Forest Row in the Weald is the scene of a gruesome harpoon murder, and a young police inspector, Stanley Hopkins, asks Holmes, whom he greatly admires as a mentor, for some help. Holmes has already determined that it would take a great deal of strength and skill to run a man through with a harpoon and embed it in the wall behind him besides.

A lunatic is roaming London, seeking out and smashing Napoleonic sculpted busts. Holmes wonders, is he as addled as he seems, or is there a method to his madness?

This case, one of the very last handled by Holmes, involves a highly respected professor whose behavior suddenly turns into that of an animal. One Sunday evening Watson receives from Holmes a typically laconic message: "Come at once if convenient - if inconvenient come all the same."

A mutilated woman, a circus strongman and betrayal lead Holmes to solve a mystery that remained up in the air for many years.

At the request of an old rugby friend of Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes finds himself on a hunt for a vampire - or rather, on a mission to prove that vampires are the stuff of Medieval legend, not a part of the modern world. Holmes soon faces a question that truly tests his superb detective abilities: Could a mother harm her own child?

Holmes and Watson arrive at Trinity College, summoned by a message that rugby star, Godfrey Staunton has disappeared. Staunton is the key man on Overton's rugby team, and they will never win the important match if he cannot be found. Holmes admits that sport is a bit outside his ken, but he takes this case as seriously as any other. It proves not all elementary.