The Sign of the Four

Doyle opens the novel with a scene that was daring for its time: Holmes takes the syringe from the mantelpiece and injects a seven-per-cent solution of cocaine, while Watson says he has witnessed this three times a day for months and can bear it no longer. Holmes's reply reveals his whole character: 'My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work.' This opening presents Holmes as brilliant yet deeply human, struggling with boredom and addiction.

The heart of the first chapter is the famous watch scene. Holmes first deduces from the reddish dust on Watson's shoe that he has been to the Wigmore Street Post Office, and from the stamps and postcards on his desk that he sent a telegram: 'Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.' Then Watson hands him an old watch that recently came into his possession. From the scratches on it, the numbers pawnbrokers scratched with a pin and the unsteady marks around the keyhole, Holmes concludes that Watson's elder brother was careless, often short of money and finally took to drink. Watson's hurt, then admiration, gives the scene both drama and humour.

In the second chapter the young, plainly dressed Mary Morstan arrives, with her large blue eyes. Her father, Captain Morstan, came home on leave from India in 1878, took rooms at the Langham Hotel and disappeared on 3 December. Since 1882 she has received a rare pearl every year from an unknown sender, and now a letter summoning her to a meeting. Holmes's examination of the letter and envelopes, and his reply 'I did not observe' to Watson's exclamation 'What a very attractive woman!', skilfully show the contrast between the two men. Watson's budding feelings for Mary, and his self-deprecation as 'an army surgeon with a weak leg and a weaker banking account', start the novel's delicate romantic thread.

In the third chapter Holmes finds in old issues of The Times that Major Sholto died on 28 April 1882 and connects the dots: the pearls began arriving a week after Sholto's death. The mysterious paper found in the captain's desk — the plan of a large building, a red cross and the words 'The sign of the four — Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, Dost Akbar' — adds a new layer to the story. The carriage ride from the Lyceum to an unknown address on a foggy, muddy September evening, with Holmes naming the streets one by one in the dark, shows Doyle's mastery of atmosphere.

The fourth chapter introduces one of the novel's most entertaining characters, Thaddeus Sholto: a luxurious, Oriental-style room hidden inside a house in a poor district, a hookah, paintings by Corot and Bouguereau, and a bald young hypochondriac constantly worried about his mitral valve. His father's deathbed confession — Morstan's death from a heart attack, the hiding of the body, the 'Agra treasure' and a savage face at the window — sets up the novel's central mystery.

The Turkish translation reads smoothly and its explanatory notes (the jezail bullet, Beaune wine, Winwood Reade) are helpful. The novel is still very easy to read today; the only problem is the colonial outlook of its time — the Indian servants and, in later chapters, the portrayal of the Andaman islander may strike the modern reader as stereotypes.

• First-person narration by Watson
• Deduction scenes combined with the atmosphere of foggy London
• Humour and contrast of character in the Holmes–Watson dialogues
• Each chapter ends with a new mystery or character