MYSTERY/DETECTIVE / FICTION AND LITERATURE
When a young lady approaches Sherlock Holmes looking for help in finding out what happened to her father when he disappeared 10 years earlier, both Holmes and Watson are sent on a mission involving stolen treasure, service in colonial India and a secret pact among four ex-convicts. (Summary by Robin Cotter)
Free English Story eBook: The Sign of the Four
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Book Excerpt / CHAPTER I
The Science of Deduction
Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece 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 velvet lined arm-chair 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
PUBLISHED: 1890 / 117 Pages
Read Online The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Science of Deduction
- The Statement of the Case
- In Quest of a Solution
- The Story of the Bald-Headed Man
- The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge
- Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration
- The Episode of the Barrel
- The Baker Street Irregulars
- A Break in the Chain
- The End of the Islander
- The Great Agra Treasure
- The Strange Story of Jonathan Small