The canonical Holmes stories usually aren’t that difficult or even clever as mysteries. There are few clues for the reader to weigh and consider, as opposed to Holmes studying matters (sometimes literally) on the ground. Also, because these are short stories it’s not as though a full line-up of suspects can be introduced. So it’s usually obvious what is going on, with things made even more obvious by the way characters are presented. Of course some of this can be attributed to the fact that Watson is narrating, and he knows who the guilty parties are. They aren’t going to be presented in a good light, even in their initial appearance. That’s very much what happens here when we’re introduced to Mr. James Wilder, personal secretary to the Duke of Holdernesse: “He was small, nervous, alert, with intelligent, light-blue eyes and mobile features.”

“OK,” we say. “That’s the guy who did it.” I mean, what’s he so nervous about?

What Wilder did, specifically, is kidnap the legal heir to the Duke, a boy with the improbably noble name of Saltire. In heraldry and vexillology (the study of flags and their meaning) a saltire is a diagonal (or St. Andrew’s) cross. I’ve never heard of anyone being named Saltire, though Saltire is an English surname, deriving not from the heraldic symbol but from the profession of manufacturing or dealing in salt (that is, a “salter”).

Anyway, the boy has gone missing from the Midlands boarding school he’d been staying at and the headmaster, who has the improbably headmasterish name of Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable, comes to London to enlist the help of Holmes. This Holmes does by the usual method of drawing precise conclusions from vague or slight physical clues. Instead of footprints we have tire tracks and hoofprints to be studied. Holmes can tell what direction a bicycle was going in from the impression left by its tires, the possibility of which is something scholars still debate. But all he really had to do was take a good look at Wilder as well as the Duke himself. Something is clearly not right with the Duke:

He was a tall and stately person, scrupulously  dressed, with a drawn, thin face, and a nose which was grotesquely curved and long. His complexion was of a dead pallor, which was more startling by contrast with a long, dwindling beard of vivid red, which flowed down over his white waistcoat, with his watch-chain gleaning through its fringe.

The word “grotesque” should trigger you, and the beard is the icing on the cake. Even though such full-length beards were the fashion around the time this story is set (possibly 1900 or 1901, according to most Holmesians), the clash between the vivid red beard and the white waistcoat is a remarkable image. “OK,” we say. “This guy is somehow involved in it.” And Holmes has no trouble fingering him for his involvement (the nature of which turns out to be something quite bizarre), while making sure in advance that Holmes is going to collect, in full, the reward money for finding the lost Saltire.

Holmes index