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When Holmes orchestrates a false fire alarm, Oldacre suddenly bursts out from behind a hidden door. As Holmes deduced, the

Fingerprinting

Although fingerprinting had been used in colonial India since 1897, it was not until 1901 that it became a staple of British criminal investigations, when the practice was imported to Britain by an officer who had trained in Bengal. Both these dates come after the 1894 setting of “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder,” so Oldacre and Lestrade would both have been ahead of their time. Conan Doyle himself had probably been familiar with the idea for quite

Unlike the original tale, in the 1985 Granada television adaptation, featuring Jeremy Brett as Holmes, the apparent victim, Jonas Oldacre, is himself revealed to be a murderer.

builder had installed a secret room within the walls. Oldacre turns out to be an embittered former suitor of McFarlane’s mother, and the intent of his entire plot was to destroy the life of his lost love’s son. “It was a masterpiece of villainy,” remarks Holmes, “…But he had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop.” Oldacre had crept out at night and made the print using a wax impression of McFarlane’s thumb, taken from a seal—a play on a new technique in criminal detection.

All this drama increases the impact of Holmes’s mischievous nobility in the final moments: while the humbled Lestrade bubbles over with praise, Holmes still insists on handing him all the credit. Even if the case’s high stakes—McFarlane would have faced the death penalty if found guilty—make Oldacre’s malice verge on implausible, they ensure that Lestrade is suitably abject before the superior analyst. ■

a while: the anthropologist Francis Galton’s book Finger Prints, which was first published in 1892, had proved that each person’s fingerprints were unique. This work had built on that of a surgeon named Henry Faulds, whose 1880 article in the scientific journal Nature described identifying a thief by means of greasy thumbprints left on a glass. To Faulds, fingerprinting was as reliable as photography, and it seems likely that Conan Doyle, as a medical man, would have read his work and seen its potential early on.

I HAVE THE

THREADS OF

THIS AFFAIR

ALL IN MY HAND

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN (1903)

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: December 1903 US: December 1903

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS Hilton Cubitt Squire of Riding Thorpe Manor, Norfolk.

Elsie Cubitt Hilton’s wife, née Elsie Patrick.

Inspector Martin Policeman from the Norfolk Constabulary.

Abe Slaney

Chicago gangster.

Wilson Hargreave Member of the New York Police Bureau.

C

onan Doyle had the idea for, and partly wrote, “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” while staying at the Hill House Hotel in Happisburgh, near the town of North Walsham, on the Norfolk coast. He wrote to Herbert Greenhough Smith, editor of The Strand Magazine, on May 14, 1903, saying it was “a strong bloody story.” Indeed he placed it third in his 12 favorite Holmes stories because of “the originality of the plot.”

“The Dancing Men” explores two of Conan Doyle’s favorite themes: a respectable person’s secret and disreputable past finally catching up with them; and American organized crime.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN 171

Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you. Here is an unexplained one.

Sherlock Holmes

Both feature in the first-ever Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet (pp.36–45), as well as “The Five Orange Pips” (pp.74–9) and “The Red Circle” (pp.226–39).

Powers of reasoning

Holmes’s astounding ability at logical reasoning comes to the fore in “The Dancing Men.” He demonstrates it even before the story is underway. One evening at 221B Baker Street, in the summer of 1898, Holmes is brewing up a “particularly malodorous product” in an experiment when he suddenly announces, “So, Watson… you

19th-century ciphers

Holmes’s method of deciphering the cryptogram was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Gold Bug” (1843). Graphic-based secret languages were popular among gypsies, secret societies, and gangs in the late 19th century, especially in the US. By the mid-19th century, more impregnable ciphers had been developed, including “flattening” frequency analysis (by shifting letters or numbers to complicate the code), or secret “keys” that were needed by both

do not propose to invest in South African securities?” Watson is astonished at his deductions, but Holmes puts his test tube to one side and lists what he calls the missing links of a “very simple chain.” Constructing this “series of inferences” has been but a warm-up for the detective, and he now turns his attentions to another, much more complex case.

Mystery in Norfolk

The real puzzle begins as Holmes hands Watson a page torn from a notebook that features a series of 15 hieroglyphic-like doodles of matchstick men in various poses— the “dancing men” of the story’s title. Watson reacts immediately: “Why, Holmes, it is a child’s drawing,” he says. But Holmes is already sure that there is more to this message than first appears.

The sender of the doodles is Mr. Hilton Cubitt, a simple country squire of Riding Thorpe Manor near North Walsham in east Norfolk. He arrives at 221B to tell his story to Holmes. “He was a fine creature, this man of the old English soil,” says Watson, “simple, straight, and gentle, with his ❯❯

the sender and the recipient. The invention of the telegraph and Morse code opened the way to reducing coded messages to numerals or a series of binary symbols (commonly 0 and 1), creating a more complex code. The “Playfair Cipher,” invented in 1854, encrypted pairs of letters or numbers rather than single characters, making the code much more difficult to crack using frequency analysis, and unbreakable unless the recipient knew the “key.” This cipher was used extensively by the military well into the 20th century.

Holmes deduces Watson’s investment decision

Watson returned from the club with chalk on his left finger and thumb.

He always puts chalk on his fingers to steady his billiard cue.

Watson only ever plays billiards with Thurston.

Thurston gave him a month to decide whether to invest in some South African property.

Watson’s checkbook is locked in Holmes’s drawer and the doctor has not asked for the key.

Watson does not plan to invest in South African gold fields.

172 A LEGEND RETURNS

North Walsham (pictured) is an old market town north of Norwich. The fictional Riding Thorpe is thought to be a combination of Ridlington and Edingthorpe villages in Norfolk.

great, earnest blue eyes and broad, comely face. His love for his wife and his trust in her shone in his features.”

Cubitt explains that a year earlier, while visiting London for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations (which took place in 1897), he met and fell in love with a lonely young American lady, Elsie Patrick, who was staying in the same boarding house as him. Elsie had candidly told him that she “had some very disagreeable associations” in her life, but would not go into any detail. Cubitt is extremely proud of his old family’s reputation in Norfolk and its “unsullied honour,” and Elsie, deeply respecting that reputation, gave him the chance to break off the engagement. But Cubitt was not put off, telling Holmes, “If you saw her and knew her it would help you to understand.” Cubitt promised never to ask her about her past, and within a month they were married; for the following year they lived in wedded bliss at his Norfolk home.

Everything changed

One day Elsie received a letter from America, at the mere sight of which she turned “deadly white.” After reading it, she threw it on the fire, so Cubitt has no idea what was in it, but from that moment she has gone about in obvious dread of someone or something. She has not said what that person or thing might be, and Cubitt, keeping his word, has not asked. “She would do better to trust me,” he tells Holmes. “She would find that I was her best friend.” Like many of Holmes’s provincial clients who have not traveled beyond their comfortable borders, Cubitt is stolid and naïve, and is incapable of even imagining the sort of peril she might be in.

Then one night a number of “dancing” figures were scrawled in chalk on a downstairs windowsill of their house. Cubitt had the drawings washed off, but, when he mentioned them to Elsie, he was surprised at how seriously she took the matter. She begged him to show her any more similar drawings, should they appear. Sure enough, a week later on the sundial in the garden he found the piece of paper he had since sent to Holmes—and when he showed it to Elsie, “she dropped in a dead faint.” Since then, Cubitt says, “she has looked like a woman in a dream, half dazed, and with terror always lurking in her eyes.” Neither Cubitt nor Watson can

Our presence is most urgently needed… for it is a singular and a dangerous web in which our simple Norfolk squire is entangled.

Sherlock Holmes

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN 173

This is the final message that Elsie receives from the mysterious cryptographer. Each “dancing man” represents a different letter, and Holmes begins by using frequency analysis, but he needs all of the messages before he can decipher the entire code.

The most common The flags occur letter in the alphabet is intermittently on different“e,” so the most common figures; they must markfigure must stand for

the ends of words.

that letter.

E L S I E / P R E P A R E /

T O / M E E T / T H Y / G O D

Using the previous

Cubitt’s wife is named

codes, Holmes gradually

Elsie, and as the codes are

identifies each letter until this

being sent to her it is likely

final, fateful message

her name will appear.

is revealed.

see it, but to Holmes the carefully defined matchstick men, some in the same poses, others bearing flags, are clearly a code—though he needs more samples if he is to crack it. He tells Cubitt to go home to Norfolk, and to keep him informed of any fresh developments.

Holmes the masterful

Two weeks later, a tired and worried Cubitt returns to Baker Street with three more coded messages that have been left outside his property, messages that he says are killing his wife “by inches.” On the night the third message was left, he had stayed up and seen a “dark, creeping figure” in the garden, but just as he was about to rush out with his revolver, Elsie had held him back, clinging to him desperately. For whatever reason, she did not want him to go outside. Evidently she knew who was out there, and that it was someone or something she did not want her husband to be involved in.

Holmes remains professional and calm until Cubitt leaves his lodgings, when he cannot contain his excitement any longer and throws himself into deciphering the messages. For two hours the great detective scribbles away, oblivious to Watson’s presence. Finally, he springs from his chair with a cry of triumph—he has cracked the code. He sends a telegram to an unknown person, and tells Watson they must wait for a reply before doing anything else. Meanwhile, Holmes receives a new coded message from Cubitt. On reading it, and then receiving the reply to his telegram, Holmes “suddenly sprang to his feet with an exclamation of surprise and dismay.” He wants to rush at once to Norfolk, but the last train has left, and they must wait until morning.

Death in the study

When Holmes and Watson finally arrive at North Walsham the next morning, they are met off the train by the stationmaster with the ❯❯

174 A LEGEND RETURNS

This sudden realization of his worst fears left him in a blank melancholy.

Dr. Watson

grim news that Mrs. Cubitt has apparently shot her husband dead, then turned the gun on herself, leaving her seriously wounded. Holmes’s worst fears have been realized.

At Riding Thorpe Manor, with Inspector Martin of the local constabulary for an audience, the great detective conducts a thorough examination of the scene of the crime, and characteristically applies his forensic and reasoning skills to try to make sense of the tragic shootings. Initially the local police inspector is eager “to assert his own position,” says Watson, but he is soon, “overcome with admiration and ready to follow without question wherever Holmes led.”

Cubitt and his wife were found in the study. The maid and the cook, sleeping upstairs, heard “an explosion,” then a second bang a minute later. Rushing downstairs, they found the passage and the study full of smoke, the window of the room shut from the inside, and a candle still burning on the table. They summoned the local doctor.

The Secret Weapon (1943) is credited as being an adaptation of “The Dancing Men.” In fact, it is based on a number of Holmes stories, and the only element taken from this tale is the cryptic code.

Cubitt’s pistol is still in the room, “two barrels of which had been emptied”—and Holmes points dramatically to a third bullet hole in the window sash. “By George!” cries the inspector. “How ever did you see that?” Holmes replies: “Because I looked for it.” He has deduced from the smoke in the passage “that the window had been open at the time of the tragedy,” and that a third person must have been involved—Cubitt had shot at whoever was outside the window, hitting the sash. This unknown person had fired the shot that killed Cubitt almost simultaneously, so that the two shots sounded like one “explosion” to the cook and the maid. Elsie had then shut the window before shooting herself. Outside the window, the flowers are trampled and the soft soil is full of footprints. Holmes hunts around “like a retriever after a wounded bird.” Then, with a similar cry of triumph to the one he made when he cracked the code, he finds a third cartridge ejected by another revolver. All the inspector can do is look on in “intense amazement at the rapid and masterful progress of Holmes’s investigation.”

The deciphered code has already given Holmes the third party’s name and address. Pretending to be Elsie, he uses the dancing men code to construct a note intended for one Abe Slaney. Holmes asks Cubitt’s stable boy to deliver the note to nearby Elrige’s Farm. Only then does he confide in Watson and the inspector.

Breaking the code

Holmes explains how he deciphered the messages, once he realized it was a simple substitution cipher: each “dance” pose represented a letter of the alphabet (see p.173). The first message—“am here Abe Slaney”—revealed that a man by that name was in the area; the second—“at Elrige’s”—gave his location at this nearby farm; and the third—“come Elsie”— summoned her to him. However, after Elsie responded “never,” using the same code, the fourth and final message told her to “prepare to meet thy God.”