The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans

Lore & Background

West's body lay next to the Underground tracks near Aldgate station with his head crushed, and he carried no Underground ticket. After examining the track, Holmes concludes that West was killed elsewhere and laid on the roof of an Underground train, falling off when the coach was shaken at a set of points near Aldgate. Sir James Walter, who had charge of the papers, has died, apparently of a broken heart over the loss of his honour.

Reader's Guide

Acting on information from Mycroft, Holmes singles out Hugo Oberstein, a known foreign agent who left town soon after the murder and whose house backs onto an above-ground stretch of the Underground where trains often stop under the windows. Holmes and Watson break into the empty house, find a bloodstain at the window, and lure the thief with a newspaper message signed Pierrot. Colonel Valentine Walter, Sir James's brother, walks in and confesses to stealing the plans because he was deep in debt, but swears that Oberstein killed West, who had followed him and intervened. Walter then writes to Oberstein to draw him back to England; Oberstein is imprisoned and the missing pages are recovered from his trunk. Colonel Walter dies in prison, and Holmes receives an emerald tie pin from a certain gracious lady.

Did You Know?

• Doyle ranked the story fourteenth in a list of his nineteen favourite Sherlock Holmes stories.
• It is the second and final main appearance of Mycroft Holmes.
• It appeared in The Strand Magazine and in Collier's in December 1908 and was collected in His Last Bow in October 1917.