"A Grip Like Steel Closed Around My Throat"

"The Adventure of the Sealed Room."
By Adrian Conan Doyle (1910-70) and John Dickson Carr (1906-77).
Short short story (6 pages).
Found in Collier's Weekly, June 13, 1953.
Online HERE.

"A man and his wife had been shot. All entrances to the room had been locked from the inside. And it was not a case of murder and suicide . . ."

As we noted in a previous post, Sherlock Holmes made maximal use of every one of his faculties in order to sniff out the culprit, especially so in this adventure.

Artwork by Robert Fawcett

Snippets:

. . . "You hoped it might be the work of a burglar?"

. . . I WAS much annoyed by the acidity of Holmes's tone, though I could not help divining its cause. Ever since, in the previous month, he had been outwitted and beaten by Mrs. Godfrey Norton, nee Irene Adler, his attitude toward the whole female sex had become more bitter than ever. 

. . . FOR a moment Holmes stood motionless before the fire. "It is possible that there may be a hundred and forty-first sort," he observed thoughtfully.

~ ~ ~

. . . "You would speak of feminine intuition?"

"Sir, what are your own boasted judgments but masculine intuition?"

"They are logic, madam!"

~ ~ ~

. . . "My dear Watson, I neither encourage hope nor do I discourage it. I examine evidence."

. . . "What are ye driving at, mon!" he cried suddenly. "Why, it's as plain as a pikestaff. The colonel and his wife are both shot in a room that is locked, bolted and barred from the inside."

". . . what the devil have oysters to do with it?"

. . . A grip like steel closed around my throat, and as I raised my arm to force back the head of my dimly seen assailant, he buried his teeth in my forearm like some savage hound.

. . . "My dear fellow, there was no great difficulty in the problem. The facts were obvious enough, but the delicacy of the matter lay in the need that the murderer himself should confirm them by some overt act. Circumstantial evidence is the bane of the trained reasoner."

Resources:
- "The Adventure of the Sealed Room" was collected together with 11 other original stories by Doyle and Carr into The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1954); see HERE for an overview, HERE for more background about this tale, and HERE for concise summaries (Warning: Possible SPOILERS) of all of the stories.

- P. J. Bergman has a spoiler-free review of "Sealed Room" HERE: "Not the strongest Holmes story or locked room mystery, but it's enjoyable to see the two combine."

Category: Locked room mysteries (what else?)