The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

“It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.”

All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive.

When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James’s Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down.

“You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed, in unfeigned admiration.

My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.

“life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,”

There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.

“I reached this one,” said my friend, “by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast.”

A few yards off he stopped under a lamp-post and laughed in the hearty, noiseless fashion which was peculiar to him.

“I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his case.

“A most painful matter to me, as you can most readily imagine, Mr. Holmes. I have been cut to the quick. I understand that you have already managed several delicate cases of this sort, sir, though I presume that they were hardly from the same class of society.” “No, I am descending.” “I beg pardon.” “My last client of the sort was a king.”

“Very good, Lestrade,” said Holmes, laughing.

It was after five o’clock when Sherlock Holmes left me, but I had no time to be lonely,

“but, though I am exceptionally

strong in the fingers, it would take me all my time to break it.