The Adventures Of Sherlok Holmes

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THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
by ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
A Scandal in Bohemia
The Red-headed League
A Case of Identity
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
The Five Orange Pips
The Man with the Twisted Lip
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb
The Adventure of the NobleBachelor
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

A Scandal in Bohemia
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 tohis 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 draw-ing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for thetrained
teasoner 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 thatwoman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious
and ques-tionable 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 hiswhole
Bohemian soul, remained in our lodg-ings in Baker Street, buried among his old books,
and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsi-ness 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 thoseclues, 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 thereigning 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 o f
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),

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when my wayled me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door,
which must always be associ-ated 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 extraordi-nary powers. His rooms were
brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in adark
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...