The Return of Sherlock Holmes The Adventure of the Priory School & The Adventure of the Black Peter (627-667)

In The Adventure of the Priory School, a man named Thorneycroft Huxtable went to Holmes and asked him to go to Mackleton with him to investigate a kidnapping of one of the children in the school he is a principal of. The child that was kidnapped was a ten year old boy named Lord Saltire, and his father put a big reward out for anyone who can find him. Another boy named Heidegger was also missing and he took his bike with him. So, Mr. Huxtable told Holmes all the information he knew and he agreed to go back with him to Mackleton. Later in the story, the police found Lord Saltire's hat with gypsies and locked them up even thought they said that they had found it on the floor. By this time, Holmes found where Heidegger's bicycle tracks ended and he also found him dead next to them. After some investigating, Holmes finds out that Lord Saltire's father wrote him a letter to leave the school and hide because he was being threatened. The Lord's father was being threatened by his other son, James Wilder, who was born out of wedlock. Wilder threatened to kidnap Saltire if his father did not change his will. At the end they caught Wilder and he was allowed to leave and go to Australia. This is not my favorite of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Also this family has some problems that should have been resolved earlier.

The Adventure of the Black Peter is somewhat better than the previous story. It starts with a police detective named Stanley Hoplins going to Holmes for help in a case he is in. Peter Carey was murdered with a harpoon. This man was very violent and had such a bad reputation that his daughter was happy when he died. He is a salor and lived away from his family in an outhouse and was harpooned there. The only witness of the crime was a stonemason named Slater who said he saw the shadow of someone in the window. At the scene of the crime Holmes found a notebook that was initialed C.P.R.. Holmes later found out that it was most likely a stockbrokers. He also finds out that someone tried to break into Carey's cabin but did not succeed. So he predicted that the burglar would come back and as predicted a man named John Hopley Neligan decided to break in. When they caught him, Neligan told them that he had nothing to do with the murder and was looking for clues to find his lost father. Holmes believed him but kept him in contact and later found the real killer. He was a sea captain named Basil. At the end all three of these characters were involved together in some way and Neligan was released because his father was involved not him.