Orakel Classics
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, prepared as a public-domain Orakel edition with 12 chapter-aware companion links.
Chapters
Choose where to begin
I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA
I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA from 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. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the
Open2II. THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE
II. THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair. With an apology for my intrusion, I was about to withdraw when Holmes pulled me abruptly into the room and closed the door behind
Open3III. A CASE OF IDENTITY
III. A CASE OF IDENTITY from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. “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
Open4IV. THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY
IV. THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the maid brought in a telegram. It was from Sherlock Holmes and ran in this
Open5V. THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS
V. THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years ’82 and ’90, I am faced by so many which present strange and interesting features that it is no easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some, however, have already gained publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a field for those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so high a degree, and
Open6VI. THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP
VI. THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Isa Whitney, brother of the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal of the Theological College of St. George’s, was much addicted to opium. The habit grew upon him, as I understand, from some foolish freak when he was at college; for having read De Quincey’s description of his dreams and sensations, he had drenched his tobacco with laudanum in an attempt to produce the same effects. He found, as so many more have done,
Open7VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE
VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and
Open8VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND
VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and
Open9IX. THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER’S THUMB
IX. THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER’S THUMB from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for solution during the years of our intimacy, there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his notice—that of Mr. Hatherley’s thumb, and that of Colonel Warburton’s madness. Of these the latter may have afforded a finer field for an acute and original observer, but the other was so strange in its inception and so
Open10X. THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR
X. THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have long ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn the gossips away from this four-year-old drama. As I have reason to believe, however, that the full facts have never been revealed to the general public, and as my friend
Open11XI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET
XI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. “Holmes,” said I as I stood one morning in our bow-window looking down the street, “here is a madman coming along. It seems rather sad that his relatives should allow him to come out
Open12XII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES
XII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. “To the man who loves art for its own sake,” remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of The Daily Telegraph, “it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I
Open