The Sign of the Four
Miss Mary Morstan comes to Baker Street with a strange tale: every year since her father vanished, someone has sent her a perfect pearl. Now she has been asked to a secret meeting. Holmes and Watson go with her, into a mystery of stolen treasure, a pact of four and a deadly little dart. By Arthur Conan Doyle (1890). A public-domain classic.
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How it begins Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him. Keep reading →About this story
Mary Morstan, a young governess, comes to Baker Street with a puzzle. Her father disappeared ten years ago, and for six years she has received a valuable pearl by post every year from an unknown sender. Now she has been asked to meet him. Holmes and Watson go with her, and the case becomes a chase across London.
Arthur Conan Doyle published it in 1890, as the second Holmes novel after A Study in Scarlet. It is the story in which Watson meets his future wife, and it opens with a famous moment of Holmes’s drug use, which Watson disapproves of. The chase on the Thames is one of the most exciting in the series.
- Themes
- Treasure, justice, love, loyalty
- Good for
- A longer Holmes adventure with a romance and a river chase
- Worth noticing
- How Holmes and Watson differ in what they care about, early in the book.
Chapters
- 1The Science of Deduction13 min · 19 Oct
- 2The Statement of the Case8 min · 19 Oct
- 3In Quest of a Solution8 min · 19 Oct
- 4The Story of the Bald-Headed Man17 min · 19 Oct
- 5The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge12 min · 19 Oct
- 6Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration14 min · 19 Oct
- 7The Episode of the Barrel19 min · 19 Oct
- 8The Baker Street Irregulars15 min · 19 Oct
- 9A Break in the Chain16 min · 19 Oct
- 10The End of the Islander15 min · 19 Oct
- 11The Great Agra Treasure10 min · 19 Oct
- 12The Strange Story of Jonathan Small45 min · 19 Oct