Audiobook Narration - Robin Reads
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
British (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel piece on his high epidemic syringe from its neat Morocco case. With his long, white nervous fingers, he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirt cuff for some little time. His eyes rested thoughtfully upon the scenery, forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny Pistone and sank back into the velvet lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction three times a day. For many months, I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day Today I had become more irritable at the site on my conscience world nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again, I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject. But there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion, which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to liberty. His great powers, his master, the manor on the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities. All made me diffident and backward in crossing him. Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the bone which I had taken with my lunch or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation off his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer. Which is it today? I asked morphine or cocaine. He raised his eyes languidly from the old black letter volume, which he had opened. It is cocaine, he said. A 7% solution. Would you care to try it? No, indeed, I answered brusquely. My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it. He smiled at my vehemence. Perhaps you are right, Watson, he said. I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that it's secondary action is a matter of small moment. But consider, I said earnestly, count the cost. Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited. But it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue change on May at last leave a permanent weakness you know to what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have bean endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man, 21 for whose constitution he is, to some extent answerable. He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his fingertips together and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair like one who has a relish for conversation. My mind, he said. Rebels are stagnation. Give me problems. Give me work. Give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense, then with artificial stimulants, but I abhor the dull routine of existence I crave for mental exultation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world, the only unofficial detective, I said, raising my eyebrows. The only unofficial consulting detective, he answered, I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection when Gregson, all the Strada or Athol New Jones air out of their depths, which, by the way, is their normal state. The matter is laid before me. I examined the data as an expert on pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper, the work itself. The pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers is my highest reward. But you have yourself had some experience of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope case. Yes, indeed, said I cordially, I was never so struck by anything in my life. I even embodied it. In a small brochure with the somewhat fantastic title off a study in Scarlet, he shook his head. Sadly, I glanced over it, said he. Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and un emotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you had worked a love storey or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid. But the romance was there, I reminisced, rated. I could not tamper with the facts. Some facts should be suppressed, or at least they just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.