I called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair.
Where I saw merely an unhappy tradesman, Sherlock observed a Freemason who had done manual labor, visited China, and written quite a bit recently.
And this last inference was at the heart of the matter.
This gentleman, Mr. Jabez Wilson, was a pawnbroker. Two months ago he answered a peculiar newspaper advertisement. The mysterious League of Red-Headed Men had announced an opening that came with a significant cash incentive, and every red-headed man above the age of 21 in London was encouraged to apply. Wilson was hesitant to go; it seemed too strange to be true, but his assistant of recent employ, who found the ad in the first place, convinced him to.
Outside the League’s office, they found hundreds of men, all awaiting their shots at the position. Seeing Wilson's particularly magnificent hair, the hosts parted the red sea and ushered him through to a room with a little man. This interviewer, one Duncan Ross, subjected Wilson to a single, painful test, then inducted him into the League. All he had to do to receive his stipend was spend four hours here every day transcribing the encyclopedia. He’d be paid handsomely; much more than his day job. Wilson, of course, accepted, and showed up to that address every day without fail for two months. Including today, when he was shocked to discover a sign saying that the League had been disbanded. Ross, meanwhile, had disappeared without a trace. So Wilson turned to the one man who might make red heads or red tails of these events.
Sherlock accepted the remarkable case and whisked me to Wilson’s place of business, where his assistant, a young man named Vincent Spaulding, answered the door. Sherlock asked him nothing more than walking directions to the Strand and concluded the interview.
The great detective proceeded to examine the area, then led me on a stroll around the block. Satisfied, he instructed me, to my great surprise, to meet him at Baker Street at 10 pm to thwart a considerable crime.
I ask you this: what was the crime and who was going to commit it?
That night, at the doorstep of 221B Baker Street, I discovered a carriage waiting. Inside, Sherlock and two other men: a bank director and a police officer. Sherlock explained: we’d gathered to prevent a robbery. Not just any robbery, the banker added; the theft of a massive quantity of French gold, on temporary storage in his bank’s subterranean vault. The carriage let us out, and there, in the cold recesses of the bank's basement, we found ... absolutely nothing of criminal consequence. Sherlock told us to hide ourselves in the darkness, ready for a fight. And at long last we heard a scratching, then a sliding sound.
We leapt into action and, after a scuffle, detained two men: Wilson’s assistant Spaulding, and the man Wilson knew as Duncan Ross.
Sherlock explained: the target all along had been the French gold. Spaulding knew it would be here, so he got himself employed by Wilson on account of the proximity of the pawnshop to the bank. But in order to dig a tunnel undetected, he’d need Wilson out of the way for long stretches. And that was when he dreamed up the Red-Headed League, for which he recruited his accomplice. Every day while Wilson toiled away for a pittance compared to the value they’d steal, Spaulding and Ross dug their tunnel, finally reaching the bank vault today. Sherlock wasn’t sure exactly what Spaulding was up to until he saw the worn and dusty knees of his trousers, and recognized him as notorious thief John Clay. He tested the pavement by the pawn shop, and finding it hollow, rounded the block, where he discovered the true target.
“Poor Wilson,” I concluded. “Out of the best job of his life and 4 pounds per week.”
To which Sherlock retorted, “Have no pity, Watson; the man is richer by far in his newfound knowledge of aardvarks, Abbasids, acupuncture, and assorted other subjects that begin with the letter A.”
