ADVENTURE I. A Scandal in Bohemia (1)
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under anyother name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that hefelt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, wereabhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfectreasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placedhimself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and asneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’smotives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicateand finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubtupon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. Andyet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious andquestionable memory.

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My owncomplete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who firstfinds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, whileHolmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in ourlodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to weekbetween cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his ownkeen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied hisimmense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, andclearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. Fromtime to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the caseof the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers atTrincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately andsuccessfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, whichI merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend andcompanion.
3.One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888—I was returning from a journey to a patient(for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street.

As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with mywooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire tosee Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His roomswere brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a darksilhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk uponhis chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, hisattitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell and wasshown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.
His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly aword spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case ofcigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fireand looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.
“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a halfpounds since I saw you.”

Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round theedges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deductionthat you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slittingspecimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my roomssmelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulgeon the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull,indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.”
I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. “When Ihear you give your reasons,” I remarked, “the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculouslysimple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning Iam baffled until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.”
“Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an armchair. “Yousee, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen thesteps which lead up from the hall to this room.”
17.“Frequently.”

“How often?”
“Well, some hundreds of times.”
“Then how many are there?”
“How many? I don’t know.”
“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I knowthat there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. By the way, since youare interested in these little problems, and since you are good enough to chronicle one or twoof my trifling experiences, you may be interested in this.” He threw over a sheet of thick, pink-tinted notepaper which had been lying open upon the table. “It came by the last post,” said he.“Read it aloud.”
23.The note was undated, and without either signature or address.

abhorrent adj. 令人憎恨的, 可恶的，背离的
precise [pri'sais] adj. 精确的,准确的,认真的
gibe [dʒaib] v.&n. 嘲笑,讥笑 vi. 嘲笑
sneer [sniə] n. 冷笑, 嘲笑 v. 嘲笑, 冷笑
veil [veil] n. 面纱,掩饰物,修女 vt. 给...戴面纱或面罩 vi. 带面纱或面罩
delicate ['delikit] adj. 细致优雅的,微妙的,美味的 adj. 淡色的,淡味的 adj. 娇弱的,纤细的
temperament ['tempərəmənt] n. 气质, 性质, 性情
lens [lenz] n. 镜头,透镜
faculty ['fækəlti] n. 才能,能力,全体教员 n. （大学的）系, 科, 院
introspective [ˌintrəu'spektiv] adj. 反省的，内省的
clumsy ['klʌmzi] adj. 笨拙的, 笨重的, 不得体的
deduce [di'dju:s] vt. 演绎,推断,溯源
nitrate ['naitreit] n. 硝酸盐
stethoscope ['steθəskəup] n. 听诊器
baffle ['bæfl] v. 困惑, 为难
chronicle ['krɔnikl] n. 年代记, 记录, 编年史
exaggerated [ig'zædʒəreitid;ig'zædʒəˌreitid] adj. 言过其辞的，夸大的 动词exaggerate的过去式和过去分词
trifling ['traifliŋ] adj. 微不足道的, 不足取的，轻浮的 动词trifle的现在分词形式

ADVENTURE I. A Scandal in Bohemia (2)
“This is indeed a mystery,” I remarked. “What do you imagine that it means?”
“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly onebegins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. Whatdo you deduce from it?”
I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was written.
“The man who wrote it was presumably well to do,” I remarked, endeavouring to imitate mycompanion’s processes. “Such paper could not be bought under half a crown a packet. It ispeculiarly strong and stiff.”
“Peculiar—that is the very word,” said Holmes. “It is not an English paper at all. Hold it up tothe light.”

I did so, and saw a large “E” with a small “g,” a “P,” and a large “G” with a small “t” woven intothe texture of the paper.
“What do you make of that?” asked Holmes.
“The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather.”
“Not at all. The ‘G’ with the small ‘t’ stands for ‘Gesellschaft,’ which is the German for‘Company.’ It is a customary contraction like our ‘Co.’ ‘P,’ of course, stands for ‘Papier.’ Nowfor the ‘Eg.’ Let us glance at our Continental Gazetteer.” He took down a heavy brown volumefrom his shelves. “Eglow, Eglonitz—here we are, Egria. It is in a German-speaking country—inBohemia, not far from Carlsbad. ‘Remarkable as being the scene of the death of Wallenstein,and for its numerous glass-factories and paper-mills.’ Ha, ha, my boy, what do you make ofthat?” His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette.
“The paper was made in Bohemia,” I said.
11.“Precisely.And the man who wrote the note is a German.

Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence—‘This account of you we have from allquarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who isso uncourteous to his verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by thisGerman who writes upon Bohemian paper and prefers wearing a mask to showing his face.And here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts.”
As he spoke there was the sharp sound of horses’ hoofs and grating wheels against the curb,followed by a sharp pull at the bell. Holmes whistled.
“A pair, by the sound,” said he. “Yes,” he continued, glancing out of the window. “A nice littlebrougham and a pair of beauties. A hundred and fifty guineas apiece. There’s money in thiscase, Watson, if there is nothing else.”
“I think that I had better go, Holmes.”
“Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. And this promises to beinteresting. It would be a pity to miss it.”
17.“But your client—”

“I promise,” said Holmes.
“And I.”
“You will excuse this mask,” continued our strange visitor. “The august person who employs mewishes his agent to be unknown to you, and I may confess at once that the title by which I havejust called myself is not exactly my own.”
“I was aware of it,” said Holmes dryly.
“The circumstances are of great delicacy, and every precaution has to be taken to quench whatmight grow to be an immense scandal and seriously compromise one of the reigning families ofEurope. To speak plainly, the matter implicates the great House of Ormstein, hereditary kings ofBohemia.”
33.“I was also aware of that,” murmured Holmes, settling himself down in his armchair and closinghis eyes.

Yet the matter was so delicate that I could not confide it to an agent without putting myself in hispower. I have come incognito from Prague for the purpose of consulting you.”
“Then, pray consult,” said Holmes, shutting his eyes once more.
“The facts are briefly these: Some five years ago, during a lengthy visit to Warsaw, I made theacquaintance of the well-known adventuress, Irene Adler. The name is no doubt familiar to you.”
42.“Kindly look her up in my index, Doctor,” murmured Holmes without opening his eyes. For manyyears he had adopted a system of docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things, so thatit was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could not at once furnish information.In this case I found her biography sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of astaff-commander who had written a monograph upon the deep-sea fishes.

I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a coloredpencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked somethinglike this:

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightenedthem.
But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat? "
6.My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting anelephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: Idrew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They alwaysneed to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this: