具体描述
内容简介
Sherlock HolmesThe Complete Novels and StoriesVolume IISince his first appearance in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes has been one of the most beloved fictional characters ever created. Now, in two paperback volumes, Bantam presents all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring Conan Doyle’s classic hero--a truly complete collection of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures in crime!Volume II begins with The Hound of the Baskervilles, a haunting novel of murder on eerie Grimpen Moor, which has rightly earned its reputation as the finest murder mystery ever written. The Valley of Fear matches Holmes against his archenemy, the master of imaginative crime, Professor Moriarty. In addition, the loyal Dr. Watson has faithfully recorded Holmes’s feats of extraordinary detection in such famous cases as the thrilling The Adventure of the Red Circle and the twelve baffling adventures from The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle’s incomparable tales bring to life a Victorian England of horse-drawn cabs, fogs, and the famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street, where for more than forty years Sherlock Holmes earned his undisputed reputation as the greatest fictional detective of all time. 作者简介
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh and studied medicine at the university there, after an education in Jesuit schools in Lancashire and Austria. He had an active career as a doctor and opthalmologist, including volunteering in Bloemfontein during the Boer War, but also in the public sphere as Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey, writer of the widely read historical works and political pamphlets, vociferous opponent of miscarriages of justice and twice parliamentary candidate (although he was never elected). Yet it was for his brilliant creation of the first scientific detective, Sherlock Holmes, that he achieved great fame - so great that after he killed Sherlock off to concentrate more on his historical work, he was forced to bring the character back to life in The Hound of the Baskervilles. In later years, the Jesuit-educated Conan Doyle converted to Spiritualism, writing works such as The Coming of the Fairies, and was a friend of the magician Houdini. He died of a heart attack in 1930, at the age of seventy-one.
阿瑟·柯南·道尔,世界著名小说家,堪称侦探悬疑小说的鼻祖。因成功的塑造了侦探人物――歇洛克·福尔摩斯(又译夏洛克·福尔摩斯)而成为侦探小说历史上最重要的小说家之一。除此之外他还曾写过《失落的世界》等多部其他类型的小说,其作品涉及科幻、悬疑、 历史小说、爱情小说、戏剧、诗歌等。 ... 精彩书摘
Chapter 1
Mr. Sherlock Holmes
MR. SHERLOCK Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a "Penang lawyer." Just under the head was a broad silver band, nearly an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date "1884." It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry--dignified, solid, and reassuring.
"Well, Watson, what do you make of it?"
Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.
"How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head."
"I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me," said he. "But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it."
"I think," said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, "that Dr. Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed, since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation."
"Good!" said Holmes. "Excellent!"
"I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot."
"Why so?"
"Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one, has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it."
"Perfectly sound!" said Holmes.
"And then again, there is the 'friends of the C.C.H.' I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small presentation in return."
"Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt."
He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and, carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens.
"Interesting, though elementary," said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. "There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions."
"Has anything escaped me?" I asked with some self-importance. "I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?"
"I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal."
"Then I was right."
"To that extent."
"But that was all."
"No, no, my dear Watson, not all--by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials 'C.C.' are placed before that hospital the words 'Charing Cross' very naturally suggest themselves."
"You may be right."
"The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a working hypothesis we have a fresh basis from which to start our construction of this unknown visitor."
"Well, then, supposing that 'C.C.H.' does stand for 'Charing Cross Hospital,' what further inferences may we draw?"
"Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!"
"I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practised in town before going to the country."
"I think that we might venture a little farther than this. Look at it in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their good will? Obviously at the moment when Dr. Mortimer withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start in practice for himself. We know there has been a presentation. We believe there has been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then, stretching our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the occasion of the change?"
"It certainly seems probable."
"Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the hospital, since only a man well-established in a London practice could hold such a position, and such a one would not drift into the country. What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff he could only have been a house-surgeon or a house-physician--little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago--the date is on the stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff."
I laughed incredulously as Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his settee and blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling.
"As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you," said I, "but at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars about the man's age and professional career." From my small medical shelf I took down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several Mortimers, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record aloud.
"Mortimer, James, M.R.C.S., 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner of the Jackson prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled 'Is Disease a Reversion?' Corresponding member of the Swedish Pathological Society. Author of 'Some Freaks of Atavism' (Lancet 1882). 'Do We Progress?' (Journal of Psychology, March, 1883). Medical Officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, and High Barrow."
"No mention of that local hunt, Watson," said Holmes with a mischievous smile, "but a country doctor, as you very astutely observed. I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absent-minded. It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room."
"And the dog?"
"Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a heavy stick the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog's jaw, as shown in the space between these marks, is too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been--yes, by Jove, it is a curly-haired spaniel."
He had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess of the window. There was such a ring of conviction in his voice that I glanced up in surprise.
"My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?"
"For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very door-step, and there is the ring of its owner. Don't move, I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. 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 practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and his trousers frayed. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence. 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 whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I would not lose that...
福尔摩斯探案集:迷雾中的推理与永恒的谜题 一部跨越世纪的侦探小说经典 福尔摩斯探案集,这个名字本身就足以唤起人们对十九世纪末伦敦迷雾、煤烟弥漫的街道,以及那两位传奇人物——夏洛克·福尔摩斯与约翰·H·华生医生——的无尽遐想。作为侦探文学的奠基石,柯南·道尔爵士笔下的这些故事,不仅仅是单纯的悬疑叙事,更是对逻辑、观察力与人性复杂性的深刻探讨。 本卷精选的系列故事,带领读者深入维多利亚时代末期那光怪陆离的社会剖面。在这里,财富的虚荣与贫困的挣扎并存,上流社会的秘密与街头巷尾的阴谋交织成一张错综复杂的网。每一桩案件都如同一个精心设置的迷局,需要福尔摩斯那超凡的演绎法(The Science of Deduction)去层层剥开。 伦敦的阴影与智慧的光芒 故事的核心魅力,无疑在于福尔摩斯本人。他是一位特立独行的天才,一个沉浸在化学实验、小提琴演奏和古怪哲学思辨中的人物。他的生活哲学是反情感的、纯粹理性的,他将犯罪现场视为一个可以被解读的文本,每一个微小的线索——一撮泥土的成分、鞋底磨损的程度、烟草灰烬的种类——都对他而言是开口说话的证人。 与他形影不离的华生医生,则是我们进入这个非凡世界的可靠向导。华生不仅是福尔摩斯的忠实记录者,更代表了普通人的视角与道德准绳。通过华生的笔触,福尔摩斯的冷峻与洞察力得以被恰当地平衡,使得人物形象既高不可攀又充满了人性的温度。他们的贝克街221B寓所,成为了伦敦最著名的“侦探总部”,那里弥漫着烟草的辛辣味、化学试剂的刺激味,以及即将揭晓真相前的紧张空气。 案件的广度与深度 本合集收录的案件,涵盖了从最精巧的密室谋杀到最复杂的国际阴谋,展现了福尔摩斯卓越的适应能力。读者将跟随他们穿梭于庄严肃穆的贵族宅邸、熙熙攘攘的港口码头、幽深阴森的乡村庄园,乃至被浓雾笼罩的异国他乡。 案件的主题丰富多样:它不仅关乎金钱、爱情或复仇,更触及了当时社会结构中的诸多痛点。例如,我们可能会面对那些利用科学知识进行精准犯罪的冷血策划者;或是那些被古老家族诅咒和遗传疾病所困扰的悲剧人物。 每一篇故事的结构都经过了精心的编排。开篇往往以一个看似毫无头绪的谜团引入,福尔摩斯和华生被卷入其中。随后是一系列的实地考察、秘密会面、紧张的对峙以及最终在壁炉旁或案发现场的推理高潮。当福尔摩斯开始他著名的“演绎”过程时,他会摒弃一切无关的假设,将所有碎片化的信息整合起来,最终以一种令人拍案叫绝的方式,将真相呈现在读者面前。 时代背景的刻画 这些故事的魅力,也源于其对十九世纪末至二十世纪初英国社会的生动描绘。维多利亚时代的繁荣背后隐藏着深刻的阶级鸿沟和对异域文化的复杂心态。福尔摩斯接触到的案件,往往折射出那个时代特有的焦虑:对殖民地事务的担忧、新兴工业革命带来的社会动荡、以及对科学进步的双重情感(既崇拜又恐惧)。 从苏格兰场的傲慢与局限,到福尔摩斯对传统警务方法的批判性继承,这些故事提供了一个独特的社会观察窗口。福尔摩斯代表了一种新兴的、基于证据和科学的方法论,挑战着旧有的、依赖直觉和权威的司法体系。 推理艺术的精髓 对于热爱推理小说的读者来说,本集是学习“硬核”逻辑推理的绝佳教材。柯南·道尔巧妙地运用了“误导”技巧,让读者与华生一样,被表象所迷惑。但福尔摩斯总能洞察到隐藏在日常之下的异常之处。他的推理过程,不仅是找到“谁干的”,更是深入探究“为什么”和“如何做到的”。 阅读这些故事,不仅仅是享受追凶的乐趣,更是一场智力上的挑战。读者会不由自主地跟随福尔摩斯的思路,试图在他开口揭示真相之前,先一步找出凶手。这种主动参与感,是福尔摩斯文学持久不衰的核心吸引力。 永恒的文学价值 尽管故事背景设定在一百多年前,但福尔摩斯所处理的人类基本动机——贪婪、嫉妒、对正义的渴求——却是永恒的。福尔摩斯探案集超越了其“类型小说”的范畴,成为了研究人类心理、社会结构以及科学思维范式的经典文本。 本卷精选的故事,代表了福尔摩斯职业生涯的成熟阶段,展现了其技巧的巅峰状态。它承诺为读者带来一场又一场引人入胜的智力冒险,一窥人类思维能够达到的最高精确度,以及在最黑暗的角落中,理性之光如何穿透迷雾,指引方向。准备好,步入那扇标志性的、刻着“221B”的门扉,与夏洛克·福尔摩斯一起,迎接下一个等待被破解的谜团。