I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.
Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories
25. The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb (March 1892, Adventures)
Poor Mr. Hatherly, the engineer who makes his dreary start on Victoria Street, is subject to the most Gothic and grotesque tale of the Holmes collection. Hatherly’s grim narrative is reminiscent to stories of Edgar Allan Poe and of Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, though without the latter’s surrealism. Invited to a country house by Colonel Lysander Stark—a thin, powerful, murderous German, one who could be an early template for the Nazi mold—ostensibly to fix a hydraulic press made for smashing bricks of Fuller’s earth, our ill-fated engineer proceeds into this hellhouse against his better sense. His forebodings strengthen; he receives fair warning of danger; still he goes on. We take a taciturn witching hour coach ride, enter a decrepit and sinister house, find the pale-faced maiden with warning signals writ clearly across her face (and later expressed fairly and clearly), and finally we enter into the colossal machine itself. For the huge hydraulic machine’s press is a chamber large enough to fit three men, and, when Mr. Hatherly begins to understand the scope of the miscreant’s occupation, his taut host snaps. Hatherly is shut into this chamber, and the machine is turned on. Its vise-like walls begin to close upon him, and he is so close to death that he begins to wonder, in his fervency, how best to face it: upon his back, facing the closing ceiling? Balled up, that he might be crushed like a grape? The unfortunate man saves his own life at the last moment when he sees that, across the way, there is a second door that leads from the deadly chamber. Hatherly slips through it, only just in time, and the machine crushes his lamp, which later sets the whole building on fire, and brings down the rogues’ operation. In effecting his escape, Hatherly loiters long enough to ensure that the lady is not badly treated by Colonel Stark. Stark pushes past the girl, and Hatherly, who is now (and once again) attempting to escape, finds himself hanging by his fingers from the window-ledge, whereupon Colonel Stark brings down a massive cleaver upon the engineer’s thumb. Mr. Hatherly falls, makes his way across the moonlit garden, and faints. He’s spirited away by the girl and a morose Englishman, the one whose stout frame so wholly fills his waistcoat. Hatherly makes his way to London, is treated by Watson, then leads Holmes and Co. back to the scene of the extraordinary affair. The house’s occupants have bolted, and the house itself is halfway to ashes.
The Engineer’s Thumb must be one of the most divisive in the canon, thanks to its gory nature. No other story, save The Cardboard Box, which features the discovery of a pair of human ears salted in a box, is so grisly. As a result, The Engineer’s Thumb revolts some of Doyle’s readership. One needs a bit of a taste for horror and the Gothic to appreciate this tale, but, if one has those things, then readers can sometimes find the right moment and mood to read The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb.
