A Study in Sable Read Online Free

usually chose. He was, in Nan’s estimation, quite handsome, and his slight limp only added to the attraction.
After all,
she thought wryly,
What red-blooded girl doesn’t like a fellow who needs just a touch of nursing, now and again?
    John was laughing. “When have you ever known Mycroft to have the wool pulled over his eyes about anything, Holmes?” he asked. “You’ve said more than once, he’s more intelligent than you are.”
    â€œIntelligence is one thing,” Sherlock Holmes grumbled, thoughstill with a hint of amusement. “I’ve known highly intelligent men to be gammoned by little girls.”
    â€œAnd
they have the blessing of Lord Alderscroft,” John Watson went on.
    â€œWho, for all I know, is as mad as a hatter.” Holmes shrugged. “But if you are going to persist in gadding about, taking on the ridiculous cases I refuse to, I see no reason why Miss Killian and Miss Lyon-White cannot assist you. At least the psychical Talents of these young ladies have
some
basis in science, unlike your Elemental nonsense!” He snorted. “The discipline of deductive reason—”
    â€œAdductive,” corrected Sarah, before he could finish.
    He was surprised enough at being interrupted that he stopped in midsentence and turned back to her. “Eh?” he got out.
    â€œAdductive reasoning,” Sarah said, quietly. “You
gather
all the facts in a case. You
add
them together. You do not
deduct
anything. You use
adductive
reasoning to
deduce
the answer, not
deductive
reasoning.”
    Nan held her breath, afraid for a moment that the famous detective would react poorly to being corrected. But instead, he slapped his knee and laughed aloud, then turned back to Watson. “There, you see! I keep telling you this, Watson, and you persist in making the same mistake over and over in your prose. It’s
adductive
reasoning, and a mere girl has shown you up!”
    Watson’s jaw firmed stubbornly. “But people like the phrase ‘deductive reasoning,’” he countered. “It rolls off the tongue. ‘Adductive’ sounds wrong, particularly when paired with ‘deducing’ and ‘detecting.’ You leave the wordsmithing to me and Doyle, and I’ll leave the clue-spotting to you.”
    But Holmes could not stop chuckling over something he obviously considered to be a major victory over his Boswell. “All right, all right. Miss Lyon-White, for that, if for no other reason, I give you two my blessing to go haring off after ghasties and ghoulies with John and his wife. Take them up to Mary, Watson. I shall make no further objections. You all have my approval, not that you’d have listened to me in the first place if I forbade this nonsense. If you four want to waste your time on airy nonsense, who am I to interfere?”
    â€œHave I ever listened to you when you told me my cases were airy nonsense?” John replied, with a laugh of his own. He gestured to the girls, and they both rose, their birds hopping to their shoulders as they did so. “Come along upstairs and meet my better half.”
    They left the flat by the same door they had entered, and climbed the stairs to 221 C Baker Street. “When I was still a bachelor, our upstairs neighbor was a—thankfully—deaf old gent who lived alone. I say thankfully, because Sherlock is inclined at times to indoor shooting practice, and while Mrs. Hudson puts up with it, I doubt anyone who wasn’t deaf would have. Nor with his violin playing at odd hours when he’s in a fever of thinking. Sherlock came into some money and bought the old fellow out just after my wedding, and presented the flat to Mary and me as a wedding present.”
    â€œBut—the stories—” Sarah ventured, as they all paused on the landing.
    â€œIt serves us very well to let others think we reside elsewhere,” John Watson said gravely.