mayserve to define the limits of observation and of deduction.Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mould adhering toyour instep. Just opposite the Seymour Street Office they have takenup the pavement and thrown up some earth which lies in such a way thatit is difficult to avoid treading in it in entering. The earth is ofthis peculiar reddish tint which is found, as far as I know, nowhereelse in the neighborhood. So much is observation. The rest isdeduction."

  "How, then, did you deduce the telegram?"

  "Why, of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I satopposite to you all morning. I see also in your open desk there thatyou have a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of post-cards. Whatcould you go into the post-office for, then, but to send a wire?Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be thetruth."

  "In this case it certainly is so," I replied, after a little thought."The thing, however, is, as you say, of the simplest. Would you thinkme impertinent if I were to put your theories to a more severe test?"

  "On the contrary," he answered, "it would prevent me from taking asecond dose of cocaine. I should be delighted to look into any problemwhich you might submit to me."

  "I have heard you say that it is difficult for a man to have any objectin daily use without leaving the impress of his individuality upon itin such a way that a trained observer might read it. Now, I have herea watch which has recently come into my possession. Would you have thekindness to let me have an opinion upon the character or habits of thelate owner?"

  I handed him over the watch with some slight feeling of amusement in myheart, for the test was, as I thought, an impossible one, and Iintended it as a lesson against the somewhat dogmatic tone which heoccasionally assumed. He balanced the watch in his hand, gazed hard atthe dial, opened the back, and examined the works, first with his nakedeyes and then with a powerful convex lens. I could hardly keep fromsmiling at his crestfallen face when he finally snapped the case to andhanded it back.

  "There are hardly any data," he remarked. "The watch has been recentlycleaned, which robs me of my most suggestive facts."

  "You are right," I answered. "It was cleaned before being sent to me."In my heart I accused my companion of putting forward a most lame andimpotent excuse to cover his failure. What data could he expect froman uncleaned watch?

  "Though unsatisfactory, my research has not been entirely barren," heobserved, staring up at the ceiling with dreamy, lack-lustre eyes."Subject to your correction, I should judge that the watch belonged toyour elder brother, who inherited it from your father."

  "That you gather, no doubt, from the H. W. upon the back?"

  "Quite so. The W. suggests your own name. The date of the watch isnearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the watch: soit was made for the last generation. Jewelry usually descends to theeldest son, and he is most likely to have the same name as the father.Your father has, if I remember right, been dead many years. It has,therefore, been in the hands of your eldest brother."

  "Right, so far," said I. "Anything else?"

  "He was a man of untidy habits,--very untidy and careless. He was leftwith good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some timein poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally,taking to drink, he died. That is all I can gather."

  I sprang from my chair and limped impatiently about the room withconsiderable bitterness in my heart.

  "This is unworthy of you, Holmes," I said. "I could not have believedthat you would have descended to this. You have made inquires into thehistory of my unhappy brother, and you now pretend to deduce thisknowledge in some fanciful way. You cannot expect me to believe thatyou have read all this from his old watch! It is unkind, and, to speakplainly, has a touch of charlatanism in it."

  "My dear doctor," said he, kindly, "pray accept my apologies. Viewingthe matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal andpainful a thing it might be to you. I assure you, however, that Inever even knew that you had a brother until you handed me the watch."

  "Then how in the name of all that is wonderful did you get these facts?They are absolutely correct in every particular."

  "Ah, that is good luck. I could only say what was the balance ofprobability. I did not at all expect to be so accurate."

  "But it was not mere guess-work?"

  "No, no: I never guess. It is a shocking habit,--destructive to thelogical faculty. What seems strange to you is only so because you donot follow my train of thought or observe the small facts upon whichlarge inferences may depend. For example, I began by stating that yourbrother was careless. When you observe the lower part of thatwatch-case you notice that it is not only dinted in two places, but itis cut and marked all over from the habit of keeping other hardobjects, such as coins or keys, in the same pocket. Surely it is nogreat feat to assume that a man who treats a fifty-guinea watch socavalierly must be a careless man. Neither is it a very far-fetchedinference that a man who inherits one article of such value is prettywell provided for in other respects."

  I nodded, to show that I followed his reasoning.

  "It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take awatch, to scratch the number of the ticket with a pin-point upon theinside of the case. It is more handy than a label, as there is no riskof the number being lost or transposed. There are no less than foursuch numbers visible to my lens on the inside of this case.Inference,--that your brother was often at low water. Secondaryinference,--that he had occasional bursts of prosperity, or he couldnot have redeemed the pledge. Finally, I ask you to look at the innerplate, which contains the key-hole. Look at the thousands of scratchesall round the hole,--marks where the key has slipped. What sober man'skey could have scored those grooves? But you will never see adrunkard's watch without them. He winds it at night, and he leavesthese traces of his unsteady hand. Where is the mystery in all this?"

  "It is as clear as daylight," I answered. "I regret the injusticewhich I did you. I should have had more faith in your marvellousfaculty. May I ask whether you have any professional inquiry on footat present?"

  "None. Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brain-work. What elseis there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such adreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls downthe street and drifts across the dun-colored houses. What could bemore hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of havingpowers, doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crimeis commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save thosewhich are commonplace have any function upon earth."

  I had opened my mouth to reply to this tirade, when with a crisp knockour landlady entered, bearing a card upon the brass salver.

  "A young lady for you, sir," she said, addressing my companion.

  "Miss Mary Morstan," he read. "Hum! I have no recollection of thename. Ask the young lady to step up, Mrs. Hudson. Don't go, doctor.I should prefer that you remain."