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It is also one of only two tales written in the third person, the other being “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” (pp.252–53), published four years later. This might have been an intentional decision by the chronicler, Watson; in “The Problem of Thor Bridge” (pp.254–57) he makes passing reference to cases in which he “was either not present or played so small a part that they could only be told as by a third person.”

An ominous moment

The language of the opening lines, “It was nine o’clock at night upon the second of August—the most terrible August in the history of the world,” is unusually ominous, and the doom-laden atmosphere can be

HIS LAST BOW 247

explained by the date, for August 2, 1914 saw a war-bound Germany deliver its ultimatum to Belgium, overthrow Luxembourg, and sign a secret alliance with Turkey. Russia invaded Prussia that same day, and Britain declared war on Germany only two days later.

At his country house in England, Von Bork—a German spy—is in conversation with his superior, Baron Von Herling. In expectation of the approaching conflict, Von Bork is preparing to leave the country. Von Herling suggests this may not be necessary, since he feels England is unprepared for war and distracted by domestic troubles, particularly Ireland. Most of Von Bork’s family and staff have already departed, leaving only his servant Martha, of whom Von Herling remarks contemptuously, “She might almost personify Britannia, with her complete self-absorption and general air of comfortable somnolence.”

Deep undercover

After Von Herling leaves, Von Bork’s star informer—an anti-British, Irish American man named Altamont—arrives to deliver what

Stand with me here upon the terrace, for it may be the last quiet talk that we shall ever have.

Sherlock Holmes

is supposed to be a stolen copy of the British Navy’s secret signals. Von Bork boasts to Altamont about his safe, which is filled with secret intelligence. Its combination code, “August 1914,” set four years earlier, indicates that the Germans had been plotting the beginning of the war for some time.

On opening the package containing the book, Von Bork is stunned to see a copy of Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, but before he can react, Altamont leaps up and knocks him out with

Wartime espionage

Contrary to public concern, there was little German espionage in Britain during World War I. Only 31 German spies were brought to trial, 11 of whom were executed at the Tower of London. In “His Last Bow,” Von Herling implies that Germany had a hand in stirring up trouble in Ireland and inciting the suffragettes. While there is no evidence for the latter, German support of the Irish campaign for “home rule,” to weaken British power, is well documented. A key figure was the Irishman Roger

a chloroform-soaked rag. Thrillingly, it is then revealed that Altamont is none other than Holmes in disguise, whisked out of his beekeeping retirement two years earlier to scupper the troublesome German. As he and his “chauffeur,” Watson, help themselves to Von Bork’s wine, Holmes explains that Martha (whom some Holmesians believe is Mrs Hudson) was in on the secret, and he had spent two years undercover (including some time in the US) to prepare for his dealings with the spy. The similarities with Birdy Edwards in The Valley of Fear (pp.212–21), published a month later, are striking.

Holmes is notably even-handed with Von Bork when he wakes, characterizing his brand of patriotic benevolence perfectly. However, the tale ends with a note of warning, with the detective voicing Conan Doyle’s own feelings about the menace of Germany: “There’s an east wind coming… such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither… But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.” ■

Casement (pictured), whose courting of German support led Germany to supply arms for the 1916 Easter Rising. Casement, who knew Conan Doyle and his writing, helped put an end to Belgium’s ruthless colonial exploitation of the Congo. He was later denounced for homosexuality before being tried for high treason and executed by the British in 1916 as a persona non grata. Even Conan Doyle’s intervention could not save him.

THE FIN

DEDUCT

AL

IONS

250 THE FINAL DEDUCTIONS

Conan Doyle The stories later

Conan Doyle publishes Danger! collected in The

publishes The New and Other Stories; Case Book of

Revelation, and His son, Kingsley, Sherlock Holmes

declares his belief dies, partly as a result Conan Doyle’s begin to appear in

in spiritualism. of war wounds. mother, Mary, dies. The Strand Magazine.

1918 DEC 1918 1921 OCT 1921 NOV 1918 FEB 1919 MAY 1921 1922

Britain and Conan Doyle’s Conan Doyle presents Conan Doyle

Germany sign brother, Innes, Holmes on stage again publishes

the armistice dies, as a result of in a play, The Crown The Poems

that ends pneumonia contracted Diamond, which of Arthur

World War I. during the war. opens in Bristol. Conan Doyle.

IN THIS CHAPTER

COLLECTION

The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, 1927

The Mazarin Stone The Problem of Thor Bridge The Creeping Man The Sussex Vampire The Three Garridebs The Illustrious Client The Three Gables The Blanched Soldier The Lion’s Mane The Retired Colourman The Veiled Lodger Shoscombe Old Place

F

our years after the exploits which were recounted in the collection His Last Bow, Sherlock Holmes returned one last time in 1927’s The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. These 12 stories, which were written during the last decade of Conan Doyle’s life, begin in 1921 with “The Mazarin Stone,” an adaptation of Conan Doyle’s single-act stage play The Crown Diamond, and culminated in “Shoscombe Old Place.”

To the dark side

Compared with the earlier stories, those in the Case Book are darker, more violent, and tougher in theme, perhaps a reflection of what Conan Doyle called the “feverish days” in which they were written, and the widespread disillusionment in the aftermath of World War I. Holmes displays a range of more negative emotions, including fear and anger; he is also cynical and vengeful, and shows he is capable of misjudging a situation, and even of succumbing to defeat, as shown by the dispatch box full of unsolved cases seen in “The Problem of Thor Bridge.” Holmes is also unprepared for the brave Kitty Winter, whose actions shock him in “The Illustrious Client.”

Some critics have argued that these stories might not all be the work of Conan Doyle. They are certainly of varying quality, and often bleaker than his earlier tales, featuring themes such as mutilation (“The Illustrious Client” and “The Veiled Lodger”) and even suicide (“The Problem of Thor Bridge”). In the climax of the violent tale “The Three Garridebs,” Watson even gets shot.

INTRODUCTION 251

Pursuing his interest

in spiritualism,

Conan Doyle Conan Doyle publishes Conan Doyle

publishes The the last Professor publishes The Conan Doyle

Coming of Challenger novel, Case Book of dies on July 7,

the Fairies. The Land of Mist. Sherlock Holmes. at age 71.

SEP 1922 1926 1927 JUL 1930 1924 1926 JUL 1929 AUG 1930

Conan Doyle Conan Doyle Conan Doyle The Last

publishes his publishes publishes The Resource

autobiography, The History Maracot Deep appears in

Memories and of Spiritualism. and Other Stories. Liberty

Adventures. magazine.

Two sides of the coin

Although Conan Doyle had accepted a knighthood in 1902, Holmes modestly turns one down in “The Three Garridebs.” There are further divergences between the beliefs of the writer and his creation in these years: Conan Doyle’s interest in spiritualism and clairvoyance were reaching their zenith. This was a result, in part, of the deaths of his beloved son during World War I, and Conan Doyle’s brother, soon after, of pneumonia caught during the war.

By this time, Conan Doyle had become a fierce devotee of “the Spiritist conclusion,” regularly taking part in séances and experiments with telepathy. His 1922 book The Coming of the Fairies defended two young girls who claimed to have photographed fairies (years later, they admitted their fraudulence). It is remarkable that, for all the strength of Conan Doyle’s own beliefs in the paranormal, Holmes’s remained as resolutely rational as ever—in particular, “The Sussex Vampire” demonstrates the detective’s total rejection of supernatural theories: “No ghosts need apply.”

A changing world

Apart from “The Lion’s Mane,” which is set in 1907, none of the action in the Case Book stories takes place any later than 1903—long before the 1914 setting of “His Last Bow,” in which Holmes explicitly comments on the “changing age.” Perhaps Conan Doyle preferred to keep the detective firmly rooted in the late Victorian and Edwardian era of his prime, sensing that even a skill set as uniquely effective as his might not be up to solving the complex moral and practical dilemmas of the early 20th century.

In the preface to this final collection of stories, Conan Doyle bids farewell to Holmes, adding his hope that he and Watson might, for a time, find a corner in that “fantastic limbo for the children of imagination.” In the decades that followed, the creation that Conan Doyle regarded as “a lower stratum of literary achievement” went on to define the archetype of the brilliant but eccentric detective so common in modern crime fiction. Today, Holmes’s popularity is undimmed, and the character continues to evolve, taking forms that his creator could never have imagined. All around the world, an ever-growing network of Holmesians are still held spellbound by his adventures, on both the page and the screen. ■

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: October 1921 US: November 1921

COLLECTION

The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, 1927

CHARACTERS

Count Negretto Sylvius

Half-Italian nobleman and master criminal.

Sam Merton Dimwitted boxer; the count’s accomplice.

Billy Holmes’s streetwise page boy.

Lord Cantlemere

One of Holmes’s eminent employers in the case.

THIS MAN HAS

COME FOR HIS OWN

PURPOSE

BUT HE

MAY STAY FOR MINE

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAZARIN STONE (1921)

T

his story is based on Conan Doyle’s short one-act play The Crown Diamond (see box), which was itself partially derived from his earlier story “The Adventure of the Empty House” (pp.162–67), accounting for the almost identical plot. It is also notable for being one of only two Holmes stories narrated in the third person—alongside “His Last Bow” (pp.246–47)—and for taking place entirely in Holmes’s sitting room.

A glittering prize

Holmes has been tasked by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, and a certain Lord

You can’t bluff me, Count Sylvius… You are absolute plate-glass. I see to the very back of your mind.

Sherlock Holmes

Cantlemere with retrieving a stolen Crown diamond worth £100,000, a figure one hundred times more than the Countess of Morcar’s stone in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (pp.82–3). Holmes knows who the thieves are but not where the stone is, so he has allowed them to remain at large despite the danger to himself. The ringleader, the half-Italian Count Negretto Sylvius, is a crack shot, so Holmes has placed a wax dummy of himself behind a curtain at the front window to foil any attempts to assassinate him. When the count turns up at the front door, Holmes sees a chance to resolve the case and sends Watson to summon Scotland Yard before receiving his visitor.

A familiar villain

Sylvius is a foreign incarnation of big-game hunter Colonel Sebastian Moran from “The Empty House,” right down to the way Holmes lectures both men on the parallels between their form of hunting and his own. Both villains favor specially-engineered air rifles: Moran’s is made by “Von Herder, the blind German mechanic,” while Sylvius’s is the work of a similarly Germanic-sounding gunsmith,

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAZARIN STONE 253

My old friend here will tell you that I have an impish habit of practical joking.

Sherlock Holmes

“old Straubenzee.” Admittedly, the count’s preferred quarry is Algerian lions rather than Indian tigers, but Moran’s mustache and large nose have found their way into Sylvius’s appearance. He also has a “cruel, thin-lipped mouth,” like the wicked Continental aristocrat, Baron Gruner, in the later story “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client” (pp.266–71).

Switch trick

Holmes offers to let Sylvius and his accomplice, Sam Merton, go free if they surrender the stone, and duly withdraws, ostensibly to play the violin in his bedroom. Thinking they are alone, Sylvius tells Merton that he has the Mazarin stone on him—at which point the “dummy” dramatically springs to life, revolver in hand. Holmes has switched places with the wax figure via a secret door, and the violin music was courtesy of a gramophone. The thieves have been roundly outsmarted and are arrested.

In a familiar practical joke, Holmes then makes fun of the supercilious Lord Cantlemere by planting the diamond in his pocket while pretending to help him with his coat, and then mischievously accuses him of being its “receiver.” In an instant, Lord Cantlemere switches from saying that he has never believed in Holmes, to congratulating him on his incredible skills: “We are greatly your debtors, Mr. Holmes… I withdraw any reflection I have made upon your amazing professional powers.”

Pros and cons

The story recycles plot details to the extent that it feels like a pastiche of “The Empty House” by someone other than Conan Doyle. It is dialogue-heavy, and much of the speech, lifted straight from the

The Crown Diamond

The Crown Diamond: An Evening with Sherlock Holmes debuted at the Bristol Hippodrome in 1921, with Dennis Neilson-Terry as Holmes, Rex Vernon Taylour as Watson, and Norman Leyland as Moran (Taylour was soon replaced by Paul Ashwell due to a scandal involving a barmaid and a stolen watch). The play toured England following performances at the Coliseum in London (pictured). But as movies replaced such entertainments, the play was so forgotten that a copy found

Count Sylvius, as illustrated by Alfred Gilbert in The Strand Magazine, prepares to attack the dummy but is instead greeted by Holmes’s “cool, sardonic” voice in the doorway.

play, is hammy. The secret door is also a cliché. The story does, however, contain the occasional magnificent line, as when Holmes says, “I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.” ■

among Conan Doyle’s papers after his death was mistaken for an undiscovered work.

Conan Doyle was no stranger to writing for the stage. In 1899, Sherlock Holmes, a collaboration with playwright William Gillette (who played Holmes), opened at the Garrick, and was a huge hit. Other work included adaptations of his Napoleonic tales, a version of “The Speckled Band,” and a joint venture with his friend