The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk

"The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk" is one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the fourth of the twelve collected in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" in most British editions of the canon, and third of eleven in most American ones (owing to the omission of the "scandalous" "Adventure of the Cardboard Box"). The story was first published in "Strand Magazine" in March 1893 and featured seven illustrations by Sidney Paget.

ynopsis

Holmes calls on Watson suddenly one day and asks if he is up for a trip to Birmingham. Watson quickly makes the necessary arrangements and joins his friend on the journey, along with Holmes' young client, Hall Pycroft, a stockbroker's clerk, who tells a mysterious story.

Pycroft recently found a new job after having been out of work for a while. He actually received it through the post without the hirer, the prestigious firm of Mawson & Williams, ever having met him. However, the same day that he had the news of his new situation, a man named Arthur Pinner came to see him, offering what promised to be a much better position, paying £500 a year to start. Pinner flattered Pycroft by telling him of the wonderful things that acquaintances in the City had said about him. He said that his company ran a chain of hardware stores all over France, with one each in Belgium and Italy besides, and that Pycroft's ignorance of hardware mattered very little: the company wanted him for his prowess with figures. Pinner even claimed to have been to Mawson & Williams to ask about Pycroft, and said that he had been treated rather rudely. Pycroft decided to accept Pinner's offer, without even writing to Mawson & Williams to resign.

Pinner gives Pycroft £100 as an advance, and asks him to write out a statement saying that he is willing to act as business manager for the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited. Pinner tells Pycroft to go to an address in Birmingham, a considerable distance from London, and see his brother, Harry Pinner, for further details.

Upon arriving there, Pycroft found that the "office" was a mean, shabby, roughly furnished, fifth-floor walk-up without even so much as the company's name outside, and Pycroft's job in Birmingham turned out to involve extracting "relevant" information from French business directories. He was met by Harry Pinner who looked remarkably like his brother in London. Indeed, Pycroft had his suspicions aroused upon noticing that Harry had a badly made gold filling that looked exactly the same as his brother's. He caught the night train back to London, believing that Sherlock Holmes could figure out what was going on. Pycroft surely could not.

Upon arriving by train in Birmingham, Pycroft takes Holmes and Watson to the address in question, 126B Corporation Street, and the detective and his friend decide to use the pretext of looking for work to justify their presence to Mr. Pinner. Just as the three are arriving there, Pycroft spots Pinner buying a newspaper and hurrying up to the office. They follow him in short order, and find him brooding over the newspaper. Pinner excuses himself and goes into the next room. There is an odd knocking sound and the three men left in the outer office decide to break into the room in which Pinner has locked himself. They find him in the closet trying to hang himself. They take him down, still alive.

As usual, Holmes has already deduced most of the truth. It is obvious to him that Pycroft has been lured away from Mawson & Williams so that someone can impersonate him there. The written document extracted by Arthur Pinner was likewise part of this caper, for the impostor had to learn to write like Pycroft. Pinner skillfully convinced Pycroft not to write and resign from Mawson & Williams so that the company would expect a Mr. Pycroft, whom they had never seen, to come in to begin work on Monday morning.

Holmes realizes that a wire must be sent to Mawson & Williams right away to warn them that a criminal caper is afoot. He gets the idea a bit too late, though. The newspaper over which Pinner was brooding contains the explanation. It seems that the impostor and the two Pinners — who "are" one and the same, just as Pycroft suspected — are two brothers who have recently been released from prison. Their true name is Beddington, and the one posing as Pycroft has just robbed Mawson & Williams of nearly £100,000 in bonds and other negotiables. He has been caught by police, and was then discovered to have murdered the watchman at Mawson & Williams. The Beddington in Birmingham tried to hang himself over this.

Commentary

This story's plot is reminiscent of that in "The Red-Headed League", for it, too, involves an elaborate hoax designed to remove an inconvenient person from the scene for a while so that a crime can be committed. The same parallel can be seen in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs".

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