The Adventure of the Dying Detective

The Adventure of the Dying Detective, published in 1913, is a short story in which Dr. Watson is urgently summoned to 221B Baker Street to find Sherlock Holmes apparently dying of a rare and highly contagious Eastern disease. Holmes, weak and delirious, refuses ordinary medical help and insists that only one man-Mr. Culverton Smith, an expert on tropical illnesses-be brought to him. Watson, deeply alarmed by his friend's condition and the sealed, quarantined rooms, follows Holmes's strange instructions while trying to understand the situation. The crisis turns out to be an elaborate ruse: Holmes has staged his own "deathbed" in order to trap a clever and ruthless murderer who believed he had successfully poisoned the detective.