Preface
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
The Adventure of the Red Circle
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
The Adventure of the Devils Foot
His Last Bow
內容試閱：
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott
Eccles
I find it recorded in my notebook that it was
a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had
received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply. He
made no remark, but the matter remained in his thoughts, for he stood in front
of the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an
occasional glance at the message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous
twinkle in his eyes.
I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as
a man of letters, said he. How do you define the word grotesque?
Strangeremarkable, I suggested.
He shook his head at my definition.
There is surely something more than that,
said he; some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you
cast your mind back to some of those narratives with which you have afflicted a
long-suffering public, you will recognize how often the grotesque has deepened
into the criminal. Think of that little affair of the red-headed men. That was
grotesque enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at
robbery. Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the five orange
pips, which led straight to a murderous conspiracy. The word puts me on the
alert.
Have you it there? I asked.
He read the telegram aloud.
Have just had
most incredible and grotesque experience. May I consult you?
Scott Eccles,
Post-Office, Charing Cross.
Man or woman? I asked.
Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send
a reply-paid telegram. She would have come.
Will you see him?
My dear Watson, you know how bored I have
been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers. My mind is like a racing engine,
tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which
it was built. Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance
seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then,
whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove?
But here, unless I am mistaken, is our client.
A
measured step was heard upon the stairs, and a moment later a stout, tall,
gray-whiskered and solemnly respectable person was ushered into the room. His
life history was written in his heavy features and pompous manner. From his
spats to his gold-rimmed spectacles he was a Conservative, a churchman, a good
citizen, orthodox and conventional to the last degree. But some amazing
experience had disturbed his native composure and left its traces in his
bristling hair, his flushed, angry cheeks, and his flurried, excited manner. He
plunged instantly into his business.
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