Arthur

Conan Doyle

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Die Memoiren von Sherlock Holmes

Übersetzt von Alice und Karl Heinz Berger, Lizenz der Aufbau Verlagsgruppe
Synchronisation und Ergänzungen © Doppeltext 2022

TITELBLATT

I. SILVER BLAZE

II. THE YELLOW FACE

III. THE STOCK-BROKER’S CLERK

IV. THE “GLORIA SCOTT”

V. THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL

VI. THE REIGATE PUZZLE

VII. THE CROOKED MAN

VIII. THE RESIDENT PATIENT

IX. THE GREEK INTERPRETER

X. THE NAVAL TREATY

XI. THE FINAL PROBLEM

IMPRESSUM

I. SILVER BLAZE

“I am afraid, Wat­son, that I shall have to go,” said Holmes, as we sat down to­geth­er to our break­fast one morn­ing.
“Go! Where to?”
“To Dart­moor; to King’s Py­land.”
I was not sur­prised. In­deed, my only won­der was that he had not already been mixed up in this ex­traordin­ary case,
which was the one top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion through the length and breadth of Eng­land.
For a whole day my com­pan­ion had rambled about the room with his chin upon his chest and his brows knit­ted,
char­ging and re­char­ging his pipe with the strongest black to­bacco, and ab­so­lutely deaf to any of my ques­tions or re­marks.
Fresh edi­tions of every pa­per had been sent up by our news agent, only to be glanced over and tossed down into a corner.
Yet, si­lent as he was, I knew per­fectly well what it was over which he was brood­ing.
There was but one prob­lem be­fore the pub­lic which could chal­lenge his powers of ana­lys­is,
and that was the sin­gu­lar dis­ap­pear­ance of the fa­vor­ite for the Wessex Cup, and the tra­gic murder of its train­er.
When, there­fore, he sud­denly an­nounced his in­ten­tion of set­ting out for the scene of the drama it was only what I had both ex­pec­ted and hoped for.
“I should be most happy to go down with you if I should not be in the way,” said I.
“My dear Wat­son, you would con­fer a great fa­vor upon me by com­ing.
And I think that your time will not be mis­spent, for there are points about the case which prom­ise to make it an ab­so­lutely unique one.
We have, I think, just time to catch our train at Pad­ding­ton, and I will go fur­ther into the mat­ter upon our jour­ney.
You would ob­lige me by bring­ing with you your very ex­cel­lent field-glass.”
And so it happened that an hour or so later I found my­self in the corner of a first-class car­riage fly­ing along en route for Ex­eter,
while Sher­lock Holmes, with his sharp, eager face framed in his ear-flapped trav­el­ling-cap,
dipped rap­idly into the bundle of fresh pa­pers which he had pro­cured at Pad­ding­ton.
We had left Read­ing far be­hind us be­fore he thrust the last one of them un­der the seat, and offered me his ci­gar-case.
“We are go­ing well,” said he, look­ing out the win­dow and glan­cing at his watch.
“Our rate at present is fifty-three and a half miles an hour.”
“I have not ob­served the quarter-mile posts,” said I.
“Nor have I. But the tele­graph posts upon this line are sixty yards apart, and the cal­cu­la­tion is a simple one.
I pre­sume that you have looked into this mat­ter of the murder of John Straker and the dis­ap­pear­ance of Sil­ver Blaze?”
“I have seen what the Tele­graph and the Chron­icle have to say.”
“It is one of those cases where the art of the reason­er should be used rather for the sift­ing of de­tails than for the ac­quir­ing of fresh evid­ence.
The tragedy has been so un­com­mon, so com­plete and of such per­son­al im­port­ance to so many people,
that we are suf­fer­ing from a pleth­ora of sur­mise, con­jec­ture, and hy­po­thes­is.
The dif­fi­culty is to de­tach the frame­work of fact — of ab­so­lute un­deni­able fact — from the em­bel­lish­ments of the­or­ists and re­port­ers.
Then, hav­ing es­tab­lished ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty to see
what in­fer­ences may be drawn and what are the spe­cial points upon which the whole mys­tery turns.
On Tues­day even­ing I re­ceived tele­grams from both Col­on­el Ross, the own­er of the horse,
and from In­spect­or Gregory, who is look­ing after the case, in­vit­ing my co­oper­a­tion.”
“Tues­day even­ing!” I ex­claimed. “And this is Thursday morn­ing. Why didn’t you go down yes­ter­day?”
“Be­cause I made a blun­der, my dear Wat­son —
which is, I am afraid, a more com­mon oc­cur­rence than any one would think who only knew me through your mem­oirs.
The fact is that I could not be­lieve it pos­sible that the most re­mark­able horse in Eng­land could long re­main con­cealed,
es­pe­cially in so sparsely in­hab­ited a place as the north of Dart­moor.
From hour to hour yes­ter­day I ex­pec­ted to hear that he had been found, and that his ab­duct­or was the mur­der­er of John Straker.
When, however, an­oth­er morn­ing had come, and I found
that bey­ond the ar­rest of young Fitzroy Simpson noth­ing had been done, I felt that it was time for me to take ac­tion.
Yet in some ways I feel that yes­ter­day has not been wasted.”
“You have formed a the­ory, then?”
“At least I have got a grip of the es­sen­tial facts of the case.
I shall enu­mer­ate them to you, for noth­ing clears up a case so much as stat­ing it to an­oth­er per­son,
and I can hardly ex­pect your co-op­er­a­tion if I do not show you the po­s­i­tion from which we start.”
I lay back against the cush­ions, puff­ing at my ci­gar, while Holmes, lean­ing for­ward,
with his long, thin fore­finger check­ing off the points upon the palm of his left hand,
gave me a sketch of the events which had led to our jour­ney.
“Sil­ver Blaze,” said he, “is from the So­momy stock, and holds as bril­liant a re­cord as his fam­ous an­cest­or.
He is now in his fifth year, and has brought in turn each of the prizes of the turf to Col­on­el Ross, his for­tu­nate own­er.
Up to the time of the cata­strophe he was the first fa­vor­ite for the Wessex Cup, the bet­ting be­ing three to one on him.
He has al­ways, however, been a prime fa­vor­ite with the ra­cing pub­lic, and has nev­er yet dis­ap­poin­ted them,
so that even at those odds enorm­ous sums of money have been laid upon him.
It is ob­vi­ous, there­fore, that there were many people who had the strongest in­terest in pre­vent­ing Sil­ver Blaze from be­ing there at the fall of the flag next Tues­day.
“The fact was, of course, ap­pre­ci­ated at King’s Py­land, where the Col­on­el’s train­ing-stable is situ­ated. Every pre­cau­tion was taken to guard the fa­vor­ite.
The train­er, John Straker, is a re­tired jockey who rode in Col­on­el Ross’s col­ors be­fore he be­came too heavy for the weigh­ing-chair.
He has served the Col­on­el for five years as jockey and for sev­en as train­er, and has al­ways shown him­self to be a zeal­ous and hon­est ser­vant.
Un­der him were three lads; for the es­tab­lish­ment was a small one, con­tain­ing only four horses in all.
One of these lads sat up each night in the stable, while the oth­ers slept in the loft. All three bore ex­cel­lent char­ac­ters.
John Straker, who is a mar­ried man, lived in a small villa about two hun­dred yards from the stables.
He has no chil­dren, keeps one maid-ser­vant, and is com­fort­ably off.
The coun­try round is very lonely, but about half a mile to the north there is a small cluster of vil­las
which have been built by a Tav­is­tock con­tract­or for the use of in­val­ids and oth­ers who may wish to en­joy the pure Dart­moor air.
Tav­is­tock it­self lies two miles to the west, while across the moor, also about two miles dis­tant,
is the lar­ger train­ing es­tab­lish­ment of Mapleton, which be­longs to Lord Back­wa­ter, and is man­aged by Silas Brown.
In every oth­er dir­ec­tion the moor is a com­plete wil­der­ness, in­hab­ited only by a few roam­ing gypsies.
Such was the gen­er­al situ­ation last Monday night when the cata­strophe oc­curred.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes / Die Memoiren von Sherlock Holmes
Zweisprachige Ausgabe
Übersetzt von Alice und Karl Heinz Berger

Dies ist ein interaktives E-Book. Klicken Sie auf den Text, um die Übersetzung einzublenden.

Der Originaltext ist gemeinfrei. Die Rechte für die synchronisierte zweisprachige Ausgabe und für die von uns in der Übersetzung ergänzten Textpassagen liegen bei Doppeltext.

Die Übersetzung erschien erstmals 1983 in Sämtliche Sherlock-Holmes-Erzählungen im Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig. Gustav Kiepenheuer ist eine Marke der Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG.
Übersetzung © Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 1983, 2008.

Unser Programm umfasst viele weitere zweisprachige Titel. Besuchen Sie www.doppeltext.com, um mehr zu erfahren.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Meinung und Kritik.

Doppeltext
Igor Kogan & Tatiana Zelenska
Karwendelstr. 25
D-81369 München
Tel. +49-89-74 79 28 26
www.doppeltext.com
info@doppeltext.com