First published in the September 1891 issue of The Strand Magazine

First published in a collection in 1892 in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Mary Sutherland, Hosmer Angel, Mr Windibank

Case Date: 7th October 1889

 

Storyline:

To Watson’s surprise, the rambling and seemingly inconsequential narrative of Miss Mary Sutherland, the large woman in the large hat with a large feather, provokes no signs of impatience in Holmes. The anxiety of a late plumber’s daughter over Mr. Hosmer Angel, her vanished bridegroom-to-be (“I met him at the gas-fitters’ ball”) would seem to offer little real interest. The circumstances of her plight are not even new to Holmes: at least two parallels lie in his indexes. It is ‘the maiden herself’, rather than her problem, who interests Holmes; together with the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumbnails, and the thought that great issues may hang from a bootlace. An interview with Mr. James Windibank, her stepfather, is sufficient to clear up every detail but one; and it is not going to be Holmes who will attend to that. He is too mindful of the old Persian saying: ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman’.