The Sign of Four

by Arthur Conan Doyle, Peter Ackroyd (Introduction), Ed Glinert (Editor), Ed Glinert (Noted by)

Overview

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor and urges Holmes and Watson to accompany her. And in the ensuing investigation - which involves a wronged woman, a stolen hoard of Indian treasure, a wooden-legged ruffian, a helpful dog and a love affair - even the jaded Holmes is moved to exclaim, 'Isn't it gorgeous!'

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140439076
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/2001
Series:	Sherlock Holmes Mystery Series
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	167,290
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.75(h) x 0.37(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh and took a degree in medicine at Edinburgh University before becoming a doctor in Southsea. He began writing detective stories to supplement his income and 'A Study in Scarlet' (1887) introduced his finest creation, the hawk-eyed detective, Sherlock Holmes. 

Peter Ackroyd is a well known writer and historian. He has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He resides in London and his most recent highly acclaimed work is Thames: Sacred River.

Date of Birth:

May 22, 1859

Date of Death:

July 7, 1930

Place of Birth:

Edinburgh, Scotland

Place of Death:

Crowborough, Sussex, England

Education:

Edinburgh University, B.M., 1881; M.D., 1885

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

The Science of Deduction

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.

Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken with my lunch, or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.

"Which is it to-day?" I asked,--"morphine or cocaine?"

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. "It is cocaine," he said,--"a seven per-cent solution. Would you care totry it?"

"No, indeed," I answered, brusquely. "My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it."

He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," he said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment."

"But consider!" I said, earnestly. "Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable."

He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his finger-tips together and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.

"My mind," he said, "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. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession,--or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world."

"The only unofficial detective?" I said, raising my eyebrows.

"The only unofficial consulting detective," he answered. "I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson or Lestrade or Athelney Jones are out of their depths--which, by the way, is their normal state--the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. But you have yourself had some experience of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope case."

"Yes, indeed," said I, cordially. "I was never so struck by anything in my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure with the somewhat fantastic title of 'A Study in Scarlet.'"

He shook his head sadly. "I glanced over it," said he. "Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid."

"But the romance was there," I remonstrated. "I could not tamper with the facts."

"Some facts should be suppressed, or at least a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes by which I succeeded in unraveling it."

I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings. More than once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion's quiet and didactic manner. I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me from walking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather.

"My practice has extended recently to the Continent," said Holmes, after a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. "I was consulted last week by Francois Le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the French detective service. He has all the Celtic power of quick intuition, but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developments of his art. The case was concerned with a will, and possessed some features of interest. I was able to refer him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga in 1857, and the other at St. Louis in 1871, which have suggested to him the true solution. Here is the letter which I had this morning acknowledging my assistance." He tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper. I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray "magnifiques," "coup-de-maitres," and "tours-de-force," all testifying to the ardent admiration of the Frenchman.

"He speaks as a pupil to his master," said I.

"Oh, he rates my assistance too highly," said Sherlock Holmes, lightly. "He has considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power of observation and that of deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge; and that may come in time. He is now translating my small works into French."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Arthur Conan Doyle: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Sign of Four

Appendix A: Domestic Contexts

1. From Havelock Ellis, The Criminal (1890)
2. From Cesare Lombroso, The Man of Genius (1891)

Appendix B: Colonial Contexts: Accounts of the Indian “Mutiny,” 1857–58

1. From Sir William Muir, Agra in the Mutiny and the Family Life of W. & E.H. Muir in the Fort, 1857: A Sketch for their Children (1896)
2. From Sir William Muir, Agra Correspondence during the Mutiny (1898)
3. From James P. Grant, The Christian Soldier: Memorials of Major-General Sir Henry Havelock (1858)
4. From Rev. Frederick S. Williams, General Havelock and Christian Soldiership (1858)
5. From Mrs. R.M. Coopland, A Lady’s Escape from Gwalior and Life in Agra Fort during the Mutinies of 1857 (1859)
6. From Sir J.W. Kaye and G.B. Malleson, The History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857–8 (1888–89)

Appendix C: Colonial Contexts: The First and Second Anglo-Afghan Wars

1. From Sir Henry Havelock, Narrative of the War in Affghanistan, 1838–9 (1840)
2. From Lady Florentia Sale, A Journal of the Disasters in Affghanistan, 1841–2 (1843)
3. From J.W. Kaye, History of the War in Afghanistan. From the Unpublished Letters and Journals of Political and Military Officers Employed in Afghanistan throughout the Entire Period of British Connexion with that Country (1851)
4. From “The Murder of Lord Mayo,” The Times (15 April 1872)

Appendix D: Colonial Contexts: The Andaman Islands

1. “The Andaman Islands, A Penal Settlement for India,” letter to the editor of The Times (11 November 1857)
2. From Frederic J. Mouat, Adventures and Researches Among the Andaman Islanders (1863)
3. From the Annual Report on the Settlement of Port Blair and the Nicobars for the Year 1872–3 (1873)
4. From “The Andamans Penal Settlement,” The Times (13 February 1872)
5. From “The Andaman Settlements: From Our Own Correspondent,” The Times (26 December 1873)
6. From the Annual Report on the Settlement of Port Blair and the Nicobars for the Year 1873–4 (1874)
7. From Edward Horace Man, On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (1884)
8. From Maurice Vidal Portman, A History of Our Relations with the Andamanese. Compiled from Histories and Travels, and from the Records of the Government of India (1899)

Appendix E: Contemporary Reviews

1. Anon., “Magazines for February,” Liverpool Mercury (5 February 1890)
2. Anon., “Notes on Novels,” Dublin Review (April 1890)
3. Anon., “Novels of the Week,” The Athenaeum (6 December 1890)
4. Anon., “New Novels,” The Academy (13 December 1890)
5. Anon., “A Batch of Novels,” Liverpool Mercury (24 December 1890)
6. Anon., “New Novels,” The Graphic (7 February 1891)
7. Anon., “Review of Books,” The Cape Illustrated Magazine (1 October 1894)
8. Anon., The Cape Illustrated Magazine (1 November 1894)
9. From Andrew Lang, “The Novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” The Quarterly Review (July 1904)

Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

In this erudite and provocative edition, Shafquat Towheed offers fans of both Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle an intricate account of the intertextual histories at the heart of The Sign of Four. Arguing for the inextricability of its colonial plots with its work as detective fiction, Towheed builds a persuasive case for The Sign of Four as Mutiny fiction, positioning it as pivotal to the imperial career of ‘British’ fiction per se. Readers of this edition will be gripped by the colonial pathways Towheed reveals, the politics of citation he uncovers, and the entanglement of home and empire he tracks in the making of the novel. This is postcolonial interpretation at its very best.” — Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

From the Publisher

"In this erudite and provocative edition, Shafquat Towheed offers fans of both Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle an intricate account of the intertextual histories at the heart of The Sign of Four. Arguing for the inextricability of its colonial plots with its work as detective fiction, Towheed builds a persuasive case for The Sign of Four as Mutiny fiction, positioning it as pivotal to the imperial career of 'British' fiction per se. Readers of this edition will be gripped by the colonial pathways Towheed reveals, the politics of citation he uncovers, and the entanglement of home and empire he tracks in the making of the novel. This is postcolonial interpretation at its very best."

Antoinette Burton University of Illinois

Naxos Audiobooks once again demonstrates impeccable casting by entrusting one of Conan Doyle's best Holmes mysteries to master narrator David Timson. Timson KNOWS Holmes and Watson. With just the right amount of flair, he allows Sherlock his idiosyncrasies without overdoing them, and his Watson is stodgily concerned about his friend's dangerous habits. Timson recounts an intriguing mystery dealing with Holmes's cocaine use, a young woman's receipt of a pearl a year after her father's disappearance, the legacy of a great treasure, and murder. He also creates a charming and believable character in Mary Morstan, the future Mrs. John Watson. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2014 - AudioFile