According to Dr. Watson's opening narration, this story is set at "the latter end of June, 1902 ... the same month that Holmes refused a knighthood for services which may perhaps some day be described." This is a parallel to the knighthood of Arthur Conan Doyle around the same time.
Plot
Holmes, Watson, and John Garrideb - 1925 illustration by Howard Elcock
Holmes receives a letter from a man named Nathan Garrideb of 136 Little Ryder Street,[2] who asks for help in finding someone else with his unusual surname. He has been informed by an American, John Garrideb of Kansas, that if he can find another Garrideb he stands to inherit a large fortune.
The American visits Holmes and Watson at 221B Baker Street, and is not pleased that Nathan has involved a private detective. John Garrideb, who claims to be a lawyer, spins a ridiculous story about Alexander Hamilton Garrideb, a millionaire land tycoon he had met in Kansas, years earlier. Hamilton Garrideb was said to have bequeathed his $15 million estate to John, with the proviso that he find two more men of the same surname to share it with equally. John says he has come to England to seek out people with this name, having failed to find anyone in his home country. So far, he has found only Nathan.
Holmes deduces that Garrideb has been in London for some time, and is not newly arrived as he claims. When Holmes invents a fictitious Kansas politician, Garrideb says he once knew him. Holmes does not reveal that he knows Garrideb is lying, and instead arranges to Nathan Garrideb. Upon arrival at Little Ryder Street, Holmes observes Nathan Garrideb's nameplate outside the house. It has obviously been there for years, and Holmes concludes that Nathan is not associated with the American's schemes.
Nathan Garrideb is an elderly eccentric who collects everything from ancient coins to old bones. Nathan's rooms look like a museum, but he holds nothing of financial value. John Garrideb has never asked for any money, nor has he suggested any course of action and Nathan has no reason, it seems, to be suspicious of the American.
During the visit, John Garrideb arrives, having supposedly found a newspaper advertisement purportedly placed by one Howard Garrideb in the course of his everyday business. Holmes observes that John Garrideb must have placed the advertisement himself as the terms and spelling are distinctly American. Despite Nathan's objections, John Garrideb insists that he must travel to Birmingham and meet this Howard Garrideb. Holmes realizes that the whole scheme is John Garrideb's way to get Nathan out of the way for a while.
Next day, Holmes goes to see Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard and identifies John Garrideb as James Winter alias Morecroft alias "Killer" Evans, who has escaped from prison after shooting three men in the United States. In London, he had killed Rodger Prescott, a Chicago forger whose description matches the former occupant of Nathan Garrideb's room. Holmes and Watson go to Garrideb's home armed with revolvers. They do not have to wait long before Winter arrives. From their hiding place, Holmes and Watson see the criminal use a "jemmy" to open a trapdoor, revealing a little cellar. They capture Winter, but not before he manages to shoot twice, striking Watson in the leg. Holmes is distraught over Watson's injury, and strikes Winter on the head with the butt of a gun hard enough to draw blood. Fortunately, Watson's wound is superficial. The cellar contains a printing press and stacks of counterfeitbanknotes, hidden there by Prescott, the man that Winter had killed.
Winter is sent back to prison. Nathan Garrideb ends up in a nursing home, so great is his disappointment, but many CID men are pleased that Prescott's equipment has at last been found. Watson seems the happiest at the adventure's outcome, despite being hurt, declaring, from the sight of Holmes's panic and rage over his friend's shooting, that "It was worth a wound, it was worth many wounds, to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask".
Publication history
"The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" was published in the US in Collier's on 25 October 1924,[3] and in the UK in The Strand Magazine in January 1925.[4] The story was published with three illustrations by John Richard Flanagan in Collier's, and with five illustrations by Howard K. Elcock in the Strand.[5] It was included in the short story collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,[5] which was published in the UK and the US in June 1927.[6]
As noted by Wilma Morgan,[7] "The Three Garridebs" takes up many plot elements used in the much earlier story "The Red-Headed League". "Both stories feature a rather naive, sedentary, middle aged bachelor who happens to sit on a location of great interest to cunning criminals. And in both stories, a very elaborate hoax is cooked up, involving a fake bequest by a fictional rich American, in order to make the bachelor go away and leave the criminals a clear field—which would have worked fine but for Sherlock Holmes seeing through the hoax. One difference between the two stories—and I am not sure that it is an improvement—is that in the second case, unlike the first, the innocent bachelor is deeply hurt and damaged by the hoax worked on him."
The then-newly formed NBC sought permission from Lady Conan Doyle to produce The Three Garridebs for American television in 1937.[14] This would be the first televised adaptation of Doyle's detective.[14]Louis Hector was cast as Holmes with William Podmore as Watson.
In 1994 the story was again adapted for television. Jeremy Brett was taken ill during the production of the Granada Television adaptation of this story (which was also a conflation with "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" and transmitted under the latter title) and so Holmes's role in the plot was taken by Mycroft Holmes with Charles Gray called in at short notice to reprise his role as Sherlock's older brother. Some note that "In addition to being immensely entertaining, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes has the unfortunate bonus of tracing the decline of Jeremy Brett's health, episode by episode."[15]
^Wilma C. Morgan, "Sherlock Holmes Revisited" in Barnabas Thompson (ed.) "Round Up of New Essays in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Popular Culture, 1988"
