The Sign of the Four Page #2

								


"He speaks as a pupil to his master," said I.

"Oh, he rates my assistance too highly," said Sherlock Holmes, lightly. "He has considerable gifts himself.  He possesses two out of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective.  He has the power of observation and that of deduction.  He is only wanting in knowledge; and that may come in time.  He is now translating my small works into French."

"Your works?"

"Oh, didn't you know?" he cried, laughing.  "Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs.  They are all upon technical subjects.  Here, for example, is one 'Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes.'  In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-, cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with colored plates illustrating the difference in the ash.  It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue.  If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search.  To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird's-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato."

"You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae," I remarked.

"I appreciate their importance.  Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses. Here, too, is a curious little work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, corkcutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers.  That is a matter of great practical interest to the scientific detective,--especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering the antecedents of criminals.  But I weary you with my hobby."

"Not at all," I answered, earnestly.  "It is of the greatest interest to me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your practical application of it.  But you spoke just now of observation and deduction.  Surely the one to some extent implies the other."

"Why, hardly," he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his arm-chair, and sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe.  "For example, observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore Street Post-Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that when there you dispatched a telegram."

"Right!" said I.  "Right on both points!  But I confess that I don't see how you arrived at it.  It was a sudden impulse upon my part, and I have mentioned it to no one."
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