1 A Royal Visit

A Scandal in BOhEmia

Chapter 1 A Royal Visit One evening in March 1888, I was returning from a visit to a patient when I happened to find myself passing through Baker Street. I was reminded that it had been some time since I'd seen my old friend Sherlock Holmes. The upper- floor window of his flat was brightly lit, and I could see the tall silhouette of the great detective against the blind as he energetically paced his study. His head was sunk upon his chest and his hands were clasped behind him in a manner that told their own story. It was clear to me who knew him so well that he was hot upon the scent of a new problem. His landlady, Mrs. Hudson, greeted me like an old friend and showed me upstairs. When I entered, Holmes stopped his pacing and turned to me. "Watson!" he declared. "You've put on seven and a half pounds since I last saw you."

"Seven!" I corrected him with a frown. "Indeed? I would have said just a little more. But how are you, my dear fellow? I see you're working as a doctor again, that you've got yourself muddy recently, and that you have a most careless housemaid." "Holmes, this is too much!" I said, laughing. "It's true. I'm back working as a doctor. I also went for a country walk on Thursday and came back in a mess. As to Mary Jane, she is, indeed, quite hopeless, but I cannot for the life of me understand how you can know these things."

"It's simplicity itself," said Holmes. "If a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of antiseptic with a black stain of silver nitrate on his right forefinger and a bulge in his hat to show where he's stowed his stethoscope, it's a fair bet that he's a working doctor. My eyes also tell me that the leather on the sole of your left shoe has been badly scratched, as if someone has carelessly scraped it to remove encrusted mud." I shook my head in wonder when I heard his reasoning. His deductions were so simple, yet at the same time devilishly clever. "Since you're here, and I know you like mysteries," Holmes continued, "you might be interested in this." He handed me a sheet of

thick, pink-tinted notepaper. "It came in the evening post," he said. "Read it aloud." The note was undated, and had neither a signature nor an address. "There will call upon you tonight, at a quarter to eight o'clock," I read, "a gentleman who desires to consult with you on a matter of deepest importance. Please be in your chamber at that hour, and do not take affront if your visitor is wearing a mask." "It is indeed mysterious!" I exclaimed. "Who do you imagine this visitor is?" "We can only speculate," said Holmes. "What do you deduce from the writing and the paper on which it is written?"

"The paper looks expensive," I said. "The man who wrote it is presumably well-to-do." "And probably not from this country," said Holmes. "The style suggests the writer's first language isn't English. I checked the watermark on the paper, and it comes from the small European state of Bohemia, where they speak German." As he spoke, there came from outside the sharp sound of horses' hooves and a grating of wheels against the street's edge. Holmes went to the window and gave a whistle. "I spy a nice little carriage pulled by a