Seventeen Steps to "The Yellow Face"

Seventeen thoughts for further ponderance of "The Yellow Face" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

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THE STORY THAT COMES WITH A DISCLAIMER
The bracketed paragraph that introduces this story is an interesting commentary on what Watson thought of this story. The good doctor had published tales of Holmes failing before now (“A Scandal in Bohemia” and “Speckled Band” come quickly to mind), but with this one he feels he needs to warn the reader of Holmes’s impending failure. Why does Watson feel he needs to explain this one and not any before it? If a story has “features of interest,” as he says, shouldn’t his readers be able to pick that up on their own?
Was Watson showing signs that he thought this was a poorer quality story over all?
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THE SHERLOCK HOLMES EXERCISE PLAN
In the beginning of this tale, Watson gives us a brief summary of Holmes’s physical abilities (as strong as can be) and his training regimen (non-existent). Are we to believe that Holmes could perform feats of strength like bending fireplace pokers, not due to training but due to sheer force of will by that mighty brain? Or was all Holmes’s training and boxing practice done in his youth, giving him enough residual ability that he didn’t seem to need training during his time with Watson? Any theories?
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THE NEW WATSON -- SOFT ON DRUGS?
Earlier in the stories, in “The Sign of the Four,” Watson shows a strong disdain for Holmes’s drug use. Now the doctor is mentioning it with a much milder statement: “Save for the occasional use of cocaine, he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the monotony of existence when cases were scanty and the papers uninteresting.”
Is this change due to the fact Watson thought Holmes was dead when he wrote this tale, softening up the more sordid aspects of Holmes so as not to speak ill of the dead? Or is this a more realistic view of Holmes’s drug experimentation, not flavored with the irritation one harbors toward a room-mate’s bad habits that Watson may have felt while writing SIGN?
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FREE CHESTNUTS?
Watson speaks of the chestnut leaves starting to emerge during their walk in the park. When these trees eventually started producing chestnuts on public grounds, who collected said chestnuts for roasting? Anyone who cared to?
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HOLMES THE PIPE-LOVER
Sherlock Holmes’s fondness for pipes is displayed clearly in YELL as he rambles on about Grant Munro’s abandoned pipe: “A nice old brier with a good long stem of what the tobacconists call amber. I wonder how many real amber mouthpieces there are in London? Some people think that a fly in it is a sign.”
Before he even thinks of making deductions, he’s wondering about real amber and speaking of its lore. This time, instead of giving us data, he’s giving us questions, too. Just how many real amber mouthpieces might there have been in London at that time? And what exactly is a fly in the amber a sign of?
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MUNRO THE PIPE-HATER
We are told Grant Munro cares enough for his old seven-shilling pipe to get it repaired time and again. Yet he’s in the habit of lighting it off of lamps and gas-jets, which chars the thing all along one side of the bowl. Would a man who really cared about his pipe constantly hold it in a flame like that? How hard was it to carry matches or a lighter along in those days?
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IS THERE SOMETHING GRANT’S NOT TELLING US?
“It seems dreadful to discuss the conduct of one's wife with two men whom I have never seen before,” a disturbed Grant Munro tells us at the outset. But as the story goes on, it gets harder and harder to see what he was talking about. One of these “men” was surely the yellow-faced person he saw at the window, but who was the other? Was the housekeeper’s face that harsh and forbidding that Munro thought of her as a man? Or is there some other tale of Effie and a couple of totally different guys that we never get to hear?
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THE BURNING OF ATLANTA
“There was a great fire at Atlanta very shortly after his death, and all her papers were destroyed.”
Poor Effie Hebron. First her husband dies of yellow fever, then all of her belongings are destroyed by fire. But was the fire just a story Effie used to cover all the belongings she left behind with her child? Or was i merely a fireplace blaze, and she destroyed the papers herself? How much does this oh-so convenient fire damage her credibility on other matters?
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CUTTING HERSELF OFF 
“I cut myself off from my race in order to wed him,” Effie says of John Hebron. But does she actually mean “my race” or “my family”? The nationality and description of her child’s nurse seems to indicate that Effie hadn’t cut herself off entirely from her race. And who was it that young Effie went to America with to begin with? Was her own family part of what sickened her about America, leaving her to flee to a sympathetic aunt?
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THE AGE OF ABANDONMENT
We meet Effie Munro’s little girl at the end of the story, and she is described as just that “a little girl.” How old was Effie’s child, and how old was she three years ago when her mother left her behind? Would she have been more likely to abandon an infant who could not yet speak than to have abandoned a child who was old enough to ask “why”?
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MAY-DECEMBER MARRIAGES IN ATLANTA
“Her husband had left her comfortably off . . . she had a capital of about four thousand five hundred pounds.”
Doing a quick calculation using Chris Redmond’s web page equation of roughly $100 in current U.S. funds to every Canonical pound, this means Effie’s late husband was worth about $450,000. As Effie was only about 24 years old when John Hebron died, she could not have been much past twenty when she met him. But how old was Hebron? While the couple’s racial difference lies at the heart of this tale, what of the couple’s age difference? How old would an Atlanta lawyer have to be to have a bankroll equivalent to a half million in modern American dollars? Was Hebron a *much* older man?
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AND WHILE WE’RE ON HEBRON’S BANKROLL . . .
Less than twenty years after the American Civil War, we find John Hebron, an African-American lawyer in Atlanta with a lot of money. While it was a time of change and dramatic change at that, could we expect any local in post-war Atlanta to rise so quickly? Or is his wealth an indication that Hebron came to America from somewhere in Europe or the Northern U.S. when the war was over, trying to either help out or take advantage of the situation?
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WHERE DID ALL THAT MONEY GO?
“I am a hop merchant myself, and as I have an income of seven or eight hundred, we found ourselves comfortably off and took a nice eighty-pound-a-year villa at Norbury.”
When you calculate the combined income of the Munros at well over a thousand pounds a year, they seem to have quite a bit of money to play with. Their eighty-pounds-a-year villa almost seems economical when looked at next to their income. Were the Munros saving the lion’s share of their income? Given the money-wise part of Effie’s first husband’s character, would we expect anything less of her choice in a second husband?
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AN HOUR AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE
The distraught Grant Munro winds up walking to the Crystal Palace, and there spends an hour on the grounds. What might he have done during that hour? Lunchtime was nearing, what might Munro have found to eat in that area if he hadn’t lost his appetite?
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THE YELLOW FACE ITSELF
Holmes “peels” the yellow face mask off of the little Hebron girl. Does this mean it was made of rubber, or some other material that would have kept it flexible and close to her face? Were masks at the time made of rubber, paper, paper mache, or another material?
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HOW MUCH MONEY DID THE NURSE HAVE?
Grant Munro is fairly specific about how much Effie was worth when he married her. But was a portion of Effie’s money left with the nurse to care for her daughter? How did the child and the nurse get by? Were the surviving members of John Hebron’s family involved in that three year period?
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WHY DID HOLMES TAKE THIS ONE SO HARD?
Like Watson in his explanatory words at the case’s beginning, Holmes seems greatly bothered by his performance in this case, telling his friend, "if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you."
Would anyone accuse Holmes of giving this case less than it deserved? Was there anything he could have done to have caused a happier outcome? 
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The Seventeen Steps originally appeared on the Hounds of the Internet e-list from September 2000 to October 2001.

Seventeen Steps to "Wisteria Lodge"

Seventeen thoughts for further ponderance of "Wisteria Lodge" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

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THE POLLYANNA OF DETECTIVES
“Audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world,” bemoans Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,” sounding like a Raffles fan who just watched an episode of “COPS.”
Isn’t this view a bit dreamy for a man who has dealt with very real, very vicious criminals for a decade? Was the criminal world ever romantic outside of fiction?
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THE MASTER AND HIS CLASS
“Private detectives are a class with whom I have absolutely no sympathy,” states Scott Eccles.
What would a common, conservative citizen of 1892 know of private detectives as a class? Would we expect a fellow like Eccles to encounter on in everyday life?
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THE BACKWARDS WATSONIAN STORYTELLER
“You are like my friend, Dr. Watson,” Holmes tells Eccles, “who has a bad habit of telling his stories wrong end foremost.”
Was Holmes speaking of Watson’s written work, or merely his habits in daily conversation? Is the Canon told “wrong end first”?
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DINING HEAD-TO-HEAD
“Our dinner was tete-a-tete,” Scott Eccles tells of his visit to Garcia.
What was Eccles expecting it to be? Had Garcia led him to believe it was going to be a party? Why was a private meal with one’s host worth remarking about?
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THE ADMIRABLE MR. BAYNES
“A woman, as usual, was at the bottom of it,” Baynes comments after his admirable display in finding the discarded note. 
For all his promise as a detective, does Baynes also display some heavy shortcomings like a prejudice against women?
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PETTY CASH ON BAKER STREET
"You will show these gentlemen out, Mrs. Hudson, and kindly send the boy with this telegram. He is to pay a five-shilling reply."
Holmes doesn’t hand Mrs. Hudson five shillings to pay for that reply, so where is she getting the money? A standing cash reservoir that Holmes supplies, or would she be expected to use her own money, keep a record, and bill him later?
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THE ADVENTURES OF ANOTHER COWARDLY CONSTABLE
Walters shivers: “And the look of it--the great staring goggle eyes, and the line of white teeth like a hungry beast. I tell you, sir, I couldn't move a finger, nor get my breath, till it whisked away and was gone. Out I ran and through the shrubbery, but thank God there was no one there.”
Would Walters have been carrying a gun for his vigil? Why was he so spooked by a dead chicken, when nobody in the area seemed up on voodoo? 
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AND NEXT, HIS MONOGRAPH ON SHOE SIZES
“"Yes," Holmes reports, after a short examination of the grass bed, "a number twelve shoe, I should say.”
How might Holmes have been gauging shoe sizes at the scene of the crime without a measuring device? Did he have a method, or was he just using guesswork specifics to make himself sound more skilled?
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EL MARIACHI, 1892 STYLE
“Odds and ends, some pipes, a few novels, two of them in Spanish, an old-fashioned pinfire revolver, and a guitar were among the personal property.”
Was the guitar a particularly Spanish instrument in 1892? Where would one expect to commonly find one in English life of that period?
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THE BAYNES SYSTEM OF CRIME SOLVING
“But we all have our own systems, Mr. Holmes. You have yours, and maybe I have mine,” Baynes explains once he has captured the mulatto cook.
What methods did Baynes plan to use at this point? He had captured his suspect . . . was he going to use extreme measures on his prisoner?
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AH, THE LEISURELY SERVANT LIFE!
“For the rest, his house is full of butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the usual overfed, underworked staff of a large English country-house.”
What percentage of the servant class was Holmes referring to here? Did they really have it that easy, or is this Holmes displaying a slight prejudice from his past?
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THOSE SAVAGES AND THEIR FILTHY DEITIES
From “Eckermann's Voodooism and the Negroid Religions” we hear:
“The true voodoo-worshipper attempts nothing of importance without certain sacrifices which are intended to propitiate his unclean gods. In extreme cases these rites take the form of human sacrifices followed by cannibalism. The more usual victims are a white cock, which is plucked in pieces alive, or a black goat, whose throat is cut and body burned.”
Okay, that’s the aloof Victorian view of one man’s religion. What was the cook attempting from his point of view? Did his arcane rites have some purpose in voodoo traditions other than the general appeasement of angry gods?
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DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN PEDRO?
Based on the scan information we have in this tale, would anyone care to hazard some speculation as to where, exactly, San Pedro was? (And while we’re at it, where did the voodoo-loving cook come from? The “backwoods of San Pedro”? How about New Orleans, serving up Cajun or Creole food? Or Haiti, serving up whatever Haitian specialties there are?)
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LIKE PUTTING YOUR NAME ON A MARQUEE
“Some six months afterwards the Marquess of Montalva and Signor Rulli, his secretary, were both murdered in their rooms at the Hotel Escurial at Madrid.”
Mr. Henderson of High Gable seems to be a low profile sort of guy, with good reason. Wouldn’t people be more likely to wonder about the background and credentials of supposed nobility, than a “Mr. Henderson”? Could someone just waltz into Madrid claiming they were a marquis? Why would Don Murillo make such a move?
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THE COLORS OF REVOLUTION?
“If you look it up you will find that the San Pedro colours are green and white,” Miss Burnet explains.
Wouldn’t the colours of a country whose dictator deserved an obsessive quest for vengeance be just the thing they wouldn’t be wanting to use? Or did these colors come into use after dictator Don Murillo was gone? 
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THE TELL-TALE SIGNS ON THE BODY
Miss Burnet explains, “I was confined to my room, terrorized by the most horrible threats, cruelly ill-used to break my spirit--see this stab on my shoulder and the bruises from end to end of my arms.”
Burnet was seriously abused, to be sure. But what sort of abuse leaves bruises all along her arms, end to end? Would grabbing alone do such damage?
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VENGEANCE OF A VOODO PRIEST
“Knowing that he would return there, Garcia, who is the son of the former highest dignitary in San Pedro, was waiting with two trusty companions of humble station, all three fired with the same reasons for revenge.”
So if Garcia picked up his cook in his travels, why was the cook so fired up about revenge on Don Murillo? Did he really have any part in this aside from cooking? 
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The Seventeen Steps originally appeared on the Hounds of the Internet e-list from September 2000 to October 2001.

Seventeen Steps to "The Veiled Lodger"

Seventeen thoughts for further ponderance of "The Veiled Lodger" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

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FORGET THE TIN DISPATCH BOX, I’LL TAKE THIS COLLECTION!
Watson writes, “There is the long row of year-books which fill a shelf, and there are the dispatch-cases filled with documents, a perfect quarry for the student not only of crime but of the social and official scandals of the late Victorian era.”
Up until now we’ve been hearing a lot about Watson’s single tin dispatch box, but now he’s talking about “dispatch-cases” and a “long row of year-books” (which would, by itself, solve many a chronological problem). Whose materials were these? What made the tin dispatch box material different from this massive reference?
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THE RETURN OF A PESKY POLITICIAN?
“I deprecate, however, in the strongest way the attempts which have been made lately to get at and to destroy these papers. The source of these outrages is known, and if they are repeated I have Mr. Holmes's authority for saying that the whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant will be given to the public. There is at least one reader who will understand.”
As “Veiled Lodger” appeared in January of 1927, can we use that date as a clue as to who might have been harassing Watson in 1926 regarding the long-passed lighthouse/cormorant scandal, perhaps someone whose career had just taken a turn for the better? Can we take this statement as a sign that Watson was alive and still in contact with Holmes in 1926?
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WATSON’S MOTIVES FOR THE WRITING
“But the most terrible human tragedies were often involved in those cases which brought him the fewest personal opportunities, and it is one of these which I now desire to record.”
Watson has already told us that he has a massive amount of material to choose from, but he desires to record this particular story, a tale about “an example of patient suffering,” as Holmes later puts it. Was Watson relating this tale due to some occurence in his personal life, perhaps for a friend or relative (or offspring!) who now needed such a lesson? Or could this tale somehow be a message for the same person who wanted the lighthouse papers?
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SHERLOCK HOLMES, NON-SMOKER?
"Mrs. Merrilow does not object to tobacco, Watson, if you wish to indulge your filthy habits,” Holmes jibes in the beginning of this case. This seems just another of the detective’s little pokes at Watson (especially given the smoke-filled room he says it in), but it makes one wonder if Sherlock Holmes actually did ever quit smoking for a time. Might Holmes have tried to give up smoking as a part of some self-betterment campaign in the 1890s? Do we have any records of smokers trying to quit from that era?
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TWO NOT-SO-FAITHFUL HOLMES READERS
“Well,” Mrs. Merrilow says to Mrs. Ronder, “if you won't have the regulars, there is this detective man what we read about.”
The two ladies have obviously been sharing the same literature in the house library -- but it’s 1896, three years after “Final Problem” first saw print and seven years before “Empty House” was released. Why don’t they think Holmes is dead? Would a lot of people at that time have read “Adventures” but not “Memoirs”? Or had Holmes’s return finally made it into the newspapers? Mrs. Ronder tells Holmes she has followed his work for “some years.” Does that make her sound like a reader of the Strand, or the book collections of the tales?
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WHEN WATSON MEETS THE BUDDHA ON THE ROAD . . .
The good doctor writes: “So excited was he that he did not rise, but sat upon the floor like some strange Buddha, with crossed legs . . .
How would a Victorian Englishman like Watson have been most familiar with Buddha? Would he know much of Buddhism, or know simply of the little figurines from some Oriental decor fad?
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AND SOMETIMES WATSON DIDN’T TAKE NOTES
"You may well say so. And yet there were one or two points which worried young Edmunds, of the Berkshire Constabulary. A smart lad that! He was sent later to Allahabad. That was how I came into the matter, for he dropped in and smoked a pipe or two over it."
"A thin, yellow-haired man?"
"Exactly. I was sure you would pick up the trail presently." 
Can we assume from the above exchange, as well as Holmes’s words, “You were with me then,” that Watson was present for the initial Abbas Parva conversation with Edmunds? Was a social evening with an investigator from the official force so commonplace that Watson didn’t even bother keeping notes on such casual case discussions?
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SHERLOCK BREAKS FOR LUNCH
After talking with Mrs. Merrilow and refreshing his memory of the case, Holmes says, “There is a cold partridge on the sideboard, Watson, and a bottle of Montrachet. Let us renew our energies before we make a fresh call upon them."
Would this be a commonplace lunch for the detective, or had he called upon Mrs. Hudson to do something special for Watson’s visit?
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RICH MAN’S JUSTICE, 1880S EDITION
Of Ronder, we learn: “Again and again he was had up for assault, and for cruelty to the beasts, but he had plenty of money and the fines were nothing to him.”
Fines for cruelty to animals don’t seem unusual, but for repeated assaults? Could Ronder get off easily from “murderous” drunken rages in which he badly beat people just by flashing the cash? Was tying your wife down and beating her with a riding whip so easy for a rich man to get away with?
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AND THEN THERE’S ALWAYS LEAVING . . .
The nightmare that Mrs. Ronder describes as her life is a terrible one, and her love affair with the strong man was her one escape. So why didn’t Mrs. Ronder and Leonardo actually escape and go look for work with another circus, as so many others from Ronder’s had? Working for a travelling circus was not the most stable, stuck-in-one-place life anyway, so why not hit the road, especially with all of Ronder’s tortures? Wouldn’t escape be easier than murder?
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THE MANNER OF THE LION’S ATTACK
As a creature operating on pure instinct, even in the heat of the blood lust described by Mrs. Ronder, why would a lion go for a person’s upper face? Mrs. Ronder’s chin and mouth seem unmarked, so the throat was not Sahara King’s target. Wouldn’t a lion stike first with his front claws, as Eugenia and Leonardo had hoped to imitate? Why bite her head?
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THE VICTIMIZATION OF EUGENIA RONDER
“I never saw him or heard from him again. Perhaps I have been wrong to feel so bitterly against him.”
After years of abuse from Ronder, Eugenia even blames herself for Leonardo’s betrayal and faithlessness, loving the strong man even in her seclusion. Would a woman of that period had any resources other than her own strength of character for pulling out of such a downward spiral?
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THE REACH OF THE TIMES AND ITS KIN
"He was drowned last month when bathing near Margate. I saw his death in
the paper."
Margate is a goodly distance from London -- would every drowning at the beach there make the London papers, or was Mrs. Ronder reading some other papers? Would a strong man be enough of a celebrity to make his death more newsworthy?
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THE SEA’S LAST EXECUTION
Leonardo’s drowning is the last in a long line of Canoncial folk who receive their just desserts from the sea itself. In fact, it almost seems like Sherlock Holmes sometimes has some mystic tie to a great sea beast who cleans up loose ends for him. Is there something symbolic in Holmes’s killing of the strange sea creature of “The Lion’s Mane” as the last recorded case of his private career, perhaps showing a break between Holmes and the executioner of Leonardo and John Openshaw?
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WATSON GIVES UP BEAUTIFUL WOMEN
After years of describing attractive women to us, Watson ends his run with this description of Eugenia Ronder’s face, “It was horrible. No words can describe the framework of a face when the face itself is gone. Two living and beautiful brown eyes looking sadly out from that grisly ruin did but make the view more awful.”
Earlier in the tale, Watson has praised Eugenia’s mouth and chin as they showed under the masked portion of her face. Her eyes also seem to both be in one piece. Yet he says her face is “gone.” What’s left of a face when you eliminate the mouth, chin, and eyes are the nose and eyebrows -- but how does a lion bite the nose and eyebrows without doing damage to the eyes? Would as much damage have been done to Eugenia’s face by infection, as the the actual bite?
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TIME TO HEAL, AND MORE TIME TO HEAL
“It was six months before she was fit to give evidence,” Holmes says of Mrs. Ronder’s recovery. Surely her physical recovery would have been quicker than that, wouldn’t it? Is he speaking of mental recovery, of was Mrs. Ronder simply putting off the questioning by drawing her convalescence out?
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CHOOSE YOUR POISON AND SEND IT TO HOLMES
“Two days later, when I called upon my friend, he pointed with some pride
to a small blue bottle upon his mantelpiece.”
Mrs. Ronder had planned to kill herself with that small blue bottle of prussic acid. Was it the best choice for suicide in 1896? When non-suicidal people went into the store to buy a small blue bottle of prussic acid, what did they usually use it for? 
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The Seventeen Steps originally appeared on the Hounds of the Internet e-list from September 2000 to October 2001.

Seventeen Steps to "The Valley of Fear"

Seventeen thoughts for further ponderance of The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

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THE FAME OF PROFESSOR MORIARTY
Watson calls Professor Moriarty “The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as . . . he is unknown to the public.”
How does one manage fame among criminals, yet stay unknown to the public? Surely criminals are the most untrustworthy, sell-their-mothers-for-a-price, hard-drinking, dim-witted blabbermouths on the face of the planet, are they not? Is Watson completely off base here, or is such undercover fame possible?
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MACDONALD’S MANY QUESTIONS 
“Twice already in his career had Holmes helped him to attain success, his own sole reward being the intellectual joy of the problem. For this reason the affection and respect of the Scotchman for his amateur colleague were profound, and he showed them by the frankness with which he consulted Holmes in every difficulty.” 
Wait a minute . . . Inspector MacDonald consults Holmes “in every difficulty,” yet Holmes has only helped him to attain success twice? Is this an indication that Holmes’s track record with the Yard is much over-estimated by his fans? 
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PROFESSOR OR EX-PROFESSOR?
Throughout the opening chapters of VALL, we hear of Moriarty referred to as a professor. Yet in “The Final Problem,” Holmes calls him “ex-Professor Moriarty,” telling how he lost his University job and has become an army coach in London. Which job is Moriarty holding at the time of this story? Have the “dark rumors” come up at this time to cost him his first job?
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MORIARTY’S CURIOUS CHECKING ACCOUNTS
Holmes says, “I made it my business to hunt down some of Moriarty's checks lately--just common innocent checks that he pays his household bills with. They were drawn on six different banks. Does that make any impression on your mind?”
Okay, so Moriarty’s hiding a lot of money. But why would he pay his everyday household bills from six different accounts, especially if he was trying to keep a low profile? Wouldn’t he just keep one modest account for that purpose?
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MILK IMPORTED FROM SUSSEX
“The inspector was himself dependent, as he explained to us, upon a scribbled account forwarded to him by the milk train in the early hours of the morning.”
When Holmes and Watson were serving Thorneycroft Huxtable milk and cookies in “Priory School,” how far away did the milk come from, and how fresh was the milk? The early morning milk train of VALL evokes legions of Sussex milkmaids milking their cows in the middle of the night, then rushing the big milk cans to the depot to get the milk to London in time for the morning milk deliveries. Is that anywhere close to the actual timetable of milk in motion? 
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THE SOCIAL LIFE IN BIRLSTONE
In describing the way fifty-year-old John Douglas became popular in Birlstone, Watson reports a social schedule that seems slightly cryptic to the modern American. Douglas was “subscribing handsomely to all local objects, and attending their smoking concerts and other functions.” We also read: “Though a wretched rider, he turned out at every meet, and took the most amazing falls in his determination to hold his own with the best.”
Local objects? Smoking concerts? Riding at meets? Whatever these things are, it sounds like John is being quite socially proactive. On the other hand, is wife is not so lucky:
“His wife, too, was popular with those who had made her acquaintance; though, after the English fashion, the callers upon a stranger who settled in the county without introductions were few and far between.”
The husband gads about while the wife sits at home waiting for callers? What’s this telling us about Victorian social conventions?
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A WEAPON FOR ASSASSINATION
“Lying across his chest was a curious weapon, a shotgun with the barrel sawed off a foot in front of the triggers. . . . The triggers had been wired together, so as to make the simultaneous discharge more destructive.”
As we see in this tale, the sawed-off, double-barrelled shotgun is a devastating weapon. Would such a gun be altered as above for any reason except murder? While one might consider sawing off a gun for a defensive weapon, does wiring the triggers together imply that the bearer knows exactly how many targets he’ll be shooting at in advance, and thus make it more specifically a murder weapon?
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ONE MORE CHEST OF FACTS IN THE BRAIN-ATTIC
White Mason asks Holmes, “Do you carry the names of all the gun makers in the world in your memory?" Holmes waves off the question, but Mason does seem impressed with the detective’s identification of the handiwork of the Pennsylvania Small Arms Company. Still, we have to wonder about the answer to Mason’s question: could Holmes have conceivably known the names of all the gun makers? How many were there worldwide in the 1880s?
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THE AMAZING CHANDOS!
Perhaps it’s a trivial thing, there’s a name in this tale that strikes me a bit odd. The former employer of Ames the butler is Sir Charles Chandos, the title and first name of which sound very British . . . but Chandos? Where might the Chandos line have hailed from? Is it the name one would expect of a country squire, or more something for a foreign mesmerist?
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SO WATSON IS WRITING A BOOK, EH?
"I am sure we are honoured by your presence and to show you all we know," White Mason says to Holmes and Watson, following it with: "Come along, Dr. Watson, and when the time comes we'll all hope for a place in your book."
According to an earlier chapter, this is late in the 1880s, a time at which Watson had only published “A Study in Scarlet,” and hadn’t really hit his great literary fame. Yet Mason knows Watson is writing “a book.” Was Watson taking notes on Holmes’s cases at that point with the idea of collecting them all into a book? Why didn’t VALL wind up in “Adventures” or “Memoirs” if such was the case?
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A MAN AND HIS BICYCLE
Of the villain’s bicycle, we learn: “It was a well used Rudge-Whitworth, splashed as from a considerable journey. There was a saddlebag with spanner and oilcan, but no clue as to the owner.”
No clue? Surely a student of Sherlock Holmes would argue that every well-used object bears some indications as to its owner. What can we tell from these few details of the bicycle? Also, “A cycle map of the county lay on his bedroom table.” What would have made a cycle map different from a normal map? Were there trails specifically for bicycles in those days?
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BUY A YELLOW COAT, GO ON A CRIME SPREE!
Of the suspected murderer, Inspector MacDonald reports: "He is at present reported from Leicester, Nottingham, Southampton, Derby, East Ham, Richmond, and fourteen other places. In three of them--East Ham, Leicester, and Liverpool--there is a clear case against him, and he has actually been arrested. The country seems to be full of the fugitives with yellow coats."
Why all the yellow coats? Was yellow in particular fashion in late 1880s Victorian England? And when MacDonald says “there is a clear case against him,” does he mean a case for the Douglas murder, or a case for some other crime? Why would ne’er-do-wells favor this yellow coat fashion? Could Moriarty have been planning a “Yellow Coat Murder Special” day, in which he flooded the country with yellow-coated assassins and red herrings to cause confusion and cover-ups nationwide? (With Porlock getting Sherlock conveniently out of town as it begins.)
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THE AMERICAN IN THE TOURIST SITE
Holmes announces he has read “a short but clear and interesting account of the old building, purchasable at the modest sum of one penny from the local tobacconist," which turns out to be “a small tract, embellished with a rude engraving of the ancient Manor House.”
Was it normal for an inhabited home to have tourist-type brochures about it at a local business? Was Birlstone the seat of a nice tourist trade, to make such a brochure worthwhile? How would such an esteemed edifice fall so easily into the hands of a newcomer from America?
*******************
THE FAMOUS FACE OF DR. WATSON
John Douglas appears from nowhere, looks at everyone, then hands Watson a bundle of paper.
"I've heard of you," he then says. "You are the historian of this bunch. Well, Dr. Watson, you've never had such a story as that pass through your hands before . . . . Tell it your own way; but there are the facts, and you can't miss the public so long as you have those. I've been cooped up two days, and I've spent the daylight hours-- as much daylight as I could get in that rat trap--in putting the thing into words. You're welcome to them--you and your public. There's the story of the Valley of Fear."
Wait a minute . . . Watson is so famous that not only does Douglas recognize him on sight, he also hands him the details of the case so he can write it up? Watson’s true fame didn’t come until after Moriarty’s death, didn’t it? How did Douglas know so much about the literary doctor?
*******************
THE WICKED THINGS HE DID IN HIS BEDROOM
“In his bedroom at his new abode McMurdo felt it safe to take out the coining moulds, and under many a pledge of secrecy a number of brothers from the lodge were allowed to come in and see them, each carrying away in his pocket some examples of the false money, so cunningly struck that there was never the slightest difficulty or danger in passing it.”
Is making counterfeit coins on one’s bedroom a feasible endeavor? What coins would McMurdo have been making, and what metals might he have used to make them with? Wouldn’t his landlord have complained about the smell or mess? (He says, “I was helping Uncle Sam to make dollars. Maybe mine were not as good gold as his, but they looked as well and were cheaper to make.” But wouldn’t twenty-dollar gold pieces have been better still?)
*******************
THE RITUAL TOAST OF THE SCOWRERS
When it comes time for McMurdo and Baldwin to kiss and make up, Boss McGinty says, “"Let us drink the quarrelling toast of the lodge. After that, as you know, there can be no bad blood between us.”
The toast, apparently, goes like this. You put your left hand around your Adam’s apple (A manly toast, this! and say, “The clouds are heavy.” 
The person your quarrell was with replies, “But they will forever brighten.”
It doesn’t say whether one man or both says the last line before drinking, but both would seem most natural for the words involved, “And this I swear!”
Any ideas where this toast or hand-around-the-throat gesture comes from? Do other secret societies use such toasts to settle fights?
*******************
BEGGING FOR TIME, OR CALLING HIS SHOT?
“Do you say that no one can ever get level with this king devil?" Cecil Barker asks, after learning it was Moriarty who finally got Douglas.
"No, I don't say that," Holmes replies with eyes that “seemed to be looking
far into the future.” "I don't say that he can't be beat. But you must give me time -- you must give me time!"
One is not quite sure how to read Holmes’s last words from VALL. Is he begging Barker’s patience? That exclamation point at the end makes it seem more a plea than a cool, calculated promise. Does Holmes feel he owes Barker? Would Barker eventually go so far as to hire Holmes to bring down the murderer of his friend Douglas?
*******************
The Seventeen Steps originally appeared on the Hounds of the Internet e-list from September 2000 to October 2001.

Seventeen Steps to "The Twisted Lip"

Seventeen thoughts for further ponderance of "The Twisted Lip" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

*******************
WATSON’S LONDON GOSSIP COLUMN
“Isa Whitney, brother of the late Elias Whitney, D. D., Principal of the Theological College of St. George's, was much addicted to opium,” this tale begins. While the Hounds have often discussed Watson’s protecting the identities of Holmes’s clients, here’s a case where the doctor seems to be going out of his way to publicly humiliate a public figure whose brother has a problem. What’s worse is that Isa’s wife is a good friend of Watson’s wife. How could Watson bring friends of his family into the tales in such a manner, even if he changed the names? Are we seeing clues to a Watson beloved by his reading public, but hated by anyone who came under the reign of his pen?
*******************
THE HONEYMOON SURE ISN’T OVER!
“There came a ring to my bell, about the hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at the clock. I sat up in my chair, and my wife laid her needle-work down in her lap and made a little face of disappointment.”
While I find it a little chauvinistic that Watson refers to the doorbell as “my bell,” even when the ringer is a friend of his wife, I’m encouraged by the fact that Mrs. Watson seems to be making cute little disappointed faces when her husband won’t be coming to bed with her. In prim and proper Victorian times, could a yawn and a glance at the clock be a subtle proposition between a husband and a wife? Can we assume the Watsons’ marriage is going well based on the data in this story?
*******************
WORKING LATE AGAIN, DEAR?
On the other hand, we have signs of trouble in paradise. Watson says it is the hour of first yawn, yet he is newly come back from a “weary day.” Has the good doctor missed supper at home and taken it elsewhere? Perhaps in the company of someone who might afterwards make him weary?
And then there’s Mrs. Watson, referring to her husband as “James.” Is no one innocent in this den of betrayal? Or is the Smash guilty of vicious slanders that the Hounds must now squash immediately? (If these last two postings seem a bit bawdy, recall that this is the only tale with the word “orgies” in it -- I blame Watson!)
*******************
A MASTER OF DISGUISE!
No, not Neville St. Clair or Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Watson says, “I felt a sudden pluck at my skirt,” as he walks through the opium den. If we eliminate night-shirts and Scottish kilts, at what part of Watson’s clothing was Holmes plucking?
*******************
THE UNITED NATIONS OF DOPE
A Malay attendant. A Danish assistant. An East Indian Lascar. So many cultures, all working together to provide opium for the stressed-out citizens of London at the Bar of Gold! Was VIctorian London all as culturally intermingled as this? Watson pays Isa Whitney’s bill at this fine establishment (they even let opium addicts run a tab), and one has to wonder what two days worth of opium cost him. Any guesses? How much money might Watson have been carrying on him during a given evening at home, as it was enough to pay off a drug dealer? Or was the opium much cheaper then?
*******************
HOW RICH WAS RICH IN 1887?
“We should be rich men if we had L1000 for every poor devil who has been done to death in that den,” Holmes says to Watson. Now, as the common version of that phrase in modern day America goes, “If I had a nickel for every time ...” one has to wonder at the sizeable difference between a nickel and a thousand pounds. While it takes a whole lot of nickels to make a man rich in any era, thousand pound notes (if such existed at the time) will make you wealthy a whole lot faster. But how many of them would it have taken back then? And, following that, roughly how many people would we guess had been killed at the Bar of Gold?
*******************
TOYS R HUGH BOONE
“She sprang at a small deal box which lay upon the table and tore the lid from it. Out there fell a cascade of children's bricks.”
Toys are always of interest to certain child-like adults among us, including the discussion leader. What manner of bricks did they sell for children in small deal boxes in 1887? Wooden bricks? Clay bricks? Gold bricks? And did children do anything with them that would have been different from what children do now, such as build houses and forts?
*******************
INQUIRIES IN KENT
“But why are you not conducting the case from Baker Street?" Watson asks.
"Because there are many inquiries which must be made out here,” Holmes replies.
Just last week in reading “Five Orange Pips,” we saw Holmes engage in exactly the opposite behavior, shunning Horsham to stay in London and follow what evidence was there. What might Holmes have found so intriguing in Kent when the crime seems to have definitely occurred in London, to a man who spent his days in London? Did Neville St. Clair have any interests in Kent that could concievably have caused his disappearance?
*******************
GENTLEMEN, START YOUR ENGINES!
“A little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad in some sort of light mousseline de soie, with a touch of fluffy pink chiffon at her neck and wrists. She stood with her figure outlined against the flood of light, one hand upon the door, one half-raised in her eagerness, her body slightly bent, her head and face protruded, with eager eyes and parted lips, a standing question.” 
The ladies present will forgive me if I reprint the paragraph above for the benefit of the Lascar and the rest of the young men among us. Watson does such a lovely job verbally painting Mrs. Neville St. Clair within the confines of Victorian sensibilities that it’s plain he held that sight near and dear in his visual memory. While the gentlemen of Sherlockiana have been favoring us with their opinions of these ladies for years, perhaps it’s time we heard from the other side. How do the female Hounds feel about Watson’s descriptions of the fair sex in the Canon? Is he a respectful afficianado or just another gawkin’ guy? And what manner of memory was the doctor holding of Mrs. St. Clair at the door? The eager eyes mentioned later or the outlined figure that he comes to first?
*******************
WATSON ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
“I am an old campaigner,” Watson tells us in this story. What exactly does he mean by that? He’s not really “old” yet is he? And he was only in that one campaign, and for not all that long at that, was he? Could Watson truly be called “an old campaigner,” or was he exagerating a bit to impress the lady in the mousseline de soie?
*******************
THE ONLY PAPER IN THE BAR OF GOLD
Mrs. St. Clair receives a note “Written in pencil upon the fly-leaf of a book, octavo size, no water-mark.” Apparently the fly-leaf of a book is the only paper available in the Bar of Gold at a moment’s notice. With no other paper in the place, it even seems remarkable that a book was present. Anyone care to speculate on what that lonely tome in the opium den might have been?
*******************
MARRYING YOUR PSYCHIC FRIEND
“There is so keen a sympathy between us that I should know if evil
came upon him. On the very day that I saw him last he cut himself in the
bedroom, and yet I in the dining-room rushed upstairs instantly with the
utmost certainty that something had happened.”
Mrs. St. Clair’s telepathic bond with her husband has always fascinated me. Such things between identical twins are almost expected, but between husband and wife? The paranormal question of the hour, however, is this: was Mrs. St. Clair telepathic, sensing her husband’s distress, or was she actually clairvoyant, picking up vibrations of the disappearance about to occur?
*******************
WHO’S MAKING ALL THE RACKET?
Okay, Hounds, let’s curb our Beavis and Butthead impulses for a moment and look at the following statement with no cheap shots: “So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips . . .”
Watson doesn’t say if he understood the shout that woke him or not. He doesn’t say if it was Holmes’s voice or not. And we find Holmes, innocently close-mouthed with pipe firmly in place, finally removing it to calmly ask, “Awake, Watson?” While the prime shouting suspect seems to be Holmes, what might his shout have been? “Eureka!” or “Hey, Watson!” “YES!!!” or “ACK! Damned burning hot tobacco ash!” Was it embarassing enough that Holmes had to pretend he was calm and non-yelling by quickly returning to puffing on his pipe?
*******************
THE DAWN OF DR. WATSON
“I found the summer sun shining into the apartment.” It is 4:25 A.M. As your leisurely discussion leader rarely experiences consciousness at that hour, I have to ask: does that really happen? Baring-Gould claims the June sunrise in England comes during the hour between 3 and 4 a.m., yet even the earliest risers in the town are only looking out their windows as Holmes and Watson drive by. How does anyone sleep in June with all this bright sunshine? Those poor men who “work from sun to sun,” suddenly seem not all that different from the women whose “work is never done.”
*******************
THOSE DUTIFUL MEN OF BOW STREET
It’s still very early when Holmes and Watson arrive at the Bow Street police station. Yet when Holmes asks, “Who is on duty?” the officers guarding the front door are respectful enough not to answer, “All of us, you silly popinjay.” Beyond that, they actually salute him. Why would police officers salute a known civilian, even if he was highly respected? And what is an inspector doing there at that hour? What were the duties of an inspector in those days?
*******************
THE FINE ART OF MAKE-UP REMOVAL
Watson writes: “Never in my life have I seen such a sight. The man's face peeled off under the sponge like the bark from a tree. Gone was the coarse brown tint! Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had seamed it across, and the twisted lip which had given the repulsive sneer to the face!”
Watson’s not the only one who has never seen such a sight in his life. What kind of fabulous makeup completely distorts a man’s features, yet wipes off with a sponge and water in two wipes? 
*******************
WHOOPS, WATSON DOES IT AGAIN
“If the police are to hush this thing up, there must be no more of Hugh Boone,” Inspector Bradstreet tells Neville St. Clair at the tale’s end. Yet Bradstreet has no idea that a soon-to-be bestselling writer of tell-all exposes is standing in their midst. While it’s true neither Holmes or Watson promised to keep St. Clair’s secret, isn’t Watson ruining one more person’s life by publishing this story, as he did to the McCarthy/Turner couple a tale or two ago? Why does he keep doing this?
*******************
The Seventeen Steps originally appeared on the Hounds of the Internet e-list from September 2000 to October 2001.

Seventeen Steps to "Thor Bridge"

Seventeen thoughts for further ponderance of "Thor Bridge" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

*******************
THE LEGENDARY TREASURE BOX
“Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine.”
These words were first published in February 1922. Can we assume that the famous dispatch-box was still there at the time of publication? Even though Watson uses the present tense, he had to take the box out to prepare “Thor Bridge” for publication, didn’t he? Why was Watson keeping this box in a bank vault to begin with?
*******************
UNDERESTIMATING THE FORTEAN OCCURENCE
“A problem without a solution may interest the student, but can hardly fail to annoy the casual reader. Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world. No less remarkable is that of the cutter Alicia, which sailed one spring morning into a small patch of mist from where she never again emerged, nor was anything further ever heard of herself and her crew. A third case worthy of note is that of Isadora Persano, the well-known journalist and duellist, who was found stark staring mad with a match box in front of him which contained a remarkable worm said to be unknown to science.”
Would reading such mysterious, unfathomable tales of mysteries beyond human ken actually annoy the readers? Or is it Holmes that would be annoyed? Did Watson let his Literary Agent have the really strange stuff to publish without the Holmes connection?
*******************
WATSON’S PAST IN AMERICA
"You have heard of Neil Gibson, the Gold King?" Holmes asks.
"You mean the American Senator?" Watson replies.
"Well, he was once Senator for some Western state,” Holmes corrects.
Would an Englishman who had not spent some time in America know much of an American senator? Is Watson’s outdated knowledge further evidence of his time in America?
*******************
BENEDICT ARNOLD, THE GOLD KING
Okay, Neil Gibson is American enough to serve in the Senate. So why does this seeming all-American boy take his Brazilian wife and run off to England? With his money, surely he could live in the climate of his choice, and America offers a much wider selection than Britain. So why would an ex-Senator bail out on his native land?
*******************
J. NEIL GIBSON, THE ANTI-LINCOLN
Marlow Bates speaks of soon being free of Gibson’s “accursed slavery.” Watson’s first impression of Gibson a few moments later is that of “an Abraham Lincoln keyed to base uses instead of high ones.” Did the thought of Gibson’s “slavery” inspire Watson’s thoughts of Lincoln? Did Abraham Lincoln leave such an impresssion on the English, or is this a further sign of Watson’s American connections?
*******************
THE MANY FACES OF J. NEIL
“I could not but admire him, for by a supreme self-command he had turned in a minute from a hot flame of anger to a frigid and contemptuous indifference.”
Is what Watson describes here an admirable trait, or the sign of some seriously scary psychosis? We’ve already heard testimony of how evil this man is by his manager. We’ve seen his fiendish, knotted fist look. Is this calm just a well-practiced guise from his political career?
*******************
PLENTY OF ROOM FOR A SEQUEL
“You've done yourself no good this morning, Mr. Holmes, for I have broken stronger men than you,” the evil Abe Lincoln says in his “calm” state. “No man ever crossed me and was the better for it.”
If Gibson didn’t wind up a reformed man thanks to Miss Dunbar, might he eventually wind up facing Holmes as an adversary? When would he have broken stronger men than Holmes? In politics? In finance? Did he do it within the law or without?
*******************
A BRAGGART AS BIG AS THEY COME
Gibson crows “I can make or break--and it is usually break. It wasn't individuals only. It was communities, cities, even nations.”
Nations? Is Gibson full of himself, or was there a nation he might have broken in the Victorian era? Which one?
*******************
WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM?
Grace Dunbar “believed and said that a fortune for one man that was more than he needed should not be built on ten thousand ruined men who were left without the means of life.”
Didn’t Gibson get his fortune from gold? How did he ruin ten thousand in gathering his wealth, as Miss Dunbar seems to accuse?
*******************
PERMITS! WE DON’T NEED NO STEENKIN’ PERMITS!
Holmes says, “I have no doubt we can get the necessary permits this morning and reach Winchester by the evening train.”
With few exceptions, Sherlock Holmes didn’t seem to bother with warrants and such. J. Neil Gibson was obviously going to allow Holmes access to the murder site. So why did Holmes need to get permits (or “the official pass”) in London for Winchester?
*******************
THE CLUTCH OF DEATH
Like so many other murder mystery victims, Maria Pinto Gibson has a note held tight in her dead fist. Now, a shot to the head is a pretty traumatic event . . . would the muscles of the hand still be responding to a brain that had sustained such catastrophic impact?
*******************
THE GRACE DUNBAR RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
“I had expected from all that we had heard to see a beautiful woman, but I can never forget the effect which Miss Dunbar produced upon me. It was no wonder that even the masterful millionaire had found in her something more powerful than himself--something which could control and guide him.”
What the heck is Watson talking about here? Is he really raising superficial beauty to the level of a divine power?
*******************
THE PRACTICAL JOKER OF BAKER STREET
“Suddenly, however, as we neared our destination he seated himself opposite to me --we had a first-class carriage to ourselves--and laying a hand upon each of my knees he looked into my eyes with the peculiarly mischievous gaze which was characteristic of his more imp-like moods.”
Was Holmes looking at Watson this way because he was sure he had the case solved, or because he was going to attempt to dispose of Watson’s revolver in Thor mere? Could the detective have been actually trying to get the weapon out of the aging doctor’s hands for the safety of all concerned?
*******************
THE AGES OF THE UNMENTIONED CHILDREN
“I was young and ardent in those days . . . she was rare and wonderful in her beauty . . . passionate, whole-hearted, tropical, ill-balanced, very different from the American women whom I had known. Well, to make a long story short, I loved her and I married her. It was only when the romance had passed--and it lingered for years . . . But nothing changed her. She adored me in those English woods as she had adored me twenty years ago on the banks of the Amazon.”
Two young passionate lovers are quite naturally going to reproduce, especially in the younger days of their relationship. And since the Gibsons had been married for twenty years, shouldn’t their kids be a bit old for a governess by Grace Dunbar’s day?
*******************
BEAUTIFULLY GUILTY OR BEAUTIFULLY INNOCENT?
“Perhaps you have seen her portrait in the papers. The whole world has proclaimed that she also is a very beautiful woman.”
Where were the newspapers getting their beautiful portraits of Grace Dunbar? Was Gibson giving them to the papers in hopes of her beauty convincing the public of her innocence? Wouldn’t the “think-the-worst” public prefer that this great beauty was really a killer?
*******************
COULDN’T THE SERGEANT HANDLE THE DETAILS?
“You can let Mr. Gibson know that I will see him in the morning, when steps can be taken for Miss Dunbar's vindication.”
What steps might Holmes have planned to take to prove Grace Dunbar’s innocence that Sergeant Coventry couldn’t have handled?
*******************
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF . . .
Holmes speculates about Gibson and Dunbar: “Should they in the future join their forces, as seems not unlikely, the financial world may find that Mr. Neil Gibson has learned something in that schoolroom of sorrow where our earthly lessons are taught.”
Of course, J. Neil Gibson had earlier married a beautiful woman from a country different from his own, and later thought he was too different from her (as different as he had earlier thought she was from American women he had known). Would this relationship be any different in the end? Or would Gibson tire of his British conquest as he had of his North and South American ones?
*******************
The Seventeen Steps originally appeared on the Hounds of the Internet e-list from September 2000 to October 2001.

Seventeen Steps to "The Sussex Vampire"

Seventeen thoughts for further ponderance of "The Sussex Vampire" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

*******************
MORRISON, MORRISON, AND SUSPICIOUS
E.J.C. writes, “As our firm specializes entirely upon the assessment of machinery the matter hardly comes within our purview, and we have therefore recommended Mr. Ferguson to call upon you and lay the matter before you. We have not forgotten your successful action in the case of Matilda Briggs.
Why would tea broker Robert Ferguson seek advice from machine assessors about vampires? Why would machine assessors need help with a ship and a giant rat? Is there as much more to these “machine assessors” as there was to a certain “government clerk” named Mycroft? What might that “much more” have been?
*******************
WHAT STORIES DID HOLMES’S NANNY TELL HIM?
“Anything is better than stagnation,” Sherlock Holmes says, “but really we seem to have been switched on to a Grimms' fairy tale.”
I don’t seem to recall hearing of a Grimm’s fairy tale with vampires in it . . . does anyone else know of one? What tale might he have been referring to? As a child, was Holmes exposed to the older, more violent versions of the tales, or had they been cleaned up a bit even then?
*******************
OKAY, IT’S NOT ALPHABETICAL ORDER ...
In Holmes’s index we find:
1. “Voyage of the Gloria Scott” 
2. Victor Lynch
3. Venomous lizard
4. Vittoria
5. Vanderbilt
5. Vipers
6. Vigor
7. Vampirism in Hungary
8. Vampires in Transylvania
Can we deduce anything from this sequence? The first five seem to be in reverse alphabetical order, after which it becomes a little messy. Could we safely say it’s chronological? Or even state which were cases and which were clippings?
*******************
THE 221B DEPARTMENT OF POSIONOUS REPTILES
“Venomous lizard or gila,” Holmes reads, then remarks, “Remarkable case, that!”
Is it a coincidence that Holmes ran into someone who used a gila monster for a crime as well as someone who used a “swamp adder” for a crime? Could a gila monster climb a bell rope? Could it kill a young lady in her sleep? (Watson couldn’t, of course, title the story after the true dying gasp, “A ... striped ... sausage ...”)
*******************
RUBBISH, WATSON, RUBBISH!
“What have we to do with walking corpses who can only be held in their grave by stakes driven through their hearts? It's pure lunacy."
Methinks the detective doth protest too much. Does he say the idea of vampires is lunacy, or that the idea that he and Watson should have anything to do with them is lunacy? If vampires themselves are such lunacy, why keep a write-up of them in his great index?
*******************
WATSON, THE VOICE OF REASON
“But surely," the good doctor asserts, "the vampire was not necessarily a dead man? A living person might have the habit.”
The letter only has the word “vampire” in it. Why is Holmes assuming every legendary aspect is implied in its use? Even when Watson makes his point and Holmes agrees, the detective still refuses to consider a blood-drinking mental disorder in his tirade. Why is Holmes so set on theorizing before the facts?
*******************
HOUSE ARREST BY A TEA BROKER
Robert Ferguson writes, of his wife, “She is now confined to her room.”
Could a husband keep his wife prisoner at his whim? Later we read: “Then she rushed to her room and locked herself in,” which seems to be the real story. Why was Ferguson attempting the impression of control?
*******************
THE EFFECTS OF AN OLD WOUND
“A spaniel had lain in a basket in the corner. It came slowly forward towards its master, walking with difficulty. Its hind legs moved irregularly and its tail was on the ground.”
When asked how long the dog has been like this, Ferguson replies, "It may have been four months ago." Is the dog is still paralyzed from a dose of curare four months old? Are the effects of the posion that long-lasting?
*******************
CALLING DOCTOR L-O-V-E
In this story we get one of the few accounts of Watson’s bedside manner alone with a patient. He just can’t seem to get over how beautiful his patient is, a condition that seems to take precedence over any medical diagnosis. Was this a fatal flaw in the doctor’s medical practice?
*******************
AND DID THE COUNTRY KNOW HIM, AS WELL? 
Watson: "lt is in Sussex, South of Horsham." 
Holmes: "Not very far, eh? And Cheeseman's?" 
Watson: "I know that country, Holmes. It is full of old houses which are named after the men who built them centuries ago. " 
While Sherlock Holmes is the member of the duo we most associate with Sussex, Watson seems to have spent a little time there himself apart from his friend, enough to "know" the country. Can we speculate as to how Watson came to know that part of Sussex? Does his "familiar, but not too familiar" tone and reference to the houses above all else indicate time spent there post-childhood? 
*******************
MORE MULTI-PURPOSE BUSINESS? 
"This gentleman married some five years ago a Peruvian lady the daughter of a Peruvian merchant, whom he had met in connection with the importation of nitrates." 
"This gentleman," we later learn, is tea-broker Robert Ferguson. What is the connection between nitrates and tea, if any? Since Peru’s nitrate supplies basically came from 2000 years of accumulated bird droppings (from cormorants, no less), one would hope not! So why was Ferguson there? 
*******************
NIGEL BRUCE STOPS IN AT BAKER STREET 
"Of course I remembered him," Nigel Bruce says of Ferguson. "It's like him to be so concerned over a friend's case." 
Basil Rathbone shakes his head at this, and says, "I never get your limits, Watson. There are unexplored possibilities about you. Take a wire down, like a good fellow. 'Will examine your case with pleasure.' " 
"Your case!" Nigel Bruce sputters. 
"We must not let him think that this agency is a home for the weak-minded. Of course it is his case." 
If ever there was justification for the Nigel Bruce portrayal of Watson, this scene in "Sussex Vampire" is it. Holmes gives him the back-handed compliment that the Bruce-ian Watson will never pick up the full implication of, then patronizingly gives Watson secretarial duty. Holmes then follows with the weak-minded jibe, straight at his friend. Is Holmes really saying that there seems to be no limit to Watson's foolishness? Should Watson have picked up on the old "I have a friend who" ruse? 
*******************
THE BOY BECOMES A MAN 
"Hullo, Watson," Big Bob Ferguson says. "You don't look quite the man you did when I threw you over the ropes into the crowd at the Old Deer Park." 
How old would we expect Watson to have been during his rugby career? Was he of an age when he could truly be called a man and not a boy? At what age might the change in label have occurred in those days? 
*******************
THE STAR OF THE BLACKHEATH BOILERSTOKERS
“I believe your friend Watson played Rugby for Blackheath when I was three-quarter for Richmond.”
What does this statement tell us about friend Watson’s past? Would he have had to live in Blackheath to be on the team?
*******************
THE STUNTING OF JACK FERGUSON 
"And yet the kiddies have got to be protected," Bob Fergusons states, and later commands, "Run away, little Jacky." 
One of the most remarkable things about this story is Ferguson's treatment of his fifteen-year-old son, calling him a "kiddie" and "little Jacky." While Holmes respectfully refers to the teenager as Jack, and the baby as "little man," Papa Ferguson seems intent on preventing his elder son from growing up. Treated forever like a child, Jack Ferguson responds in kind. Why would Big Bob do this to his son? Is it due to his first wife's death or Jack's crippling injury? 
*******************
FERGUSON'S GUIDE TO TRAINS 
"There is an excellent train at two from Victoria if you could come," says Big Bob. 
It's a silly question, but I have to ask it ... was the train rated "excellent" just due to its departure time, or were there actually better quality trains the choosy traveller could be on the lookout for? 
*******************
FEARFUL FRIEND DELORES 
"She verra ill. She need doctor. I frightened stay alone with her without doctor," says Delores, the Peruvian personal assistant. 
Why is Delores so frightened to stay alone with someone to whom she is more friend than servant? Did she feel responsible for Mrs. Ferguson, or was she actually afraid of her? 
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THE ONE-SIDED TALE OF THE HUSBAND 
"The lady was very beautiful, but the fact of her foreign birth and of her alien religion always caused a separation of interests and of feelings between husband and wife, so that after a time his love may have cooled towards her and he may have come to regard their union as a mistake. He felt there were sides of her character which he could never explore or understand." 
When we finally encounter Mrs. Ferguson at the tale's end, she speaks perfect English and is completely rational. Everyone in the household seems to know what is going on, except Big Bob. Is Holmes's "leave everything to sort itself out" actually going to be a happy ending for this household? Or are Big Bob's weird prejudices, his peculiar relationship with his teenage son, and his communication gaps with the rest of the household going to continue once Holmes and Watson are gone? Might Ferguson have ignored Holmes's advice for his spoiled teenager, and kept the boy in Sussex, to the eventual despair of everyone? Does solving the blood-sucking mystery truly resolve the effects of "foreign birth and alien religion," the cooling of Ferguson's love, and Big Bob's notions that the union was a mistake? 
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The Seventeen Steps originally appeared on the Hounds of the Internet e-list from September 2000 to October 2001.