Work record

The Sign of the Four

Name: The Sign of the Four
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Also known as: The Sign of Four

1890 · 19th Century · Novel · English

Public domainmedium medical relevanceRead full text Download EPUB Five-minute digest

Abstract

Written: Written 1889; published February 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine; book form 1890
Setting: 1888, with a backstory set during the 1857 rebellion in India; London and the Thames; Agra and the Andaman Islands
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Country: United Kingdom (Victorian Britain)
Language: English
Genre: Detective novel
Form: Short novel in twelve chapters narrated by Watson
Recommended: Grades 8–12 (Opens with Holmes injecting cocaine; murder and colonial violence in India.)

Premise. A governess who has received a pearl each year from an unknown benefactor asks Holmes to accompany her to a mysterious meeting. The meeting leads to a hidden fortune, a quarrel between dead officers, and a corpse with a thorn in its neck in a suburban house.

Action. The middle of the book is pure pursuit: a dog following a chemical scent across south London, street urchins combing the wharves, and a night race between police and fugitives on the river that ends in gunfire. Holmes works alongside an overconfident inspector who arrests the wrong people, and the detective's patience with small physical traces is set against official bluster.

Backstory and themes. A convict's confession reveals a pact made in a besieged Indian fortress and a betrayal that followed the plotters home. Greed connects every crime, and the narrator's quiet courtship runs alongside the chase. When the strongbox is finally opened, its emptiness becomes the hinge of the ending, because wealth had stood between the doctor and the woman he loves.

For students. The opening drug scene, the Victorian view of empire and the crude description of an islander all need context. The book rewards attention to method, motive and the moral weight of wealth taken by violence.

Main characters

Sherlock Holmes: consulting detective
Dr. John H. Watson: narrator who falls in love
Mary Morstan: governess whose father vanished
Jonathan Small: convict with a claim to the treasure
Thaddeus and Bartholomew Sholto: twin sons of the officer who took the jewels

Summary

The Sign of the Four, the second Sherlock Holmes novel, opens with a scene that has troubled readers ever since: Holmes, bored for lack of work, injects himself with cocaine while Watson protests that he is ruining a great mind. Rescue from boredom arrives in the person of Miss Mary Morstan, a young governess. Her father, an officer in an Indian convict regiment, disappeared ten years before; for six years she has received a single large pearl every year from an unknown sender, and now a letter asks her to meet a stranger that night and bring two friends. Holmes and Watson go with her. They are taken to Thaddeus Sholto, a nervous aesthete, who explains that his late father, Major Sholto, and Captain Morstan had brought a great treasure home from India and that Morstan died suddenly during a quarrel over it. Thaddeus wants to give Mary her share. When the party reaches Pondicherry Lodge, home of his brother Bartholomew, they find Bartholomew dead in a locked room with a poisoned thorn in his neck, the treasure gone, and a paper bearing the words 'the sign of the four'. Holmes follows a trail of creosote with the help of the dog Toby, sets the Baker Street Irregulars searching the river, and after a wild night chase down the Thames brings down the steam launch Aurora. The one-legged convict Jonathan Small is captured, but his companion, the islander Tonga, is shot, and the iron treasure box proves to be empty: Small has scattered the jewels in the river. Small then tells his story of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, of a fortress at Agra, a murdered merchant, a pact among four men, and Sholto's betrayal. Watson's romance with Mary, freed from the barrier of her wealth, ends in their engagement. Written quickly for Lippincott's Magazine, the novel is a fast adventure that also shows Doyle's medical eye and his era's imperial assumptions, including a crude, prejudiced description of Tonga that teachers should name honestly.

Virtues in this work

Fortitude: Mary Morstan faces danger and loss with calm courage.
Temperance: Watson's rebuke of Holmes's drug use presents self-mastery as the better path for a great mind.

Plot or Argument

Chapters 1-2: Cocaine and a client
Holmes explains his science of deduction and his need for mental work; Mary Morstan brings the mystery of her vanished father and the annual pearls.
Chapters 3-5: Pondicherry Lodge
Thaddeus Sholto tells of the Agra treasure; at his brother's house the party finds Bartholomew murdered in a locked room.
Chapters 6-9: The chase begins
Holmes reconstructs the crime, follows the creosote trail with Toby, and searches the river for the launch Aurora.
Chapters 10-11: The Thames and the empty box
A night chase down the river ends with Tonga's death and Small's capture; the treasure box is empty.
Chapter 12: Jonathan Small's story
Small recounts the siege at Agra, the murder of the merchant Achmet, the oath of the four, and Sholto's betrayal; Watson and Mary become engaged.

Characters

Sherlock Holmes, detective
Restless genius who turns to cocaine when he has no problem to solve.
Dr. John H. Watson, narrator
Holmes's friend, who falls in love with the client.
Mary Morstan, client
Composed young governess searching for the truth about her father.
Thaddeus Sholto, informant
Anxious son of Major Sholto who wants to share the treasure fairly.
Jonathan Small, convict
One-legged former soldier who believes the treasure was stolen from him.
Athelney Jones, Scotland Yard detective
Pompous inspector who arrests the wrong people.

Lessons

A gifted mind and a bad habit
Holmes defends his cocaine use as relief from boredom; Watson calls it ruin. Doyle lets the doctor have the last moral word, and later stories show Holmes giving it up.
- What arguments do Holmes and Watson each make?
- Why does boredom tempt gifted people?
Related across the library
- The Last of the Mohicans, Full Text
  at that solitary and silent spring around which and its sister fountains within fifty years the wealth beauty and talents of a hemisphere were to assemble in throngs in pursuit of health and pleasure Then Hawkeye announced his determination to proceed The sisters resumed their saddles Duncan and David grapsed their rifles and followed on footsteps the scout leading the advance and the Mohicans bringing up the rear The whole party moved swiftly through the narrow path toward the north leaving the healing waters t...
- A Lost Lady, Full Text
  seen a little of the world You mustn't be so stiff so--so superior It isn't becoming at your age She drew her brows down into a level frown so like his own that he laughed He had almost forgotten her old talent for mimicry What do you want me for You used always to say it was no good asking people who didn't mix You can mix well enough if you take the trouble And this time you will for me Won't you When she was gone Niel was angry with himself for having been persuaded On Friday evening he was the last guest to...
- Timon of Athens, Lesson: Liberality is not the same as love
  Liberality is not the same as love. Timon gives freely, but he gives without judgment and partly to be surrounded by thanks. Aristotle distinguished the liberal man, who gives to the right people in the right amount, from the prodigal who gives to anyone; Timon's servants and Apemantus see the difference before he does. The first half lets students ask whether generosity that ignores truth and stewardship is a virtue at all.
- The Republic, Full Text
  and his companions are viewing the heavens as stationary in place but whether or not herself revolving unless this is implied in the revolution of the axis is uncertain Timaeus The spectator may be supposed to look at the heavenly bodies either from above or below The earth is a sort of earth and heaven in one like the heaven of the Phaedrus on the back of which the spectator goes out to take a peep at the stars and is borne round in the revolution There is no distinction between the equator and the ecliptic But...
- Poems: First, Second and Third Series, Full Text
  knoll Busy needles and spools of thread And trudging feet from school Playmates and holidays and nuts And visions vast and small Strange that the feet so precious charged Should reach so small a goal XXV Essential oils are wrung The attar from the rose Is not expressed by suns alone It is the gift of screws The general rose decays But this in lady's drawer Makes summer when the lady lies In ceaseless rosemary XXVI I lived on dread to those who know The stimulus there is In danger other impetus Is numb and vital-...
Treasure and its cost
Nearly everyone touched by the Agra treasure is destroyed or corrupted by it. Watson is glad when it is lost.
- Why is Watson relieved that the box is empty?
- How does 1 Timothy 6:10 apply to the story?
Related across the library
- The Time Machine, Lesson: The long view of time
  The long view of time. In the further vision the Traveller watches the sun swell and redden, life dwindle to crabs and lichens, and finally the sounds of every living thing fall silent. Wells draws on the physics of a cooling sun and the long timescales of geology to show a universe far older and longer than human history. The narrator's answer is practical: even if that is our end, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.
- Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, Lesson: Civilized and savage
  Civilized and savage. Melville questions who is truly savage. Students can weigh his claims.
- A Wrinkle in Time, Lesson: Faults can become gifts
  Faults can become gifts. Mrs Whatsit gives Meg her own faults, her anger, impatience and stubbornness, and those faults are what keep her from giving in to IT. Meg does not have to become a different person to be useful; her character has to be turned toward the good.
- Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Lesson: Respectability is not virtue
  Respectability is not virtue. Jekyll is honoured, charitable and outwardly devout, yet he has long hidden a desire for pleasures he thinks beneath his dignity. Rather than repent, he invents a way to sin without being seen. Stevenson shows that a reputation guarded for its own sake can become the very cloak under which vice grows.
- Fathers and Sons, Source
  FATHERS AND SONS BY IVAN S TURGENEV Translated from the Russian by C J Hogarth LONDON TORONTO PUBLISHED BY J M DENT SONS LTD IN NEW YORK BY E P DUTTON CO INTRODUCTION In this masterly unromantic novel Turgenev drew a character Bazarov who served to express what he taught us to call Nihilism and made a movement into a man In Russia itself the effect of the story was astonishing The portrait of Bazarov was immediately and angrily resented as a cold travesty The portraits of the backwoodsmen or retired aristocrats...
Empire seen from London
The backstory brings the violence of British India into a London drawing room. Students should note both the drama and the period's prejudices.
- How is the 1857 rebellion portrayed?
- How should we read the description of Tonga today?
Related across the library
- Dracula, Lesson: Modern method against ancient evil
  Modern method against ancient evil. The heroes defeat Dracula by pooling records, typing, phonographs, telegrams and medical science alongside folklore. The novel shows knowledge-sharing as power, while suggesting that science alone cannot explain everything.
- Chess, Medical lens
  A concise literary study of the effects of solitary confinement and of obsessive thinking. Dr B.'s deterioration in isolation, his later compulsive self-play, splitting into two opposing selves, agitation, sleeplessness and eventual breakdown, which Zweig calls 'chess poisoning', can be discussed in relation to later research on sensory deprivation and on psychosis in solitary confinement, as well as in relation to obsessional and dissociative phenomena, without imposing a diagnosis. A hospital physician who cer...
- Faust, Part One, Lesson: Restlessness as a way of life
  Restlessness as a way of life. Faust's wager says he will never rest content in any moment. Goethe makes this striving both his greatness and his danger: it lifts him above Wagner's dry contentment and also makes him use Gretchen as one more experience.
- Robinson v. California, Lesson: The Bill of Rights and the states
  The Bill of Rights and the states. Robinson is generally counted as the case that applied the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. White's dissent questions whether the Framers' words support so novel an application, raising a recurring debate about how courts extend constitutional text to new problems.
- Silas Marner, Lesson: The cost of concealment
  The cost of concealment. Godfrey's refusal to own his marriage and child brings him a comfortable life but leaves him childless and without his daughter's love. When he finally confesses, he learns that a duty refused cannot always be taken up again later.

Context

The novel was commissioned at a London dinner in 1889 by the American editor J. M. Stoddart of Lippincott's, who on the same evening commissioned Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray. Its Indian backstory draws on British memories of the 1857 rebellion.

Composition

Written in a few weeks in 1889 and published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in February 1890, then in book form by Spencer Blackett later that year.

Reception

Better received than A Study in Scarlet, it helped prepare the huge success of the Strand short stories from 1891.

Crime / Punishment Money Wealth Colonialism Empire Love Desire Friendship Science / Knowledge

Comparisons

A Study in Scarlet
The first Holmes novel uses the same two-part shape, with a long backstory abroad explaining a London murder.
The Moonstone
Collins's novel also begins with a jewel taken in India and follows its curse into an English house.
Treasure Island
Stevenson's adventure also follows a one-legged man and a lust for treasure that corrupts all who chase it.

Quotes

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four, Ch. 6 (Project Gutenberg #2097).Quote card

The Gay Science, EDITORIAL NOTE
sickly thinkers--and perhaps the sickly thinkers preponderate in the history of philosophy what will happen to the thought itself which is brought under the pressure of sickness This is the important question for psychologists and here experiment is possible We philosophers do just like a traveller who resolves to awake at a given hour and then quietly yields himself to sleep we surrender ourselves temporarily body and soul to the sickness supposing we become ill--we shut as it were our eyes on ourselves And as...
The War of the Worlds, Full Text
of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet as flaming gases rushed out of a gun A singularly appropriate phrase it proved Yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the Daily Telegraph and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy the well-known astrono...
Address to the Nation on the Challenger Disaster, Paragraph 7
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." The closing sentence, ending with phrases from John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s sonnet High Flight.
On Christian Doctrine, Full Text
On Christian Doctrine In Four Books Translated by Rev Professor J F Shaw of Londonderry Introductory Note by the Editor The four books of St Augustin On Christian Doctrine De Doctrina Christiana iv libri are a compend of exegetical theology to guide the reader in the understanding and interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures according to the analogy of faith The first three books were written a d the fourth was added He speaks of it in his Retractations Bk ii chap as follows Finding that the books on Christian Do...
Novum Organum, Book I, Aphorism XLVI
But where are the portraits of those who have perished in spite of their vows Bacon's anecdote of the man shown votive tablets from shipwreck survivors, an early statement of survivorship and confirmation bias.

“Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four, Ch. 1 (Project Gutenberg #2097).Quote card

Kim, Chapter XV
“I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?” Recovering after the mission, Kim feels detached from the world and asks who he is, a question that runs through the book.
Barchester Towers, XIV
his way Mr Slope was contented He considered himself at liberty to accept Mr Harding s last speech as an absolute refusal of the appointment At least he so represented it to the bishop and to Mrs Proudie That is very surprising said the bishop Not at all said Mrs Proudie you little know how determined the whole set of them are to withstand your authority But Mr Harding was so anxious for it said the bishop Yes said Mr Slope if he can hold it without the slightest acknowledgement of your lordship s jurisdiction T...
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, Chapter VI
father was an enthusiast, and always said and believed that God and hard work were by far the best doctors. Explaining why no physician was called when he was stricken with pneumonia during harvest.
Thoughts on Government and Selected Letters, Preface
said he I want to speak with you He always called me John and I him Jonathan and I often said to him I wish my name were David He took me to a window-seat and said These Englishmen are going to play the devil with us They will over- turn every thing We must resist them and that by force I wish you would write in the newspapers and urge a general attention to the militia to their exercises and discipline for we must resist in arms I answered All this I fear is true but why do you not write yourself You are older...
Eclogues and Georgics, Eclogue IV
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung Has come and gone The opening of the prophecy of a child and a renewed golden age, later read by Christians as a foretelling of Christ.

“love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four, Ch. 12 (Project Gutenberg #2097).Quote card

Characters, Thomas Day Seymour
Y August Contents PAGE INTRODUCTION xi EPISTLE DEDICATORY THE DISSEMBLER I THE FLATTERER II THE COWARD XXV THE OVER-ZEALOUS MAN IV THE TACTLESS MAN XII THE SHAMELESS MAN IX THE NEWSMONGER VIII THE MEAN MAN X THE STUPID MAN XIV THE SURLY MAN XV THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN XVI THE THANKLESS MAN XVII THE SUSPICIOUS MAN XVIII THE DISAGREEABLE MAN XX THE EXQUISITE XXI THE GARRULOUS MAN III THE BORE VII THE ROUGH VI THE AFFABLE MAN V THE IMPUDENT MAN XI THE GROSS MAN XIX THE BOOR IV THE PENURIOUS MAN XXII THE POMPOUS MAN XX...
The Idiot, Full Text
He carried a little bundle tied up in an old faded silk handkerchief apparently containing all his belongings He wore thick-soled shoes and gaiters all in the foreign style His dark-haired neighbour in the sheepskin observed all this partly from having nothing to do and at last with an indelicate smile in which satisfaction at the misfortunes of others is sometimes so unceremoniously and casually expressed he asked Chilly And he twitched his shoulders Very answered his neighbour with extraordinary readiness and...
Shall Turkey Live or Die?, Section on Turkey ('And first of Turkey')
The Christian Church has, as a Church, no possession on earth Part of the argument that the Church's origin at Jerusalem gives Christians no right to possess it.
First Inaugural Address, Lesson: Peacemaker as the highest title
Peacemaker as the highest title. Nixon redefines national honor in terms of peacemaking rather than victory, seeking a peace that is "not victory over any other people." He spoke while more than half a million American troops were in Vietnam, and the war continued until 1973. Students can weigh the promise against the record without dismissing the ideal.
The Descent of Man, Chapter IV
he now exists has few special instincts having lost any which his early progenitors may have possessed this is no reason why he should not have retained from an extremely remote period some degree of instinctive love and sympathy for his fellows We are indeed all conscious that we do possess such sympathetic feelings Hume remarks An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals edit of p There seems a necessity for confessing that the happiness and misery of others are not spectacles altogether indifferent to us b...

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

Holmes's defence of his cocaine use and Watson's medical reply in Chapter 1.
How Holmes reasons about the locked room at Pondicherry Lodge.
The role of the dog Toby and the street boys.
What each character wants from the treasure.

Key terms and names

Agra: City in northern India with a great fort, where the treasure pact was made.
Indian Rebellion of 1857: Uprising against British East India Company rule, the setting of Small's story.
Creosote: Strong-smelling tar product whose trail Toby follows across London.
Steam launch: Small, fast steam-powered river boat like the Aurora.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension What mystery does Mary Morstan bring to Baker Street?
Comprehension How does Holmes trace the Aurora?
Interpretation Why does Doyle open the novel with the cocaine scene?
Interpretation Is Jonathan Small's claim to the treasure just?
Interpretation What does the novel suggest about Britain's wealth from India?
Big Question Is a gift ever an excuse for a vice?

Faith Connections

1 Timothy 6:10 (Scripture)
The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil; the Agra treasure ruins nearly everyone who desires it.
Proverbs 25:2 (Scripture)
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, and the honour of kings to search it out; patient inquiry into hidden things is a kind of honour.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Reason can solve the mystery, but greed and broken promises explain the crime, and a treasure gained by murder brings no good.

Rhetorical device: locked-room puzzle. Bartholomew is found dead behind a locked door, and Holmes must explain how the killers entered and left.

Debate: Resolved: that Jonathan Small had a rightful claim to the Agra treasure.

Memory Work

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
Ch. 6. Holmes's most famous principle of reasoning.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace the Agra treasure from the fortress to the Thames and explain what it does to each person who holds it.

Comparison with The Moonstone: Compare how the Indian jewel and the Agra treasure carry guilt from empire into English homes.

Medical Lens

The opening is a classic literary portrait of recreational cocaine use, written when cocaine was a new, legal medical drug; Watson, a doctor, warns of tissue damage and lasting harm. A plant-alkaloid poison causes Bartholomew's death.

Addiction Physicians Doctors Pharmacology Poisons

Ch. 1
Holmes injects a seven-per-cent solution of cocaine; Watson objects on medical grounds.
Addiction
Ch. 5-6
Bartholomew's rigid death grin from a poisoned thorn.
Pharmacology Poisons

Creative Prompts

Dialogue
Write the conversation in which Watson finally persuades Holmes to give up cocaine for good.
Essay
Argue whether the loss of the Agra treasure is a happy or a sad ending for each major character.
Classroom
Map the Thames chase using the place names in Chapter 10 and an old London map.