"Doyle, Arthur Conan - Sherlock Holmes 07 - The Valley of Fear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

that case, and possibly bring trouble on him."
"No doubt," said I. "Of course." I had picked up the
original cipher message and was bending my brows over it. "It's
pretty maddening to think that an important secret may lie here on
this slip of paper, and that it is beyond human power to penetrate
it."
Sherlock Holmes had pushed away his untasted breakfast and
lit the unsavoury pipe which was the companion of his deepest
meditations. "I wonder!" said he, leaning back and staring at
the ceiling. "Perhaps there are points which have escaped your
Machiavellian intellect. Let us consider the problem in the light
of pure reason. This man's reference is to a book. That is our
point of departure."
"A somewhat vague one."
"Let us see then if we can narrow it down. As I focus my
mind upon it, it seems rather less impenetrable. What indications
have we as to this book?"
"None."
"Well, well, it is surely not quite so bad as that. The cipher
message begins with a large 534, does it not? We may take it as
a working hypothesis that 534 is the particular page to which the
cipher refers. So our book has already become a large book
which is surely something gained. What other indications have
we as to the nature of this large book? The next sign is C2. What
do you make of that, Watson?"
"Chapter the second, no doubt."
"Hardly that, Watson. You will, I am sure, agree with me
that if the page be given, the number of the chapter is immate-
rial. Also that if page 534 finds us only in the second chapter,
the length of the first one must have been really intolerable."
"Column!" I cried.
"Brilliant, Watson. You are scintillating this morning. If it is
not column, then I am very much deceived. So now, you see, we
begin to visualize a large book printed in double columns
which are each of a considerable iength, since one of the words
is numbered in the document as the two hundred and ninety-
third. Have we reached the limits of what reason can supply?"
"I fear that we have."
"Surely you do yourself an injustice. One more coruscation,
my dear Watson -- yet another brain-wave! Had the volume been
an unusual one, he would have sent it to me. Instead of that, he
had intended, before his plans were nipped, to send me the clue
in this envelope. He says so in his note. This would seem to
indicate that the book is one which he thought I would have no
difficulty in finding for myself. He had it -- and he imagined that
I would have it, too. In short, Watson, it is a very common
book."
"What you say certainly sounds plausible."
"So we have contracted our field of search to a large book,
printed in double columns and in common use."