Showing results by narrator "David Ian Davies" in All Categories

"A curious experience? said the Doctor. Yes, my friends, I have had one very curious experience. I never expect to have another, for it is against all doctrines of chances that two such events would befall any one man in a single lifetime. You may believe me or not, but the thing happened exactly as I tell it." The opening lines of Arthur Conan Doyle's story "The Beetle Hunter" promise much and deliver as only Doyle can do.

In this brief yet eloquent story, the writer recounts his trip from Europe to California visit to an old friend, during which he hears a tapping on the wall to an adjoining apartment. With regret, his friend tells the story of his coldhearted, selfish denial of his love for a young lady.

When an Englishwoman receives mysterious gifts of pearls and a letter promising to right wrongs done to her, she calls upon Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to investigate. This classic work of detective fiction is the second of Conan Doyle's books to feature Holmes and Watson.

Holmes must recover a highly inflammatory stolen document, which may result in a world war if its contents become known to certain parties. Then a murder further complicates the desperate situation.

A call comes for Holmes' assistance from Inspector Hopkins. The facts behind the murder of Sir Eustace Brackenstall during an invasion robbery seem simple enough, until a possible lie by his wife, and inconsistencies in the evidence, suggest her accounts of the crime may be disguising the truth for personal reasons.

A visitor to Wisteria Lodge awakens one morning to discover everyone else has vanished.

To avoid a scandal at a prestigious school, Holmes must determine how and by whom the answers to an extremely difficult Greek exam, which will result in the award of a scholarship, have been copied.

Holmes and Watson arrive at Trinity college, summoned by an message that Cambridge Varsity rugby star Godfrey Staunton has disappeared after reading a note that has left him utterly stunned.

A crime with no apparent motive, the murder of Willoughby Smith, invalid Professor Coram’s secretary, puzzles the great detective.

Young John McFarland is accused of the violent murder of a man who has just left all his worldly goods to the accused in his will. The evidence against the great detective’s client mounts and Holmes candidly admits to Watson that, perhaps, the case Lestrade is building is as sound as Holmes believes it is untrue.

While still grieving over his great friend's death, Watson is stunned, relieved and joyful when Holmes suddenly appears and reveals that he has escaped an untimely end in that fatal struggle with his mortal enemy, Moriarty, at Reichenbach Falls. The criminal underworld suspects this, says Holmes, and Watson is drawn anew into Holmes's plot to deceive his enemies and foil a probable attempt upon his life.

Hydraulic engineer Victor Hatherley arrives at 221-B in a state of hysteria, his thumb grossly amputated from his left hand. The Baker Street duo's foray into the case leads to characters and machinations even stranger and more threatening than the case's grotesque genesis.

A banker accepts a priceless British artifact as collateral for a loan and it is promptly stolen from his home's safe. Circumstances point to the banker's son, who bitterly denies taking it. Holmes allows his investigation to follow the trail of evidence, come what may.

Whose is the face at the upstairs window, "livid, deadly yellow, and with something set and rigid about it, which was shockingly unnatural?"

When a young governess, unemployed and desperate for a position, accepts a job with a couple living in a remote country home, her positive first impressions of the man and his family begin to change. With a mixture of fear and uncertainty, she asks Sherlock Holmes to investigate the increasingly disturbing events that have begun to unfold around her.

The groom loses his bride 10 minutes after the wedding and Holmes must find her.

Mr. Hall Pycroft has no sooner found a new position to replace the job he lost than he is approached by an unknown gentleman who offers him even better and higher paying employment. Pycroft accepts the offer and is told to contact the gentleman’s brother. After traveling to what have been called the temporary offices of the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited, what he sees and hears during his interview raises alarms in his mind. Uncertain of what the strange events all mean, he has come to Sherlock Holmes.

A holiday in the country after Holmes suffers an attack of nervous exhaustion develops into a crime investigation, and then one of the detective's cases. A family retainer has been murdered, but the points of evidence seem completey awry.

Digging into his tin box of papers one day, Holmes recounts for Dr. Watson one of his earliest cases. In it, Holmes must decipher the ancient Musgrave Ritual to solve the mysterious disappearance of schoolmate Reginald Musgrave's butler and maid, after Musgrave terminates the butler for secretly reading the text of the ceremony.

The fifth story from Doyle's Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ( The Strand magazine, 1893) reveals the roots of the detective's foray into criminology and his very first case as a young college student, when the death of his school chum's father unearths a terrible, tragic series of events upon the high seas, of plotting and murder, of betrayal - and the man's long-hidden secrets of another life.