The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes quotes

“I am sorry,” said Holmes. “

I am accustomed to have mystery at one end of my cases, but to have it at both ends is too confusing.

I fear, Sir James, that I must decline to act.”

“

A purring cat who thinks he sees prospective mice.

Some people’s affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls. His greeting was characteristic. ‘I rather thought I should see you sooner or later, Mr. Holmes,’ said he.

“A purring cat who thinks he sees prospective mice.

Some people’s affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.

His greeting was characteristic. ‘I rather thought I should see you sooner or later, Mr. Holmes,’ said he. ‘You have been engaged, no doubt by General de Merville, to endeavour to stop my marriage with his daughter, Violet. That is so, is it not?’

“She knew what we had come for, of course—that villain had lost no time in poisoning her mind against us. Miss Winter’s advent rather amazed her, I think, but she waved us into our respective chairs like a reverend abbess receiving two rather leprous mendicants.

If your head is inclined to swell, my dear Watson, take a course of Miss Violet de Merville.

“ ‘Well, sir,’ said she in a voice like the wind from an iceberg, ‘your name is familiar to me. You have called, as I understand, to malign my fiancé, Baron Gruner.

His hair and moustache were raven black, the latter short, pointed, and carefully waxed. His features were regular and pleasing, save only his straight, thin-lipped mouth.

If ever I saw a murderer’s mouth it was there⁠—a cruel, hard gash in the face, compressed, inexorable, and terrible.

He was ill-advised to train his moustache away from it, for it was Nature’s danger-signal, set as a warning to his victims. His voice was engaging and his manners perfect.

“

The wages of sin, Watson⁠—the wages of sin!

” said he. “Sooner or later it will always come. God knows, there was sin enough,” he added, taking up a brown volume from the table. “Here is the book the woman talked of. If this will not break off the marriage, nothing ever could.

I find from my notebook that it was in January, 1903, just after the conclusion of the Boer War, that I had my visit from Mr. James M. Dodd, a big, fresh, sunburned, upstanding Briton.

The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association.

I was alone.

“

I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see.

However, Mr. Dodd, it was not to discuss the science of observation that you called upon me this morning. What has been happening at Tuxbury Old Park?”

“

It is my business to know things. That is my trade.

”

“

Because the faculties become refined when you starve them.

Why, surely, as a doctor, my dear Watson, you must admit that what your digestion gains in the way of blood supply is so much lost to the brain. I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.

“Because the faculties become refined when you starve them. Why, surely, as a doctor, my dear Watson, you must admit that what your digestion gains in the way of blood supply is so much lost to the brain.

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.

Therefore, it is the brain I must consider.”

“It is no use your fingering your revolver, my friend,” he said in a quiet voice. “You know perfectly well that you dare not use it, even if I gave you time to draw it.

Nasty, noisy things, revolvers, Count. Better stick to airguns.

Ah! I think I hear the fairy footstep of your estimable partner. Good day, Mr. Merton. Rather dull in the street, is it not?”

He swung a huge knotted lump of a fist under my friend’s nose. Holmes examined it closely with an air of great interest.

“Were you born so?” he asked. “Or did it come by degrees?”

It may have been the icy coolness of my friend, or it may have been the slight clatter which I made as I picked up the poker. In any case, our visitor’s manner became less flamboyant.

“I was wondering whether he could have buried something. Of course, when people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank. But there are always some lunatics about.

It would be a dull world without them.

At first I thought of some buried valuable. But why, in that case, should they want your furniture? You don’t happen to have a Raphael or a first folio Shakespeare without knowing it?”

“Very good. I think you will sign me a check for that, and I will see that it comes to Mrs. Maberley. You owe her a little change of air. Meantime, lady”—he wagged a cautionary forefinger—“have a care! Have a care!

You can’t play with edged tools forever without cutting those dainty hands.

”

“You are right, Watson. It mentions the legend in one of these references. But are we to give serious attention to such things? This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us.

No ghosts need apply.

I fear that we cannot take Mr. Robert Ferguson very seriously. Possibly this note may be from him and may throw some light upon what is worrying him.”

“I think we can dispense with Dolores,” said Holmes. “Oh, very well, madame, if you would rather she stayed I can see no objection. Now, Mr. Ferguson, I am a busy man with many calls, and my methods have to be short and direct.

The swiftest surgery is the least painful.

Let me first say what will ease your mind. Your wife is a very good, a very loving, and a very ill-used woman.”

“You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!”

It was worth a wound⁠—it was worth many wounds⁠—to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask.

The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.

“

The faculty of deduction is certainly contagious, Watson,

” he answered. “It has enabled you to probe my secret. Yes, I have a case. After a month of trivialities and stagnation the wheels move once more.”

“Not so, Watson. It had struck me even at my first perfunctory reading as very strange, and now that I am in closer touch with the case it is my only firm ground for hope. We must look for consistency.

Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.

”

“The same old Watson!” said he. “

You never learn that the gravest issues may depend upon the smallest things.

But is it not on the face of it strange that a staid, elderly philosopher—you’ve heard of Presbury, of course, the famous Camford physiologist?—that such a man, whose friend has been his devoted wolfhound, should now have been twice attacked by his own dog?

“Thick and horny in a way which is quite new in my experience.

Always look at the hands first, Watson. Then cuffs, trouserknees, and boots.

Very curious knuckles which can only be explained by the mode of progression observed by—” Holmes paused and suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh, Watson, Watson, what a fool I have been! It seems incredible, and yet it must be true.

“The real source,” said Holmes, “lies, of course, in that untimely love affair which gave our impetuous professor the idea that he could only gain his wish by turning himself into a younger man.

When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it.

The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny.” He sat musing for a little with the phial in his hand, looking at the clear liquid within.

You will know, or Watson has written in vain, that I hold a vast store of out-of-the-way knowledge without scientific system, but very available for the needs of my work.

My mind is like a crowded box-room with packets of all sorts stowed away therein

—so many that I may well have but a vague perception of what was there. I had known that there was something which might bear upon this matter. It was still vague, but at least I knew how I could make it clear.

That was all that was left to me to do—and that is what I have done.

A poor wounded beast that has crawled into its hole to die⁠—that is the end of Eugenia Ronder.

”

What is that something? We can only guess at it from its effects. They seem to be of a curiously mixed character. But that should surely help us.

It is only the colourless, uneventful case which is hopeless.

“Let us consider our data. The brother no longer visits the beloved invalid sister. He gives away her favourite dog. Her dog, Watson! Does that suggest nothing to you?”

“Well, Watson, that’s done it,” said Holmes as he fastened the lead to the neck of the excited spaniel. “He thought it was his mistress, and he found it was a stranger.

Dogs don’t make mistakes.

”

“Exactly, Watson. Pathetic and futile. But is not all life pathetic and futile? Is not his story a microcosm of the whole?

We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow.

Or worse than a shadow—misery.”