The Sign of Four

The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes by British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective. Plot In 1888, Dr. Watson remonstrates with Holmes about his cocaine usage. Holmes claims he is bored and needs a problem to solve; Miss Mary Morstan arrives with a case. She explains that, in December 1878, her father, Captain Arthur Morstan, arrived in London, on leave from his post as a convict guard in the Andaman Islands. He requested her to meet him at the Langham Hotel but was not there when she arrived. Mary contacted Major John Sholto, a former convict guard who knew her father and was living in England; however, he denied having seen Morstan, who was never heard from again. Four years later, Mary answered an anonymous newspaper advertisement, asking for her whereabouts. She then received a valuable pearl in the post, a gift repeated once a year for six years. With the sixth pearl, she received a letter asking for a meeting, claiming she has been "wronged". Holmes takes the case, and soon discovers that Major Sholto had died in 1882; within a week of his death, Mary received the first pearl. The only further clue Mary can give Holmes is a map of a fortress found in her father's desk, appended with the words "The Sign of the Four: Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, and Dost Akbar". Holmes, Watson, and Mary meet with Major Sholto's son Thaddeus, the anonymous sender of the pearls. Apparently, Morstan visited Major Sholto to demand his half of a treasure that Sholto had secretly brought back from India. In the ensuing quarrel, Captain Morstan suffered a heart attack and died, striking his head on the treasure box as he fell. Afraid he would be suspected of murder, Major Sholto buried the body and hid the treasure, leaving out a small gold chaplet studded with twelve pearls. Thaddeus and his twin brother Bartholomew knew nothing of these events, until a letter from India caused their father to faint, and sicken to his death. On his deathbed, he confessed the truth to them; he was about to reveal to them where the treasure was hidden, when a bearded man appeared at the window and the Major died of fear. The man fled, but the brothers later found a note reading "The Sign of the Four" pinned to the body. Thaddeus began sending Mary the pearls to make things right, and the brothers searched for the treasure.