Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations

Holmes smiled with an expression of weary patience.
“The bath!” he said; “the bath! Why the relaxing and expensive Turkish rather than the invigorating home-made article?”
“The train of reasoning is not very obscure, Watson,” said Holmes with a mischievous twinkle. “It belongs to the same elementary class of deduction which I should illustrate if I were to ask you who shared your cab in your drive this morning.”

“Besides, on general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes. Go, then, my dear Watson, and if my humble counsel can ever be valued at so extravagant a rate as two pence a word, it waits your disposal night and day at the end of the Continental wire.”

Holmes’s ideas of humour are strange and occasionally offensive.

“Well, Watson,” said he, “a very pretty hash you have made of it! I rather think you had better come back with me to London by the night express.”

“And a singularly consistent investigation you have made, my dear Watson,” said he. “I cannot at the moment recall any possible blunder which you have omitted. The total effect of your proceeding has been to give the alarm everywhere and yet to discover nothing.”

“I have no desire to encourage false hopes, but you may rest assured that all that can be done will be done for the safety of Lady Frances.”

He was incoherent in his agitation. Holmes soothed him with a few words and thrust him into an armchair.

“Well?” he asked in that vibrant voice which told of the fiery soul behind the cold gray face.

“You have done excellent work,” said Holmes

‘Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just.’ We simply can’t afford to wait for the police or to keep within the four corners of the law. ....Now, Watson, we’ll just take our luck together, as we have occasionally done in the past.”

“I mean to find her,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I’m going through this house till I do find her.”
“Where is your warrant?”
Holmes half drew a revolver from his pocket. “This will have to serve till a better one comes.”
“Why, you are a common burglar.”
“So you might describe me,” said Holmes cheerfully. “My companion is also a dangerous ruffian. And together we are going through your house.”

With a quick movement Holmes pushed the fellow to one side and passed into the hall.

Holmes’ expression was as impassive as ever under the jeers of his antagonist, but his clenched hands betrayed his acute annoyance.

Holmes was as cool as ever, but I was hot with anger and humiliation.

Sherlock Holmes was too irritable for conversation and too restless for sleep. I left him smoking hard, with his heavy, dark brows knotted together, and his long, nervous fingers tapping upon the arms of his chair, as he turned over in his mind every possible solution of the mystery. Several times in the course of the night I heard him prowling about the house. Finally, just after I had been called in the morning, he rushed into my room. He was in his dressing-gown, but his pale, hollow-eyed face told me that his night had been a sleepless one.

“Good heavens, Watson, what has become of any brains that God has given me? Quick, man, quick! It’s life or death — a hundred chances on death to one on life. I’ll never forgive myself, never, if we are too late!”

The authority in Holmes’s voice had its effect upon the bearers.

“Quick, Watson, quick! Here is a screw-driver!” he shouted as the coffin was replaced upon the table. “Here’s one for you, my man! A sovereign if the lid comes off in a minute! Ask no questions — work away! That’s good! Another! And another! Now pull all together! It’s giving! It’s giving! Ah, that does it at last.”

In an instant he had passed his arm round the figure and raised her to a sitting position.

“Should you care to add the case to your annals, my dear Watson,” said Holmes that evening, “it can only be as an example of that temporary eclipse to which even the best-balanced mind may be exposed. Such slips are common to all mortals, and the greatest is he who can recognize and repair them. To this modified credit I may, perhaps, make some claim. My night was haunted by the thought that somewhere a clue, a strange sentence, a curious observation, had come under my notice and had been too easily dismissed.”