![]() In effect, Conan Doyle constructs the mystery in reverse, beginning with the criminal, John Clay, who himself constructs a plot out of the detail, and then having Holmes trace back, as though reverse-engineering, the conspiracy. The story of the Red-headed League is based on an extraordinary and somewhat implausible detail: Jabez Wilson's red hair. ![]() ![]() He deduces that Clay has been using the ruse of the Red-headed League to keep Wilson out of his shop so that in his absence he, Clay, along with some accomplices could dig a tunnel to the vault of a neighboring bank.Īlong with a bank executive and a police chief, Holmes sets up an ambush in the bank vault and catches the criminals. Holmes investigates and concludes that Vincent Spaulding, who had only recently begun working as an assistant at Wilson's shop and who had shown Wilson the Red-headed League's advertisement in a newspaper, is actually the infamous criminal John Clay. ![]() For the simple menial task of copying out parts of the Encyclopedia Brittanica for a few hours each day, Wilson was paid a handsome amount by a so-called Red-headed League but suddenly the Red-headed League disappeared. Jabez Wilson, a pawnbroker with a uniquely intense head of red hair, comes to Holmes to ask for help about a mysterious job he, Wilson, had been working. ![]()
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