In September 1887 my wife was visiting some of her
family, so I was staying with my old friend Sherlock
Holmes in Baker Street. It was a windy, stormy
evening, and the rain was falling heavily outside.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door.
I looked at my friend in surprise. 'Who can this be?'
I asked.
'If he comes on business in this weather, it's
important,' said Sherlock Holmes. 'Come in!' he
called.
A young man came in. He looked wet, tired and
worried. 'I've come to ask for help,' he said. 'I've heard
of you, Mr Holmes. People say you know everything. I
don't know what to do.'
'Well, sit down,' said Holmes, 'and tell me about
yourself.'
The young man sat down, and put his wet feet near
the fire. 'My name is John Openshaw. My father,
Joseph, had a brother, my uncle Elias, who went to live
in America when he was young. He made a lot of
money there. He didn't like the black Americans, so
during the Civil War he fought against the men from
The Five Orange Pips 29
the North, and with those from the South. But when
the South lost the war, and there was equality for black
people, Uncle Elias left America. So in 1869 he came
back to England and went to live in a large house in the
country. He was a strange, unhappy man.
'He did not want any friends,' John Openshaw
went on, 'and he often drank a lot. But he liked me,
and when I was twelve, I moved to Uncle Elias's house.
He was very kind to me. I could go anywhere in the
house. But there was one small room at the top of the
house which was always locked. Nobody could go into
this room.
'One day Uncle Elias got a letter from Pondicherry
in India. "I don't know anyone in Pondicherry!" he
said, but when he opened the envelope, five little
orange pips fell on to his plate. I began to laugh but
stopped when I saw my uncle's white face.
"K.K.K.!" he cried. "Oh my God, my God, they've
found me!"
"What do you mean, uncle?" I asked.
"Death!" he cried, and ran upstairs.
i looked at the envelope, which had three Ks on the
back. There was no letter. Who sent it? And why was
my uncle so afraid?
'Uncle Elias went immediately to the secret room
and took out a box which also had three Ks on it. He
burnt all the papers in the box, and said to me, "John, I
know that I'm going to die soon. My brother, your
father, will have all my money and my house after my
death, and you will have it all when he dies. I hope you
can enjoy it, but if not, give it to your worst enemy. I'm
afraid that my money brings death with it."
'I didn't understand what he meant, and nothing
happened for a few weeks, so I did not feel so worried.
But my uncle was very afraid. He stayed in his room
most of the time, and drank more than before. He
always locked all the doors carefully. Then one night
he drank very heavily and ran wildly out of the house,
and in the morning we found him dead in a river. The
police said he killed himself, but I knew he was afraid
to die, so I didn't think that was true.'
Holmes stopped the young man for a minute. 'Tell
me,' he said. 'When did your uncle get the letter from
India, and when did he die?'
'The letter arrived on 10th March 1883, and he died
seven weeks later,' answered John Openshaw.
'Thank you. Please go on,' said Holmes.
'After my uncle's death, my father moved into the
house. Of course I asked him to look carefully at the
locked room, but we didn't find anything important.'
2
More Pips
'Everything went well until a year later,' said John
Openshaw. 'But one morning my father opened a letter
to find five orange pips inside it. "What does this
mean, John?" he asked. His face was white.
"Look!" I said. "There's K.K.K. on the envelope.
Those letters were on Uncle Elias's envelope too!" We
were both shaking and afraid.
"Yes, and this time it says 'Put the papers in the
garden'."
"Which papers? The papers in Uncle Elias's box? He
burnt them!" I said.
"And where has this letter come from?" my father
said. He looked at the envelope. "Dundee, Scotland.
Well, I don't know anything about pips or papers. I'm
not going to do anything."
"Father, you must tell the police," I said. I remembered
my uncle's letter from India, and I was very
worried.
"No, they'll laugh at me. Let's just forget about it,"
he replied.
'Three days later my poor father went to visit an old
friend who lived some miles away. But he never came
back. The police said that he was walking home in the
dark when he fell down a hill. He was badly hurt, and
he died soon after. They decided it was an accident,
but I didn't agree. I thought it was murder, and I could
not forget the five orange pips and the strange letters to
my uncle and my father.
'But I've tried to forget, and I've lived alone in that
house for nearly three years now. Then yesterday I got
this.'
The young man showed us an envelope with K.K.K.
The Five Orange Pips 33
on the back, and five small orange pips. 'You see?' he
said. 'It comes from East London, and it says "Put the
papers in the garden". Those are the words that were
in the letter to my father.'
'So what did you do next?' asked Holmes.
'Nothing,' answered Openshaw. He put his head in
his hands. 'I don't know what to do. I'm afraid.'
'Nothing?' cried Holmes. 'Young man, you must do
something fast. You're in danger!'
'Well,' I've talked to the police,' said Openshaw
unhappily. 'But they laughed at me. They think that
there's nothing to worry about.'
'How stupid they are!' cried Holmes. 'And why
didn't you come to me immediately? Your enemies
have had almost two days to make a plan. Haven't you
found anything which will help us?'
'Well, I found this in the locked room,' said John
Openshaw. He showed us a small, half-burnt piece of
paper. 'It was with my uncle's papers. It's his writing.
Look, it says:
March 7th 1869 Sent the pips to three people,
Brown, Robinson and Williams.
March 9th Brown left.
March 10th Williams left.
March 12th Visited Robinson and finished business
with him.
'Thank you,' said Sherlock Holmes. 'And now you
must hurry home. Put this paper into your uncle's box,
put in a letter which says that your uncle burnt all the
other papers, and put the box outside in the garden. I
hope your enemies will be happy with that, and then
you won't be in danger any more. How are you going
home?'
'By train from Waterloo station,' replied Openshaw.
'There'll be a lot of people in the streets, so I think
that you'll be all right. But be careful.'
'Thank you, Mr Holmes,' said Openshaw. 'I'll do
everything you say.' He went out into the dark night,
the wind and the rain.
3
K.K.K.
Sherlock Holmes sat silently, and watched the fire.
Then he said to me, 'John Openshaw is in real danger.
Why did his Uncle Elias have to leave America? Because
he had enemies. When he came back to England he
was afraid. That's why he lived a lonely life and locked
all his doors so carefully. Now where did those letters
come from? Did you see?'
'The first from Pondicherry in India, the second
from Dundee in Scotland and the third from East
London,' I answered.
'Does that tell you anything?' asked Holmes.
'They're all sea ports. The writer was on a ship when
he wrote the letters,' I replied. I was pleased with my
answer.
'Very good, Watson,' said Holmes. 'Somebody sent
some pips from India, and arrived seven weeks later to
kill Uncle Elias. Then he sent some pips from Scotland
and arrived three days later to kill John's father. Do
you see why I'm worried now? He has sent pips toJohn from Londonl John's enemy is in London
already!'
'Good God, Holmes!' I cried. 'Who is this man?'
'More than one man, I think. They belong to the Ku
Klux Klan. That explains the "K.K.K.". Haven't you
ever heard of it? It's a very secret group of Americans
from the South. They wanted to stop equality for black
people and to kill anyone who didn't agree with them.
The police couldn't stop them. But in 1869 Uncle Elias,
who belonged to this secret group, suddenly left
America with all their papers, and so the group could
not go on. Of course the group wanted to get the
papers back. You remember the half-burnt paper?
That was Uncle Elias's American diary. While he was
working for the K.K.K., he sent the pips to frighten
those three men. Two left the country, but one didn't,
so the K.K.K. "finished business with him", or killed
him. The K.K.K. always worked like that.'
'Well, I hope they won't kill young Openshaw,' I
said.
4
The Last Deaths
But they did. The next morning we read in the
newspaper that John Openshaw was dead. A policeman
found him in the river near Waterloo station. TheThe Five Orange Pips 37
police said it was an accident, but Holmes was very
angry about it.
'He came to me for help and those men murdered
him! I'm going to find them, if it's the last thing I do!'
he said to me, and he hurried out of the house.
In the evening, when he came back to Baker Street,
he was tired, but pleased. 'Watson!' he said, 'I know
the names of Openshaw's enemies! And now I'm going
to send them a surprise! This will frighten them!' He
took five pips from an orange and put them in an
envelope. On it he wrote 'S.H. for J.C.'
'I'm sending the pips, not from the K.K.K., but from
me, Sherlock Holmes, to Captain James Calhoun. His
ship is called the Star. He and his men are sailing back
to Georgia, USA, now.'
'How did you find him, Holmes?' I asked.
'Ship's papers,' he said. 'I've looked at hundreds of
them today. Only one ship, the Star, was in the three
ports at the right times, and this morning the Star left
London to sail back to Georgia. I found out that the
captain and two of his men, all Americans, weren't on
the ship last night, so I'm sure they killed poor John
Openshaw. When they arrive in America, they'll get
the pips and then the police will catch them!'
Sherlock Holmes is a very clever detective, but he
can do nothing about the weather. The winter storms
at sea that year were worse than ever, and so the Star
never arrived in Georgia, and nobody saw the captain
or his men again. The murderers of John Openshaw
did not get the pips, but, in the