"Doyle, Arthur Conan - Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers.
His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw
his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against
the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head
sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who
knew his every mood and habit, his attitude 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 was shown 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 a word spoken, but with a kindly
eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars,
and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he
stood before the fire and looked me over in his singular
introspective fashion.

"Wedlock suits you," he remarked. "I think, Watson, that you have
put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you."

"Seven!" I answered.

"Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more,
I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not
tell me that you intended to go into harness."

"Then, how do you know?"

"I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting
yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and
careless servant girl?"

"My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly
have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true
that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful
mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can't imagine how you
deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has
given her notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work it
out."

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands
together.

"It is simplicity itself," said he; "my eyes tell me that on the
inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it,
the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they
have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round
the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it.
Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile