Foreign Office
Where state secrets are traded, but only a detective can keep them safe.
The Foreign Office enters the Sherlock Holmes stories through "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty". Percy Phelps is a young Foreign Office employee whose uncle and superior, Lord Holdhurst, orders him to copy an important naval treaty between England and Italy. The treaty was to be kept secret, for many foreign governments would want to read it.
Lore & Background
The treaty is stolen, and Phelps suffers a nine-week attack of brain fever before he begs Watson to bring Holmes to his aid. Holmes works out that Joseph Harrison, the brother of Phelps's fiancée Annie, was responsible: with stock exchange debts to pay, he took the treaty to sell it and hid it under the floorboards of his bedroom. A second case of state papers is "The Adventure of the Second Stain", in which the Prime Minister, Lord Bellinger, and the Secretary of State for European Affairs, Trelawney Hope, consult Holmes about a letter from a foreign potentate stolen from Hope's dispatch box.
Reader's Guide
Government work also reaches Holmes through his brother. Mycroft Holmes walks each morning to Whitehall, where he works, and in "The Bruce-Partington Plans" he comes to Baker Street to ask Sherlock to recover missing submarine plans for the government.
More in Criminals & Organizations
Elsewhere in Sherlock Holmes
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