First published in the March 1892 issue of The Strand Magazine

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

 

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Victor Hatherley, Colonel Lysander Stark, Mr Ferguson, Elise, Inspector Bradstreet

Case date: 7th September 1889

 

Storyline:

Dr. Watson is aroused early to treat an emergency case, Victor Hatherley, who might have bled to death following the loss of his thumb, but for his expert knowledge of hydraulic principles. The patient’s account of his ‘accident’ has Watson hurrying him round to repeat it to Holmes.

Hatherley recounts a visit to his office by a Colonel Lysander Stark, requesting him, for a fee equivalent to double what he had earned in all of three years, to go at once to his house in Berkshire to repair a hydraulic press used for processing fuller’s earth. Secrecy was enjoined: should the colonel’s neighbours learn of the presence of this valuable commodity in their district they would refuse to sell him their fuller’s-earth-bearing land. Hatherley had accepted the commission, but having examined the press had had no more discretion than to observe that so powerful a machine could scarcely be required for so simple a process. In consequence, he had lost not only his fee, but a thumb.

Given a brief description of a horse, glimpsed by lamplight, and a recollection of tales of pirates, Holmes is not long in supplying an explanation and a word of consolatory advice.