"Doyle, Arthur Conan - Sherlock Holmes 02 - The Sign of the Four" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

THE SIGN OF THE FOUR.

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CHAPTER I.
THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION.

SHERLOCK HOLMES took his bottle from the corner of the
mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat
morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he
adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left
shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested
thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted
and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he
thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston,
and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long
sigh of satisfaction.

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this
performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it.
On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable
at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me
at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest.
Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver
my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool,
nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man
with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a
liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the
experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities,
all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.

Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I
had taken with my lunch, or the additional exasperation
produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner,
I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.

"Which is it to-day?" I asked, -- "morphine or cocaine?"

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter
volume which he had opened. "It is cocaine," he said, --
"a seven-per-cent. solution. Would you care to try it?"

"No, indeed," I answered, brusquely. "My constitution has
not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to
throw any extra strain upon it."

He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson,"
he said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad
one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and
clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter