The Pearl of Death (1944)
Basil Rathbone: Sherlock Holmes
Photos
Quotes
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Dr. John H. Watson : Amazing. And the Borgia Pearl's inside that?
Sherlock Holmes : If it isn't, I shall retire to Sussex and keep bees.
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Sherlock Holmes : This man pervades Europe like a plague, yet no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on the pinnacle in the records of crime.
Dr. John H. Watson : What's he do?
Sherlock Holmes : Everything and nothing. In his whole diabolical career, the police have never been able to pin anything on him. And yet, show me crime without motive, robbery without a clue, murder without a trace and I'll show you Giles Conover.
Dr. John H. Watson : But that's amazing, Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes : Two years ago, he disappeared from his usual haunts and I have every reason to believe that he... Oh, here it is... I've every reason to believe that he's back in England again. If I could free society of this sinister creature, I should feel that my own career had reached it's summit.
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Dr. John H. Watson : Well, how... how does the, uh, the thing work?
Sherlock Holmes : Electricity. The high priest of false security.
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Sherlock Holmes : My dear Watson, I really must caution you against hitting newspaper reporters in the teeth...
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Sherlock Holmes : Watson, look sharp, will you? Go to that door to the alley, and do exactly as I tell you.
Dr. John H. Watson : Huh?
Sherlock Holmes : No, not "huh". Just do it.
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Dr. John H. Watson : [viewing the Borgia Pearl] Huh, can't be real.
Sherlock Holmes : Real as death, old fellow, with the blood of twenty men upon it down through the centuries.
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Sherlock Holmes : [sitting down gingerly to remove his make-up] Oh, I'm as stiff as a varnished eel!
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[last lines]
Sherlock Holmes : What's Conover? No more than a symbol of the greed and cruelty and lust for power that have set men at each other's throats down through the centuries... and the struggle will go on, Watson, for a pearl... kingdom... perhaps even world dominion... till the greed and cruelty have burned out of every last one of us... and when that time comes... perhaps even the pearl... will be washed clean again.
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Sherlock Holmes : I don't like your work, Conover. I've seen quite a bit of it both here in London and and elsewhere on the continent. Don't like the smell of you either. That underground smell, the sick sweetness of decay. You haven't robbed and killed merely for gain like any ordinary halfway decent thug. No, you're in love with cruelty for it's own sake.
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Inspector Lestrade : When a lady gets hysterical...
Sherlock Holmes : She may do many desperate things but, my dear Lestrade, she does not run around the walls like a mouse.
