Conan Doyle's taking it up in this story was in line with his recurrent theme of wild and violent Americans and other foreigners exporting their power struggles to Victorian Britain - which already formed the basis to A Study in Scarlet, the very first Holmes mystery. The only trace of the boat is a ship's sternpost marked "LS" sighted in the North Atlantic.Īt the time of writing, the actual Ku Klux Klan was indeed broken and effectively defunct, and it would be decades before its 20th century revival.
The Lone Star never arrives in Savannah, due to a severe gale. Holmes sends five orange pips to the captain of the Lone Star, and then sends a telegram to the Savannah police claiming that the captain and two mates are wanted for murder. Furthermore, Holmes confirms that the Lone Star had docked in London a week before. Holmes checks sailing records of ships who were at both Pondicherry in January/February 1883 and at Dundee in January 1885 and recognises a Georgia-registered barque named the Lone Star, that he infers is a reference to Texas. The next day there is a newspaper account that the body of John Openshaw has been found in the River Thames and the death is believed to be an accident. K." as the Ku Klux Klan, an anti- Reconstruction domestic terrorist group in the South, until its sudden collapse in March 1869 – and theorises that this collapse was the result of the Colonel's maliciously taking their papers away to England. After Openshaw leaves, Holmes deduces from the time that has passed between the letter mailings and the deaths of Elias and his brother that the writer is on a sailing ship. Holmes advises Openshaw to leave the diary page with a note on the garden sundial, telling of the burning of the Colonel's papers.
The only clue with which John Openshaw can furnish Holmes is a page from his uncle's diary marked March 1869 describing orange pips having been sent to three men, of whom two fled and the third has been "visited". Three days later, Joseph Openshaw was found dead in a chalk-pit. Despite his son's urging, Joseph Openshaw refused to call the police.
K." and instructions to leave "the papers" on the sundial. On 4 January 1885 Elias's brother Joseph – John's father – received a letter postmarked Dundee with the initials "K. He would either lock himself in his room and drink or he would go shouting forth in a drunken sally with a pistol in his hand. More strange things happened: Papers from the locked room were burnt and a will was drawn up leaving the estate to John Openshaw. K." with five orange pips (seeds) enclosed. Another peculiarity was that in March 1883 a letter postmarked Pondicherry, in India, arrived for the Colonel inscribed only "K. Strange incidents have occurred one is that although John could go anywhere else in the house, he could never enter a locked room containing his uncle's trunks. Not being married, Elias had allowed his nephew to stay at his estate. A young gentleman named John Openshaw has a strange story: in 1869 his uncle Elias Openshaw had suddenly come back to England to settle on an estate in Horsham, West Sussex after living for years in the United States as a planter in Florida and serving as a colonel in the Confederate Army.