The red-headed league

Mr Jabez Wilson, a pawnbroker, comes to Holmes with a unique case ! Two months ago, his new assistant, Vincent Spaulding, showed him an advertisement : the "red-headed league", founded by a millionaire, had a vacancy : it offered a good pay to any man, Londoner, with a rich tint of hairs...

Encouraged by his assistant, Mr Wilson takes a chance. As soon as he enters the office where the selection takes place, he gets the job, regardless to all other applicants waiting outside. The duty is simple: he just have to sit in the office between ten and two. He must not leave, under any excuse ! He has to copy the "Encyclopedia Britannica".

For eight weeks, Mr Wilson copies all A articles. Then, suddenly, the business ends. The door is shut, and a cardboard announces that the red-headed league has been dissolved.

In this story, we have a good example of what Watson calls "the dual nature" of Holmes: he may be deeply depressed when his mind is idle, and becomes at once full of energy when he has got a case to solve. He especially enjoys the chase !

But it also gives an illustration of what is a bit odd for "modern" readers in Doyle's style; he does not give all the clues to make a deduction by ourselves. "I had seen what he had seen", says Watson. Not us ! 

For example, we may "deduce" rather easily that Mr Wilson is naïve and that there is a scam to attract him out of his home. But Holmes observes something in his street -we do not know what. At the end of the story, it turns out that the building facing Mr Wilson's house was a bank! How different...

Later, Agatha Christie and other authors improved that little flaw in the style. But Doyle can be credited of many other advances in the science of writing a detective novel !

Characters : Jabez Wilson; Peter Jones, of Scotland Yard (the same as "Athelney Jones" ?); Mr Merryweather, a bank director; An accomplice whose false names are Duncan Ross and William Morris; and John Clay, aka Vincent Spaulding, "murderer, thief, smasher and forger"; clever and nimble, he is noble-born and has been educated at the best schools.