“To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.”
Read the story. At four key moments, the text will pause — and you must play detective before continuing.
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888—I was returning from a journey to a patient, when my way led me through Baker Street. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.
His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner.
“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.”
I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. “When I hear you give your reasons,” I remarked, “the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.”
“Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an armchair. “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.”
“Frequently.”
“How often?”
“Well, some hundreds of times.”
“Then how many are there?”
“How many? I don’t know.”
Holmes has asked Watson how many steps lead up from the hall to their room at 221B Baker Street. Watson has climbed them hundreds of times — but cannot say.
How many steps do you think there are?
The answer is seventeen.
“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
He threw over a sheet of thick, pink-tinted notepaper which had been lying open upon the table. “It came by the last post,” said he. “Read it aloud.”
The note was undated, and without either signature or address. “There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o’clock,” it said, “a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment.”
Holmes deduced the paper was Bohemian, the writer German. “It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs,” he noted.
A slow and heavy step paused outside the door. Then there was a loud and authoritative tap. A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six inches in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. He wore across the upper part of his face a black vizard mask.
“You may address me as the Count Von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman,” he said.
A giant of a man in a mask calls himself “Count Von Kramm.” But Holmes has already deduced who he really is, from: the Bohemian paper, German turns of phrase, mention of “the reigning families of Europe,” and the absurd richness of his dress.
Who is he really?
He is Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of Bohemia.
“Your Majesty had not spoken before I was aware that I was addressing Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of Bohemia.”
The King confessed: five years ago he had an affair with the adventuress Irene Adler, and she possessed a compromising photograph of them both. He was about to marry the Princess of Scandinavia. The photograph must be recovered.
Holmes took the case. The next day, disguised as a groom, he reconnoitred Briony Lodge. He learned Irene had one frequent male visitor: a Mr. Godfrey Norton, of the Inner Temple. Then came the most preposterous moment: Holmes followed Adler and Norton to a church, was grabbed as a witness, and found himself “generally assisting in the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to Godfrey Norton, bachelor.”
That evening, Holmes devised his plan. Disguised as a clergyman, he staged a street brawl outside Briony Lodge to get inside. Watson was stationed at the window with a smoke-rocket.
“When I raise my hand — so — you will throw into the room what I give you to throw, and will, at the same time, raise the cry of fire.”
The compromising photograph is hidden somewhere in Briony Lodge. Burglars have already searched twice and found nothing. Holmes must make Irene reveal the hiding place herself.
Where would YOU search for it?
Holmes didn’t search at all. He staged a false fire — and she revealed it herself.
“When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. It is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have more than once taken advantage of it.”
The photograph was in a recess behind a sliding panel just above the right bell-pull. She rushed to it the instant the smoke-rocket went off.
Holmes was triumphant. He returned to Baker Street, certain he would retrieve the photograph the next morning. But when Holmes and the King arrived at Briony Lodge at eight o’clock, the sitting room was empty. The bird had flown. On a small table was a photograph — of Irene Adler herself, alone — and a letter addressed to Sherlock Holmes.
Irene Adler has vanished. She left behind a letter and a photograph — of herself alone, not the compromising one. She saw through Holmes’s disguise, followed him home in men’s clothes, and is gone.
What do you think she did with the compromising photograph?
She kept it — but only to protect herself. She gave her word never to use it.
“I love and am loved by a better man than he. The King may do what he will without hindrance from one whom he has cruelly wronged. I keep it only to safeguard myself, and to preserve a weapon which will always secure me from any steps which he might take in the future.”
She signed: “IRENE NORTON, nÊe ADLER.”
Final Score: 0 pts
“And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.”
Click each card to reveal the key quote. Piece together the case.
The Woman — Opera singer, adventuress, the one who got away
“She has the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men.”
Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein — The client
“I was mad—insane.” … “I tell you that I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom to have that photograph.”
Barrister of the Inner Temple — Irene’s husband
“He is dark, handsome, and dashing, never calls less than once a day, and often twice.”
Cabinet-sized — Hidden behind a sliding panel above the right bell-pull
“We were both in the photograph.” — “Oh, dear! That is very bad! Your Majesty has indeed committed an indiscretion.”
Serpentine Avenue, St. John’s Wood — Irene Adler’s residence
“It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in front right up to the road, two stories.”
Holmes & Watson’s lodgings — Seventeen steps up
“I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
Scrub through the key events of “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
A masked giant arrives at 221B with a compromising photograph problem.
Disguised as a groom, Holmes surveys Briony Lodge and learns about Godfrey Norton.
Holmes accidentally serves as the wedding witness for Irene Adler and Godfrey Norton.
As a clergyman, Holmes stages a brawl, gets inside, and Watson throws the smoke-rocket.
Irene rushes to save the photo — a recess behind a sliding panel above the bell-pull.
Irene has fled with her husband, leaving a letter and her own photograph behind.
You’ve played 3 cases. There are nine more — from “The Red-Headed League” to “The Devil’s Foot” — in one beautifully typeset EPUB.