CHAPTER XLVIII
THE SLEUTH-HOUND
For the Doctor Watsons of this world, as opposed to the Sherlock
Holmeses, success in the province of detective work must always be, to
a very large extent, the result of luck. Sherlock Holmes can extract a
clue from a wisp of straw or a flake of cigar-ash. But Doctor Watson
has got to have it taken out for him, and dusted, and exhibited
clearly, with a label attached.
The average man is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a
patronising manner at that humble follower of the great investigator,
but, as a matter of fact, we should have been just as dull ourselves.
We should not even have risen to the modest level of a Scotland Yard
Bungler. We should simply have hung around, saying:
"My dear Holmes, how--?" and all the rest of it, just as the
downtrodden medico did.
It is not often that the ordinary person has any need to see what he
can do in the way of detection. He gets along very comfortably in the
humdrum round of life without having to measure footprints and smile
quiet, tight-lipped smiles. But if ever the emergency does arise, he
thinks naturally of Sherlock Holmes, and his methods.
Mr. Downing had read all the Holmes stories with great attention, and
had thought many times what an incompetent ass Doctor Watson was; but,
now that he had started to handle his own first case, he was compelled
to admit that there was a good deal to be said in extenuation of
Watson's inability to unravel tangles.
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