#adventure of the devil's foot

[mendedrum]

SHERLOCK HOLMES HAS ZOOMIES WHEN HE'S FOUND A CLUE

"In an instant, he was tense and alert, his eyes shining, his face set, his limbs quivering with eager activity. He was out on the lawn, in through the window, round the room and up into the bedroom for all the world like a dashing foxhound drawing a cover."

LITERALLY HAS TO TELL EVERYONE ABOUT HOW EXCITED HE IS

"In the bedroom, he made a rapid cast around and ended by throwing open the window which appeared to give him some fresh course for excitement for he leaned out of it with loud ejaculations of interest and delight."

-> watson wrote all of these in his notes.

from Sherlock Holmes - The Adventure of The Devil's Foot.

[angryducktimemachine]

Reading The Adventure of the Devil's Foot was certainly. An experience.

The pointy ears are a stylistic choice I just like drawing pointy ears.

[ID: a digital, fully colored drawing of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. They're sitting outside in the grass, both without a jacket, Holmes is wearing a black waistcoat and trousers with a scarf while Watson wears a brown waistcoat and trousers. They're sitting close to each other with their foreheads almost touching. Holmes eyes are closed with furrowed brow while Watson looks at him worried and holding him by the shoulders. /End ID]

[raingoddess214]

Holmes, a murderer behind you

[vernajarrett]

I watched "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" the other night and, although I hadn't seen it in long time, it hit me with its usual force.

Everything about it is wonderful and I don't want to dribble on about it (as I well might if I don't control myself), but I cannot help the following:

I will NEVER recover from Holmes' exclamation of "John!" and his grateful grasp at Watson. It is incredibly moving. I appreciate that the utterance is not canon, but it is quite close to the feeling in the story.

This series really is the pinnacle of Sherlock Holmes interpretation. Simply superb.

[doingbad]

Holmes and Watson just invented a new love language and it is terrible

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans

The Adventure of the Devil's Foot

[..]

[moonlightandpalmtrees]

parallels that make you go hmmmmmm

[holmesoldfellow]

Sherlockian Relics Vol. 1, including "The Musgrave Ritual, Blue Carbuncle, Devil’s Foot poison, Red Headed League contract and dissolve notice, Sign of Four card, and Falls of Reichenbach poster"

[221b-johnlocked-1895]

I was rewatching "The Devil's Foot" from Granada Holmes and I thought something. Since I've never read anything about it, I decided to write it here.

Holmes decided to let Sterndale return to Africa, despite the fact that he had killed a man.

(For those who don't know or don't remember, Sterndale killed Mortimer Treggenis, because he killed his sister Brenda Treggenis, with whom Sterndale was in a romantic relationship)

Holmes himself says that he didn't get him arrested because he would have done the same. In fact, later in the story he says: “I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done. Who knows?"

Well, we know, thanks to what Holmes himself said in "The Adventure Of The Three Garridebs": "If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.".

I think that it's quite clear that the "woman" in question, or better, the person who Holmes loves, is Watson.

[lumilescense]

Hey uh wait my guy my dude dr leon sterndale or whatever. Why. Why did you have a really poisonous plant you were showing off and like thought to mention how easy it would be to murder with that???? I feel like we're not asking enough questions about why the FUCK you had that?

[monocordum]

Holmes to Watson, in the context of what is meant to be a life-threatening situation and is actually recreational drug use verging on a very bad trip: " I thought I knew MY Watson", HIS Watson, who now sees ALL of Holmes' HEART and EMOTIONALLY confesses that doing mushrooms together helping Holmes is HIS GREATEST JOY AND PRIVILEGE.

*gestures defeatedly*

(From The Adventure of the Devil's Foot , December 1910 issue of The Strand)

[worst-sherlockholmes-story]

vote for the WORSE story!

The Adventure of the Three Gables: Holmes has been messaged by an elderly woman who has been offered a large sum for her house on the condition that all of her belongings are also sold. Holmes deduces that the offer comes from someone who wants the woman's late son's possessions. Later, the woman grabs part of a manuscript as it is stolen from her son's trunk. Holmes deduces from the scrap that the son threatened to expose a rich woman's affair and that the woman has been behind the house purchase and the theft.

The Adventure of the Devil's Foot: Holmes is on holiday in Cornwall when a vicar and his lodger consult Holmes about the sudden insanity and death of the lodger's three siblings. The next day, the lodger is found dead in the same way. Holmes deduces that both were killed by an airborne poison and that the lodger killed his siblings, then was killed by a man who was in love with the lodger's late sister.

[mendedrum]

mutually negotiated poisoning with safeword, my dear watson.

[shortstorytournament]

Pre-Tournament: Arthur Conan Doyle Brackets

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL'S FOOT (1910) (link) - tw: death

Many of my readers may retain some recollection of what was called at the time “The Cornish Horror,” though a most imperfect account of the matter reached the London press. Now, after thirteen years, I will give the true details of this inconceivable affair to the public.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE YELLOW FACE (1894) (link)

"A man can tell easily enough when a woman loves him. But there’s this secret between us, and we can never be the same until it is cleared.”

THE FINAL PROBLEM (1893) (link) - tw: death

It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished.

[joemerl]

I take it, in the first place, that neither of us is prepared to admit diabolical intrusions into the affairs of men. Let us begin by ruling that entirely out of our minds. Very good.

First no vampire in Sussex, and now no demons in "The Devil's Foot?" 😒

[contact-guy]

I was seized with a fervor and could not rest until I illustrated one of my favorite scenes from Sherlock Holmes: the Adventure of the Devil's Foot. While Holmes and Watson take a holiday in the Cornish countryside for Holmes's health, multiple people in the nearby village are found driven mad or dead from horror. Holmes deduces a substance that was burned in their presence is to blame. With a bit of the mysterious powder and a gas lamp in hand, he proposes an experiment to Watson...

content warning for drug use!

I'm not sure if it's supported by the canon but in my mind this is the first time Holmes ever apologies to Watson and he is so overcome with emotion that he immediately makes it weird

Text under the cut:

"It is not for me, my dear Watson, to stand in the way of the official police force. I leave them all the evidence which I found. The poison still remained upon the talc had they the wit to find it. Now, Watson, we will light our lamp; we will, however, take the precaution to open our window to avoid the premature decease of two deserving members of society, and you will seat yourself near that open window in an armchair unless, like a sensible man, you determine to have nothing to do with the affair. Oh, you will see it out, will you? I thought I knew my Watson. This chair I will place opposite yours, so that we may be the same distance from the poison and face to face. The door we will leave ajar. Each is now in a position to watch the other and to bring the experiment to an end should the symptoms seem alarming. Is that all clear? Well, then, I take our powder--or what remains of it--from the envelope, and I lay it above the burning lamp. So! Now, Watson, let us sit down and await developments."

They were not long in coming. I had hardly settled in my chair before I was conscious of a thick, musky odour, subtle and nauseous. At the very first whiff of it my brain and my imagination were beyond all control. A thick, black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses, lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe. Vague shapes swirled and swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of something coming, the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul. A freezing horror took possession of me. I felt that my hair was rising, that my eyes were protruding, that my mouth was opened, and my tongue like leather. The turmoil within my brain was such that something must surely snap. I tried to scream and was vaguely aware of some hoarse croak which was my own voice, but distant and detached from myself. At the same moment, in some effort of escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse of Holmes's face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror--the very look which I had seen upon the features of the dead. It was that vision which gave me an instant of sanity and of strength. I dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the door, and an instant afterwards had thrown ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious sunshine which was bursting its way through the hellish cloud of terror which had girt us in. Slowly it rose from our souls like the mists from a landscape until peace and reason had returned, and we were sitting upon the grass, wiping our clammy foreheads, and looking with apprehension at each other to mark the last traces of that terrific experience which we had undergone.

"Upon my word, Watson!" said Holmes at last with an unsteady voice, "I owe you both my thanks and an apology. It was an unjustifiable experiment even for one's self, and doubly so for a friend. I am really very sorry."

"You know," I answered with some emotion, for I have never seen so much of Holmes's heart before, "that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you."

He relapsed at once into the half-humorous, half-cynical vein which was his habitual attitude to those about him. "It would be superfluous to drive us mad, my dear Watson," said he. "A candid observer would certainly declare that we were so already before we embarked upon so wild an experiment. I confess that I never imagined that the effect could be so sudden and so severe." He dashed into the cottage, and, reappearing with the burning lamp held at full arm's length, he threw it among a bank of brambles. "We must give the room a little time to clear. I take it, Watson, that you have no longer a shadow of a doubt as to how these tragedies were produced?"