First published in 1890, The Sign of the Four is a classic of detective fiction and a forerunner of this now-ubiquitous genre. The story has everything - a beautiful damsel in distress, mysterious disappearances, a murder, a strange and lustrous pearl, a peculiar map, four desperate villains, an exotic treasure and, above it all, smiling superiorly as he moves with sure-footed confidence through the morass of conflicting clues, the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, investigator extraordinaire.