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“Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last. This is an instructive case. There is neither money nor credit in it, and yet one would wish to tidy it up.�� --Sherlock Holmes

Holmes has a hypnotic power of soothing.

I find it interesting that Doyle (Holmes) distinguishes the significant differences between printing and writing. It’s apparently a big deal that The Lodger prints his requests instead of writes them, and Holmes describes the technique as ‘a clumsy process.��

A woman, Mrs. Warren, comes to Holmes asking for help with a lodger she’s never seen before that makes her nervous. Holmes is blunt that he has no interest but she insists, so he listens. The lodger never comes out of his room and leaves notes out if he needs anything, which is left outside his door. Holmes is indeed intrigued but plainly tells the woman that it’s none of her business so long as the gentleman pays his rent and isn’t causing any problems.

Holmes is brilliant and deduces that there is more than one lodger in the room given the print on the paper, the words written, and the reclusiveness given the one time the lodger had left the room. He then believes that the lodger is communicating with someone through the newspaper and successfully finds ads to substantiate his claims.

Mr. Warren is attacked and dumped in Hampstead Heath. His wife immediately goes to Holmes who believes that the attack was meant for her lodger and not her husband. Holmes, Watson, and Mrs. Warren agree to catch a view of the lodger as he lunches. They see small, thin hands. Holmes believes it to be a woman who is in hiding.

The boys then go on a stake-out to watch someone communicate with the lodger via morse code that turns out to be a warning to the woman. The warning is suddenly cut short and the two transform from observers to active participants only to run into Inspector Gregson and an American Pinkerton.

The four decide to enter the room and find a body of a well-known international criminal. Behind them, a woman enters and does a dance, happy someone has killed the man. When she finds out that Holmes and co. didn’t kill the man, she believes that her husband has and they all move to a room to listen to her narrative of what happened.

She starts waaaaay back with how poor her family is and when she first met her husband. She gets to New York with her husband and tells she met the now dead man, Gorgiano, and how he talked too much and too loudly. I suppose that’s good enough reason to want to kill someone, right???
Finally, she gets to how her husband joined the Red Circle, a sort of cult that once you joined you could never leave. The dead man and her husband fight over her and her husband is struck but otherwise unharmed. Husband is summoned to a meeting and returns with a mandate to kill his best friend, so they ran to London to hide. The story has come full-circle now.

Mrs. Warren asks if her husband will be arrested but doesn’t really get a definite answer. Holmes asks Watson to go to the theater with him.

This is a good story but slows down a bit when we must go back in time with Mrs. Warren as she recounts her life and the events leading up to a man being dead. I’m a bit bummed that Holmes didn’t work this one out and we are just told what happens.