”My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”…
…”When you have eliminated the possible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”…
    The profession was that of Private Detective, which, some might argue, still does not exist, but anyhow neither Holmes nor Doyle had, in 1889, quite got into their stride. In fact in his second go at Sherlock, Doyle still had to tell a longwinded story at the end to explain everything and it would never have been possible for anyone to deduce what was happening before that. The biggest mystery was that the Americans call it The Sign of The Four, which refers to the note pinned to the victims breast, but British editions it is The Sign of Four—I don’t know why. Perhaps the editors, too, got stuck into the Hookah in Chapter 3.