Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Illustrated

by Arthur Conan Doyle

"At least I have got a grip of the essential facts of the case. I shall enumerate them to you, for nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person, and I can hardly expect your co-operation if I do not show you the position from which we start."

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.

"But the Professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence which would convict in a court of law. You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal. My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill.

Something pure in the way that an intellectual regards their equal is as a child speaking of their new found interest, innocently enamored without the weight of morality — it was for a moment that Holmes, despite his sense of justice, was able to respect a man that he otherwise could not see fit for humanity. I enjoyed that.