The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
Public domain text from Project Gutenberg.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Contents
I. A Scandal in Bohemia
II. The Red-Headed League
III. A Case of Identity
IV. The Boscombe Valley Mystery
V. The Five Orange Pips
VI. The Man with the Twisted Lip
VII. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
VIII. The Adventure of the Speckled Band
IX. The Adventure of the Engineer s Thumb
X. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
XI. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
XII. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA
I.
To Sherlock Holmes she is always _the_ woman. I have seldom heard him
mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion
akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly,
1
were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He
was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that
the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a
false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe
and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer excellent for
drawing the veil from men s motives and actions. But for the trained
reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely
adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might
throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive
instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not
be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And
yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene
Adler, of dubious and questi…