The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Red-Headed League
Arthur Conan Doyle
A shopkeeper is paid well to copy an encyclopedia by hand, because of his red hair. Why would anyone pay for that?
About the book
Arthur Conan Doyle's second Holmes story, first printed in 1891. Jabez Wilson, a pawnbroker with flaming red hair, tells Holmes and Watson about an odd job: a society called the Red-Headed League pays him four pounds a week to copy the Encyclopaedia Britannica by hand. Then one morning the office door is locked and the League has vanished. Holmes suspects that the job was never the point, and the trail leads to Wilson's own shop.
Reading it as a learner
One continuous story of about 9,100 words, estimated B2, in eight ten-minute parts. Much of it is dialogue, so the sentences are shorter than in Watson's descriptions elsewhere. The humour comes from Wilson's slow, puzzled telling, which is easy to follow once you know the setup. Watch for money and work vocabulary from the 1890s, such as “assistant”, “wages” and “advertisement”, and for Holmes's habit of reasoning out loud.