The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is the second collection of short stories featuring the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend and chronicler, Dr. John Watson. The eleven stories range from cases early in Holmes's career to the dramatic confrontation that appears to end it.

In "The Adventure of the Silver Blaze," Holmes and Watson travel to Dartmoor to investigate the disappearance of the racehorse Silver Blaze and the murder of its trainer, John Straker. Holmes finds the case against the arrested suspect unconvincing and tracks the horse to a rival stable. At the Wessex Cup, the horse wins under altered coloring, and Holmes reveals that the horse itself killed Straker. To fund a secret double life, Straker drugged his own stable-boy, took the horse onto the moor, and tried to nick its tendon with a surgical knife. The startled horse kicked him in the forehead. Holmes notes a key clue: The stable dog did not bark, meaning the midnight visitor was someone it knew.

"The Adventure of the Yellow Face" is one of Holmes's rare failures. Grant Munro of Norbury seeks Holmes's advice about his wife Effie, who has been visiting a nearby cottage and sneaking out at night. Effie claimed her first husband and child died of yellow fever in Atlanta. When the men force their way into the cottage, they find a child wearing a pale mask. Holmes removes it, revealing a young Black girl. Effie confesses her first husband was a Black man named John Hebron; their daughter Lucy inherited her father's complexion. After Hebron's death, Effie kept Lucy secret for fear of losing Munro. Munro lifts the child, kisses her, and takes his wife's hand. Holmes asks Watson to whisper "Norbury" whenever he grows overconfident, as a reminder of his fallibility.

In "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk," Holmes and Watson accompany Hall Pycroft, a young clerk, to Birmingham. Pycroft was diverted from a position at Mawson & Williams by a man who offered a lavish salary at a supposed hardware company and insisted Pycroft not resign from Mawson's. Holmes deduces the scheme: The fraudsters needed Pycroft's handwriting so an impostor could take his place at Mawson's and rob the firm. At the Birmingham office, the man attempts to hang himself after reading that the impostor murdered a watchman and was captured. Watson revives him.

"The Adventure of the 'Gloria Scott'" recounts Holmes's very first case. During a college visit to his friend Victor Trevor's estate, Holmes's deductions caused old Mr. Trevor to faint. A former sailor named Hudson, who knew of Trevor's criminal past, arrived and blackmailed old Trevor, who later collapsed fatally upon receiving a cryptic letter. Holmes cracked the cipher by reading every third word: "The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your life." The elder Trevor had been James Armitage, a banker transported aboard the convict ship Gloria Scott in 1855 for embezzlement. A mutiny destroyed the vessel, and among the wreckage the survivors rescued Hudson, who decades later blackmailed them.

In "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual," Reginald Musgrave seeks Holmes's help after his butler Brunton vanishes from the Hurlstone estate in Sussex. Musgrave had caught Brunton studying the Musgrave Ritual, a cryptic family catechism. Holmes recognizes the Ritual as directions and follows its steps to a cellar, where he finds Brunton's body beside a wooden box. Brunton had enlisted the jilted housemaid Rachel Howells to raise a heavy flagstone, but once he descended, she allowed it to fall shut. Rachel threw the box's contents into the estate's lake; they proved to be the crown of the kings of England, hidden during the English Civil War.

"The Adventure of the Reigate Puzzle" finds Holmes recuperating from exhaustion in Surrey. When a coachman named William Kirwan is shot dead at the neighboring Cunningham estate, Holmes examines a torn note found in the dead man's hand and determines that two people wrote alternate words. He identifies the elder Cunningham and his son Alec as the authors. The Cunninghams attack Holmes before being subdued and arrested. Their motive: William had witnessed their burglary of a neighbor's house and was blackmailing them.

In "The Adventure of the Crooked Man," Holmes investigates the death of Colonel James Barclay of the Royal Munsters, found dead in a locked room while his wife, Nancy (née Devoy), lies insensible. Servants heard her call her husband a coward. Holmes traces Nancy's fury to an encounter with Henry Wood, a disfigured former corporal whom Barclay betrayed to enemy forces during the Indian Mutiny to eliminate his rival for Nancy's affections. Wood followed Nancy home and burst in; the Colonel died of a stroke brought on by the shock of seeing the man he had betrayed.

"The Adventure of the Resident Patient" centers on Dr. Percy Trevelyan, whose benefactor Blessington becomes terrified after mysterious visitors exploit a faked medical consultation to access his rooms. The next morning, Blessington is found hanged. Holmes proves it was murder and identifies Blessington as Sutton, the informer in the 1875 Worthingdon bank robbery. His former accomplices, recently released from prison, executed him after conducting what amounted to a trial.

In "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter," Watson meets Holmes's elder brother Mycroft, whose even greater deductive powers go largely unused. Mycroft introduces a case involving Mr. Melas, a Greek interpreter kidnapped and forced to interrogate a captive named Paul Kratides. Kratides is being starved to compel him to sign over family property; Holmes deduces that Kratides's sister Sophy was lured to England by Harold Latimer, a young Englishman who had gained an ascendancy over her, and that Paul came from Athens to rescue her. Holmes, Watson, Mycroft, and Inspector Gregson rush to the captors' house in Beckenham, but the villains have fled. They find Melas and Kratides in a locked room filled with charcoal fumes; Kratides is dead, but Watson revives Melas. Months later, a Budapest newspaper reports the English captors stabbed to death, and Holmes suspects Sophy avenged her brother.

"The Adventure of the Naval Treaty" involves Percy Phelps, a Foreign Office clerk and nephew of Lord Holdhurst, the Foreign Minister. Phelps was entrusted with copying a secret naval treaty and stepped away from his desk; he returned to find the document stolen. Holmes visits Phelps at Briarbrae, the home of his fiancée Annie Harrison and her brother Joseph Harrison. After an intruder attempts to enter Phelps's room, Holmes sends Phelps to London, instructs Annie to remain in the room, and keeps vigil in the garden. That night, Joseph enters through the window and retrieves the treaty from beneath the floorboards. Joseph had seized the treaty the night of the theft and hidden it under the bedroom floor, but could not retrieve it after Phelps was installed there as a sickbed.

The collection concludes with "The Adventure of the Final Problem." Holmes arrives at Watson's home pale and agitated, revealing that Professor Moriarty, whom Holmes calls "the Napoleon of crime," controls a vast criminal organization. Holmes has spent months building a case to dismantle the network, but Moriarty warned him to withdraw, and three assassination attempts followed. Holmes and Watson flee to the Continent and travel to Switzerland, where Holmes learns the police arrested the gang but Moriarty escaped. At the Reichenbach Falls near Meiringen, a forged letter lures Watson away. When Watson races back, he finds Holmes's Alpine-stock, footprints leading to the cliff's edge with none returning, and a farewell letter. Watson determines that Holmes and Moriarty grappled at the precipice and plunged together into the abyss. He closes by declaring Holmes the best and wisest man he has ever known.