Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place, while some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the stage which they have vacated.
Women have seldom have been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart.
Why should you go further in it? What have you to gain from it?” “What, indeed? It is art for art’s sake, Watson. I suppose when you doctored you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?” “For my education, Holmes.” “Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last. This is an instructive case. There.
What is the use of having powers, doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?
Where’s your warrant?” asked McGinty. “By Gar! a man might as well live in Russia as in Vermissa while folk like you are running the police. It’s a capitalist outrage, and you’ll hear more of it, I reckon.
Our official detectives may blunder in the matter of intelligence, but never in that of courage. Gregson climbed the stair to arrest this desperate murderer with the same absolutely quiet and businesslike bearing with which he would have ascended the official staircase of Scotland Yard. The Pinkerton man had tried to push past him, but Gregson had firmly elbowed him back. London dangers were the privilege of the London force.
He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.
Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature rather than those more superficial ones tor which our artificial state of society is responsible.
You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.
Died August 4th, 1860.
The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations – that’s the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year’s pension as a solatium for his wounded character.
In this great stretch of country there is no sign of life, nor of anything appertaining to life. There is no bird in the steel-blue heaven, no movement upon the dull, grey earth – above all, there is absolute silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a sound in all that mighty wilderness; nothing but silence – complete and heart-subduing silence.
Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. “Well, I never!” said he. “I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all.” “I begin to think, Watson,” said Holmes, “that I make a mistake in explaining.
Is that Eduardo Lucas of Godolphin Street?” “Yes.” “You will not see him.” “Why not?” “He was murdered in his house last night.” My friend has so often astonished me in the course of our adventures that it was with a sense of exultation that I realized how completely I had astonished him.
If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders.
Goethe is always pithy.
Then he’s no use to me. I’m a practical man.” “Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime. Everything comes in circles – even Professor Moriarty.
Well, Mr. Holmes, what are we to do with that fact?” “To remember it – to docket it. We may come on something later which will bear upon it.
We ran round, and there lay the unfortunate rider. He was a tall man, full-bearded, with spectacles, one glass of which had been knocked out. The cause of his death was a frightful blow upon the head, which had crushed in part of his skull. That he could have gone on after receiving such an injury said much for the vitality and courage of the man. He wore shoes, but no socks, and his open coat disclosed a nightshirt beneath it. It was undoubtedly the German master.
Use your powers! Go to the scene of the crime! See the people concerned! Leave no stone unturned! In all your career you have never had so great a chance of serving your country.