Chapter 1

"Le Science de Deduction"


Sometimes ...reality is too complex for oral communication But legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world

Steve Adler took his Mahogany stash box from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his papers from their steel case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he rolled a long elegant spliff on top of a copy of volume three of the Waverley novels . For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the perfect cylindrical shape. Finally, he sparked the wick of his gunmetal Zippo lit the construction and inhaling deeply sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.


For many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. 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 a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and 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 Special Brew and half tab of Exstasy which I had taken with my lunch at the Old Ship Inn or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer. "Which is it to-day," I asked, "hashish or grass?" He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. "It is grass," he said, " finest Somalian bush sent to be in the diplomatic bags by an old friend in the Libyan embassy . Would you care to try it?"
"No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution has not got over the Poll tax riots yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it."
He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Ronald," 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 its secondary action is a matter of small moment."
man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable."
He leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.
"My mind," he said, "rebels at 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 exaltation. 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 metaphysical detective?" I said, raising my eyebrows.
"The only unofficial consulting metaphysical detective," he answered. "I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection. When Poincare, or Dalton , or Grieves are out of their depths -- which, by the way, is their normal state -- the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper, save perhaps a fleeting mention in the Hackney Gazette or Figaro-pravda, no more.

"My practice has extended recently to the North," said Adler after a while, lighting up a Balkan Sobraine. "I was consulted last week by the very same Adriano de le Dalton, who, as you probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the Boro Legal service. He has all the Celtic power of quick intuition but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developments of his art. The case was concerned with a will and possessed some features of interest. I was able to refer him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga in 1857, and the other at St. Louis in 1871, which have suggested to him the true solution. Here is the letter which I had this morning acknowledging my assistance."
He tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper. I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray magnifiques,




coup-de-maitres and tours-de-force, all testifying to the ardent admiration of the northerner.
"He speaks as a pupil to his master," said I.
"Oh, he rates my assistance too highly," said Steve Adler lightly. "He has considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power of observation and that of deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge, and that may come in time. He is now translating my small works into Geordie."
"Your works?"
"Oh, didn't you know?" he cried, laughing. "Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, for example, is one 'Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos.' In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar, cigarette, and pipe tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue. If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder had been done by a man who was smoking a Regal king-size, it obviously narrows your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much difference between the ash of Marlboro light and the white fluff of a silk cut as there is between a cabbage and a potato."
"You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae," I remarked.
But I weary you with my hobby."
"Not at all," I answered earnestly. "It is of the greatest interest to me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your practical application of it. But you spoke just now of observation and deduction. Surely the one to some extent implies the other."
"Why, hardly," he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his armchair and sending up thick blue wreaths of smoke . "For example, observation shows me that you have been to the Mare Street Post-Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that when there you cashed your housing cheque."
"Right!" said I. "Right on both points! But I confess that I don't see how you arrived at it. It was a sudden impulse upon my part, and I have mentioned it to no one."
"It is simplicity itself," he remarked, chuckling at my surprise -- "so absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it may serve to define the limits of observation and of deduction. Observation tells me that you have a little vomit adhering to your instep. Just opposite the Mare Street Office the inhabitants of the homeless shelter have taken to sitting on the pavement and having thrown up , the deposits lie in such a way that it is difficult to avoid treading in it on entering. The vomit is of this peculiar reddish tint which is found, as far as I know, nowhere else in the neighbourhood. So much is observation. The rest is deduction."
"How, then, did you deduce the housing cheque ?"
"Why, of course I knew that you had not cashed , since I sat opposite





to you all morning since it arrived. I see also in your open desk there that you have a six pack of Tennants Special and a Frey Bentos steak pie. What could you go into the post-office for, then, but to secure funds for these purchases? Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

May I ask whether you have any professional inquiry on foot at present?"
"None. Hence the marijuana . I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Ronnie, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth."
I had opened my mouth to reply to this tirade when, with a crisp knock, our butler Perry entered, bearing a card upon the brass salver.
"A young lady for you, sir," he said, addressing my companion.
"Miss Virginia Simpson," he read. "Hum! I have no recollection of the name. Ask the young lady to step up, Perry. Don't go, Ronald. I should prefer that you remain."