Agra Treasure
A stolen hoard that brings bad luck to everyone who holds it.
The Agra treasure is the hoard of jewels at the centre of The Sign of the Four, Arthur Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel, published in 1890. It was the jewellery of an outlawed rajah, sent to the Agra fortress for safekeeping during the 1857 rebellion and seized in a robbery and murder. Holmes and Watson are drawn in when Mary Morstan brings them the case of her father's disappearance and of the pearls that reach her by post each year.
Quick Facts
- Original location
- Agra Fort, India
- Key figures
- Major Sholto
- Jonathan Small
- Thaddeus Sholto
- Mary Morstan
Lore & Background
Jonathan Small, a one-legged former soldier, was standing guard at the Agra fortress when Sikh troopers overpowered him and made him choose between death and helping them waylay the rajah's servant. The crime was discovered but the hidden jewels were not, and Small and his accomplices were sent to a prison in the Andaman Islands. There Small made a deal with two officers of the convict barracks, Major Sholto and Captain Morstan: Sholto would recover the treasure and send a boat so that all could share it. Sholto instead stole it for himself and went back to England. Morstan later confronted him, suffered a heart attack during the quarrel and died, and Sholto hid the treasure. He died before telling his sons Thaddeus and Bartholomew where it lay; six years later Bartholomew found it, and Small's companion Tonga killed him before Small could stop him.
Reader's Guide
Holmes learns that Small has hired a steam launch, the Aurora, and pursues it in a police launch. Small is captured, but the treasure box is empty: unwilling to give up the gems, he scattered them into the Thames during the chase. Small concludes that the treasure brings nothing but bad luck to whoever has it. Mary Morstan is left with only the pearls, and she and Watson, who have fallen in love during the adventure, become engaged.
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