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The Yellow Face, one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the third tale from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in The Strand Magazine in 1894 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget.
One of the few sentimental pieces, two characteristics make this a particularly remarkable story. First, Sherlock Holmes' deduction was incorrect, but, nevertheless, the truth still comes out. According to Doctor Watson: "...where he failed it happened too often that no one else succeeded...Now and again, however, it chanced that even when he erred the truth was still discovered." The second remarkable feature was Conan Doyle's sympathetic though inaccurate treatment of inter-racial marriage in America; at the time the story was written, such marriages were illegal.
Synopsis
"HE LIFTED THE LITTLE CHILD" Sherlock Holmes, suffering from boredom due to a want of cases, returns home from a walk with Doctor Watson to find he has missed a visitor, but that the visitor has left his pipe behind. From this pipe, Holmes deduces that the visitor was disturbed of mind (because he forgot the pipe); that he valued the pipe highly (because he had repaired, rather than replaced, the pipe when it was broken); that he was muscular, left-handed, had excellent teeth, was careless in his habits and was well-off.
None of these deductions are particularly germane to the story; they are merely Holmesian logical pyrotechnics. When the visitor, Mr. Grant Munro (whose name Holmes observed from his hat-band) returns, Holmes and Watson hear the story of Munro's deception by his wife. She had been previously married in America, but her husband and child had died of yellow fever, whereupon she returned to England and met and married Grant Munro. Their marriage had been blissful - "We have not had a difference, not one, in thought, or word, or deed" says Grant Munro - until she asked for a hundred pounds and begged him not to ask her purpose for the money. Two months later, Effie Munro was caught conducting secret liaisons with the occupants of a cottage near the Munro house in Norbury.
Grant Munro has seen a mysterious yellow-faced person in this cottage; overcome with jealousy, he breaks into the cottage and finds it empty. However, in the room where he has seen the mysterious figure, a portrait of his wife stands on the mantelpiece.
Holmes, after sending Munro home with instructions to wire for him if the cottage was re-occupied, confides in Watson his belief that the mysterious figure is Effie Munro's first husband. He postulates that the husband, having been left in America, has come to England to blackmail Effie Munro.
After Munro summons Holmes and Watson, the three enter the cottage, brushing aside the entreaties of Effie Munro. They find the strange yellow-faced character; Holmes peels the mask from its face to reveal a young black girl. Effie Munro's husband, a black man, did indeed die in America; their child, however, did not. Afraid that Grant Munro would repudiate his love for her if he knew she was mother to a black child, she had endeavored to keep the child hidden. Overcome with desire to see her child again, Effie Munro used the hundred pounds to bring the child and her nurse to England and installed them in the cottage near the Munro house.
Both Watson and Holmes are touched by Munro's response. Watson says: "...when [Munro's] answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door." Holmes says: "Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you."
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The Yellow Face
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