I am ec-centric - that is, away from the centre. Watson mentions my Bohemian habits [ENGR]. I describe myself as the only unofficial consulting detective [SIGN]. People come to a private detective mainly for privacy [3STU, MISS, SECO]. My allegiance is not to maintaining the status quo of conventional morality but to the larger values of truth and justice.¹

This places me from time to time outside the official (and often officious) law. Thus, I was happy to take a confession from an old man with a month to live and not make it available until he had gone and even then if only absolutely necessary [BOSC], to justify private revenge in extreme cases [CHAS], to express sympathy for the lion-hunter who described himself as being so long outside the law that he had become a law unto himself [DEVI], to require Watson to bring jemmy, dark lantern, chisel, revolver on one adventure [BRUC] and to pack his revolver on a number of other occasions (though fortunately he never got around to using it!)

I suppose that I am commiting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul [BLUE].

I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Watson? But, after what we have heard, I don't feel as if I could give the man up, so there is an end to it [HOUN].

I was not at all upset at the official police getting the credit from the cases which I had solved. I was at most slightly amused, as I said, when Watson was chagrined to find them getting credit in the Daily News:

If the man is caught, it will be on account of their exertions, if he escapes, then it will be despite their exertions [STUD].

I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work in itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward [SIGN].

Supposing I unravel the whole matter, you may be sure that Gregson, Lestrade, and Co. will pocket all the credit. That's what becomes of being an unofficial personage [STUD].

Your merits should be publicly recognized. You should publish an account of the case. If you won't, I will for you [STUD].

I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before [FIVE].

--- the efforts of the police would have been supplemented, or more probably anticipated, by the trained observation and the alert mind of the first criminal agent in Europe [EMPT].

--- was able occasionally, without any active interference, to give some hint or suggestion drawn from his (my) own vast knowledge and experience [SIXN].

Mr Holmes is an independent investigator. He is his own master and would act as his own judgment directed. At the same time, he would naturally feel loyalty towards the officials who were working on the same case, and he would not conceal from them anything which would help them in bringing a criminal to justice [VALL].

You are ready enough to use all the information that the police can lay at your disposal, and then you try to finish the case yourself and bring discredit upon them [NAVA].