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Title: The Sign of Four
Series:
Sherlock Holmes #2
Author: Arthur Doyle
Rating:
4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages:
171
Words: 49K
From Wikipedia.org
Set
in 1888, The Sign of the Four has a complex plot involving service in
India, the Indian Mutiny of 1857, a stolen treasure, and a secret
pact among four convicts ("the Four" of the title) and two
corrupt prison guards. It presents Holmes's drug habit and humanizes
him in a way that had not been done in the preceding novel, A Study
in Scarlet (1887). It also introduces Dr. Watson's future wife, Mary
Morstan.
According
to Mary, in December 1878, her father had telegraphed her upon his
safe return from India and requested her to meet him at the Langham
Hotel in London. When Mary arrived at the hotel, she was told her
father had gone out the previous night and not returned. Despite all
efforts, no trace was ever found of him. Mary contacted her father's
only friend who was in the same regiment and had since retired to
England, one Major John Sholto, but he denied knowing her father had
returned. The second puzzle is that she has received six pearls in
the mail from an anonymous benefactor, one per year since 1882, after
answering an anonymous newspaper query inquiring for her. With the
last pearl she received a letter remarking that she has been wronged
and asking for a meeting. Holmes takes the case and soon discovers
that Major Sholto had died in 1882 and that within a short span of
time Mary began to receive the pearls, implying a connection. The
only clue Mary can give Holmes is a map of a fortress found in her
father's desk with the names of Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh,
Abdullah Khan and Dost Akbar.
Holmes,
Watson, and Mary meet Thaddeus Sholto, the son of the late Major
Sholto and the anonymous sender of the pearls. Thaddeus confirms the
Major had seen Mary's father the night he died; they had arranged a
meeting to divide a priceless treasure Sholto had brought home from
India. While quarrelling over the treasure, Captain Morstan—long in
weak health—suffered a heart attack. Not wanting to bring attention
to the object of the quarrel—and also worried that circumstances
would suggest that he had killed Morstan in an argument, particularly
since Morstan's head struck the corner of the chest as he fell—Sholto
disposed of the body and hid the treasure. However, Sholto himself
suffered from poor health and an enlarged spleen (possibly due to
malaria, as a quinine bottle stands by his bed). His health
deteriorated when he received a letter from India in early 1882.
Dying, he called his two sons and confessed to Morstan's death; he
was about to divulge the location of the treasure when he suddenly
cried, "Keep him out!" before falling back and dying. The
puzzled sons glimpsed a face in the window, but the only trace was a
single footstep in the dirt. On their father's body is a note reading
"The Sign of the Four". Both brothers quarrelled over
whether a legacy should be left to Mary, and Thaddeus left his
brother Bartholomew, taking a chaplet and sending its pearls to her.
The reason he sent the letter is that Bartholomew has found the
treasure and possibly Thaddeus and Mary might confront him for a
division of it. All of the party travel to the Sholto family home,
Pondicherry Lodge in Upper Norwood, to confront brother Bartholomew.
Bartholomew
is found dead in his home from a poisoned dart and the treasure is
missing. While the police wrongly take Thaddeus in as a suspect,
Holmes deduces that there are two persons involved in the murder: a
one-legged man, Jonathan Small, and a small accomplice. He traces
them to a boat landing where Small has hired a steam launch named the
Aurora. With the help of dog Toby that he sends Watson to collect
from Mr. Sherman, the Baker Street Irregulars and his own disguise,
Holmes traces the steam launch. In a police steam launch Holmes and
Watson chase the Aurora and capture it, but in the process end up
killing the small companion after he attempts to kill Holmes with a
poisoned dart shot from a blow-pipe. Small tries to escape but is
captured. However, the iron treasure box is empty; Small claims to
have dumped the treasure over the side during the chase.
Small
confesses that years before he was a soldier of the Third Buffs in
India and lost his right leg to a crocodile while bathing in the
Ganges. After some time, when he was an overseer on a tea plantation,
the 1857 rebellion occurred and he was forced to flee for his life to
the Agra fortress. While standing guard one night he was overpowered
by two Sikh troopers, who gave him a choice of being killed or being
an accomplice to waylaying a disguised servant of a rajah who had
sent said servant with a valuable fortune in pearls and jewels to the
British for safekeeping. The robbery and murder took place and the
crime was discovered, although the jewels were not. Small got penal
servitude on the Andaman Islands.
After
twenty years, Small overheard that Major Sholto had lost much money
gambling and couldn't even sell his commission, necessitating his
resignation. Small saw his chance and made a deal with Sholto and
Captain Morstan: Sholto would recover the treasure and in return send
a boat to pick up Small and the Sikhs. Sholto double-crossed both
Morstan and Small and stole the treasure for himself after inheriting
a fortune from his uncle. Small vowed vengeance and four years later
escaped the Andaman Islands with an islander named Tonga after they
both killed a prison guard. It was the news of his escape that
shocked Sholto into his fatal illness. Small arrived too late to hear
of the treasure's location, but left the note which referred to the
name of the pact between himself and his three Sikh accomplices. When
Bartholomew found the treasure, Small planned to only steal it, but
claims a miscommunication led Tonga to kill Bartholomew as well.
Small claims the treasure brought nothing but bad luck to anyone who
came in touch with it—the servant who was murdered; Sholto living
with fear and guilt; and now he himself is trapped in slavery for
life—half his life building a breakwater in the Andaman Islands and
the rest of his life digging drains in Dartmoor Prison.
Mary
is left without the bulk of the Agra treasure, although she will
apparently receive the rest of the chaplet. Watson falls in love with
Mary and it is revealed at the end that he proposed to her and she
has accepted.
I enjoyed this read much more than I did back in '08. There were a
couple of factors involved in that and I'll touch on them
momentarily. But first, Holmes' drug use. I don't have a woke view of
it, ie, Oh, we're so enlightened and we must despise and denigrate
the Past because it doesn't live up to Our Modern Ideals, but I do
take it as a serious warning about just what we put into our bodies.
If you didn't know, my wife and I are Seventh Day Adventists and one
of the tenets is the Health Message. Alcohol, tobacco and illicit
drugs are not to be taken. In the earlier days, it went farther than
that. ANY stimulant was considered dangerous and their long term
(usually unknown at the time) effects far outweighed the immediate
gain one got. I bring this up specifically because of caffeine. If
you didn't know, besides being an SDA, I am also an energy drink
addict and I am beginning to see the effects of massive doses and
long term use. All of that is to say that just because something
doesn't have an immediate negative effect on you doesn't make it
good. Makes me want to adhere to the health message that much more!
Ok, on the bits directly about this book :-D
First, since I had just watched Season One of Sherlock, I was trying
to find connections. The first and most obvious is Watson's future
wife. She's in the second episode, the Blind Banker and she's in the
second story. Also, 1 man steals something that doesn't belong to him
and suffers the consequences. That one is a bit of a stretch but it
is still there.
Another reason I enjoyed this was because the “flashback” is
simply told as a tale and as such there is no confusion and it is
very easy to tell just what is going on, AND when it is going on.
This was a longer book than the previous but it didn't feel that way.
The speedboat chase near the end and the completely unrepentant
attitude of Small about the treasure (he tosses it little by little
into the Thames while they are being chased so that NO ONE can have
it) just made me laugh. That quirk of human nature that assumes such
proprietary ownership over something (in this case a bunch of jewels
that Small helped murder and steal for) even when it is completely
wrong just makes me laugh.
The tv show, at least in season one, has Sherlock sneering at the
police and publicly demeaning them and basically alienating them,
usually on purpose, any chance he gets. It's the usual disdain of the
media companies showing through for the lawful authorities. In the
books however, Sherlock, while saying he is much smarter than them,
doesn't disparage them and is fine with giving them the credit. He
wants them to succeed, even if it ends up falling on his shoulders.
There is the proper respect for authority exhibited in the books and
I really do like that.
I read through pretty quickly and enjoyed it.
And while our buddywatch of Sherlock has ended, I see no reason not
to link to SavageDave's review from 2019: The
Sign of Four
★★★★☆
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