“It is always awkward doing business with an alias.”
—The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
“Six thousand a year. That’s paying for brains, you see—the American business principle. I learned that detail quite by chance. It’s more than the Prime Minister gets. That gives you an idea of Moriarty’s gains and of the scale on which he works. Another point: I made it my business to hunt down some of Moriarty’s checks lately—just common innocent checks that he pays his household bills with. They were drawn on six different banks. Does that make any impression on your mind?”
—The Valley of Fear
“I have a check for five hundred pounds which should be cashed early, for the drawer is quite capable of stopping it, if he can.”
—His Last Bow
“It is my business to know things. Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook.”
—A Case of Identity
“They are mostly sent on by private inquiry agencies. They are all people who are in trouble about something and want a little enlightening. I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee.”
—A Study of Scarlet
“They will at least show our people what is known and what is not. I may say that a good many of these papers have come through me, and I need not add are thoroughly untrustworthy. It would brighten my declining years to see a German cruiser navigating the Solent according to the mine-field plans which I have furnished.”
—His Last Bow
“Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.”
—The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
“Yes; I have a turn both for observation and for deduction. The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical, are really extremely practical—so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese.”
—A Study in Scarlet
“There’s money in this case, Watson, if there is nothing else.”
—A Scandal in Bohemia
“Because it is done by a man who cannot afford to fail, one whose whole unique position depends upon the fact that all he does must succeed. A great brain and a huge organization have been turned to the extinction of one man. It is crushing the nut with the triphammer—an absurd extravagance of energy—but the nut is very effectually crushed all the same.”
—The Valley of Fear
“I am glad of all details, whether they seem to you to be relevant or not.”
—The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
“I put myself in the man’s place, and, having first gauged his intelligence, I try to imagine how I should myself have proceeded under the same circumstances.”
—The Musgrave Ritual
“He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed the word is passed to the professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defense. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught—never so much as suspected.”
—The Final Problem
