Question

A reader has made this inference: "I think Watson put the phosphorus on the dog when he touched it after it was dead." What is the best reason that this inference is not a "smart guess"?

A. The hound was already glowing with fire before it was killed.
B. Holmes calls the phosphorus "a cunning preparation."
C. The hound was too enormous for Watson to put it on that quickly.
D. The passage says nothing about the phosphorus being on Watson's hand.

Answer 1

The reader's inference is incorrect because the hound was already glowing before it was killed, indicating that phosphorus was applied earlier not by Watson postmortem.

Step-by-step explanation:

The reader's inference that Watson put phosphorus on the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story is not a "smart guess". The best reason that supports the claim is option A: The hound was already glowing with fire before it was killed. This directly contradicts the inference that Watson applied the phosphorus postmortem. The fact that the dog was emitting light prior to its death implies that the luminescence was the result of an earlier action, rather than something Watson did after the fact.