The Valley of Fear -Arthur Conan Doyle

I’ll admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption

He was too much absorbed with his own thoughts to give any immediate answer to my remonstrance.

Porlock is important, not for himself, but for the great man with whom he is in touch. That is where he comes within my purview.

Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book of which it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it? Is this a man to traduce?

Because there are many ciphers which I would read as easily as I do the apocryphal column: such crude devices amuse the intelligence without fatiguing it.

“I have no more notion than you how long it is to last,” Holmes answered with some asperity.

Brilliant, Watson. You are scintillating this morning.

Though reserved in its earlier vocabulary, it becomes, if I remember right, quite garrulous towards the end.

It is, as I gather from your original remarks, an explicable, or at least an unexplained, murder.

A long series of sterile weeks lay behind us.

Official requisition of your services is in separate envelope.

The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon their flanks, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, and jagged rock towered upon each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous valley in the centre.

A small stream fed it and continued beyond it, so that the sheet of water, though turbid, was never ditch-like or unhealthy.

I have arranged it with the estimable Ames, who is by no means whole-hearted about Barker.

Having a remarkably rich tenor voice, he was always ready to oblige with an excellent song.

The other denizens of the old building included the prim, respectable and capable Ames, and Mrs. Allen.

We walked down the quaint village street.

We will suppose that they are an extraordinarily astute couple,

Those strange, peaked roofs and quaint, overhung gables were a fitting covering to grim and terrible intrigue.

More than once I’ve sworn off coming for that reason, and then he would write me such penitent, imploring letters that I just had to.

“I can’t profess to say what it means.” he answered.

It was badly stage-managed; for even the rawest investigators must be struck by the absence of the usual feminine ululation.

Anyone could pick him at once as gregarious in his habits and communicative in his nature, with a quick wit and a ready smile

My visit was specially made to the good Mr. Ames, which culminated in his allowing me to sit alone for a time in the study.

Surely our profession, Mr. Mac, would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes set the scene so as to glorify our results.

The blunt accusation, the brutal tap upon the shoulder—what can one make of such a denouement?

But the quick inference, the subtle trap, the clever forecast of coming events, the triumphant vindication of bold theories—are these not the pride and the justification of our life’s work?

Here, as you perceive, is the inner pocket prolonged into the lining in such fashion as to give ample space for the truncated fowling piece.

The V. V. upon the card by the dead body might stand for Vermissa Valley, or that this very valley which sends forth emissaries of murder.

Anger, amazement, consternation, and indecision swept over his face in turn.

With the connivance of his wife and his friend he was concealed in a house which had such conveniences for a fugitive.

I can’t understand a spry man of the union finding no work to do in Chicago.

Against the lurid background of the flaming furnaces, dark figures were bending and straining, twisting and turning, with the motion of winch or of windlass.

“What the hell is it to you who are my friends?” roared McMurdo in a voice which brought every head in the carriage round to witness the altercation.

The town showed a dead level of mean ugliness and squalor.

Here were these men, who again and again had struck down some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children.

From that day these outrages have never ceased, until now they have reached a pitch which makes us the opprobrium of the civilized world.

Cross examined by the clever attorney who had been engaged by McGinty, they were even more nebulous in their evidence.

His soft felt hat and ragged, grizzled beard gave him a general resemblance to an itinerant preacher.