I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 4, 2024] “The Red-Headed League”

The third story in this collection is one that I have heard of and that I know is significant in the canon.  But I didn’t know anything about it, which made reading it even more fun.

Like most stories, it starts with Watson coming over to Holmes’ place while he’s just meeting with a client.  He says he’s quite puzzled by this one.

Jabez Wilson is a man with red hair.  He owns a pawn shop and is not terribly busy these days.  He has a man working for him and the only way he can keep the man is because he accepts half pay.  The employee brought to Wilson’s attention an ad in the paper about the red-headed league.

The league has an endowment and they are looking for a new member to replace one who has left.  For 100 pounds a month, all you need to do is work for a few hours a week.  The line for interviews is very long, but Wilson has the perfect flame-red hair that gets him the gig.  His job is to copy the encyclopedia every day from 10-2.  He is not permitted to leave during those hours and he cannot miss a day or the gig is forfeited.

Pretty weird.

But why not.  He starts copying the volume of A.  And then a few days later, her returns to this hang out to see a note that says The Red-Headed League has disbanded.   When Wilson asks around, no one can tell him anything about the people who were renting the space.  Wilson comes to Holmes to find out what’s up.

Holmes laughs and says, you made a few pound and you learned some things from the encyclopedia, what’s the problem.

I assumed that this was going to be some kind of forgery scheme, since they’d probably have had him write every conceivable word after a few days.

But when Holmes goes to investigate the place he becomes aware of a potentially big undertaking going on.

I don’t want to give away too much except to say that the red-headed league was a ruse specifically designed to trap Wilson.  But it’s not for who he is or what he has to write.  It’s for the location of his shop.

For this case also concerns John Clay.  This name didn’t mean anything to me but Holmes says that Clay has escaped his detection for quite a long while.

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The four novels of the canon:

1. A Study in Scarlet (1887)
2. The Sign of the Four (1890)
3. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
4. The Valley of Fear (1915)

The 56 short stories are collected in five books:

1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
2. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
3. The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
4. His Last Bow (1917)
5. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) contains 12 stories published in The Strand between July 1891 and June 1892

1. “A Scandal in Bohemia” (June 1891)
2. “The Red-Headed League” (August 1891)
3. “A Case of Identity” (September 1891)
4. “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” (October 1891)
5. “The Five Orange Pips” (November 1891)
6. “The Man with the Twisted Lip” (December 1891)
7. “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (January 1892)
8. “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (February 1892)
9. “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb” (March 1892)
10. “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor” (April 1892)
11. “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” (May 1892)
12. “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” (June 1892)