Адаптированный текст повести А. К. Дойла «Знак четырех» на английском языке с транскрипцией и видеопрезентацией. Учебное пособие

He is now translating my small works into French.»

01_033

«Your works?»

«Oh, didn’t you know?» he cried, laughing. «Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, for example, is one «Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes.»

01_034

In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-, cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with colored plates illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue.

01_035

If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search.

01_036

To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird’s-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato.»

01_037

«You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae,» I remarked.

«I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses.

01_038

Here, too, is a curious little work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, corkcutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers.

01_039

That is a matter of great practical interest to the scientific detective, – especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering the antecedents of criminals.

01_040

«Not at all,» I answered, earnestly. «It is of the greatest interest to me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your practical application of it. But you spoke just now of observation and deduction. Surely the one to some extent implies the other.

01_041

«Why, hardly,» he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his arm-chair, and sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe. «For example, observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore Street Post-Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that when there you dispatched a telegram.»

01_042

«Right!» said I. «Right on both points! But I confess that I don’t see how you arrived at it.