His Last Bow quotes

“Oh, man, of course.

No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram. She would have come.

”

“My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers. My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.

Life is commonplace, the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world.

Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove? But here, unless I am mistaken, is our client.”

“My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers.

My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.

Life is commonplace, the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove?

My host had shown me which was his bedroom the night before, so I knocked at the door. No reply. I turned the handle and walked in. The room was empty, and the bed had never been slept in. He had gone with the rest.

The foreign host, the foreign footman, the foreign cook, all had vanished in the night!

That was the end of my visit to Wisteria Lodge.”

“I have not all my facts yet, but I do not think there are any insuperable difficulties.

Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.

”

“Good, Watson, very good—but quite inadmissible. A Spaniard would write to a Spaniard in Spanish. The writer of this note is certainly English. Well, we can only possess our soul in patience until this excellent inspector come back for us.

Meanwhile we can thank our lucky fate which has rescued us for a few short hours from the insufferable fatigues of idleness.

”

“I must congratulate you, Inspector, on handling so distinctive and instructive a case.

Your powers, if I may say so without offence, seem superior to your opportunities.

”

“And I’ll work it myself, Mr. Holmes. It’s only due to my own credit to do so.

Your name is made, but I have still to make mine.

I should be glad to be able to say afterwards that I had solved it without your help.”

“But he would never cease talking of it—your kindness, sir, and the way in which you brought light into the darkness. I remembered his words when I was in doubt and darkness myself. I know you could if you only would.”

Holmes was accessible upon the side of flattery, and also, to do him justice, upon the side of kindliness.

The two forces made him lay down his gum-brush with a sigh of resignation and push back his chair.

“What, indeed?

It is art for art’s sake, Watson.

I suppose when you doctored you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?”

“

Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last.

This is an instructive case. There is neither money nor credit in it, and yet one would wish to tidy it up. When dusk comes we should find ourselves one stage advanced in our investigation.”

“Why, Gregson!” said my companion as he shook hands with the Scotland Yard detective. “

Journeys end with lovers’ meetings.

What brings you here?”

“

Different threads, but leading up to the same tangle.

I’ve been taking the signals.”

“He is in unoccupied premises under suspicious circumstances,” said Gregson. “That is good enough for the moment. When we have him by the heels we can see if New York can’t help us to keep him. I’ll take the responsibility of arresting him now.”

Our official detectives may blunder in the matter of intelligence, but never in that of courage.

Gregson climbed the stair to arrest this desperate murderer with the same absolutely quiet and businesslike bearing with which he would have ascended the official staircase of Scotland Yard. The Pinkerton man had tried to push past him, but Gregson had firmly elbowed him back.

Gregson climbed the stair to arrest this desperate murderer with the same absolutely quiet and businesslike bearing with which he would have ascended the official staircase of Scotland Yard. The Pinkerton man had tried to push past him, but Gregson had firmly elbowed him back.

London dangers were the privilege of the London force.

The door of the left-hand flat upon the third landing was standing ajar. Gregson pushed it open. Within all was absolute silence and darkness. I struck a match and lit the detective’s lantern.

“

Education, Gregson, education. Still seeking knowledge at the old university.

Well, Watson, you have one more specimen of the tragic and grotesque to add to your collection. By the way, it is not eight o’clock, and a Wagner night at Covent Garden! If we hurry, we might be in time for the second act.”

“The London criminal is certainly a dull fellow,” said he in the querulous voice of the sportsman whose game has failed him. “Look out this window, Watson. See how the figures loom up, are dimly seen, and then blend once more into the cloud-bank.

The thief or the murderer could roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he pounces, and then evident only to his victim.

”

“This great and sombre stage is set for something more worthy than that,” said he. “

It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.

”

“Why not?

It is as if you met a tramcar coming down a country lane.

Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the Diogenes Club, Whitehall—that is his cycle. Once, and only once, he has been here. What upheaval can possibly have derailed him?”

“It recalls nothing to my mind. But that Mycroft should break out in this erratic fashion!

A planet might as well leave its orbit.

By the way, do you know what Mycroft is?”

“I did not know you quite so well in those days. One has to be discreet when one talks of high matters of state. You are right in thinking that he is under the British government.

You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British government.

”

“I thought I might surprise you.

Mycroft draws four hundred and fifty pounds a year, remains a subordinate, has no ambitions of any kind, will receive neither honour nor title, but remains the most indispensable man in the country.

”

The same great powers which I have turned to the detection of crime he has used for this particular business. The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance.

All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.

We will suppose that a minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question;

“

I play the game for the game’s own sake

,” said he. “But the problem certainly presents some points of interest, and I shall be very pleased to look into it. Some more facts, please.”

“

We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Here all other contingencies have failed. When I found that the leading international agent, who had just left London, lived in a row of houses which abutted upon the Underground, I was so pleased that you were a little astonished at my sudden frivolity.”

“You are not angry?” he asked, gasping for breath.

Poor devil, how could I be angry when I saw him lying in such a plight before me?

“It’s for your own sake, Watson,” he croaked.

I have so deep a respect for the extraordinary qualities of Holmes that I have always deferred to his wishes, even when I least understood them. But now all my professional instincts were aroused.

Let him be my master elsewhere, I at least was his in a sick room.

“Holmes,” said I, “you are not yourself. A sick man is but a child, and so I will treat you. Whether you like it or not, I will examine your symptoms and treat you for them.”

“Holmes,” said I, “you are not yourself.

A sick man is but a child, and so I will treat you.

Whether you like it or not, I will examine your symptoms and treat you for them.”

“

In your friendship, certainly. But facts are facts, Watson, and, after all, you are only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications.

It is painful to have to say these things, but you leave me no choice.”

“The first three sensible words that you have uttered since you entered this room, Watson. You will find some books over there. I am somewhat exhausted;

I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a nonconductor?

At six, Watson, we resume our conversation.”

The incident left a most unpleasant impression upon my mind. The violent and causeless excitement, followed by this brutality of speech, so far removed from his usual suavity, showed me how deep was the disorganization of his mind.

Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.

I sat in silent dejection until the stipulated time had passed. He seemed to have been watching the clock as well as I, for it was hardly six before he began to talk with the same feverish animation as before.

“I am sorry to hear this,” said he. “I only know Mr. Holmes through some business dealings which we have had, but I have every respect for his talents and his character.

He is an amateur of crime, as I am of disease. For him the villain, for me the microbe.

There are my prisons,” he continued, pointing to a row of bottles and jars which stood upon a side table. “Among those gelatine cultivations some of the very worst offenders in the world are now doing time.”

“

The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it

,” said Holmes. “I give you my word that for three days I have tasted neither food nor drink until you were good enough to pour me out that glass of water. But it is the tobacco which I find most irksome.

“

Three days of absolute fast does not improve one’s beauty, Watson.

For the rest, there is nothing which a sponge may not cure. With vaseline upon one’s forehead, belladonna in one’s eyes, rouge over the cheekbones, and crusts of beeswax round one’s lips, a very satisfying effect can be produced.

My correspondence, however, is, as you know, a varied one, and I am somewhat upon my guard against any packages which reach me. It was clear to me, however, that by pretending that he had really succeeded in his design I might surprise a confession.

That pretence I have carried out with the thoroughness of the true artist.

Thank you, Watson, you must help me on with my coat. When we have finished at the police-station I think that something nutritious at Simpson’s would not be out of place.”

She is helpless. She is migratory. She has sufficient means to take her from country to country and from hotel to hotel. She is lost, as often as not, in a maze of obscure pensions and boardinghouses.

She is a stray chicken in a world of foxes. When she is gobbled up she is hardly missed.

I much fear that some evil has come to the Lady Frances Carfax.”

“There is one correspondent who is a sure draw, Watson. That is the bank.

Single ladies must live, and their passbooks are compressed diaries.

She banks at Silvester’s. I have glanced over her account. The last check but one paid her bill at Lausanne, but it was a large one and probably left her with cash in hand. Only one check has been drawn since.”

“Hence the health-giving expedition to Lausanne. You know that I cannot possibly leave London while old Abrahams is in such mortal terror of his life. Besides, on general principles it is best that I should not leave the country.

Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

Go, then, my dear Watson, and if my humble counsel can ever be valued at so extravagant a rate as two pence a word, it waits your disposal night and day at the end of the Continental wire.”

He is a bulky, bearded, sunburned fellow, who looks as if he would be more at home in a farmers’ inn than in a fashionable hotel. A hard, fierce man, I should think, and one whom I should be sorry to offend.”

Already the mystery began to define itself, as figures grow clearer with the lifting of a fog.

Here was this good and pious lady pursued from place to place by a sinister and unrelenting figure. She feared him, or she would not have fled from Lausanne. He had still followed. Sooner or later he would overtake her. Had he already overtaken her?

To Holmes I wrote showing how rapidly and surely I had got down to the roots of the matter. In reply I had a telegram asking for a description of Dr. Shlessinger’s left ear.

Holmes’s ideas of humour are strange and occasionally offensive

, so I took no notice of his ill-timed jest—indeed, I had already reached Montpellier in my pursuit of the maid, Marie, before his message came.

“And a singularly consistent investigation you have made, my dear Watson,” said he. “I cannot at the moment recall any possible blunder which you have omitted.

The total effect of your proceeding has been to give the alarm everywhere and yet to discover nothing.

”

But neither the official police nor Holmes’s own small but very efficient organization sufficed to clear away the mystery.

Amid the crowded millions of London the three persons we sought were as completely obliterated as if they had never lived.

Advertisements were tried, and failed. Clues were followed, and led to nothing. Every criminal resort which Shlessinger might frequent was drawn in vain. His old associates were watched, but they kept clear of him.

“Should you care to add the case to your annals, my dear Watson,” said Holmes that evening, “it can only be as an example of that temporary eclipse to which even the best-balanced mind may be exposed.

Such slips are common to all mortals, and the greatest is he who can recognize and repair them.

To this modified credit I may, perhaps, make some claim. My night was haunted by the thought that somewhere a clue, a strange sentence, a curious observation, had come under my notice and had been too easily dismissed.

Then come the sudden swirl round of the wind, the blistering gale from the southwest, the dragging anchor, the lee shore, and the last battle in the creaming breakers.

The wise mariner stands far out from that evil place.

On the land side our surroundings were as sombre as on the sea. It was a country of rolling moors, lonely and dun-colored, with an occasional church tower to mark the site of some old-world village.

As it drove by us I caught a glimpse through the closed window of a horribly contorted, grinning face glaring out at us.

Those staring eyes and gnashing teeth flashed past us like a dreadful vision.

“My brothers!” cried Mortimer Tregennis, white to his lips. “They are taking them to Helston.”

“It won’t do, Watson!” said he with a laugh. “Let us walk along the cliffs together and search for flint arrows. We are more likely to find them than clues to this problem.

To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.

The sea air, sunshine, and patience, Watson—all else will come.

“

That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.

You spent a restless night at your cottage, and you formed certain plans, which in the early morning you proceeded to put into execution.

“

I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done.

Who knows? Well, Watson, I will not offend your intelligence by explaining what is obvious. The gravel upon the windowsill was, of course, the starting-point of my research. It was unlike anything in the vicarage garden. Only when my attention had been drawn to Dr.

One might have thought already that God’s curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air.

The sun had long set, but one bloodred gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west.

Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the shipping glimmered in the bay.

They stood with their heads close together, talking in low, confidential tones.

From below the two glowing ends of their cigars might have been the smouldering eyes of some malignant fiend looking down in the darkness.

A remarkable man this Von Bork—a man who could hardly be matched among all the devoted agents of the Kaiser.

“

Tut, my dear sir, we live in a utilitarian age. Honour is a medieval conception.

Besides England is not ready.