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After deciphering the third message, Holmes had sent a telegram to his friend, Wilson Hargreave, in the New York Police, asking if an Abe Slaney was known to them; the reply that he received, that Abe Slaney was “the most dangerous crook in Chicago,” left Holmes anxious and ready to catch a train to Norfolk.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN 175

All is explained

Soon enough, Abe Slaney, “a tall, handsome, swarthy fellow, clad in a suit of grey flannel, with a Panama hat, a bristling black beard, and a great, aggressive hooked nose” is striding up the path to Riding Thorpe Manor, flourishing a cane. The moment he enters the house, Holmes has a pistol to his head and Martin puts him in handcuffs. Slaney readily admits to killing Cubitt, but says it was in self-defense, because Cubitt fired first. He is genuinely grief-stricken to hear that Elsie is seriously injured, and explains that he had only threatened her out of anger, for he loved her and always had. They had grown up together in Chicago, and were members of a gang, of which Elsie’s father was the leader. They had invented the code, deliberately making it look “like a child’s scrawl” so that no one outside the gang would even realize it was a code, never mind be able to decipher it. Elsie “couldn’t stand the business,” and ran away to start a new life. Slaney wrote to Elsie after her marriage to Cubitt, but when she did not reply, he came to England to find her: “Who was this

Abe Slaney

One of several American criminals to feature in Conan Doyle’s work, Abe Slaney is a driven man who is obsessed with Elsie. “I tell you, there was never a man in this world loved a woman more than I loved her,” he tells Holmes. The depth of his love is never in doubt, and when he is told that Elsie has been injured he declares, “I may have threatened her – God forgive me! – but I would not have touched a hair of her pretty head... If Elsie dies, I care nothing what becomes of me.” When Holmes

Englishman that he should come between us? I tell you that I had the first right to her, and that I was only claiming my own,” he cries. The story ends with Slaney being condemned to death at the Norwich assizes, but his sentence is changed to penal servitude “in consideration of mitigating circumstances, and the certainty that Hilton Cubitt had fired the first shot.” Elsie recovers, and devotes her life “to the care of the poor and to the administration of her husband’s estate.”

I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writings, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyze one hundred and sixty separate ciphers.

Sherlock Holmes

tells him Elsie is suspected of Cubitt’s murder, he readily owns up to killing him himself.

What may have started as passionate love has become a sense of entitlement, as Elsie was pledged to him long ago. How much say Elsie had in that is never revealed. They were engaged before she left the US, and Slaney is convinced she would have married him had he gone straight. Unable to accept her decision to leave him and start a new life without him, his passion becomes a dangerous and tragic obsession.

A tale of passion

Conan Doyle draws a striking contrast between the characters of Cubitt and Slaney. Cubitt is an old-fashioned figure representing the traditional British values of honor, loyalty, and decency, while the American Slaney is a brash gangster from the other side of the Atlantic, with his own firm, if somewhat warped, ideas about love and honor.

This is a tale of heated and hidden passions, where Holmes’s rational logic leads the story, but he fails his client. In “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” Conan Doyle seems poised between the naturalism and social realism of 19th-century writers like Gustave Flaubert, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Émile Zola, and Thomas Hardy on the one hand, and the sensationalism of his 20th-century successors such as Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace on the other. Holmes, perhaps like Conan Doyle himself, is less interested in Slaney’s thwarted passion, the intriguing nature of the triangular relationship, and the eventual, fateful, criminal outcome, than the logical problem of the cryptic code, and how to solve it. ■

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

US: December 1903 UK: January 1904

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS Violet Smith Cyclist and music teacher.

Bob Carruthers Former prospector in South Africa, and widower with a daughter.

Jack Woodley

Ruffian, recently returned from South Africa.

Mr. Williamson Disgraced former clergyman.

Cyril Morton Violet’s fiancé and electrical engineer.

SHE THINKS SHE DOES

NOT KNOW THE MAN

I AM CONVINCED

SHE DOES

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY CYCLIST (1904)

T

his tale opens with Watson telling the reader about Holmes’s professional success, and ponders the difficulty in deciding which of his hundreds of cases should be presented to the public. Watson concludes that he will give “preference to those cases which derive their interest not so much from the brutality of the crime as from the ingenuity and dramatic quality of their solution.” “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist” is certainly dramatic— with guns brandished and shots fired—and Holmes is at his most chivalrous and physical as he rescues the damsel in distress.

The mysterious stalker

It is April 1895 and Violet Smith arrives at 221B Baker Street. She is a beautiful, upright young woman, who is devoted to both her widowed mother and her fiancé, Cyril Morton. Holmes immediately identifies Violet as being an avid cyclist (from the roughening of the side of her sole caused by the friction of the pedal) and a musician (from her “spatulate finger-end”).

She had recently responded to a newspaper advertisement from two men—Woodley and Carruthers— who claim to have known her uncle Ralph in South Africa. They told her of Ralph’s death, and said that he had asked them both to tend to the needs of his relations. Woodley, she said, kept “making eyes” at her, but she found him “odious” and repellent. Carruthers, a widower, offered her a live-in job as a music tutor to his daughter at a remote house near Farnham. Since the position was

One of Holmes’s many skills is boxing, which he puts to use when defending himself against a drunken Woodley. “It was a straight left against a slogging ruffian,” he tells Watson.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY CYCLIST 177

well paid, and he seemed kind, she accepted. Each weekend, Violet cycles to Farnham station to take a train to see her mother but has noticed that she is always followed, at a distance, by another lone cyclist. Unnerved by her silent stalker, she is seeking advice from Holmes.

Uncovering the plot

Watson is sent to investigate but, predictably, Holmes is disappointed by his meager observations, which do little more than confirm the girl’s story. So Holmes goes to Farnham himself, where he makes “discreet inquiries” at the local pub. There, he becomes embroiled in a brawl with Woodley, who wants to know why Holmes is snooping into his affairs.

A dramatic denouement ensues when Watson and Holmes conceal themselves on the country lane. For safety, Violet has begun traveling by dog-cart, but as it draws near they see it is empty. Violet has been abducted, and her stalker is cycling fast behind. The stalker turns out to be Carruthers in disguise, but he is desperately looking for Violet and entreats Holmes to help him “save” her. Alerted by Violet’s screams, they find her, gagged and faint, and learn she has been forcibly married to Woodley by Mr. Williamson— a notorious defrocked priest.

At the heart of this crime is, of course, money. Carruthers and Woodley, who knew each other from South Africa, were aware that Violet was about to inherit a fortune from her uncle, and devised a plot to

In Edwardian times, women cyclists were considered independent, modern, and daring. Cycling really emancipated women, because for the first time they could travel without male supervision.

entrap her, enlisting Williamson’s help. The plan was for Woodley to marry her and for Carruthers to have a share in the “plunder.” The plan misfired when Carruthers fell in love with Violet and became her protector, cycling behind her each week to Farnham station in case of an attack by Woodley.

Carruthers is horrified Woodley has succeeded in marrying Violet, and shoots him in rage—Woodley is injured but survives. Holmes asserts that Mr. Williamson’s right to conduct a marriage ceremony is questionable and that no forced marriage would be legally valid.

The dramatic conclusion, with a swooning girl, two brutal rogues, and an unscrupulous clergyman, forms a classic tableau of Gothic storytelling. And in spite of the fact that the heroine is an independent individual, she still needs saving from “the worst fate that can befall a woman” by the knight in shining armor—Sherlock Holmes. ■

Fortune-seeking in South Africa

The wealth that fuels the crime in this story was generated in South Africa, which became a magnet for fortune-seekers in the late 19th century. In 1866, a child of a Dutch farmer found a diamond measuring 22 carats near the Vaal River. The next year, huge diamond deposits were discovered in Kimberley, and in 1884 the world’s largest gold deposits were discovered in Witwatersrand. As news of the vast mineral wealth spread, thousands of immigrants from all over the world made their way to the Transvaal. The huge influx of prospectors, laborers, and entrepreneurs had a huge impact on the region, leading to the foundation of cities— Johannesburg grew out of a mining camp named Langlaagte— and the development of a transportation infrastructure, such as improved roads and rails. Prospectors who became super-wealthy (as was the case with Violet Smith’s uncle) were known as “randlords.”

A CRIMINAL WHO WAS

CAPABLE OF SUCH A

THOUGHT IS A MAN

WHOM I SHOULD

BE PROUD TO DO

BUSINESS WITH

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL (1904)

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

US: January 1904 UK: February 1904

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS

Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable

Head of the Priory School.

Lord Arthur Saltire

Missing student.

Duke of Holdernesse

Arthur’s father.

James Wilder Duke of Holdernesse’s secretary.

Heidegger German master at the Priory School.

Reuben Hayes Landlord of the nearby Fighting Cock Inn.

C

ollapsing onto a rug at 221B Baker Street, schoolmaster Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable cuts an absurd figure. His calling card bears a welter of academic qualifications, and his “majestic figure” is as cumbersome as his unwieldy name. It is with this undignified entrance that this scholarly adventure begins.

Watson examines the supine figure and diagnoses exhaustion. Meanwhile, Holmes reaches into the man’s pocket and pulls out a round-trip train ticket from Mackleton in northern England— it seems Huxtable has indeed traveled far. (In the original manuscript, the story was set in

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL 179

the real-life village of Castleton, Derbyshire, which Conan Doyle changed to the fictional Mackleton, Hallamshire, in the printed edition.)

Huxtable eventually recovers enough to request a glass of milk and a cookie and, after this quaint refreshment, proceeds to explain his purpose. Although he is a rather comic figure, Huxtable’s mission is serious. He is the principal of a highly exclusive preparatory school called the Priory, which educates the sons of the British aristocracy, and his newest and most well-connected pupil, young Lord Arthur Saltire, has gone missing. Holmes leaps to his feet to look up Saltire’s father, the Duke of Holdernesse, in his “encyclopaedia of reference,” and exclaims that he is “one of the greatest subjects of the Crown!”

Although Conan Doyle doesn’t specify, the encyclopaedia Holmes is reading from is probably Burke’s Landed Gentry, an index of Britain’s noble families, produced in 1826 by genealogist John Burke, which is still used as an active register today. Throughout the story, the action rings with the importance of the British aristocracy; its power, but also its vulnerability. The Duke may be rich, but this wealth has put his son at risk of abduction, and like many aristocratic families, he lives in fear of social scandal should the family name ever be tarnished.

Locked room mystery

The immediate facts of the case provide a compelling variation on the “locked room mystery.” Saltire disappeared during the night from his second-floor room at the Priory, which is situated behind another, occupied by two notoriously light-sleeping students. There are no footprints below his open window, and no sign of intruders. He was dressed in his school suit of gray trousers and black Eton jacket— an allusion to Britain’s elite public school, Eton College. All of these

An exhausted Huxtable collapses at 221B Baker Street, where Watson describes him as “a sorely stricken man who lay before us.” Illustrated for The Strand Magazine by Sidney Paget.

details suggest a planned escape. The school roll call has revealed that the German master, Heidegger, is also missing. Although there is no apparent connection between the student and master, there are obvious signs of the latter’s rapid descent from his second floor window, which faces the same way as Saltire’s, using the ivy outside. Heidegger’s bicycle is also missing.

Saltire had not had any visitors before he vanished, although he had received a letter, which he took with him. Huxtable adds that the boy was apparently happy at school, but that his home life is unbalanced. His parents, the Duke and his wife, have recently separated, and she has moved to France. The Duke’s secretary, James Wilder, has let Huxtable know that the boy prefers the company of his mother to that of his stiff and formal father. Could it be possible that he has fled to France to be with her? ❯❯

We have had some dramatic entrances and exits upon our small stage at Baker Street, but I cannot recollect anything more sudden and startling than the first appearance of Thorneycroft Huxtable.

Dr. Watson

180 A LEGEND RETURNS

The allure of cash

This mysterious web is sufficiently seductive for Holmes to abandon the other two cases he claims to be busy with. Either that, or he’s been uncharacteristically seduced by the handsome reward offered by the Duke—£5,000 for the return of his son, and a further £1,000 for the names of his abductors. “I think we shall accompany Dr. Huxtable back to the North of England,” Holmes decides, after being told about this generous offer—and even before hearing all the facts.

That same evening, Holmes and Watson arrive at the Priory, and find the Duke and Wilder already there. Wilder upbraids Huxtable severely for summoning Holmes, although his apparent concern that the case will cause a scandal begins to sound more like fear over what Holmes will learn. As for the austere Duke, it is unclear whether his reticence is due to aristocratic reserve or something more suspicious—with his booming “dinner gong” voice, he submits to Holmes’s involvement in the case but offers little assistance.