About this story
An almanac unlocks three words, Douglas, Birlstone, danger, minutes before Inspector MacDonald arrives to report that John Douglas of Birlstone Manor was shot dead inside a locked house behind a raised drawbridge. A card marked V.V. and 341 lay beside the body; his wedding ring is missing, though another remains above it. You board the train for Birlstone with Holmes, already doubting whose body it is.
How it opens
Sherlock Holmes balanced a page of figures at arm's length above breakfast.
Porlock has risked punishment to send us this, then omitted the key.
The informant occupied a small place inside Professor Moriarty's hidden organization.
Without the book he used, the figures may mean anything.
They mean he expected us to possess a common book of fixed pagination.
Choose
An almanac changes each year but reaches every household.
A railway timetable would explain the many numbers.
A dictionary offers long pages and stable words.