Showing results by narrator "Sam Kusi" in All Categories

Holmes receives an odd letter that makes reference to vampires. Mr. Robert Ferguson, who comes to 221B Baker Street the next morning, has become convinced that his Peruvian second wife has been sucking their baby son's blood. By his first wife, he has a 15-year-old son named Jack, who suffered an unfortunate accident as a child and now, although he can still walk, he does not have the full use of his legs. After the bloodsucking began, Jack has unaccountably been struck twice by his stepmother, although Mr. Ferguson cannot imagine why.

Watson arrives at 221B Baker Street where the page boy Billy shows him a wax effigy of Holmes placed near a curtained window in the sitting room. The effigy produces a shadow on the curtain that, when viewed from outside, is the unmistakable profile of Sherlock Holmes. Using this visual trick, Holmes aims to give a perfect target to a would-be murderer with a rifle. Holmes names his murderer as Count Negretto Sylvius, the diamond thief he has been following in disguise. He gives the criminal's address to Watson, then sends the doctor out the back for the police.

Lord Robert St. Simon's new American bride, Hatty Doran, has disappeared almost immediately after the wedding. The servants had prevented an old love interest of his from forcing her way into the wedding breakfast, Hatty had been seen in whispered conversation with her maid, and Inspector Lestrade arrives with the news that Hatty's wedding dress and ring have been found floating in the Serpentine. Holmes quickly solves the mystery, locating Hatty at a hotel with a mysterious, "common-looking" man who had picked up her dropped bouquet after the ceremony.

A man named Trevor Bennett comes to Holmes with a most unusual problem. He is Professor Presbury's personal secretary, and Mr. Bennett is also engaged to the professor's only daughter, Edith. Professor Presbury is himself engaged to a young lady, Alice Morphy, a colleague's daughter, although he himself is already 61 years of age. Their impending marriage does not seem to have caused a great scandal, so that is not Mr Bennett's problem. Nonetheless, the trouble seems to have begun at about the time of Professor Presbury's and Alice's engagement.

An engineer, Victor Hatherley, attends Dr Watson's surgery after his thumb is chopped off, and recounts his tale to Watson and Holmes. Hatherley had been hired for 50 guineas to repair a machine he was told compressed Fuller's earth into bricks. Hatherley was told to keep the job confidential, and was transported to the job in a carriage with frosted glass, to keep the location secret. He was shown the press, but on closer inspection discovered a "crust of metallic deposit" on the press, and he suspected it was not being used for compressing earth.

Holmes is enjoying his retirement in Sussex when one day at the beach, he meets his friend Harold Stackhurst, the headmaster of a nearby preparatory school called The Gables. No sooner have they met than Stackhurst's science teacher, Fitzroy McPherson, staggers up to them, clearly in agony and wearing only an overcoat and trousers. He collapses, manages to say something about a "lion's mane", and then succumbs. He is observed to have red welts all over his back, possibly administered by a flexible weapon of some kind, for the marks curve over his shoulder and round his ribs.

Sherlock Holmes is hired by a retired art supply dealer from Lewisham, Josiah Amberley, to look into his wife's disappearance. She has left with a neighbour, Dr. Ray Ernest, taking a sizeable quantity of cash and securities. Amberley wants the two tracked down.

Sir James Damery comes to see Holmes and Watson about his illustrious client's problem (the client's identity is never revealed to the reader, although Watson finds out at the end of the story; it is heavily implied to be King Edward VII). General de Merville's young daughter Violet has fallen in love with the roguish and sadistic Austrian Baron Adelbert Gruner, who Damery and Holmes are convinced is a shameless philanderer and a murderer. The victim was his last wife, of whose murder he was acquitted owing to a legal technicality and a witness's untimely death.

According to Dr. Watson's opening narration, this story is set at "the latter end of June, 1902 ... the same month that Holmes refused a knighthood for services which may perhaps some day be described." This is a parallel to the knighthood of Arthur Conan Doyle around the same time.

The story begins with a visit to 221B Baker Street from Steve Dixie, a black man and a cowardly ruffian who warns Sherlock Holmes to keep away from Harrow. Although Dixie has come to intimidate Holmes, Holmes secures Dixie's future cooperation by threatening to tell what he knows about the suspicious Perkins death involving Dixie. Dixie's boss is Barney Stockdale, and he must be connected with the Harrow Weald case, of which Holmes has just learnt from a message from Mary Maberley, a lady who lives at Three Gables, a house at Harrow Weald.

In January 1903, at Baker Street, James M. Dodd sees Holmes about a missing friend, Godfrey Emsworth. Dodd and Emsworth served together in the Imperial Yeomanry in South Africa during the Second Boer War, which has only just ended. Emsworth was wounded during this war. Dodd has not seen him since the report of his injury leading Dodd to believe something is amiss.

Head trainer John Mason from Shoscombe Old Place, a racing stable in Berkshire, comes to Holmes about his master, Sir Robert Norberton. Mason thinks he has gone mad. Sir Robert's sister, Lady Beatrice Falder, owns Shoscombe, but it will revert to her late husband's brother when she dies. The stable has a horse, Shoscombe Prince, who Sir Robert hopes will win the Derby. He would be out of debt if that actually happened.

Neil Gibson, the Gold King and former Senator from "some Western state", approaches Holmes to investigate the murder of his wife Maria in order to clear his children's governess, Grace Dunbar, of the crime. It soon emerges that Mr. Gibson's marriage had been unhappy and he treated his wife very badly. He had fallen in love with her when he met her in Brazil, but soon realised they had nothing in common. He became attracted to Miss Dunbar; since he could not marry her, he had attempted to please her in other ways, such as trying to help people less fortunate than himself.

His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of previously published Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, including the titular short story, "His Last Bow. The War Service of Sherlock Holmes" (1917). The collection's first US edition adjusts the anthology's subtitle to "Some Later Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes".

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes is the final set of twelve (out of a total of fifty-six) Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle first published in the Strand Magazine between October 1921 and April 1927. The first British edition and the first American edition of the collection were both published in June 1927.

John Openshaw tells Holmes that in 1883 his uncle died two months after receiving a letter inscribed "K.K.K." with five orange pips enclosed, and that in 1885 his father died soon after receiving a similar letter; now Openshaw himself has received such a letter. Holmes tells him to do as the letter asks and leave a diary page, which Holmes deduces is connected to the Ku Klux Klan, on the garden sundial. Openshaw is killed before he can do so, but Holmes discovers the killers have been travelling on a sailing ship, and sends the captain a letter with five orange pips. The ship is lost at sea.

A "Blue Carbuncle" is stolen from a hotel suite, and a former felon is soon arrested. However, an acquaintance of Holmes discovers the carbuncle in the throat of a Christmas goose. Holmes traces the owner of the goose, but soon determines that he was not the thief by offering him a replacement goose. The detective continues his search, first to an inn and then a dealer in Covent Garden.

Helen Stoner worries her stepfather may be trying to kill her after he contrives to move her to the bedroom where her sister had died two years earlier, shortly before her wedding. Stoner is herself now engaged, and Holmes learns that her stepfather's annuity (from the estate of his wife — Stoner's mother) would be greatly reduced if either sister married. During a late-night investigation of the bedroom, Holmes and Watson discover a dummy bell-pull near a ventilator. As they lie in wait a whistle sounds, then a snake appears through the ventilator.

The Cabman's Story (sub-titled The Mysteries of a London "Growler") is a short story written by Arthur Conan Doyle first published anonymously in the Cassell's Saturday Journal on 17 May 1884. A cabman tells one of his clients three stories he experienced. The first one is about a dead passenger, the second about a passenger with a mysterious box, and the last one tells the story of a passenger who is a terrorist.

Burning Daylight takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The main character, Elam Harnish, nicknamed "Burning Daylight" was the most successful entrepreneur of the Alaskan Gold Rush. The story of the main character was partially based upon the life of Oakland entrepreneur "Borax" Smith. Bringing his fortunes to the States he is cheated out of it by a crowd of money kings, and recovers it only at the muzzle of his gun. Embarking on a new life in California, he makes another fortune by underhanded means . . . only to find his corrupt life suddenly turned around by the love of a woman.