Plot
When several women are murdered and their forefingers severed, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are called into action by Inspector Gregson, but Holmes is baffled by the crimes at the start. Widower Sir George Fenwick, after a romantic night at the apartment of Lydia Marlowe, is hypnotized into believing that he is responsible for the crimes. He is certain that he is guilty after he awakes from a stupor and finds a woman's forefinger in his pocket. His daughter comes to Holmes and Watson without realizing that Moriarty's henchman is following her. She tells Holmes and Watson that she saw her father burying something in their garden. Later, she dug up a box containing a forefinger and shows it to them.
Fenwick is then found dead in his house in Kingston, obviously murdered by someone to keep him from talking. Holmes theorizes that Moriarty, who was supposed to have been hanged in Montevideo, is alive and responsible for the crimes. Watson is then called to help a woman who fell over while feeding her pet bird. He leaves, and minutes later, Moriarty appears and explains that he faked the phone call so he could talk to Holmes. Just after Moriarty leaves, Watson returns. Holmes explains what Moriarty did, notices that a window shade that was shut in the empty house across the street is now open, and tells Watson to investigate.
Inside the empty house Watson believes that he sees a sniper shoot Holmes in his apartment through the open window. Holmes then appears at the house and explains that he put a bust of Julius Caesar there because of the bust's resemblance to his own face (Holmes realized that as soon as he sat there, Moriarty would have him killed). Inspector Gregson takes the sniper, a hypnotized ex-soldier, away, but the sniper is kidnapped and later killed on Holmes's doorstep.
Holmes now realizes that Moriarty's plan involves:
- 1) killing women and cutting off their forefingers,
- 2) making rich, single men who have been hypnotized believe they have committed the crime,
- 3) using this fake information to blackmail them, and
- 4) counting on the victims being too terrified to expose the scheme.
He befriends Lydia at the Mesmer Club, suspecting that she is in cahoots with Moriarty. She takes him to her house, where he is apparently hypnotized using a pill containing cannabis japonica . Moriarty enters and has one of his men cut Holmes with a knife to verify that he is hypnotized. He then tells Holmes to write a suicide note (which he does), walk out of Lydia's apartment onto the ledge, and jump to his death.
Watson and the police then appear and grab the criminals. Holmes reveals he was never really hypnotized, but had secretly ingested a drug to make him appear as if he had been hypnotized and which made him insensitive to pain. Moriarty then escapes from the hold of the policemen and jumps from the terrace of Lydia's apartment to another building. However, he hangs onto a pipe which becomes loose from the building, causing him to fall to his death.
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