The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Chapter 6 summary

What happens

1. Kate Whitney asks for help, and Watson finds her husband in an opium den, where he also encounters Holmes in disguise.
2. After sending Whitney home, Watson accompanies Holmes to The Cedars and hears the evidence connecting Hugh Boone with Neville St. Clair’s disappearance.
3. Mrs. St. Clair produces a letter and ring from her husband, challenging Holmes’s belief that he is dead.
4. Holmes spends the night thinking, then takes Watson and a bath sponge to the Bow Street cells.
5. Holmes washes Boone’s face and removes his wig, revealing Neville St. Clair, who explains his profitable secret career as a beggar.
6. St. Clair promises to stop begging, and Inspector Bradstreet makes further police action unlikely unless he breaks that promise.

In this chapter

What to notice

Holmes identifies secrecy as the source of the crisis. St. Clair’s effort to conceal his occupation causes his wife’s fear and his own arrest.

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