住院的病人01（在线收听）

The Resident Patient

Arthur Conan Doyle

Glancing over the somewhat incoherent series of Memoirs with which I have  endeavored to illustrate a few of the mental peculiarities of my friend Mr.  Sherlock Holmes, I have been struck by the difficulty which I have experienced  in picking out examples which shall in every way answer my purpose. For in those  cases in which Holmes has performed some tour de force of analytical reasoning,  and has demonstrated the value of his peculiar methods of investigation, the  facts themselves have often been so slight or so commonplace that I could not  feel justified in laying them before the public. On the other hand, it has  frequently happened that he has been concerned in some research where the facts  have been of the most remarkable and dramatic character, but where the share  which he has himself taken in determining their causes has been less pronounced  than I, as his biographer, could wish. The small matter which I have chronicled  under the heading of “A Study in Scarlet,” and that other later one connected  with the loss of the Gloria Scott, may serve as examples of this Scylla and  Charybdis which are forever threatening the historian. It may be that in the  business of which I am now about to write the part which my friend played is not  sufficiently accentuated; and yet the whole train of circumstances is so  remarkable that I cannot bring myself to omit it entirely from this series.

It had been a close, rainy day in October. Our blinds were half-drawn, and  Holmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading a letter which he had  received by the morning post. For myself, my term of service in India had  trained me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer of 90 was no  hardship. But the paper was uninteresting. Parliament had risen. Everybody was  out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of  Southsea. A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as  to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest  attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of  people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive  to every little rumor or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of Nature  found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his  mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country.

I cannot be sure of the exact date, for some of my memoranda upon the matter  have been mislaid, but it must have been towards the end of the first year  during which Holmes and I shared chambers in Baker Street. It was boisterous  October weather, and we had both remained indoors all day, I because I feared  with my shaken health to face the keen autumn wind, while he was deep in some of  those abstruse chemical investigations which absorbed him utterly as long as he  was engaged upon them. Towards evening, however, the breaking of a test-tube  brought his research to a premature ending, and he sprang up from his chair with  an exclamation of impatience and a clouded brow.

我粗略地看了看一连串内容不连贯的回忆录，想用它们来阐明我朋友歇洛克-福尔摩斯先生 智力上的一些特点，但却觉得很难挑出我所需要的例子。因为在侦破这些案子的过程中，福 尔摩斯虽然运用了他那分析推理的巧妙手法，证实了他那独特的调查研究方法的重要，但案 件本身，却往往微不足道，平凡无奇，我觉得实在不值得向读者介绍。另一方面，也经常发 生这样一种情况，他参与调查了一些案情离奇、富有戏剧一性一的案子，但他在侦破过程中 所起的作用，却又不能满足我这给他写传记的人的愿望。我曾经记述过一件小小的案子，题 目是《血字的研究》，后来又有另一个有关“格洛里亚斯科特”号三桅帆船失事案，都是能 作为使历史学家永远感到惊奇的岩礁与漩涡［岩礁与漩涡：意大利墨西拿海峡上的岩礁，它 的对面有大漩涡。此处作者用来形容惊险——译者注］的例子。现在我要记载的这件案子， 在侦破案件中我的朋友虽然没有起到十分重要的作用，但整个案情却很稀奇古怪，我觉得实 在不能够遗漏不记。

那是七月里一个闷热的一陰一雨天，我们的窗帘放下了一半，福尔摩斯蜷卧在沙发上，把早 晨接到的一封信读了又读。由于我在印度服过兵役，使我养成了怕冷不怕热的一习一惯，因 而寒暑表虽已到了华氏九十度，我也毫不觉得难受。不过这天的报纸实在乏味。议会已经休 会，人们都离开了城市。我渴望到新森林中的空地或南海的铺满一卵一石的海滩一游。但因 我的存款拮据，我推迟了假期。而对我的伙伴来说，无论是乡下或是海滨，都丝毫不能引起 他的兴趣。他只喜欢混迹于五百万人口的中心，对他们中间关于悬而未决的案件的每一个小 小的传闻或猜疑特别关心。他对于欣赏大自然，却丝毫不感兴趣。而他唯一的改变，是去看 望他在乡间的哥哥。