Click "free sample" to read the whole book. No need to purchase. On a foggy day in 1888,Dr. Watson remonstrates with Holmes about his cocaine usage. Holmes claims he needs a problem to solve and is bored; shortly thereafter, Miss Mary Morstan arrives with a case.Miss Morstan explains that, in December 1878, her father, Captain Arthur Morstan, had arrived in London, on leave from his post as a convict guard in the Andaman Islands. He requested her to meet him at the Langham Hotel, but he was not there when she arrived. Mary contacted Major John Sholto, a former convict guard who had known her father and was now living in England; however, he denied having seen Morstan, and Morstan was never heard from again. Four years later, Miss Morstan answered an anonymous newspaper advertisement, asking for her whereabouts. She then received a large and valuable pearl in the post, a gift repeated once a year for six years. With the sixth pearl, she received a letter asking for a meeting, claiming she has been "wronged". Holmes takes the case, and soon discovers that Major Sholto had died in 1882; within a week of his death, Mary received the first pearl. The only further clue Mary can give Holmes is a map of a fortress found in her father's desk, appended with the words "The Sign of the Four: Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, and Dost Akbar".