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

of small moment."

"But consider!" I said, earnestly. "Count the cost! Your
brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a
pathological and morbid process, which involves increased
tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness.
You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you.
Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you,
for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers
with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not
only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one
for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable."

He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his
finger-tips together and leaned his elbows on the arms of
his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.

"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems,
give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram
or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper
atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants.
But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental
exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular
profession, -- or rather created it, for I am the only one in
the world."

"The only unofficial detective?" I said, raising my eyebrows.

"The only unofficial consulting detective," he answered.
"I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection.
When Gregson or Lestrade or Athelney Jones are out of their
depths -- which, by the way, is their normal state -- the
matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert,
and pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim no credit in
such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself,
the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers,
is my highest reward. But you have yourself had some experience
of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope case."

"Yes, indeed," said I, cordially. "I was never so struck by
anything in my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure
with the somewhat fantastic title of 'A Study in Scarlet.'"

He shook his head sadly. "I glanced over it," said he.
"Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is,
or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in
the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted
to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same
effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into
the fifth proposition of Euclid."