PART 1-
The first part of the story focuses on an introduction to the characters- Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Detective Lestrade, and Gregson, and we get an overview of the case. Dr. Watson, who has been recently retired from his services in the army, travels to London in search of an apartment. Soon he gets introduced to Sherlock Holmes, a man with uncommon levels of intellect and intelligence. Watson and Holmes move into 221B Baker Street, wherein Watson learns that Sherlock is a consulting detective, and gives a lead to private and government detectives such as Lestrade and Gregson. Sherlock also deducts that Watson had been deployed in Afghanistan earlier, after looking at his sunburned skin and his soldier-like etiquette. Holmes soon receives a letter from Gregson demanding his help on a murder case.
A night earlier, on Baxton Street, a cop was strolling after heavy rain when he witnessed an enlightened house that had been abandoned for a while. On entering the house the cop found a grim figure of a dead man lying on the floor with a chilling and frozen expression. Gregson soon started the investigation involving Lestrade, and when the two were not able to figure out a lot, thus they asked for Sherlock's help.
Sherlock on arriving at the place observes all kinds of footprints and signs that might help him figure out the movements of the culprit. Enter the house Sherlock finds the grim figure lying on the floor when he asks for the dead man's belongings. Lestrade and Gregson hand over a letter that had been lying in the pocket, which reveals the name of the dead man- Enoch Drebber, and a person he had been traveling with- Joseph Strangerson. The two had to leave for Cleveland when the incident happened. Lestrade finds on a wall a word inscribed- 'RACHE' which he mistakes for some woman named Rachel. Sherlock corrects him by explaining that RACHE is a German word that means revenge. But Sherlock deduces that the word is just a way to put the police on the wrong track, as the letter 'A' had been written in some distorted and incorrect manner.
Sherlock makes some deductions alone in the room and finds some blood stains near the wrist of the dead man. But the dead man had not been wounded on any parts of his body which implies that the blood belongs to the killer and the man died by taking some poison, also there had been no signs of struggle in his body but an expression on his face filled with shock and hate. Which clearly implies that the dead man knew the killer somehow. Smelling his breath Sherlock discovers that the dead man had been drunk at the time when all this happened, thus it was easy for the killer to do his job. On measuring the height at which 'RACHE' had been written, Sherlock deduces the height of the man who wrote it, as people usually tend to write at their eye level. But more importantly, he finds a wedding ring on the man that belongs to a woman.
Sherlock keeps the ring with him and decides to interrogate the cop who saw it all. Sherlock learns from the cop that after coming out, the cop saw a drunk man at the gate of the house in a brown coat, but there was no cab nearby. Sherlock deduces that the ring belongs to the killer somehow and he comes back to pursue it back after the murder. Sherlock plants an advertisement of the wedding ring in a newspaper to bait the killer to him. But unexpectedly, an old woman shows up and claims the ring belongs to her daughter. On following the old woman, Sherlock finds out that the old woman was a hoax.
The next day Sherlock calls upon a group of street Arabs, who are led by a boy named Wiggins, and they actually help Sherlock with the investigation by spying. Sherlock demands some help from Wiggins who sets out to find the person Sherlock demands. Soon, Gregson arrives at Baker Street, claiming to have figured out the entire case. Gregson deduced that the lodge at which Strangerson and Drebber stayed was owned by a woman, her son, and her daughter. Drebber did some misbehaving with her daughter for which her son threatened to kill Drebber and went after him that night. Which clearly states to him that it was he who murdered Drebber while Strangerson had gone. Gregson had also arrested the man when Lestrade arrived with a piece of rather shocking news. Lestrade finally found Strangerson at a hotel but he had already been murdered the same morning after getting stabbed.
This puts the case in some twist when Sherlock, Lestrade, and Gregson arrive at the place of the murder. They find a ladder to Strangerson's window and a white box with two pills. A milkman clarifies the description of the man he saw getting out of Strangerson's window from a ladder, which matches the same description the cop gave for Baxton Street. Sherlock takes the white box of pills to his apartment and after an experiment, he finds out that out of the two soluble pills, one is poisonous and the other one is plainly digestible. He figures out that the killer had used the toxic pill to attempt the murder of Enoch Drebber.
Soon Wiggins arrives with a cab when Sherlock calls upon the cabbie. The Cabbie arrives in the room when Sherlock arrests him, announcing the killer to everyone- Jefferson Hope.
PART 2-
In Utah's Salt Lake Valley, John Ferrier and his later adopted daughter Lucy are given shelter by the tribe of Mormons who accept them into their tribe provided they become a member of their faith. John Ferrier raises Lucy as his daughter and grows into enormous wealth and fortune. Soon Lucy grows into a beautiful young woman and falls in love with Jefferson Hope, a hunter who had come on an expedition in the Salt Lake Valley. John Ferrier accepts the relationship of Lucy and Hope and wishes them to married. Hope leaves the village for two months, with intentions to come back and claim Lucy as his wife.
Later, John is met by the Prophet, who reminds him that he is in debt by the Mormons for giving him shelter, and to repay it, he must get his daughter married to one of the sons of the tribe's elders. Two candidates who were eligible for marriage were Enoch Drebber and Joseph Strangerson. John was threatened that if he tried to decline or escape, he would face brutal consequences, and thus, to his mercy, the Prophet gave him thirty days to decide. John doesn't want his daughter Lucy to marry either Drebber or Strangerson and writes to Hope, to be there soon as they are in brutal danger.
For the next few days, the tribesmen repeatedly threaten John, by inscribing the number of days left on the walls of his house. This scares him even further when on the night of the last day, Jefferson helps John and Lucy to escape. On their way, they spent two days in traveling across hills and forests, while the tribe had been following them all this while. Hope decides to rest for some time while hunts down some food for the father and daughter. Hope in search of food gets lost in the forest for five hours when he comes back to find out that father and daughter are absent. He soon finds out that John Ferrier had been murdered by Strangerson and Lucy had been forcefully married to Drebber. This enrages Hope and tears him apart emotionally. Soon after one month of the events, Lucy passes away, but Drebber remains unmoved. Jefferson Hope determines to have his revenge on Strangerson and Drebber when he decides to follow them everywhere they go.
The two soon move out of the village, where Strangerson becomes an assistant to Drebber, who uses his wealth to gain fortune. They soon learned about Hope following them, when they repeatedly changed towns. When finally Hope got them in London. In London, Strangerson and Drebber were about to leave for Cleveland when they lost their train. Drebber quarreled with Strangerson and decided to go back to his lodge and claim the landlady's daughter. Hope followed him and when Drebber came out of the lodge after a quarrel with Landlady's son, he rode into Hope's cab. After that Drebber stopped at a pub and drank until he had lost consciousness. Hope had an opportunity to take his revenge when he took Drebber to Baxton Street's empty house. There he revealed his true identity to Drebber and gave him an option to have any one of the two pills. Luckily, Drebber took the poisonous one and died that very night. Just to put the investigation on the wrong track Hope wrote 'RACHE' on the wall which was a sign of a secret German group in America.
After this, he realized that he had left his ring of Lucy at the same place but when he came back, he saw the cop already there and decided to not move any further and pretended like a drunk man. After this, as he had heard Strangerson and Drebber planning their stay at a hotel, Hope traveled to the hotel and figured out Strangerson's window. He later on climbed and attempted to murder him the same way. But Strangerson intervened and led Hope to stab him instead. Hope wrote 'RACHE' on the ceiling of the room to leave his mark. He decided to leave the cab business when he was visited by Wiggins asking him for his cab at 221B Baker Street Sherlock Holmes traveled there and got arrested.
Jefferson Hope narrates the entire deal to everyone present there and is imprisoned. Soon Jefferson Hope dies of an underlying heart disease, and the case closes. Sherlock reveals to Doctor Watson that when he investigated the entire case he figured out from the footsteps outside Baxton Street that two people had gone inside and a horse had been making random movements. It would do this only in case the Cabbie was not there which means the Cabbie was supposed to be the killer. Also, after finding the ring, Sherlock sends a telegram to Cleveland demanding some data on Drebber's married life. The police reverted that Drebber lodged a complaint against the lover of his dead wife, named Jefferson Hope. Then he asked Wiggins to look out for a Cabbie named Jefferson Hope and luckily he was able to find him in the town.
The case closes, but the credit for investigation falls into the hands of Detective Lestrade and Gregson instead, while Sherlock gets a slight mention.
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