The Sign of the Four

Mary Morstan brings Sherlock Holmes a puzzle with no crime attached: ten years ago her father vanished; for the last six, someone has anonymously sent her a flawless pearl every year; and now that someone requests a meeting. From this delicate opening Doyle unspools his second Holmes novel into a story of a locked-room death, a stolen Indian treasure, a pact made in a colonial fortress, and a pursuit that ends in a full-throttle steam-launch chase down the Thames at night, the most cinematic sequence in the canon.

This is also the book where Watson, tagging along, finds himself paying rather more attention to the client than to the case. Vintage Holmes at his sharpest and strangest, in a mystery that spans decades and continents yet resolves with perfect precision.

At roughly 43,500 words, The Sign of the Four runs about 5 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

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