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indirect trace is the stain, which does not appear in The Hound of the Baskervilles .
    * The devout Sherlock Holmes reader will recall the central importance of animal psychology in “The Crooked Man,” “The Adventure
     of the Creeping Man,” “Silver Blaze,” “The Speckled Band,” and, most famously, the “curious incident of the dog in the night-time,”
     also in “Silver Blaze.”—Trans.

IV
The Principle of Incompleteness
    CONSIDERED A MODEL of scientific rigor, even an inspiration for certain procedures taught in police academies, the Holmes
     method still does not yield the anticipated results every time—far from it. And an uncompromising examination of its results
     throughout the detective’s years of activity leads to complex conclusions that shatter the Holmesian image of success—as well
     as the Holmesian image of unfailing self-satisfaction.

    To begin with, it is not insignificant that the weaknesses of Holmes’s method are brought out in the prologue, during the
     first meeting with Dr. Mortimer, as if the admission of failure were an epigraph to the investigation that follows. Mortimer
     had stopped by the detective’s flat the previous day and, finding Holmes absent, had absentmindedly left his cane there. As
     they wait for a return visit from their future client, about whom they as yet know nothing, Holmes and Watson amuse themselves
     by applying the detective’s method to this unknown object.
    Watson begins, indulging in a whole series of deductions based on clues taken from the cane. From the presence of inscriptions
     on the cane he deduces that it’s a gift offered to an elderly doctor, and from its poor condition that its owner is a country
     practitioner visiting his cases on foot. The engraved initials suggest to him that the gift was offered to the doctor by members
     of a local hunting association.
    Holmes ironically congratulates Watson on his abilities before explaining to him that he was mistaken on most of the points.
     He acknowledges that the visitor is probably a country practitioner and a great walker, but challenges his friend’s other
     deductions. A gift made to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunting club; further, it is legitimate
     to suppose, since the doctor went to the country where positions are less sought, that he is a young doctor.
    But although he questions his friend’s deductions and arrives at a certain number of results, Holmes too is wrong, on one
     point at least. It was not to settle in the country but to get married that Dr. Mortimer left the hospital. At the beginning
     of the book, the detective acknowledges his mistake:
    As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes’s hand, and he ran towards it with an exclamation of joy.
      “I am so very glad,” said he. “I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I would not lose that
     stick for the world.”
      “A presentation, I see,” said Holmes.
      “Yes, sir.”
      “From Charing Cross Hospital?”
      “From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage.”
      “Dear, dear, that’s bad!” said Holmes, shaking his head.
      Dr. Mortimer blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment.
      “Why was it bad?”
      “Only that you have disarranged our little deductions. Your marriage, you say?”
      “Yes, sir. I married, and so left the hospital, and with it all hopes of a consulting practice. It was necessary to make a
     home of my own.”
      “Come,come, we are not so far wrong, after all,” said Holmes. 26
    Unfortunately, Holmes’s initial mistake about why Dr. Mortimer left the hospital is not the only one he makes in the book.
    There are others, with much more serious consequences. First, the slowness with which Holmes catches the killer (assuming
     we believe that Stapleton is the killer) allows another murder to take place. Faced with Selden’s corpse (which he mistakes
     for