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elapt1c
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ElapticAI-512

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so.
“And you are a benefactor of the race, said I.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some
little use, he remarked. “‘L’homme c’est rien—l’œuvre c’est tout,’
as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.
III. A CASE OF IDENTITY
“My dear fellow, said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the
fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than
anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to
conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If
we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great
city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which
are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the
cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through
generations, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all
fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale
and unprofitable.
“And yet I am not convinced of it, I answered. “The cases which come
to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough.
We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and
yet the result is, it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor
artistic.
“A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a
realistic effect, remarked Holmes. “This is wanting in the police
report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the platitudes of the
magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the
vital essence of the whole matter. Depend upon it, there is nothing so
unnatural as the commonplace.
I smiled and shook my head. “I can quite understand your thinking so,
I said. “Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper
to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents,
you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But
here —I picked up the morning paper from the ground—“let us put it to a
practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. ‘A
husband’s cruelty to his wife.’ There is half a column of print, but I
know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There
is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the
bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers
could invent nothing more crude.
“Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument, said
Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. “This is the
Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing
up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a
teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was
that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking
out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will
allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the
average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge
that I have scored over you in your example.
He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the
centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to his homely
ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.
“Ah, said he, “I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is
a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia in return for my assistance
in the case of the Irene Adler papers.
“And the ring? I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which
sparkled upon his finger.
“It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which
I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to
you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little
problems.
“And have you any on hand just now? I asked with interest.
“Some ten or twelve, but none which present any feature of interest.
They are important, you understand, without being interesting. Indeed,
I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a
field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and
effect which gives the charm to an investigation. The larger crimes are
apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a
rule, is the motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate
matter which has been referred to me from Marseilles, there is nothing
which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however, that
I may have something better before very many minutes are over, for this
is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken.
He had risen from his chair and was standing between the parted blinds
gazing down into the dull neutral-tinted London street. Looking over
his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large
woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck, and a large curling red
feather in a broad-brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess
of Devonshire fashion over her ear. From under this great panoply she
peeped up in a nervous, hesitating fashion at our windows, while her
body oscillated backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her