The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name.

In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.

Scene 1.1

One night — it was on the twentieth of March, 1888 — I was returning from a journey to a patient, when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers.

His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him.

Scene 1.2

“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.”

“Seven,” I answered. “And, now that I observe it, I perceive that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl.”

Scene 1.3

I had hardly settled into my chair before he handed me the note. It was undated, and without either signature or address. “There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o’clock,” it said, “a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment…”