解説　場面 1「二つの事件」

Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for solution during the years of our intimacy, there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his notice—that of Mr. Hatherley's thumb, and that of Colonel Warburton's madness. Of these the latter may have afforded a finer field for an acute and original observer, but the other was so strange in its inception and so dramatic in its details that it may be the more worthy of being placed upon record, even if it gave my friend fewer openings for those deductive methods of reasoning by which he achieved such remarkable results. The story has, I believe, been told more than once in the newspapers, but, like all such narratives, its effect is much less striking when set forth en bloc in a single half-column of print than when the facts slowly evolve before your own eyes, and the mystery clears gradually away as each new discovery furnishes a step which leads on to the complete truth. At the time the circumstances made a deep impression upon me, and the lapse of two years has hardly served to weaken the effect.

私が親友シャーロック・ホームズと親しく過ごした年月に、解決を求めて持ち込まれた数々の難題のうち、私が彼に紹介したものは二件だけだった――ハザリー氏の親指の事件と、ウォーバートン大佐の狂気の事件である。後者のほうが鋭敏で独創的な観察者には格好の題材だったかもしれないが、前者は発端があまりに奇妙で細部があまりに劇的だったため、ホームズが驚くべき成果を挙げた演繹的推理を用いる機会は少なかったにせよ、記録に残す価値はこちらのほうが高いだろう。この話は新聞で何度か報じられたと思うが、こうした物語はすべてそうであるように、事実が目の前でゆっくり展開し、新たな発見が完全な真相へ至る一歩となって謎が次第に晴れていく場合と比べ、一段組みの記事にまとめて載せられると印象がはるかに弱くなる。当時、この一件は私に深い印象を残し、二年という歳月もその印象をほとんど薄れさせなかった。

It was in the summer of '89, not long after my marriage, that the events occurred which I am now about to summarise. I had returned to civil practice and had finally abandoned Holmes in his Baker Street rooms, although I continually visited him and occasionally even persuaded him to forgo his Bohemian habits so far as to come and visit us. My practice had steadily increased, and as I happened to live at no very great distance from Paddington Station, I got a few patients from among the officials. One of these, whom I had cured of a painful and lingering disease, was never weary of advertising my virtues and of endeavouring to send me on every sufferer over whom he might have any influence.

これから要約する出来事が起きたのは、私が結婚して間もない一八八九年の夏だった。私は一般診療に戻り、ホームズをベイカー街の部屋に残して完全に離れていたが、絶えず彼を訪ね、ときには放浪者めいた習慣をしばし控えて私たちの家へ来るよう説得することさえあった。私の診療は着実に増えており、住まいがパディントン駅からさほど遠くなかったため、駅員の患者も何人かいた。その一人は、私が痛みの続く長患いを治した男で、私の腕前を褒めて回り、自分が口を利ける病人を片端から私のところへ送ろうとして飽きることがなかった。