A Scandal in Bohemia Arthur Conan Doyle This text is provided to you “as-is” without any warranty. No warranties of any kind, expressed or implied, are made to you as to the text or any medium it may be on, including but not limited to warranties of merchantablity or fitness for a particular purpose. This text was formatted from various free ASCII and HTML variants. See http://sherlock-holm.esfor an electronic form of this text and additional information about it. This text comes from the collection’s version 3.1. Table of contents Chapter 1 ............................................................. 3 Chapter 2 ............................................................. 7 Chapter 3 ............................................................. 12 1 CHAPTER I. o Sherlock Holmes she is always the (for I had now returned to civil practice), when woman. I have seldom heard him men- my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed tion her under any other name. In his the well-remembered door, which must always be T eyes she eclipses and predominates the associated in my mind with my wooing, and with whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emo- the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was tion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, to know how he was employing his extraordinary precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing would have placed himself in a false position. He the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, and a sneer. They were admirable things for the ob- who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude server—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s and manner told their own story. He was at work motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a dis- I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber tracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all which had formerly been in part my own. his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me a nature such as his. And yet there was but one to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Adler, of dubious and questionable memory. Then he stood before the fire and looked me over I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage in his singular introspective fashion. had drifted us away from each other. My own “Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, complete happiness, and the home-centred inter- Watson, that you have put on seven and a half ests which rise up around the man who first finds pounds since I saw you.” himself master of his own establishment, were suf- “Seven!” I answered. ficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, “Indeed, I should have thought a little more. who loathed every form of society with his whole Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in prac- Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker tice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you Street, buried among his old books, and alternating intended to go into harness.” from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of “Then, how do you know?” his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply “I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that immense faculties and extraordinary powers of ob- you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?” servation in following out those clues, and clearing “My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. up those mysteries which had been abandoned as You would certainly have been burned, had you hopeless by the official police. From time to time lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a I heard some vague account of his doings: of his country walk on Thursday and came home in a summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff mur- dreadful mess, but as I have changed my clothes der, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of I can’t imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her of the mission which he had accomplished so del- notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work icately and successfully for the reigning family of it out.” Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, how- He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, ever, which I merely shared with all the readers of nervous hands together. the daily press, I knew little of my former friend “It is simplicity itself,” said he; “my eyes tell me and companion. that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the One night—it was on the twentieth of March, firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost 1888—I was returning from a journey to a patient parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by 3 someone who has very carelessly scraped round “This is indeed a mystery,” I remarked. “What the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted do you imagine that it means?” mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction “I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to that you had been out in vile weather, and that you theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a gen- suit facts. But the note itself. What do you deduce tleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, from it?” with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right I carefully examined the writing, and the paper forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top- upon which it was written. hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, “The man who wrote it was presumably well I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to do,” I remarked, endeavouring to imitate my to be an active member of the medical profession.” companion’s processes. “Such paper could not be I could not help laughing at the ease with which bought under half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly he explained his process of deduction. “When I strong and stiff.” hear you give your reasons,” I remarked, “the thing “Peculiar—that is the very word,” said Holmes. always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple “It is not an English paper at all. Hold it up to the that I could easily do it myself, though at each light.” successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled I did so, and saw a large “E” with a small “g,” until you explain your process. And yet I believe a “P,” and a large “G” with a small “t” woven into that my eyes are as good as yours.” the texture of the paper. “Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, “What do you make of that?” asked Holmes. and throwing himself down into an armchair. “You “The name of the maker, no doubt; or his mono- see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. gram, rather.” For example, you have frequently seen the steps “Not at all. The ‘G’ with the small ‘t’ stands for which lead up from the hall to this room.” ‘Gesellschaft,’ which is the German for ‘Company.’ “Frequently.” It is a customary contraction like our ‘Co.’ ‘P,’ of “How often?” course, stands for ‘Papier.’ Now for the ‘Eg.’ Let us glance at our Continental Gazetteer.” He took down “Well, some hundreds of times.” a heavy brown volume from his shelves. “Eglow, “Then how many are there?” Eglonitz—here we are, Egria. It is in a German- speaking country—in Bohemia, not far from Carls- “How many? I don’t know.” bad. ‘Remarkable as being the scene of the death “Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you of Wallenstein, and for its numerous glass-factories have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that and paper-mills.’ Ha, ha, my boy, what do you there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen make of that?” His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a and observed. By-the-way, since you are interested great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette.