A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (ebook reader with highlighter txt) ๐
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A Study in Scarlet is the novel which first introduced Arthur Conan Doylesโ iconic characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. It was published in 1887 in a popular magazine, Beetonโs Christmas Annual. It attracted little public attention at the time, but interest in Holmes continued to build with the subsequent series of short stories Doyle wrote featuring the austere, analytical detectiveโnow one of the most well-known characters in all of English literature.
A Study in Scarlet is told from the point of view of Dr. John Watson, a medical doctor who has recently returned to London after suffering serious injury and illness as part of the Army Medical Department deployed to Afghanistan. In precarious health and even more precarious financial straits, heโs looking for cheap lodgings when a friend introduces him to Sherlock Holmes. The pair agree to share the rent of a flat Holmes has found.
Watson is baffled by his companionโs strange nature, his peculiar interests, his unusual breadth of knowledge in certain fields alongside his shocking ignorance in others, and his many strange visitors. Only eventually does Watsonb discover that Holmes has set himself up as the worldโs first โconsulting detective,โ and itโs not long before Watson finds himself assisting Holmes in a mysterious case. The body of a man has been found in an abandoned house, without wounds or other marks of injury. But on the wall, scrawled in blood, is the word RACHE. The subsequent unravelling of the mystery takes many unexpected turns.
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- Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Read book online ยซA Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (ebook reader with highlighter txt) ๐ยป. Author - Arthur Conan Doyle
โThe moment for which I had waited so long had at last come. I had my enemies within my power. Together they could protect each other, but singly they were at my mercy. I did not act, however, with undue precipitation. My plans were already formed. There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him. I had my plans arranged by which I should have the opportunity of making the man who had wronged me understand that his old sin had found him out. It chanced that some days before a gentleman who had been engaged in looking over some houses in the Brixton Road had dropped the key of one of them in my carriage. It was claimed that same evening, and returned; but in the interval I had taken a moulding of it, and had a duplicate constructed. By means of this I had access to at least one spot in this great city where I could rely upon being free from interruption. How to get Drebber to that house was the difficult problem which I had now to solve.
โHe walked down the road and went into one or two liquor shops, staying for nearly half-an-hour in the last of them. When he came out he staggered in his walk, and was evidently pretty well on. There was a hansom just in front of me, and he hailed it. I followed it so close that the nose of my horse was within a yard of his driver the whole way. We rattled across Waterloo Bridge and through miles of streets, until, to my astonishment, we found ourselves back in the Terrace in which he had boarded. I could not imagine what his intention was in returning there; but I went on and pulled up my cab a hundred yards or so from the house. He entered it, and his hansom drove away. Give me a glass of water, if you please. My mouth gets dry with the talking.โ
I handed him the glass, and he drank it down.
โThatโs better,โ he said. โWell, I waited for a quarter of an hour, or more, when suddenly there came a noise like people struggling inside the house. Next moment the door was flung open and two men appeared, one of whom was Drebber, and the other was a young chap whom I had never seen before. This fellow had Drebber by the collar, and when they came to the head of the steps he gave him a shove and a kick which sent him half across the road. โYou hound,โ he cried, shaking his stick at him; โIโll teach you to insult an honest girl!โ He was so hot that I think he would have thrashed Drebber with his cudgel, only that the cur staggered away down the road as fast as his legs would carry him. He ran as far as the corner, and then, seeing my cab, he hailed me and jumped in. โDrive me to Hallidayโs Private Hotel,โ said he.
โWhen I had him fairly inside my cab, my heart jumped so with joy that I feared lest at this last moment my aneurism might go wrong. I drove along slowly, weighing in my own mind what it was best to do. I might take him right out into the country, and there in some deserted lane have my last interview with him. I had almost decided upon this, when he solved the problem for me. The craze for drink had seized him again, and he ordered me to pull up outside a gin palace. He went in, leaving word that I should wait for him. There he remained until closing time, and when he came out he was so far gone that I knew the game was in my own hands.
โDonโt imagine that I intended to kill him in cold blood. It would only have been rigid justice if I had done so, but I could not bring myself to do it. I had long determined that he should have a show for his life if he chose to take advantage of it. Among the many billets which I have filled in America during my wandering life, I was once janitor and sweeper out of the laboratory at York College. One day the professor was lecturing on poisons, and he showed his students some alkaloid, as he called it, which he had extracted from some South American arrow poison, and which was so powerful that the least grain meant instant death. I spotted the bottle in which this preparation was kept, and when they were all gone, I helped myself to a little of it. I was a fairly good dispenser, so I worked this alkaloid into small, soluble pills, and each pill I put in a box with a similar pill made without the poison. I determined at the time that when I had my chance, my gentlemen should each have a draw out of one of these boxes, while I ate the pill that remained. It would be quite as deadly, and a good deal less noisy than firing across a handkerchief. From that day I had always my pill boxes about with me, and the time had now come
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