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                               Chapter 2

                        THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION

     We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms
at No. 221B, Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting.
They consisted of a couple of comfortable bedrooms and a single
large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by
two broad windows.  So desirable in every way were the
apartments, and so moderate did the terms seem when divided
between us, that the bargain was concluded upon the spot, and we
at once entered into possession.  That very evening I moved my
things round from the hotel, and on the following morning
Sherlock Holmes followed me with several boxes and portmanteaus.
For a day or two we were busily employed in unpacking and laying
out our property to the best advantage.  That done, we gradually
began to settle down and to accommodate ourselves to our new
surroundings.
     Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with.  He
was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular.  It was rare
for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably
breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning.  Sometimes
he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the
dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared
to take him into the lowest portions of the city.  Nothing could
exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and
again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would
lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or
moving a muscle from morning to night.  On these occasions I have
noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I
might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some
narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole
life forbidden such a notion.
     As the weeks went by, my interest in him and my curiosity as
to his aims in life gradually deepened and increased.  His very
person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the
most casual observer.  In height he was rather over six feet, and
so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller.
His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of
torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawklike nose gave
his whole expression an air of alertness and decision.  His chin,
too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of
determination.  His hands were invariably blotted with ink and
stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary
delicacy of touch, as I frequently had occasion to observe when I
watched him manipulating his fragile philosophical instruments.
     The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, when I
confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often
I endeavoured to break through the reticence which he showed on
all that concerned himself.  Before pronouncing judgment,
however, be it remembered how objectless was my life, and how
little there was to engage my attention.  My health forbade me
from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial,
and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the
monotony of my daily existence.  Under these circumstances, I
eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion,
and spent much of my time in endeavouring to unravel it.
     He was not studying medicine.  He had himself, in reply to a
question, confirmed Stamford's opinion upon that point.  Neither
did he appear to have pursued any course of reading which might
fit him for a degree in science or any other recognized portal
which would give him an entrance into the learned world.  Yet his
zeal for certain studies was remarkable, and within eccentric
limits his knowledge was so extraordinarily ample and minute that
his observations have fairly astounded me.  Surely no man would
work so hard or attain such precise information unless he had
some definite end in view.  Desultory readers are seldom
remarkable for the exactness of their learning.  No man burdens
his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason
for doing so.
     His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.  Of
contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to
know next to nothing.  Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he
inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done.
My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally
that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the
composition of the Solar System.  That any civilized human being
in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth
travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an
extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
     "You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my
expression of surprise.  "Now that I do know it I shall do my
best to forget it."
     "To forget it!"
     "You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain
originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it
with such furniture as you choose.  A fool takes in all the
lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge
which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is
jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a
difficulty in laying his hands upon it.  Now the skilful workman
is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic.
He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the
most perfect order.  It is a mistake to think that that little
room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.  Depend
upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge
you forget something that you knew before.  It is of the highest
importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the
useful ones."
     "But the Solar System!" I protested.
     "What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently;
"you say that we go round the sun.  If we went round the moon it
would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."
     I was on the point of asking him what that work might be,
but something in his manner showed me that the question would be
an unwelcome one.  I pondered over our short conversation,
however, and endeavoured to draw my deductions from it.  He said
that he would acquire no knowledge which did not bear upon his
object.  Therefore all the knowledge which he possessed was such
as would be useful to him.  I enumerated in my own mind all the
various points upon which he had shown me that he was
exceptionally well informed.  I even took a pencil and jotted
them down.  I could not help smiling at the document when I had
completed it.  It ran in this way:

                     Sherlock Holmes -- his limits
       1.  Knowledge of Literature. -- Nil.
       2.      "     "  Philosophy. -- Nil.
       3.      "     "  Astronomy. -- Nil.
       4.      "     "  Politics. -- Feeble.
       5.      "     "  Botany. -- Variable.
           Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally.
Knows nothing of practical gardening.
       6.  Knowledge of Geology. -- Practical, but limited.
           Tells at a glance different soils from each other.
After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me
by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had
received them.
       7.  Knowledge of Chemistry. -- Profound.
       8.      "     "  Anatomy. -- Accurate, but unsystematic.
       9.      "     "  Sensational Literature. -- Immense.
           He appears to know every detail of every horror
perpetrated in the  century.
      10.  Plays the violin well.
      11.  Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
      12.  Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

When I had got so far in my list I threw it into the fire in
despair.  "If I can only find what the fellow is driving at by
reconciling all these accomplishments, and discovering a calling
which needs them all," I said to myself, "I may as well give up
the attempt at once."
     I see that I have alluded above to his powers upon the
violin.  These were very remarkable, but as eccentric as all his
other accomplishments.  That he could play pieces, and difficult
pieces, I knew well, because at my request he has played me some
of Mendelssohn's Lieder, and other favourites.  When left to
himself, however, he would seldom produce any music or attempt
any recognized air.  Leaning back in his armchair of an evening,
he would close his eyes and scrape carelessly at the fiddle which
was thrown across his knee.  Sometimes the chords were sonorous
and melancholy.  Occasionally they were fantastic and cheerful.
Clearly they reflected the thoughts which possessed him, but
whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether the playing
was simply the result of a whim or fancy, was more than I could
determine.  I might have rebelled against these exasperating
solos had it not been that be usually terminated them by playing
in quick succession a whole series of my favourite airs as a
slight compensation for the trial upon my patience.
     During the first week or so we had no callers, and I had
begun to think that my companion was as friendless a man as I was
myself.  Presently, however, I found that he had many
acquaintances, and those in the most different classes of
society.  There was one little sallow, rat-faced, dark-eyed
fellow, who was introduced to me as Mr. Lestrade, and who came
three or four times in a single week.  One morning a young girl
called, fashionably dressed, and stayed for half an hour or more.
The same afternoon brought a gray-headed, seedy visitor, looking
like a Jew peddler, who appeared to me to be much excited, and
who was closely followed by a slipshod elderly woman.  On another
occasion an old white-haired gentleman had an interview with my
companion; and on another, a railway porter in his velveteen
uniform.  When any of these nondescript individuals put in an
appearance, Sherlock Holmes used to beg for the use of the
sitting-room, and I would retire to my bedroom.  He always
apologized to me for putting me to this inconvenience.  "I have
to use this room as a place of business," he said, "and these
people are my clients."  Again I had an opportunity of asking him
a point-blank question, and again my delicacy prevented me from
forcing another man to confide in me.  I imagined at the time
that he had some strong reason for not alluding to it, but he
soon dispelled the idea by coming round to the subject of his own
accord.
     It was upon the 4th of March, as I have good reason to
remember, that I rose somewhat earlier than usual, and found that
Sherlock Holmes had not yet finished his breakfast.  The landlady
had become so accustomed to my late habits that my place had not
been laid nor my coffee prepared.  With the unreasonable
petulance of mankind I rang the bell and gave a curt intimation
that I was ready.  Then I picked up a magazine from the table and
attempted to while away the time with it, while my companion
munched silently at his toast.  One of the articles had a pencil
mark at the heading, and I naturally began to run my eye through
it.
     Its somewhat ambitious title was "The Book of Life," and it
attempted to show how much an observant man might learn by an
accurate and systematic examination of all that came in his way.
It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of
absurdity.  The reasoning was close and intense, but the
deductions appeared to me to be far fetched and exaggerated.  The
writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or
a glance of an eye, to fathom a man's inmost thoughts.  Deceit,
according to him, was an impossibility in the case of one trained
to observation and analysis.  His conclusions were as infallible
as so many propositions of Euclid.  So startling would his
results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the
processes by which he had arrived at them they might well
consider him as a necromancer.
     "From a drop of water," said the writer, "a logician could
infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having
seen or heard of one or the other.  So all life is a great chain,
the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link
of it.  Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction and
Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient
study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the
highest possible perfection in it.  Before turning to those moral
and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest
difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary
problems.  Let him, on meeting a fellow-mortal, learn at a glance
to distinguish the history of the man, and the trade or
profession to which he belongs.  Puerile as such an exercise may
seem, it sharpens the faculties of observation, and teaches one
where to look and what to look for.  By a man's finger-nails, by
his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the
callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by
his shirt-cuffs -- by each of these things a man's calling is
plainly revealed.  That all united should fail to enlighten the
competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable."
     "What ineffable twaddle!" I cried, slapping the magazine
down on the table; "I never read such rubbish in my life."
     "What is it?" asked Sherlock Holmes.
     "Why, this article," I said, pointing at it with my eggspoon
as I sat down to my breakfast.  "I see that you have read it
since you have marked it.  I don't deny that it is smartly
written.  It irritates me, though.  It is evidently the theory of
some armchair lounger who evolves all these neat little paradoxes
in the seclusion of his own study.  It is not practical.  I
should like to see him clapped down in a third-class carriage on
the Underground, and asked to give the trades of all his
fellow-travellers.  I would lay a thousand to one against him."
     "You would lose your money," Holmes remarked calmly.  "As
for the article, I wrote it myself."
     "You!"
     "Yes; I have a turn both for observation and for deduction.
     The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear
to you to be so chimerical, are really extremely practical -- so
practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese."
     "And how?" I asked involuntarily.
     "Well, I have a trade of my own.  I suppose I am the only
one in the world, I'm a consulting detective, if you can
understand what that is.  Here in London we have lots of
government detectives and lots of private ones.  When these
fellows are at fault, they come to me, and I manage to put them
on the right scent.  They lay all the evidence before me, and I
am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of
crime, to set them straight.  There is a strong family
resemblance about misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a
thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can't unravel the
thousand and first.  Lestrade is a well-known detective.  He got
himself into a fog recently over a forgery case, and that was
what brought him here."
     "And these other people?"
     They are mostly sent on by private inquiry agencies.  They
are all people who are in trouble about something and want a
little enlightening.  I listen to their story, they listen to my
comments, and then I pocket my fee."
     "But do you mean to say," I said, "that without leaving your
room you can unravel some knot which other men can make nothing
of, although they have seen every detail for themselves?"
     "Quite so.  I have a kind of intuition that way.  Now and
again a case turns up which is a little more complex.  Then I
have to bustle about and see things with my own eyes.  You see I
have a lot of special knowledge which I apply to the problem, and
which facilitates matters wonderfully.  Those rules of deduction
laid down in that article which aroused your scorn are invaluable
to me in practical work.  Observation with me is second nature.
You appeared to be surprised when I told you, on our first
meeting, that you had come from Afghanistan."
     "You were told, no doubt."
     "Nothing of the sort.  I knew you came from Afghanistan.
From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my
mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of
intermediate steps.  There were such steps, however.  The train
of reasoning ran, 'Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but
with the air of a military man.  Clearly an army doctor, then.
He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that
is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair.  He
has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says
clearly.  His left arm has been injured.  He holds it in a stiff
and unnatural manner.  Where in the tropics could an English army
doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded?  Clearly
in Afghanistan.'  The whole train of thought did not occupy a
second.  I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you
were astonished."
     "It is simple enough as you explain it," I said, smiling.
"You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin.  I had no idea that
such individuals did exist outside of stories.'
     Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe.  "No doubt you think
that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin," he
observed. "Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow.
That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an
apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really
very showy and superficial.  He had some analytical genius, no
doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared
to imagine."
     "Have you read Gaboriau's works?" I asked.  "Does Lecoq come
up to your idea of a detective?"
     Sherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically.  "Lecoq was a
miserable bungler," he said, in an angry voice; "he had only one
thing to recommend him, and that was his energy.  That book made
me positively ill.  The question was how to identify an unknown
prisoner.  I could have done it in twenty-four hours.  Lecoq took
six months or so.  It might be made a textbook for detectives to
teach them what to avoid."
     I felt rather indignant at having two characters whom I had
admired treated in this cavalier style.  I walked over to the
window and stood looking out into the busy street.  "This fellow
may be very clever," I said to myself, 'but he is certainly very
conceited."
     "There are no crimes and no criminals in these days," he
said, querulously.  "What is the use of having brains in our
profession?  I know well that I have it in me to make my name
famous.  No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same
amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime
which I have done.  And what is the result?  There is no crime to
detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so
transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through
it."
     I was still annoyed at his bumptious style of conversation.
I thought it best to change the topic.
     "I wonder what that fellow is looking for?" I asked,
pointing to a stalwart, plainly dressed individual who was
walking slowly down the other side of the street, looking
anxiously at the numbers.  He had a large blue envelope in his
hand, and was evidently the bearer of a message.
     "You mean the retired sergeant of Marines," said Sherlock
Holmes.
     "Brag and bounce!" thought I to myself.  "He knows that I
cannot verify his guess.
     The thought had hardly passed through my mind when the man
whom we were watching caught sight of the number on our door, and
ran rapidly across the roadway.  We heard a loud knock, a deep
voice below, and heavy steps ascending the stair.
     "For Mr. Sherlock Holmes," he said, stepping into the room
and handing my friend the letter.
     Here was an opportunity of taking the conceit out of him.
He little thought of this when he made that random shot.  "May I
ask, my lad," I said, in the blandest voice, "what your trade may
be?"
     "Commissionaire, sir," he said, gruffly.  "Uniform away for
repairs."
     "And you were?" I asked, with a slightly malicious glance at
my companion.
     "A sergeant, sir, Royal Marine Light Infantry, sir.  No
answer?  Right, sir."
     He clicked his heels together, raised his hand in salute,
and was gone.