The Return of Sherlock Holmes The Adventure of the Norwood Builder & The Adventure of the Dancing Men (p575-612)

The Adventure of the Norwood Builder is the second story that Doyle has to offer in the Return of Sherlock Holmes. This starts with a man by the name John Hector McFarlane. He is a lawyer who had been accused of murdering one of his clients. The person that was murdered was Jonas Oldacre. John told Holmes that Jonas hired him to write his will. The weird part about this will is that Jonas wanted to give John everything he had. So, John went to Jonas' house to write the will and put all the papers in a safe at the house. He stayed there late and went to an inn after. The next morning John found out in the paper that Jonas was murdered and the police were looking for him. There was a massive amount of evidence against John and did not know what to do. So, when he went to Holmes he began his own investigation. Later in the story Holmes found out that John's mother was once engaged to Jonas but then left him. Homes then talked with the house keeper and found that she knew information. Later in the story, Holmes solved the case. To prove it, he set fire to the house and Jonas, who was thought to be dead, ran out. At the end of the story they found out that Jonas was trying to have revenge on John's mother.
In The Adventure of the Dancing Men, a man named Hilton Cubitt went to Holmes for help. He gave him a piece of paper with pictures of dancing stick figures. He told Holmes that the men had a meaning to his wife and that they continuously reappeared. Mr. Cubitt's wife had a scared look on her face when she saw them but would not tell her husband why. So, Holmes told Mr. Cubitt to write down every occurrence of the men and give them to him Holmes later found out it was a code and cracked it. When he went to tell Cubitt, the man was shot and his wife was hit in the head. From the code, Holmes found out that a man named Abe Slaney was Cubitt's old lover and he had come to get her back. He was also a criminal and when he saw Cubitt, he shot him. At the end Slaney was arrested but escaped and Cubitt's wife spent the rest of her life alone.