The Sign of Four

This is the novel that gave Holmes his cocaine habit, Watson his wife, and Doyle his first taste of writing a full-length chase. It is a treasure-hunt mystery where the treasure is the villain: every hand it passes through is maimed, frightened, or hanged. Read it if you love Victorian London at night, steam launches on the Thames, or the rare sight of Holmes losing an argument about love.

1. 1

   Act 1

   A Needle, a Lady, and Six Pearls

   The novel opens in 1888 at 221B Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes injects himself with a seven-per-cent solution of cocaine and Dr. Watson reproaches him for the habit. Holmes defends the habit with chilling logic: he has a curious constitution, and his mind rebels at stagnation. 'Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere.' The problem arrives in the flesh: Miss Mary Morstan, a young woman with a story ten years old. Her father, Captain Arthur Morstan, landed in London from India on 3 December 1878, sent a telegram from the Langham Hotel, and vanished. His only friend in England, Major John Sholto, swore he had not seen him. Then, from 1882 onward, one valuable pearl a year arrived by post, six in all, anonymous. With the sixth came a letter declaring her 'a wronged woman' and naming a meeting that evening at the Lyceum Theatre. Mary shows Holmes and Watson her father's paper found in his desk: a plan of the Agra fortress bearing the words 'The Sign of the Four - Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, Dost Akbar' and four small crosses like signposts. Holmes works fast. Major Sholto died on 28 April 1882, about a week before the first pearl. From the agony columns of the newspapers, he identifies the letter-writer: Thaddeus Sholto, the Major's son.

2. 2

   Act 2

   The Bald-Headed Man's Confession

   Following the letter's instructions, Holmes, Watson and Mary go to the Lyceum Theatre, where a coachman with a box seat takes them to a house in Streatham (the Upper Norwood area) belonging to Thaddeus Sholto, a small, bald, ornately dressed man. Thaddeus reveals he sent the pearls and explains that his father Major Sholto had brought a great treasure back from India and had quarrelled with Captain Morstan over it. Thaddeus recounts that Captain Morstan suffered a burst blood vessel during the quarrel at Major Sholto's lodgings, struck his head on the treasure box as he fell, and died, and that the frightened Major Sholto buried the body secretly. The treasure belonged to something called the Sign of the Four, and it sat hidden while the Major's guilt ate him alive. Thaddeus says his father, on his deathbed, was about to reveal its hiding place when a bearded man appeared at the window and the Major died of fright. Thaddeus and his twin brother Bartholomew found a note pinned to their father's body reading 'The Sign of Four'. Thaddeus and Bartholomew later learned the treasure was hidden inside the house itself. Thaddeus reveals he sent the pearls. The party travels to Pondicherry Lodge in Upper Norwood, where the housekeeper Mrs. Bernstone reports that Bartholomew Sholto has locked himself in his laboratory and has not been seen all day. Looking through the keyhole of the locked laboratory, the group sees Bartholomew sitting rigid in his chair with a fixed, unnatural grin on his face; Holmes and Watson break down the door and find him dead. Holmes discovers a poisonous thorn above Bartholomew's ear, concludes he was killed by a poisoned dart, and notes that the Agra treasure, which Bartholomew had found in the attic, has vanished through a hole in the ceiling.

3. 3

   Act 3

   Creosote, a Hound, and the Aurora

   Holmes notices the smell of creosote on the scene, and finds footprints of a wooden-legged man and a small naked person on the dust of the roof and floor. Inspector Athelney Jones arrests Thaddeus Sholto on suspicion of murdering his brother. Holmes privately demonstrates to Watson his deductions about the two murderers: a one-legged white man and a small Andaman Islander. Holmes sends Watson to fetch Toby, a scent hound belonging to Mr. Sherman, a naturalist, to track the creosote scent through south London. Toby leads Holmes and Watson on a long trail through south London, at one point mistakenly following a creosote barrel before correcting course, and the trail ends at a boat landing on the Thames near Lambeth. Holmes learns the fugitives escaped in a steam launch called the Aurora, and he engages the Baker Street Irregulars, a band of street boys led by Wiggins, to search the river for it. Holmes disguises himself as an old sailor (and later as a workman) to search the boatyards along the river for the Aurora. Mrs. Smith, wife of the Aurora's owner Mordecai Smith, tells Holmes (in disguise) that her husband took the launch up the river with a wooden-legged man and a dwarf. Holmes, Watson, Inspector Jones and the Irregulars pursue the Aurora in a police steam launch down the Thames; the islander Tonga tries to shoot a poisoned dart at Holmes but is shot dead by Watson and Jones. The Aurora runs aground near the Woolwich area (below London Bridge) and Jonathan Small is captured. The iron treasure box, a heavy chest from the Agra fort, is recovered from the Aurora, and Holmes tricks Small into revealing that the jewels are gone by asking him to open it. The treasure chest is found empty: Small had scattered the jewels into the Thames during the chase.

4. 4

   Act 4

   The Confession and the Empty Box

   In custody, Jonathan Small tells the whole black history. He was a soldier of the Third Buffs (the 3rd Norfolk Regiment) in India, lost his right leg to a crocodile while bathing in the Ganges, and became an overseer on an indigo plantation near Muttra. During the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Small fled to the Agra fort, where he was overpowered by three Sikh troopers - Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan and Dost Akbar - who forced him to help them murder and rob a merchant named Achmet, who was carrying a rajah's treasure to the fort. Small and the three Sikhs hid the treasure inside the Agra fort, but their crime was discovered; they were tried and sentenced to penal servitude in the Andaman Islands, keeping the secret of the treasure's location. In the Andamans, Small made a pact with two convict-barrack guards, Major John Sholto and Captain Arthur Morstan: Sholto would recover the treasure and send a boat for all of them, sharing it equally. Sholto betrayed them: he stole the treasure, inherited a fortune from his uncle, and returned to England; Morstan followed him and was never seen again, and Small swore vengeance. Small escaped from the Andaman Islands with the help of Tonga, a small Andaman Islander whose life he had saved, and arrived in England too late to learn where Sholto had hidden the treasure; he left the 'Sign of Four' note at Sholto's deathbed as revenge. Small explains that when Bartholomew Sholto finally found the treasure, Small only intended to steal it back, but Tonga killed Bartholomew with a poisoned thorn before Small could stop him. Small declares that the Agra treasure has brought only misfortune to everyone who possessed it, and that he is glad it is gone. Watson brings the empty treasure box to Mary Morstan, and the loss of the treasure removes any obstacle to their marriage; he tells Holmes he has proposed and she has accepted.

• SSherlock HolmesA bored, cocaine-using deduction machine who comes alive only when a problem is hard enough. He solves a ten-year mystery in days but cannot talk his friend out of marrying for love.
• DDr. John WatsonThe loyal narrator who scolds Holmes about the needle and falls for the client. He shoots an islander dead mid-chase and ends the book engaged, richer in love and poorer by a fortune.
• MMary MorstanThe client, left fatherless by a treasure she never saw. Six anonymous pearls a year keep her hope alive; in the end she keeps the pearls and loses the gold, and calls it a fair trade.
• JJonathan SmallA wooden-legged convict who spent decades guarding a treasure that cost him his leg, his freedom, and everyone he conspired with. He scatters the jewels rather than let them ruin anyone else.
• TTongaA small Andaman Islander whose life Small once saved, repaying the debt with lethal loyalty. His poisoned thorn kills Bartholomew, and a bullet kills him on the Thames.
• TThaddeus SholtoThe ornate, bald, guilt-ridden twin who sent the pearls to make amends for his father's sin. His reward is a night in a police cell for a murder he did not commit.
• BBartholomew SholtoThaddeus's twin, the clever one who finally finds the Agra treasure in the attic. He enjoys it for hours before a poisoned thorn finds his ear.
• MMajor John SholtoThe dying patriarch who buried a friend's body and kept a stolen treasure. A bearded face at his window finishes what his conscience started.
• IInspector Athelney JonesThe confident Scotland Yard man who arrests the wrong twin within minutes of arriving. A reliable foil for Holmes's superiority.

The pearls

Six pearls, one a year, are guilt converted into instalments: Thaddeus paying off his father's debt in small, anonymous gifts. They are the only treasure that survives the book, and fittingly, they are the only treasure given rather than taken. Mary keeps them; they end as her dowry of someone else's conscience.

The Sign of the Four

Four names and four crosses on a map of a fortress: a pact between convicts to share stolen gold. It becomes a death note pinned to a dying man's body, the signature of a vow of vengeance. The symbol outlives the treasure it marks, and marks everyone who touched it.

The empty treasure box

The iron chest from Agra, hauled out of the Aurora and opened to reveal nothing, is the book's final image of its own plot: a fortune that was real, fought over, and worth less than the lives it cost. Small scattered it into the Thames on purpose; the box is the curse, emptied.

The cocaine needle

The seven-per-cent solution that opens the novel is Holmes's own treasure problem: a mind too strong for ordinary life, numbing itself between cases. It frames the book's argument that even the finest intellect is a kind of appetite, and that Watson, the ordinary man, chooses better.

The ending is a double verdict. Small scatters the jewels and calls it justice: the treasure killed Achmet and Bartholomew, terrified Sholto, and imprisoned him, so he would rather feed it to the Thames than let it ruin a fourth family. Doyle lets the criminal deliver the moral, which is a bold move, and the novel never contradicts him. The second verdict belongs to Watson, who proposes to Mary the moment the treasure is gone, because its loss removes the last barrier between them. Read one way, this is romance: love matters more than gold. Read another, it is Doyle quietly retiring his narrator, since a married Watson cannot comfortably share lodgings at 221B, and Holmes's annoyance at the engagement is the author's own wink at the problem he has created. The empty box lands because it satisfies both readings at once: the curse is lifted, the lovers are freed, and the great detective, for once, is the only one left empty-handed.

1. 1.Small claims the treasure brought misfortune to everyone who possessed it. Does the plot actually support his superstition, or is he rationalizing a lifetime of crime?
2. 2.Compare Holmes's cocaine use in the opening scene with the treasure's effect on its owners: is Doyle drawing a parallel between addiction and greed?
3. 3.Tonga is described through Victorian colonial stereotypes yet is the only character who never betrays anyone. How should a modern reader handle Doyle's imperialism alongside the novel's implicit critique of imperial plunder?
4. 4.The novel punishes nearly everyone who touches the treasure but rewards Mary, who never does. Is this moral bookkeeping or coincidence?

Anyone who wants to see where the modern detective thriller learned to run: this is the blueprint for the chase, the disguise, and the confession. Readers of Victorian fiction and fans of Holmes's short stories will find the novel's flaws part of its charm.

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