SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

ADVENTURE I.

A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

I.

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 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

figure 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 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.

\"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 trifle 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.

How do I know that you have been getting

yourself very wet lately, and that you have

a most clumsy and careless servant girl?\"

\"My dear Holmes,\" said I, \"this is too

much.

You would certainly have been burned, had

you lived a few centuries ago.

It is true that I had a country walk on

Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess,

but as I have changed my clothes I can't

imagine how you deduce it.

As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and

my wife has given her notice, but there,

again, I fail to see how you work it out.\"

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long,

nervous hands together.

\"It is simplicity itself,\" said he; \"my

eyes tell me that on the inside of your

left shoe, just where the firelight strikes

it, the leather is scored by six almost

parallel cuts.

Obviously they have been caused by someone

who has very carelessly scraped round the

edges of the sole in order to remove

crusted mud from it.

Hence, you see, my double deduction that

you had been out in vile weather, and that

you had a particularly malignant boot-

slitting specimen of the London slavey.

As to your practice, if a gentleman walks

into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a

black mark of nitrate of silver upon his

right forefinger, and a bulge on the right

side of his top-hat to show where he has

secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull,

indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an

active member of the medical profession.\"

I could not help laughing at the ease with

which he explained his process of

deduction.

\"When I hear you give your reasons,\" I

remarked, \"the thing always appears to me

to be so ridiculously simple that I could

easily do it myself, though at each

successive instance of your reasoning I am

baffled until you explain your process.

And yet I believe that my eyes are as good

as yours.\"

\"Quite so,\" he answered, lighting a

cigarette, and throwing himself down into

an armchair.

\"You see, but you do not observe.

The distinction is clear.

For example, you have frequently seen the

steps which lead up from the hall to this