字里行间英文经典：福尔摩斯探案全集之四签名

历史上影响最大的文学侦探形象

福尔摩斯系列第二部

情节曲折 步步惊心

英文原版，经典呈现

最佳的文学经典读物 最好的语言学习读本

读英文经典 品经典英文

《福尔摩斯探案全集之四签名》是柯南?道尔1890年创作的第二本以夏洛克?福尔摩斯为主角的推理小说。故事发生在1887年，讲述了一个复杂的密谋，其中提到不列颠东印度公司的服役、印度民族起义、一个被窃的宝物以及由四位罪犯和两位腐败监狱看护所拟定的秘密协定。在这个故事中，华生医生将来的妻子登场。

阿瑟·柯南·道尔（1859—1930），英国小说家，因成功塑造侦探人物夏洛克·福尔摩斯而成为侦探小说历史上最重要的作家之一。代表作有《福尔摩斯探案集》（《血字的研究》、《四签名》、《巴斯克维尔的猎犬》等）。除此之外他还曾写过《失落的世界》等多部其他类型的小说，其作品涉及科幻、悬疑、 历史小说、爱情小说、戏剧、诗歌等。

Chapter I The Science of Deduction

Chapter II The Statement of the Case

Chapter III In Quest of a Solution

Chapter IV The Story of the Bald-Headed Man

Chapter V The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge

Chapter VI Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration

Chapter VII The Episode of the Barrel

Chapter VIII The Baker Street Irregulars

Chapter IX A Break in the Chain

Chapter X The End of the Islander

Chapter XI The Great Agra Treasure

Chapter XII The Strange Story of Jonathan Small

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvetlined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject; but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty.

His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.

Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken with my lunch or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.

“Which is it to-day?” I asked, “morphine or cocaine?”

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. “It is cocaine,” he said, “a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?”

“No, indeed,” I answered brusquely. “My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it.”

He smiled at my vehemence. “Perhaps you are right, Watson,” he said. “I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.”

“But consider!” I said earnestly. “Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable.”

He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his finger-tips together, and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.

“My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”

“The only unofficial detective?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“The only unofficial consulting detective,” he answered. “I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson, or Lestrade, or Athelney Jones are out of their depths—which, by the way, is their normal state—the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist’s opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. But you have yourself had some experience of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope case.”

“Yes, indeed,” said I cordially. “I was never so struck by anything in my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure, with the somewhat fantastic title of ‘A Study in Scarlet.’”

He shook his head sadly.

“I glanced over it,” said he. “Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.”

“But the romance was there,” I remonstrated. “I could not tamper with the facts.”

“Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it.”