The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb

Engineer Victor Hatherley hangs on for dear life. This illustration by Sidney Paget originally appeared in The Strand Magazine where ‘The Engineer’s Thumb’ was first published.

The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb is one of the more obscure Sherlock Holmes stories, opaque in parts yet full of menace, tension and a more than a little gore.

Engineer Victor Hatherley is rushed to see Dr Watson when he is found at a railway station with a severed thumb and on the brink of collapse from loss of blood and shock.

Watson bandages his hand and the pair rush to see Sherlock Holmes in a bid to track down the strange German colonel in a remote country house who had wielded the butcher’s cleaver against the unfortunate engineer.

“He dashed her to one side, and, rushing to the window, cut at me with his heavy weapon. I had let myself go, and was hanging by the hands to the sill, when his blow fell. I was conscious of a dull pain, my grip loosened, and I fell into the garden below.”
– Victor Hatherly, in The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb