The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez E-Book

Arthur Conan Doyle

• Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 42

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Sherlock Holmes is called to investigate the mysterious murder of a college professor's secretary, found dead in a locked study with no sign of forced entry. The only clue is a pair of golden pince-nez glasses left behind at the scene. As Holmes follows the trail, he uncovers a story of revolutionary politics, lost love, and hidden identity. With subtle observation and deduction, he solves a case where the motive is buried deep in the past — and justice is more complex than it first appears.

Leseprobe

The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez

Arthur Conan Doyle

SYNOPSIS

Sherlock Holmes is called to investigate the mysterious murder of a college professor’s secretary, found dead in a locked study with no sign of forced entry. The only clue is a pair of golden pince-nez glasses left behind at the scene. As Holmes follows the trail, he uncovers a story of revolutionary politics, lost love, and hidden identity. With subtle observation and deduction, he solves a case where the motive is buried deep in the past — and justice is more complex than it first appears.

Keywords

Murder Mystery, Political Exile, Hidden Identity

NOTICE

This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given the evolution in social norms and in our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.

Names from foreign languages will be preserved in their original form, with no translation.

The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez

When I look at the three massive manuscript volumes which contain our work for the year 1894, 1 confess that it is very difficult for me, out of such a wealth of material, to select the cases which are most interesting in themselves, and at the same time most conducive to a display of those peculiar powers for which my friend was famous. As I turn over the pages, I see my notes upon the repulsive story of the red leech and the terrible death of Crosby, the banker. Here also I find an account of the Addleton tragedy, and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow. The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin—an exploit which won for Holmes an autograph letter of thanks from the French President and the Order of the Legion of Honor. Each of these would furnish a narrative, but on the whole I am of opinion that none of them unites so many singular points of interest as the episode of Yoxley Old Place, which includes not only the lamentable death of young Willoughby Smith, but also those subsequent developments which threw so curious a light upon the causes of the crime.

It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November. Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon surgery. Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man's handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement. A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end.

“Well, Watson, it's as well we have not to turn out tonight,” said Holmes, laying aside his lens and rolling up the palimpsest.

“I've done enough for one sitting. It is trying work for the eyes. So far as I can make out, it is nothing more exciting than an Abbey's accounts dating from the second half of the fifteenth century. Halloa! halloa! halloa! What's this?”

Amid the droning of the wind there had come the stamping of a horse's hoofs, and the long grind of a wheel as it rasped against the curb. The cab which I had seen had pulled up at our door.

“What can he want?” I ejaculated, as a man stepped out of it.

“Want? He wants us. And we, my poor Watson, want over-coats and cravats and goloshes, and every aid that man ever invented to fight the weather. Wait a bit, though! There's the cab off again! There's hope yet. He'd have kept it if he had wanted us to come. Run down, my dear fellow, and open the door, for all virtuous folk have been long in bed.”

When the light of the hall lamp fell upon our midnight visitor, I had no difficulty in recognizing him. It was young Stanley Hopkins, a promising detective, in whose career Holmes had several times shown a very practical interest.

“Is he in?” he asked, eagerly.

“Come up, my dear sir,” said Holmes' voice from above. “I hope you have no designs upon us such a night as this.”

The detective mounted the stairs, and our lamp gleamed upon his shining waterproof. I helped him out of it, while Holmes knocked a blaze out of the logs in the grate.

“Now, my dear Hopkins, draw up and warm your toes,” said he. “Here's a cigar, and the doctor has a prescription containing hot water and a lemon, which is good medicine on a night like this. It must be something important which has brought you out in such a gale.”

“It is indeed, Mr. Holmes. I've had a bustling afternoon, I promise you. Did you see anything of the Yoxley case in the latest editions?”