Recording intelligenceAI-generated brief · check the source for context

The Red-headed League

59:07 recording · AUTO · 7 speakers

Listen to the original

Brief overview

A fake job copying the encyclopaedia kept a pawnbroker away while thieves tunnelled toward a bank vault.

  1. The absurd job was only a way to empty a shopFour pounds a week for copying the encyclopaedia bought the thieves Wilson's absence from ten to two every weekday.
  2. An assistant at half wages was the clueHolmes says that from the moment he heard Spalding came for half wages, it was obvious the man had a strong motive for securing the place.
  3. Worn trouser knees gave the tunnel awayHolmes rang the pawnbroker's bell only to see the assistant's knees, worn, wrinkled and stained from hours of burrowing.
Executive Summary AI
  • Holmes tells Watson that the pawnbroker Jabez Wilson has brought him one of the most singular narratives he has heard in some time, and asks Wilson to recommence it from the beginning.
  • A newspaper advertisement for the Red-Headed League, founded on the bequest of the late Ezekiah Hopkins of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, offered a red-headed man four pounds a week for purely nominal services at Seven Pope's Court, Fleet Street.
  • Wilson, pushed to apply by his half-wage assistant Vincent Spalding, was hired by Duncan Ross and spent eight weeks copying the Encyclopaedia Britannica from ten to two, forbidden to leave the office, paid four golden sovereigns each Saturday.
  • On the morning he told the story, a card on the door read "The Red-Headed League is Dissolved, October 9, 1890", the landlord knew no Duncan Ross, and the address given for William Morris turned out to be a manufactory of artificial kneecaps.
  • That Saturday night Holmes, Watson, Inspector Peter Jones and bank director Merriweather waited in the cellar of the City and Suburban Bank, where thirty thousand Napoleons of French gold lay, and took John Clay and his red-haired accomplice as they broke through the floor of their tunnel.
Key Quote
“Why, I have lost four pound a week!”
— Jabez Wilson
Key Quote
“the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.”
— Sherlock Holmes
Key Quote
“It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling”
— Sherlock Holmes

Transcript

0:00 THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE
0:32 I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year,
0:39 and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced elderly gentleman with fiery red hair. With an apology for my intrusion, I about to withdraw when holmes pulled me abruptly into the room and closed the door behind me you could not possibly have come at a better time my dear watson he said cordially "'So I am, very much so.' "'Then I can wait in the next room.'
1:05 "'Not at all.
1:06 "'This gentleman, Mr. Wilson,
1:08 "'has been my partner and helper
1:10 "'in many of my most successful cases,
1:13 "'and I have no doubt
1:14 "'that he will be of the utmost use to me in yours also.'
1:18 "'The stout gentleman half rose from his chair
1:21 "'and gave a bob of greeting,
1:23 "'with a quick little questioning glance
1:25 "'from his small, fat, encircled eyes. "'Try the settee,' said Holmes, relapsing into his arm-chair
1:32 and putting his finger-tips together, as was his custom when in judicial moods.
1:38 "'I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday
1:45 life. You have shown your relish for it by the enthusiasm which has prompted you to chronicle,
1:52 and, if you will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish, so many of my own little adventures.
2:00 Your cases have indeed been of the greatest interest to me,' I observed.
2:10 "'You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary
2:16 combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort
2:21 of the imagination.'
2:23 "'A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.
2:27 You did, doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on
2:33 piling fact upon fact on you, until your reason breaks down under them, and acknowledges me to
2:39 be right. Now, Mr. Jabez Wilson here has been good enough to call upon me this morning and to begin a narrative which promises to be one of the most singular which i have listened to for some time
2:53 you have heard me remark that the strangest and most unique things are very often connected not with the larger but with the smaller crimes and occasionally indeed where there is room for doubt whether any positive crime has been committed. As far as I have heard, it is impossible for me to say
3:12 whether the present case is an instance of crime or not, but the course of events is certainly
3:17 among the most singular that I have ever listened to. Perhaps, Mr. Wilson, you would have the great kindness to recommence your narrative i ask you not merely because my friend dr watson has not heard the opening part but also because the peculiar nature of the story makes me anxious to have every possible detail from your lips
3:38 as a rule when i have heard some slight indication in the course of events, I am able to guide myself by the
3:45 thousands of other similar cases which occur to my memory. In the present instance I am forced
3:52 to admit that the facts are, to the best of my belief, unique. The portly client puffed out his
3:59 chest with an appearance of some little pride, and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from the inside pocket of
4:06 his great-coat. As he glanced down the advertisement column, with his head thrust forward and the paper
4:12 flattened out upon his knee, I took a good look at the man, and endeavoured, after the fashion
4:17 of my companion, to read the indications which might be presented by his dress or appearance. I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection.
4:28 Our visitor bore every mark of being an average, commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous,
4:35 and slow. He wore rather baggy, grey, shepherd's-check trousers, a not over-clean black
4:43 frock-coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat
4:47 with a heavy brassy albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as an ornament.
4:55 A frayed top-hat and a faded brown overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside

Showing the first 40 of 492 lines.