Собака Баскервилей / The Hound of the Baskervilles

”

He had never said as much before, and his words gave me keen pleasure. I was proud, too, to think that I had mastered his system. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes, then he carried it to the window and looked over it again with a lens.

“Interesting, though elementary,” said he. “There are one or two marks on the stick, which allow us to make several deductions.

“I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were wrong. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, that your mistakes guided me towards the truth.

Not that you are entirely wrong in this case. The man is certainly a country doctor. And he walks a good deal.”

“Then I was right.”

“No, no, my dear Watson. A present to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital, and when the initials ‘C.C.’ are placed before that hospital the words ‘Charing Cross’ very naturally occur to you.”

“You may be right.”

“Now, you will see that he could not be a doctor at the hospital, since only a man with a good London practice could have such a position, and such a man would not go to live in the country.

What was he, then? A student. And he left five years ago—the date is on the stick. So your middle-aged family doctor turns into a young fellow under thirty, with a favourite dog, larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff.”

“A dog?”

“A dog has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. The marks of his teeth are very well seen. These marks are too broad for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff.

It may be—yes, it is a spaniel.”

I looked at him in surprise. He was now standing at the window.

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself at our door, and there is the ring of its owner. Don’t go away, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may help me. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!”

The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country doctor.

He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, keen, gray eyes, sparkling brightly from behind a pair of glasses. Though he was young, his long back was already bowed. As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes’s hand, and he ran towards it with an exclamation of joy. “I am so very glad,” said he. “I was not sure that I had left it here.