Fiction · 1890
The Sign of the Four
A young governess, Mary Morstan, brings Sherlock Holmes a problem: her father vanished ten years ago, and for six years someone has been sending her a pearl on the same day each year. The case leads to a treasure from India, a pact between four convicts, and a chase down the Thames by steam launch.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s second Holmes novel appeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890. It is also the book in which Watson meets his future wife.
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Contents
- Chapter I — The Science of Deduction
- Chapter II — The Statement of the Case
- Chapter III — In Quest of a Solution
- Chapter IV — The Story of the Bald-Headed Man
- Chapter V — The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge
- Chapter VI — Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration
- Chapter VII — The Episode of the Barrel
- Chapter VIII — The Baker Street Irregulars
- Chapter IX — A Break in the Chain
- Chapter X — The End of the Islander
- Chapter XI — The Great Agra Treasure
- Chapter XII — The Strange Story of Jonathan Small
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Part of Mystery & Detection.
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About the author
1859–1930 · Victorian
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh and trained as a physician there before practising in Southsea, where he wrote A Study in Scarlet (1887), the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes stories in the Strand Magazine from 1891 made him famous; he killed the detective in 1893 and revived him in 1901–03. He also wrote historical novels, the Professor Challenger stories (The Lost World, 1912), military histories, and, in his later years, extensively on spiritualism. He was knighted in 1902.
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