Exploits of Sherlock Holmes Read online

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Excerpt from the Cover Flaps …

  About the authors

  CONTENTS

  Always Holmes

  1

  The Adventure of the Seven Clocks

  2

  The Adventure of the

  3

  The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers

  4

  The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle

  5

  The Adventure of the Black Baronet

  6

  The Adventure of the Sealed Room

  7

  The Adventure of Foulkes Rath

  8

  The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby

  9

  The Adventure of the Dark Angels

  10

  The Adventure of the Two Women

  11

  The Adventure of the Deptford Horror

  12

  The Adventure of the Red Widow

  THE EXPLOITS OF

  SHERLOCK HOLMES

  by Adrian Conan Doyle

  and John Dickson Carr

  A Microsoft Word E-Book

  THE EXPLOITS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

  The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes — with the exception of one story, which was published in Life Magazine — appeared in Collier's Magazine, which originally published some of the Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  Jacket Painting by David Cook

  Jacket Design by Jeff Faust

  This is a complete and unabridged digitally reproduced version that includes every word contained in the original edition.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or portions thereof, may not be reproduced by any means without permission of the original publisher Random House, Inc.

  http://www.randomhouse.com

  Introduction

  Excerpt from the Cover Flaps …

  The footsteps of a client are heard once again upon the stairs of 221 B Baker Street. The world’s greatest detective is back at work, miraculously returned to life in a collection of authentic adventures that have never appeared in a Sherlock Holmes book written by Arthur Conan Doyle.

  This series might be called "The Unrecorded Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes," since the stories are based on cases referred to in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original works but never before reported by Dr. Watson.

  Now under the authorship of Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr, Dr. Watson has been persuaded to describe fully the amazing adventures that were only briefly mentioned in the earlier tales. The authors have carefully reconstructed the world of Sherlock Holmes, whose headquarters was his rooms at 221 B Baker Street. Their stories are the inspired results of years of meticulous research, of creative imagination, and of scrupulous attention to the minute details that characterized all the efforts of the world’s most famous detective.

  The twelve stories in The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes derive from the unsolved cases to which Dr. Watson alludes in the original fifty-six stories and four novels. The plots are new, but these stories are painstaking reproductions of the originals, in construction as well as in texture.

  And now, once again, "the game’s afoot…"

  About the authors

  Adrian Conan Doyle, the youngest son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his literary executor, worked on the stories in this book using the very desk on which his father wrote.

  John Dickson Carr was one of America’s most celebrated mystery writers, the author of forty-six novels (including The Three Coffins and Till Death Do Us Part) — and of twenty-four more under the pen name of Carter Dickson.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction 4

  Always Holmes 6

  By Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr

  The Adventure of the Seven Clocks 8

  The Adventure of the Gold Hunter

  The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers

  The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle

  The Adventure of the Black Baronet

  The Adventure of the Sealed Room

  By Adrian Conan Doyle

  The Adventure of Foulkes Rath

  The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby

  The Adventure of the Dark Angels

  The Adventure of the Two Women

  The Adventure of the Deptford Horror

  The Adventure of the Red Widow

  Always Holmes

  It is fairly certain that no reader of the Strand Magazine in 1887 could have guessed that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, then making their debut in that British magazine, would soon become the world's most famous characters of fiction. It is, however, quite certain that their creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had no inkling of it at that time nor many years later when he decided to do away with Holmes by having him pushed off a cliff at the Reichenbach Falls. This incident created such repercussions that public clamor forced Conan Doyle to bring his hero right back to life and to the familiar surroundings of his lodgings at 221 B Baker Street.

  In view of Holmes's immense popularity it is not surprising that in the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions his name has not only become a household word, but also that of a man thought to have lived. Actually, the invention of Holmes is much less an invention than some people think. The chivalry of Holmes, his penetrating mind, his erudition, his physical feats and his entire character are really and truly those of the genius who created him. Sir Arthur in real life, as Holmes in fiction, came to the rescue of people convicted for crimes they did not commit and he used the very logic and deductive reasoning that enabled Holmes to solve the problems of his clients. Sir Arthur, like Holmes, was a man of unusual physical strength who would undoubtedly have been a great boxer had he pursued that endeavor rather than being first a doctor, then a writer.

  Even Holmes's background, to a certain extent, parallels that of the man who created him.

  Though his ancestors were of the Irish landed gentry, Sir Arthur's grandmother, like Holmes's was of French extraction. His grandfather, John Doyle, was the most brilliant political cartoonist of the early 1800's. His uncle Richard ("Dicky") Doyle drew the cover for Punch which is still used. His uncle Henry Doyle was the director of the National Gallery of Ireland. His uncle James the compiler of The Chronicle of England. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his immediate forbears are the only family in Great Britain to have given in the space of three generations five separate members to the record of achievement, The National Biography.

  And yet, despite his distinguished ancestry, despite his celebrated historical novels, and despite his glorious Boer War record, Conan Doyle is best known to the world for having created Sherlock Holmes.

  Since 1887, books of Sherlock Holmes have been translated into every known language and have never been out of print. Holmes has been the hero of fifteen different legitimate stage plays, more than one thousand radio dramatizations, and he is now making his television debut in America, having already appeared on television in England.

  Some of the investigative methods created for Holmes by Sir Arthur were shortly thereafter adopted by Scotland Yard, the French Sûreté and police forces of many other nations. Holmes has even become the cult of many societies and the object of many imitations all of which have failed to catch the spirit of the man about whom Somerset Maugham says, in his recent book, The Vagrant Mood: "No detective stories have had the popularity of Conan Doyle's and because of the invention of Sherlock Holmes I think it may be admitted that none has so well deserved it."

  It is fortunate for the millions of Holmes's admirers that this new series of stories, The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, comes from the pen of Sir Arthur's youngest son, Adrian Conan
Doyle, in collaboration with John Dickson Carr, who is the author of the widely acclaimed Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and has also written many of probably the best contemporary mystery novels. Adrian Conan Doyle, the author of Heaven Has Claws, a personal-experience book about his deep-sea fishing expeditions, was brought up in the tradition of the Victorian era and in close contact with his father. The son, like the father, has a lust for adventure, cherishes relics of the past, and above all has the same sense of chivalry that so completely characterized his father—or should we say Holmes?

  Adrian Conan Doyle uses the very desk on which his father wrote. He is surrounded by the same objects that his father handled, and he has in every way endeavored to recreate each particle of atmosphere that formed Sir Arthur's environment.

  The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes are based on the unsolved cases to which Watson refers in the original fifty-six short stories and four novels. Sherlockians will find added interest in the quotations which appear at the end of each story. Here are the references to the unsolved cases of Sherlock Holmes as they appeared in the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and which the present authors used as their points of departure for the twelve cases which follow. The plots are new, but the stories are painstaking reproductions of the originals, in construction as well as in texture. Conan Doyle and Carr wrote together "The Adventure of the Seven Clocks" and "The Adventure of the Gold Hunter." "The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers" and "The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle" were written almost entirely by Carr. "The Adventure of the Black Baronet" and "The Adventure of the Sealed Room" were written almost entirely by Conan Doyle. The last six stories were conceived and written by Adrian Conan Doyle after John Dickson Carr suffered a brief illness.

  The Exploits were inspired by the single desire of producing stories of the "old vintage;" of recreating those moments of true delight when the approaching step of a new client tells us that "the game's afoot," or when Holmes unravels his solutions to the astonished questioning of his colleagues, as in these celebrated four lines from "Silver Blaze," when the inspector asks Holmes:

  "Is there any point to which you wish to draw my attention?"

  "To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime."

  "The dog did nothing in the nighttime."

  "That was the curious incident," remarked Holmes.

  —THE PUBLISHERS

  1

  The Adventure of the Seven Clocks

  I find recorded in my notebook that it was on the afternoon of Wednesday, the 16th of November, 1887, when the attention of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was first drawn to the singular affair of the man who hated clocks.

  I have written elsewhere that I had heard only a vague account of this matter, since it occurred shortly after my marriage. Indeed, I have gone so far as to state that my first post-nuptial call on Holmes was in March of the following year. But the case in question was a matter of such extreme delicacy that I trust my readers will forgive its suppression by one whose pen has ever been guided by discretion rather than by sensationalism.

  A few weeks following my marriage, then, my wife was obliged to leave London on a matter which concerned Thaddeus Sholto and vitally affected our future fortunes. Finding our new home insupportable without her presence, for eight days I returned to the old rooms in Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes made me welcome without question or comment. Yet I must confess that the next day, the 16th of November, began inauspiciously.

  It was bitter, frosty weather. All morning the yellow-brown fog pressed against the windows. Lamps and gas-jets were burning, as well as a good fire, and their light shone on a breakfast table uncleared at past midday.

  Sherlock Holmes was moody and distraught. Curled up in his armchair in the old mouse-colored dressing gown and with a cherry-wood pipe in his mouth, he scanned the morning newspapers, now and again uttering some derisive comment.

  "You find little of interest?" I asked.

  "My dear Watson," said he, "I begin to fear that life has become one flat and monotonous plain ever since the affair of the notorious Blessington."

  "And yet," I remonstrated, "surely this has been a year of memorable cases? You are over-stimulated, my dear fellow."

  "'Pon my word, Watson, you are scarcely the man to preach on that subject. Last night, after I had ventured to offer you a bottle of Beaune at dinner, you held forth so interminably on the joys of wedlock that I feared you would never have done."

  "My dear fellow! You imply that I was over-stimulated with wine!" My friend regarded me in his singular fashion.

  "Not with wine, perhaps," said he. "However!" And he indicated the newspapers. "Have you glanced over the balderdash with which the press have seen fit to regale us!"

  "I fear not. This copy of the British Medical Journal—"

  "Well, well!" said he. "Here we find column upon column devoted to next year's racing season. For some reason it seems perpetually to astonish the British public that one horse can run faster than another. Again, for the dozenth time, we have the Nihilists hatching some dark plot against the Grand Duke Alexei at Odessa. One entire leading article is devoted to the doubtless trenchant question, 'Should Shop-Assistants Marry?'"

  I forbore to interrupt him, lest his bitterness increase.

  "Where is crime, Watson? Where is the weird, where that touch of the outré without which a problem in itself is as sand and dry grass? Have we lost them forever?"

  "Hark!" said I. "Surely that was the bell?"

  "And someone in a hurry, if we may judge from its clamor."

  With one accord we stepped to the window, and looked down into Baker Street. The fog had partly lifted. At the kerb before our door stood a handsome closed carriage. A top-hatted coachman in livery was just closing the carriage door, whose panel bore the letter "M." From below came the murmur of voices followed by light, quick footsteps on the stairs, and the door of our sitting room was flung open.

  Both of us were surprised, I think, to perceive that our caller was a young lady: a girl, rather, since she could hardly have been as much as eighteen, and seldom in a young face have I seen such beauty and refinement as well as sensitiveness. Her large blue eyes regarded us with agitated appeal. Her abundant auburn hair was confined in a small hat; and over her traveling dress she wore a dark-red jacket trimmed with strips of astrakhan. In one gloved hand she held a traveling case with the letters "C.F." over some sort of label. Her other hand was pressed to her heart.

  "Oh, please, please forgive this intrusion!" she pleaded, in a breathless but low and melodious voice. "Which of you, I beg, is Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"

  My companion inclined his head.

  "I am Mr. Holmes. This is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson."

  "Thank heaven I have found you at home! My errand—"

  But our visitor could go no further than "My errand." She stammered, a deep blush spread up over her face, and she lowered her eyes. Gently Sherlock Holmes took the traveling case from her hand, and pushed an armchair towards the fire.

  "Pray be seated, madam, and compose yourself," said he, laying aside his cherry-wood pipe.

  "I thank you, Mr. Holmes," replied the young lady, shrinking into the chair and giving him a grateful look. "They say, sir, that you can read the human heart."

  "Hm! For poetry, I fear, you must address yourself to Watson."

  "That you can read the secrets of your clients, and even the—the errands upon which they come, when they have said not a single word!"

  "They overestimate my powers," he answered, smiling. "Beyond the obvious facts that you are a lady's companion, that you seldom travel yet have recently returned from a journey to Switzerland, and that your errand here concerns a man who has engaged your affections, I can deduce nothing."

  The young lady gave a violent start, and I myself was taken aback.

  "Holmes," cried I, "this is too much. How could you possibly know this?"

  "How, indeed?" echoed the young lady.

  "I see it, I obse
rve it. The traveling case, though far from new, is neither worn nor battered by travel. Yet I need not insult your intelligence by calling attention to the paper label of the Hotel Splendide, at Grindelwald in Switzerland, which has been affixed with gum to the side of the case."

  "But the other point?" I insisted.

  "The lady's attire, though in impeccable taste, is neither new nor costly. Yet she has stayed at the best hotel in Grindelwald, and she arrives in a carriage of the well-to-do. Since her own initials, 'C.F.,' do not match the 'M.' on the carriage panel, we may assume her to occupy a position of equality in some well-to-do family. Her youth precludes the position of governess, and we are left with a lady's companion. As for the man who has engaged her affections, her blushes and lowered eyelids proclaim as much. Absurd, is it not?"