1)Sherlock Holmes --->සිව් රහස් සලකුණ

AAA999

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    1)Sherlock Holmes --->සිව් රහස් සලකුණ

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    Chapter 1
    The Science of Deduction

    Part I

    Chapter 1
    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 shirtcuff. 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 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 extraor-
    dinary 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, Wat-
    son," he said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad
    one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarify-
    ing 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.

     

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    Part II


    "My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me prob-
    lems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or
    the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmo-
    sphere. 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 Greg-
    son, 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 unrav-
    elling it."
    I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been
    specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was
    irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line
    of my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings.
    More than once during the years that I had lived with him in
    Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity underlay my
    companion's quiet and didactic manner. I made no remark
    however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had had a Jezaii
    bullet through it some time before, and though it did not prevent
    me from walking it ached wearily at every change of the weather.
     

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    Part III


    "My practice has extended recently to the Continent," said
    Holmes after a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. "I was
    consulted last week by Francois le Villard, who, as you
    probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the French
    detective service. He has all the Celtic power of quick intuition
    but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is
    essential to the higher developments of his art. The case was
    concerned with a will and possessed some features of interest. I
    was able to refer him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga in
    1857, and the other at St. Louis in 1871, which have suggested
    to him the true solution. Here is the letter which I had this
    morning acknowledging my assistance."
    He tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign
    notepaper. I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of
    notes of admiration, with stray magnifiques, coup-de-maitres and
    tours-de-force, all testifying to the ardent admiration of the
    Frenchman.
    "He speaks as a pupil to his master," said I.
    "Oh, he rates my assistance too highly," said Sherlock Holmes
    lightly. "He has coosiderable gifts himself. He possesses two
    out of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has
    the power of observation and that of deduction. He is only
    wanting in knowledge, and that may come in time. He is now
    translating my small works into French."
    "Your works?"
    "Oh, didn't you know?" he cried, laughing. "Yes, I have
    been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical
    subjects. Here, for example, is one 'Upon the Distinction be-
    tween the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos.' In it I enumerate a
    hundred and forty forms of cigar, cigarette, and pipe tobacco,
    with coloured plates illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a
    point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and
    which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue. If you can
    say definitely, for example, that some murder had been done by
    a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows
    your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much differ-
    ence between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff
    of bird's-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato."
    "You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae," I remarked.
    "I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon
    the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of
    plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses. Here, too, is a
    curious little work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of
    the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, cork-
    cutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers. That is a
    matter of great practical interest to the scientific detective --
    especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering the
    antecedents of criminals. But I weary you with my hobby."