This is one of the two cases in the compilation of Dr. Watson that he introduced to Sherlock Holmes. It all started when Mr. Victor Hatherley, a hydraulic engineer, was brought to Dr. Watson to treat his cut thumb. Dr. Watson accompanied him to Sherlock Holmes to help him shed some light on the nightmarish event that led to his injury and get the perpetrators. A dubious man, Colonel Lysander Stark, a German, commissioned the engineer to come to Eyford, in Berkshire and to teach the colonel and his friend Mr. Ferguson to repair their hydraulic machine; they used it to compress fuller’s earth into brick, according to his client. But after the engineer’s assessment of the machine’s break down, he doubted of its purpose. He confronted the colonel. The colonel got mad, locked him in the hydraulic room and set it on to kill him. But he saw a door and managed to get through it. A woman named Elise, she is one of them, helped him escaped through a window, but before he could jump the colonel chopped his thumb. Holmes, Watson and Inspector Bradstreet, of Scotland Yard accompanied Hatherley back to Berkshire to arrest Colonel Lysander Stark and his friends, who Holmes and the inspector believed to be a coin counterfeit syndicate. But when they came to the place, the house was burning and the group was gone. Mr. Victor Hatherley will never forget the night he almost dies.
More summaries about the The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb