关于本书
这部侦探小说集讲述了才华横溢的夏洛克·福尔摩斯和他忠实的伙伴华生医生在维多利亚时代的伦敦破解种种复杂谜案。凭借敏锐的观察和缜密的逻辑推理，福尔摩斯接手了令官方警察束手无策的案件，这些案件往往牵涉重大秘密，委托人也多半神秘莫测，他们求助于他独到的本领，以解决自己最棘手的难题。
开篇
I.
一
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.
对夏洛克·福尔摩斯来说，她永远是那位女人。
I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name.
我很少听到他用别的称呼提到她。
In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.
在他眼里，她使全体女性都黯然失色，并且胜过她们所有人。
It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler.
这并不是说他对艾琳·艾德勒怀有任何类似爱情的感情。
All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.
一切感情，尤其是那一种，都与他那冷静、精确而又令人钦佩地平衡的头脑格格不入。
He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen,
我认为，他是世界上见过的最完美的推理和观察机器，
but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position.
但作为一个情人，他会把自己置于一个不恰当的位置。
He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer.
他从不谈论那些较为温柔的感情，除非是带着嘲弄和讥笑。
They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions.
对观察者来说，它们是令人钦佩的东西——极好地用来揭开蒙在人们动机和行为上的面纱。
But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate
但是对一个训练有素的推理者来说，允许这种侵扰进入他自己那精细
and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results.
而又调节得很好的性情，就等于引入一个令人分心的因素，可能会使他所有的思维成果都受到怀疑。
Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses,
一台灵敏仪器里的沙砾，或者他自己的一块高倍透镜上的裂缝，
would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.
都不会比强烈的感情对他这样一种天性更具干扰性。
And yet there was but one woman to him,
然而对他来说，只有一个女人，
and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
那个女人就是已故的艾琳·艾德勒，一个名声可疑、值得怀疑的人。
I had seen little of Holmes lately.
近来我很少见到福尔摩斯。
My marriage had drifted us away from each other.
我的婚姻使我们彼此疏远了。
My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man
我自己完满的幸福，以及围绕着一个男人产生的、以家庭为中心的种种兴趣——这个男人
who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention,
第一次发现自己成了自己家的主人——这些足以吸引我全部的注意力，