The Return of Sherlock Holmes

This collection of thirteen short stories features the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the celebrated London detective, as narrated by his loyal friend and companion, Dr. John Watson. The stories mark Holmes's dramatic return after his apparent death at the Reichenbach Falls, where he seemingly perished in a struggle with the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.

In "The Empty House," set in the spring of 1894, Watson is mourning Holmes and puzzling over the murder of Ronald Adair, a young aristocrat shot dead in his locked room at Park Lane. An elderly book-collector follows Watson home and reveals himself to be Holmes in disguise. Watson faints from shock. Holmes explains that he used baritsu, a Japanese wrestling technique, to throw Moriarty over the Falls, then spent three years traveling through Tibet, Persia, and France, confiding only in his brother Mycroft. He has returned to catch Colonel Sebastian Moran, Moriarty's former chief of staff, whom he identifies as Adair's killer. That night, Holmes lures Moran into firing at a wax bust in the Baker Street window, and Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard arrests him. Holmes attributes Adair's murder to Adair having discovered Moran cheating at cards.

In "The Norwood Builder," a frantic young solicitor, John Hector McFarlane, arrives expecting arrest for the murder of Jonas Oldacre, a builder whose charred remains and McFarlane's blood-stained walking stick were found after a fire at Oldacre's property. Holmes learns that McFarlane's mother once rejected Oldacre as a suitor, and a suspicious bloody thumbprint appears on a wall Holmes had already found clean. Holmes deduces Oldacre is alive and hiding in the house; he discovers a concealed room and flushes Oldacre out by setting straw smoldering. Oldacre staged his death to swindle creditors and frame McFarlane out of revenge.

"The Dancing Men" concerns Hilton Cubitt, a Norfolk squire whose American wife, Elsie, is terrified by mysterious stick-figure drawings on their property. Holmes deciphers the figures, decoding messages from Abe Slaney, a Chicago criminal once engaged to Elsie, who fled to England to escape her family's criminal life. The final message is a death threat. Holmes and Watson rush to Norfolk but arrive too late: Cubitt has been shot dead and Elsie critically wounded. Holmes uses the cipher to lure Slaney into a trap. Slaney confesses that Cubitt fired first; Slaney receives penal servitude, and Elsie recovers.

In "The Solitary Cyclist," Violet Smith, a young music teacher, reports being followed by a cyclist along a lonely Surrey road each weekend. Holmes uncovers a scheme by Carruthers and Woodley, two men from South Africa who hired Violet knowing she would inherit her uncle's fortune. Though Woodley was to marry her, Carruthers fell in love with Violet and secretly followed her as protection. Holmes and Watson arrive just after Woodley has forced Violet into a sham marriage performed by a disgraced clergyman. The marriage is invalidated, and Violet later inherits her fortune and marries her fiancé, Cyril Morton.

"The Priory School" involves the disappearance of Lord Saltire, the ten-year-old son of the Duke of Holdernesse, from a preparatory school. On the moors, Holmes and Watson find the body of the school's German master, killed while pursuing the boy. Holmes discovers that horses at a nearby inn have been shod with shoes shaped like cow hooves to disguise their tracks. He confronts the Duke, who confesses that his illegitimate son, James Wilder, orchestrated the kidnapping out of jealousy. Holmes secures the boy's return and advises the Duke to send Wilder away.

In "Black Peter," a retired whaling captain known as Black Peter is found harpooned to the wall of his private cabin. Inspector Stanley Hopkins arrests a suspect, but Holmes proves him too frail to wield a harpoon with such force. Holmes identifies the real killer as Patrick Cairns, a harpooner from the captain's former ship, luring him to Baker Street with a fake job advertisement. Cairns confesses that the captain murdered a passenger at sea for his securities, and when Cairns came to blackmail him, the captain attacked, forcing Cairns to kill in self-defense.

"Charles Augustus Milverton" pits Holmes against a ruthless professional blackmailer threatening to ruin Lady Eva Brackwell by exposing her imprudent letters to her fiancé. When negotiation fails, Holmes and Watson burgle Milverton's mansion. They witness a former victim shoot Milverton dead, and Holmes burns every packet of letters from the safe. When Lestrade asks for help investigating the murder, Holmes refuses.

In "The Six Napoleons," someone systematically smashes plaster busts of Napoleon, and the case escalates to murder. Holmes traces all six busts to a single factory batch and discovers that an Italian worker named Beppo hid the stolen black pearl of the Borgias inside one bust before his arrest. Upon release, Beppo destroyed each bust in turn, killing a confederate in the process. Holmes buys the final bust and cracks it open to reveal the pearl.

"The Three Students" finds Holmes solving an examination tampering case at a university. A scholarship candidate named Gilchrist, a tall athlete, spotted proof sheets through a tutor's window, found the door key in the lock, and copied the paper. Holmes identifies him through black clay from the jumping pit tracked in on his spiked shoes. Gilchrist confesses and withdraws from the examination.

In "The Golden Pince-Nez," a young secretary is stabbed to death, dying with the words "The professor, it was she" and a pair of pince-nez, or nose-clipping eyeglasses, clutched in his hand. Holmes deduces that the killer, nearly blind without her glasses, fled down the wrong corridor and became trapped in the professor's bedroom. By observing that cigarette ash he dropped on the floor has been disturbed, Holmes proves someone is hiding behind a hinged bookcase. The woman reveals she is the professor's wife, a Russian revolutionary who came to retrieve documents that could free an innocent comrade from a Siberian salt mine. She killed the secretary accidentally and takes poison before surrendering.

"The Missing Three-Quarter" concerns Godfrey Staunton, a Cambridge rugby star who vanishes on the eve of the match against Oxford. Holmes uses a draghound to follow the scent of aniseed applied to a doctor's carriage wheel, leading to a cottage where Staunton kneels beside his secretly married wife, who has died of tuberculosis. The marriage was hidden to protect Staunton's inheritance from his miserly uncle.

In "The Abbey Grange," Lady Brackenstall claims burglars killed her abusive husband, Sir Eustace. Holmes detects inconsistencies: The wine glasses suggest two drinkers rather than three, the bell-rope was cut rather than torn, and the knots are sailor's knots. He identifies Captain Jack Croker as the true killer. Croker confesses he struck Sir Eustace with a poker after the man attacked his wife. Holmes stages an impromptu trial with Watson as jury, who pronounces Croker not guilty.

"The Second Stain" closes the collection. A letter from a foreign head of state, stolen from the European Secretary's dispatch-box, threatens to ignite a European war. Holmes discovers that the Secretary's wife, Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope, stole the letter under pressure from a blackmailing spy named Eduardo Lucas, who possessed an indiscreet love letter she had written before her marriage. Lucas was murdered that same night by his jealous wife. Lady Hilda retrieved the document from under Lucas's floorboard, and Holmes slips it back into the dispatch-box, averting the crisis without scandal.