The Sign of the Four The Sign of the Four The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective. The story is set in 1888. "The Sign of the Four" has a complex plot involving service in India, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a stolen treasure, and a secret pact among four convicts ("the Four" of the title) and two corrupt prison guards. It presents the detective's drug habit and humanizes him in a way that had
Adrian Conan Doyle and later, a book: "The True Conan Doyle" (John Murray, 1945). According to Lycett, "When the BBC commissioned an anniversary talk from Hesketh Pearson, Adrian announced that if it went ahead it would never broadcast another Sherlock Holmes story. The Corporation caved in." Lycett states that Pearson had met Arthur Conan Doyle at Francis Galton's home before the First World War. Pearson had idolised him from an early age, but was disappointed to find a thick-set broad-faced man with no more mystery than a pumpkin, who fulminated against Sherlock Holmes for preventing him from writing the historical novels he wanted.