The Return of Sherlock Holmes quotes

The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to me compared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me the greatest shock and surprise of any event in my adventurous life.

Even now, after this long interval, I find myself thrilling as I think of it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy, amazement, and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind.

Let me say to that public, which has shown some interest in those glimpses which I have occasionally given them of the thoughts and actions of a very remarkable man, that they are not to blame me if I have not shared my knowledge with …

I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me.

When I turned again, Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table.

I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life.

“I am glad to stretch myself, Watson,” said he. “

It is no joke when a tall man has to take a foot off his stature for several hours on end.

Now, my dear fellow, in the matter of these explanations, we have, if I may ask for your cooperation, a hard and dangerous night’s work in front of us.

“This is, indeed, like the old days. We shall have time for a mouthful of dinner before we need go. Well, then, about that chasm.

I had no serious difficulty in getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I never was in it.

”

Then it would be time for me to announce that I was still in the land of the living.

So rapidly does the brain act that I believe I had thought this all out before Professor Moriarty had reached the bottom of the Reichenbach Fall.

“I stood up and examined the rocky wall behind me. In your picturesque account of the matter, which I read with great interest some months later, you assert that the wall was sheer. That was not literally true.

… was now left in London, I was about to return when my movements were hastened by the news of this very remarkable Park Lane Mystery, which not only appealed to me by its own merits, but which seemed to offer some most peculiar personal opportunities.

I came over at once to London, called in my own person at Baker Street, threw Mrs. Hudson into violent hysterics, and found that Mycroft had preserved my rooms and my papers exactly as they had always been.

So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o’clock today I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned.”

“

I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,

” said he, and I recognized in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in his own creation. “It really is rather like me, is it not?”

My friend’s plans were gradually revealing themselves. From this convenient retreat, the watchers were being watched and the trackers tracked.

That angular shadow up yonder was the bait, and we were the hunters.

In silence we stood together in the darkness and watched the hurrying figures who passed and repassed in front of us. Holmes was silent and motionless;

My friend’s plans were gradually revealing themselves.

From this convenient retreat, the watchers were being watched and the trackers tracked.

That angular shadow up yonder was the bait, and we were the hunters. In silence we stood together in the darkness and watched the hurrying figures who passed and repassed in front of us. Holmes was silent and motionless;

It was indeed no longer the profile, but the back, which was turned towards us.

Three years had certainly not smoothed the asperities of his temper or his impatience with a less active intelligence than his own.

“Of course it has moved,” said he. “Am I such a farcical bungler, Watson, that I should erect an obvious dummy, and expect that some of the sharpest men in Europe would be deceived by it?

It was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face which was turned towards us.

With the brow of a philosopher above and the jaw of a sensualist below, the man must have started with great capacities for good or for evil.

But one could not look upon his cruel blue eyes, with their drooping, cynical lids, or upon the fierce, aggressive nose and the threatening, deep-lined brow, without reading Nature’s plainest danger-signals.

“It must be very familiar to you. Have you not tethered a young kid under a tree, lain above it with your rifle, and waited for the bait to bring up your tiger?

This empty house is my tree, and you are my tiger.

You have possibly had other guns in reserve in case there should be several tigers, or in the unlikely supposition of your own aim failing you. These,” he pointed around, “are my other guns. The parallel is exact.”

“It is true,” Holmes answered. “Up to a certain point he did well. He was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger.

There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity.

You will see it often in humans.

So long as he was free in London, my life would really not have been worth living. Night and day the shadow would have been over me, and sooner or later his chance must have come. What could I do?

I could not shoot him at sight, or I should myself be in the dock.

There was no use appealing to a magistrate. They cannot interfere on the strength of what would appear to them to be a wild suspicion. So I could do nothing. But I watched the criminal news, knowing that sooner or later I should get him.

“Well, well, I must not be selfish,” said he, with a smile, as he pushed back his chair from the breakfast-table. “

The community is certainly the gainer, and no one the loser, save the poor out-of-work specialist, whose occupation has gone.

With that man in the field, one’s morning paper presented infinite possibilities.

“The community is certainly the gainer, and no one the loser, save the poor out-of-work specialist, whose occupation has gone. With that man in the field, one’s morning paper presented infinite possibilities.

Often it was only the smallest trace, Watson, the faintest indication, and yet it was enough to tell me that the great malignant brain was there, as the gentlest tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul spider which lurks in the centre.

Petty thefts, wanton assaults, purposeless outrage—to the man who held the clue all could be worked into one connected whole. To the scientific student of the higher criminal world, no capital in Europe offered the advantages which London then possessed.

“

That it was written in a train. The good writing represents stations, the bad writing movement, and the very bad writing passing over points.

A scientific expert would pronounce at once that this was drawn up on a suburban line, since nowhere save in the immediate vicinity of a great city could there be so quick a succession of points.

“

It strikes me, my good Lestrade, as being just a trifle too obvious,

” said Holmes. “You do not add imagination to your other great qualities, but if you could for one moment put yourself in the place of this young man, would you choose the very night after the will had been made to commit your crime?

“It’s all going wrong, Watson—all as wrong as it can go. I kept a bold face before Lestrade, but, upon my soul, I believe that for once the fellow is on the right track and we are on the wrong.

All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade’s facts.

”

“Not at all.

The work is its own reward.

Perhaps I shall get the credit also at some distant day, when I permit my zealous historian to lay out his foolscap once more—eh, Watson? Well, now, let us see where this rat has been lurking.”

“It would strike him that in disappearing he might throw all pursuit off his track, and at the same time have an ample and crushing revenge upon his old sweetheart, if he could give the impression that he had been murdered by her only child.

It was a masterpiece of villainy, and he carried it out like a master.

The idea of the will, which would give an obvious motive for the crime, the secret visit unknown to his own parents, the retention of the stick, the blood, and the animal remains and buttons in the woodpile, all were admirable.

It was a net from which it seemed to me, a few hours ago, that there was no possible escape.

But he had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop.

He wished to improve that which was already perfect—to draw the rope tighter yet round the neck of his unfortunate victim—and so he ruined all. Let us descend, Lestrade. There are just one or two questions that I would ask him.”

A dead dog, or rabbits, or what? You won’t tell? Dear me, how very unkind of you! Well, well, I daresay that a couple of rabbits would account both for the blood and for the charred ashes.

If ever you write an account, Watson, you can make rabbits serve your turn.

”

“Quite so!” said he, a little nettled. “

Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you.

Here is an unexplained one. See what you can make of that, friend Watson.” He tossed a sheet of paper upon the table, and turned once more to his chemical analysis.

“

What one man can invent another can discover,

” said Holmes. “There is a cab coming to convey you to Norwich, Mr. Slaney. But meanwhile, you have time to make some small reparation for the injury you have wrought. Are you aware that Mrs.

There were seven of us in a gang in Chicago, and Elsie’s father was the boss of the joint. He was a clever man, was old Patrick.

It was he who invented that writing, which would pass as a child’s scrawl unless you just happened to have the key to it.

Well, Elsie learned some of our ways, but she couldn’t stand the business, and she had a bit of honest money of her own, so she gave us all the slip and got away to London.

but it had seemed to me sometimes that my employer, Mr. Carruthers, takes a great deal of interest in me. We are thrown rather together. I play his accompaniments in the evening. He has never said anything. He is a perfect gentleman.

But a girl always knows.

”

I am very busy just now, but I will find time to make some inquiries into your case. In the meantime, take no step without letting me know. Goodbye, and I trust that we shall have nothing but good news from you.”

“It is part of the settled order of Nature that such a girl should have followers,”

said Holmes, as he pulled at his meditative pipe, “but for choice not on bicycles in lonely country roads. Some secretive lover, beyond all doubt. But there are curious and suggestive details about the case, Watson.”

“Because then, again, she would have left me, and I couldn’t bear to face that.

Even if she couldn’t love me, it was a great deal to me just to see her dainty form about the house, and to hear the sound of her voice.

”

In the whirl of our incessant activity, it has often been difficult for me, as the reader has probably observed, to round off my narratives, and to give those final details which the curious might expect.

Each case has been the prelude to another, and the crisis once over, the actors have passed forever out of our busy lives.

I find, however, a short note at the end of my manuscript dealing with this case, in which I have put it upon record that Miss Violet Smith did indeed inherit a large fortune, and that she is now the wife of Cyril Morton, the …

“

His Grace is never very friendly with anyone. He is completely immersed in large public questions, and is rather inaccessible to all ordinary emotions.

But he was always kind to the boy in his own way.”

“I have done the lawn and the bicycle shed,” said he. “I have also had a rumble through the Ragged Shaw. Now, Watson, there is cocoa ready in the next room. I must beg you to hurry, for we have a great day before us.”

His eyes shone, and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration of the master workman who sees his work lie ready before him.

A very different Holmes, this active, alert man, from the introspective and pallid dreamer of Baker Street. I felt, as I looked upon that supple figure, alive with nervous energy, that it was indeed a strenuous day that awaited us.

His eyes shone, and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration of the master workman who sees his work lie ready before him.

A very different Holmes, this active, alert man, from the introspective and pallid dreamer of Baker Street.

I felt, as I looked upon that supple figure, alive with nervous energy, that it was indeed a strenuous day that awaited us.

“Admirable!” he said. “A most illuminating remark.

It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong.

Yet you saw for yourself. Can you suggest any fallacy?”

“

Only that it is a remarkable cow which walks, canters, and gallops.

By George! Watson, it was no brain of a country publican that thought out such a blind as that. The coast seems to be clear, save for that lad in the smithy. Let us slip out and see what we can see.”

“

I must take the view, your Grace, that when a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it.

”

Right through his broad breast a steel harpoon had been driven, and it had sunk deep into the wood of the wall behind him.

He was pinned like a beetle on a card.

Of course, he was quite dead, and had been so from the instant that he had uttered that last yell of agony.

“My good Hopkins, I have investigated many crimes, but

I have never yet seen one which was committed by a flying creature.

As long as the criminal remains upon two legs so long must there be some indentation, some abrasion, some trifling displacement which can be detected by the scientific searcher. It is incredible that this blood-bespattered room contained no trace which could have aided us.

“Oh, yes, my dear Watson, I am perfectly satisfied. At the same time, Stanley Hopkins’s methods do not commend themselves to me. I am disappointed in Stanley Hopkins. I had hoped for better things from him.

One should always look for a possible alternative, and provide against it. It is the first rule of criminal investigation.

”

“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Holmes,” he blurted out at last, with a very red face. “It seems to me that I have been making a fool of myself from the beginning.

I understand now, what I should never have forgotten, that I am the pupil and you are the master.

Even now I see what you have done, but I don’t know how you did it or what it signifies.”

“Hum! He’s about due.

Do you feel a creeping, shrinking sensation, Watson, when you stand before the serpents in the Zoo, and see the slithery, gliding, venomous creatures, with their deadly eyes and wicked, flattened faces? Well, that’s how Milverton impresses me.

I’ve had to do with fifty murderers in my career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have for this fellow. And yet I can’t get out of doing business with him—indeed, he is here at my invitation.”

“I’ll tell you, Watson. He is the king of all the blackmailers.

Heaven help the man, and still more the woman, whose secret and reputation come into the power of Milverton!

With a smiling face and a heart of marble, he will squeeze and squeeze until he has drained them dry. The fellow is a genius in his way, and would have made his mark in some more savoury trade. His method is as follows:

“At the same time you must admit that the occasion of a lady’s marriage is a very suitable time for her friends and relatives to make some little effort upon her behalf. They may hesitate as to an acceptable wedding present.

Let me assure them that this little bundle of letters would give more joy than all the candelabra and butter-dishes in London.

”

I had a catching of the breath, and my skin went cold at the words, which were slowly uttered in a tone of concentrated resolution.

As a flash of lightning in the night shows up in an instant every detail of a wild landscape, so at one glance I seemed to see every possible result of such an action

—the detection, the capture, the honoured career ending in irreparable failure and disgrace, my friend himself lying at the mercy of the odious Milverton.

“Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so. We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell.

You know, Watson, I don’t mind confessing to you that I have always had an idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal.

This is the chance of my lifetime in that direction. See here!” He took a neat little leather case out of a drawer, and opening it he exhibited a number of shining instruments.

“Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so.

We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell.

You know, Watson, I don’t mind confessing to you that I have always had an idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal. This is the chance of my lifetime in that direction. See here!”

The high object of our mission, the consciousness that it was unselfish and chivalrous, the villainous character of our opponent, all added to the sporting interest of the adventure.

Far from feeling guilty, I rejoiced and exulted in our dangers.

With a glow of admiration I watched Holmes unrolling his case of instruments and choosing his tool with the calm, scientific accuracy of a surgeon who performs a delicate operation.

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you, Lestrade,” said Holmes. “The fact is that I knew this fellow Milverton, that I considered him one of the most dangerous men in London, and that

I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge.

No, it’s no use arguing. I have made up my mind. My sympathies are with the criminals rather than with the victim, and I will not handle this case.”

“

There are no limits to the possibilities of monomania

,” I answered. “There is the condition which the modern French psychologists have called the ‘idée fixe,’ which may be trifling in character, and accompanied by complete sanity in every other way.

Barnicot’s hall, where a sound might arouse the family, the bust was taken outside before being broken, whereas in the surgery, where there was less danger of an alarm, it was smashed where it stood. The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet

I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement.

You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.

“

The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.

And now, if you have quite finished, we will hark back to Kensington and see what the manager of Harding Brothers has to say on the matter.”

“

Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs.

”

Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows.

It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man’s handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields.

I walked to the window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement. A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end.

“

I’ve seen nothing later than the fifteenth century today.

”

“

I have forged and tested every link of my chain, Professor Coram, and I am sure that it is sound.

What your motives are, or what exact part you play in this strange business, I am not yet able to say. In a few minutes I shall probably hear it from your own lips.

“Mr. Overton was evidently considerably excited when he sent it, and somewhat incoherent in consequence. Well, well, he will be here, I daresay, by the time I have looked through the Times, and then we shall know all about it.

Even the most insignificant problem would be welcome in these stagnant days.

”

“

In that, Doctor, you will find yourself in agreement with every criminal in the country,

” said my friend, quietly.

“I fancy that every one of his cases has found its way into your collection, and I must admit, Watson, that you have some power of selection, which atones for much which I deplore in your narratives.

Your fatal habit of looking at everything from the point of view of a story instead of as a scientific exercise has ruined what might have been an instructive and even classical series of demonstrations.

You slur over work of the utmost finesse and delicacy, in order to dwell upon sensational details which may excite, but cannot possibly instruct, the reader.”

If she were seated on the chair when the crime was done, how comes that mark? No, no, she was placed in the chair after the death of her husband. I’ll wager that the black dress shows a corresponding mark to this.

We have not yet met our Waterloo, Watson, but this is our Marengo, for it begins in defeat and ends in victory.

I should like now to have a few words with the nurse, Theresa. We must be wary for a while, if we are to get the information which we want.”

“No, I couldn’t do it, Watson,” said he, as we reentered our room. “Once that warrant was made out, nothing on earth would save him.

Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.

Let us know a little more before we act.”

“

I was only testing you, and you ring true every time.

Well, it is a great responsibility that I take upon myself, but I have given Hopkins an excellent hint and if he can’t avail himself of it I can do no more. See here, Captain Crocker, we’ll do this in due form of law.

“

Then, sir, prepare for war.

”

“A coincidence! Here is one of the three men whom we had named as possible actors in this drama, and he meets a violent death during the very hours when we know that that drama was being enacted.

The odds are enormous against its being coincidence. No figures could express them.

No, my dear Watson, the two events are connected—must be connected. It is for us to find the connection.”

“And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose—that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand?

Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.

Good morning, Watson.”

“Yes, I will while away the morning at Godolphin Street with our friends of the regular establishment. With Eduardo Lucas lies the solution of our problem, though I must admit that I have not an inkling as to what form it may take.

It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.

Do you stay on guard, my good Watson, and receive any fresh visitors. I’ll join you at lunch if I am able.”