“Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written about Abbots and

Archery and Armour and Architecture and Attica, and hoped with diligence that I

might get on to the B’s before very long. It cost me something in

foolscap, and I had pretty nearly filled a shelf with my writings. And then

suddenly the whole business came to an end.”


“To an end?”


“Yes, sir. And no later than this morning. I went to my work as usual at

ten o’clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a little square of

cardboard hammered on to the middle of the panel with a tack. Here it is, and

you can read for yourself.”


He held up a piece of white cardboard about the size of a sheet of note-paper.

It read in this fashion:


“THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED. October 9, 1890.”


Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face

behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely overtopped every

other consideration that we both burst out into a roar of laughter.


“I cannot see that there is anything very funny,” cried our client,

flushing up to the roots of his flaming head. “If you can do nothing

better than laugh at me, I can go elsewhere.”


“No, no,” cried Holmes, shoving him back into the chair from which

he had half risen. “I really wouldn’t miss your case for the world.

It is most refreshingly unusual. But there is, if you will excuse my saying so,

something just a little funny about it. Pray what steps did you take when you

found the card upon the door?”


“I was staggered, sir. I did not know what to do. Then I called at the

offices round, but none of them seemed to know anything about it. Finally, I

went to the landlord, who is an accountant living on the ground floor, and I

asked him if he could tell me what had become of the Red-headed League. He said

that he had never heard of any such body. Then I asked him who Mr. Duncan Ross

was. He answered that the name was new to him.