The Adventure of the Dancing Men
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| "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" | |
|---|---|
| by Arthur Conan Doyle | |
| Released | 1903 |
| Series | The Return of Sherlock Holmes |
| Client(s) | Hilton Cubitt |
| Set in | 1898 |
| Villain(s) | Abe Slaney |
The Adventure of the Dancing Men, one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
Contents |
[edit] Synopsis
What would most people make of this childish-looking scrawl:
…or more to the point, what does Sherlock Holmes make of it?
Mr. Hilton Cubitt of Ridling Thorp Manor in Norfolk submits this very question. The little dancing men are at the heart of a mystery which seems to be driving his young wife Elsie to distraction. He married her about a year ago, and until recently, everything was well. She is American, and before the wedding, she asked her husband-to-be to promise her never to ask about her past, as she had had some “very disagreeable associations” in her life, although she said that there was nothing that she was personally ashamed of. Mr. Cubitt swore the promise and, being an honourable English gentleman, insists on living by it, which is one of the things causing difficulty at Ridling Thorpe Manor.
The trouble began when Elsie received a letter from the United States, which evidently disturbed her, and she threw the letter on the fire. Then the dancing men appeared, sometimes on a piece of paper left on the sundial overnight, sometimes scrawled in chalk on a wall or door, even a windowsill. Each time, their appearance has an obvious, terrifying effect on Elsie, but she will not tell her husband what is going on.
Holmes tells Cubitt that he wants to see every occurrence of the dancing men. They are to be copied down and brought or sent to him at 221B Baker Street. Cubitt duly does this, and it provides Holmes with the most important clue in the mystery.
Holmes quickly realizes that it is a substitution cipher. Through much brainwork, he cracks the code by frequency analysis. The last of the messages conveyed by the dancing men is a particularly chilling one, and Holmes rushes down to Ridling Thorpe Manor only to find Cubitt dead of a bullet to the heart and his wife gravely wounded in the head. Inspector Martin of the Norfolk Constabulary believes that it is a murder-suicide, or will be if Elsie dies. She is the prime suspect in her husband’s death.
As is so often the case, Holmes sees things differently. Why is there a bullet hole in the windowsill, making a total of three shots, while Cubitt and his wife were each only shot once? Why are only two chambers in Cubitt’s revolver empty? What is the large sum of money doing in the room? The discovery of a trampled flowerbed just outside the window, and the discovery of a shell casing therein confirm what Holmes has suspected — a third person was involved, and it is surely the one who has been sending the curious dancing-man messages.
Holmes knows certain things that Inspector Martin does not. He seemingly picks the name “Elrige’s” out of the air, and Cubitt’s stable boy recognizes it as a local farmer’s name. Holmes quickly writes a message — in dancing men characters — and sends the boy to Elrige’s Farm to deliver it to a lodger there, whose name he has also apparently picked out of the air. Of course, Holmes has learned both men's names by reading the dancing men code.
While waiting for the result of this message, Holmes takes the opportunity to explain to Watson and Inspector Martin how he cracked the code of the dancing men, and the messages are revealed. The last one, which caused Holmes and Watson to rush to Norfolk, read “ELSIE PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD”.
The lodger, Mr. Abe Slaney, another American, unaware that Elsie is at death’s door and quite unable to communicate, duly arrives at Ridling Thorpe Manor a short while later, much to everyone’s astonishment, except Holmes’s. He has sent for Slaney using the dancing men, knowing that Slaney will believe that the message is from Elsie. He is seized as he comes through the door.
He tells the whole story. He is a former lover from Chicago and has come to England to woo Elsie back. She originally fled his clutches because he was a dangerous criminal, as Holmes has found out through telegraphic inquiries to the US. When an encounter at the window where the killing happened turned violent with Hilton Cubitt's appearance in the room, Slaney pulled out his gun and shot back at Cubitt, who had already shot at him. Cubitt was killed and Slaney fled. Apparently, Elsie then shot herself. Slaney seems genuinely upset that Elsie has come to harm. The threatening nature of some of his dancing-man messages is explained by Slaney's losing his temper at Elsie's apparent unwillingness to leave her husband. The money found in the room was apparently to have been a bribe to make Slaney go away.
Slaney is arrested and later tried. He escapes the noose owing to mitigating circumstances. Elsie recovers from her serious injuries and spends her life helping the poor and administering her late husband’s estate.
[edit] Commentary
- Holmes treats Inspector Martin with a bit more respect than Inspector Lestrade might usually expect, but then Martin seems genuinely impressed with Holmes and his methods, unlike Lestrade's obtusely low opinion of them.
- The date at which the story is set may be deduced from a comment in the story itself. Hilton Cubitt mentions that "the Jubilee" was "last year". He surely means Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, which was in 1897; therefore, the story is set in 1898. Cubitt could mean the Golden Jubilee in 1887, but this was before Holmes's "death" and subsequent return, and such a story is therefore not likely to have been included in The Return.
- Though not mentioned in previous messages, Holmes is able to decipher the letter 'C' and send it in a final message of his own in the "Dancing Men" code. It appears similarly to the E character that Holmes first discovers, but with a noticeable lower leg stance.
[edit] References in other books
In Dorothy Sayers' "The Nine Tailors", Lord Peter Wimsey struggles with a difficult code: "He had never seen a secret message that looked so innocent. Sherlock Holmes' Little Dancing Men were, by comparison, obviously secretive" (Second part, Ch. 8).
In Robert Harris' thriller "Enigma" the protagonist, a WWII British cryptanalyst and a Sherlock Holmes fan, is mentioned as solving the Little Dancing Men secret message while recuperating from a severe nervous breakdown; from his point of view, as a professional involved in solving the wartime codes of Nazi Germany, Doyle's coded message is "simple but elegant".
