The Adventure of the Naval Treaty

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes #11

by Arthur Conan Doyle

France and Russia will pay anything to know England's naval plans. A desperate thief acts. The disgraced official loses his mind, then months later, calls for Sherlock Holmes, because the treaty is still secret.

Genres: Mystery, Classics, Short Stories, Fiction, Detective, Crime, Audiobook

First published January 1, 1893

About the author

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.

Reviews

[Aishu Rehman]

Today, The Adventure of the Naval Treaty is one of the most famous of the original canon of Sherlock Holmes stories; it is also interestingly one of the longest of the 56 short stories. The tale though, is not overly long, and The Adventure of the Naval Treaty can be read in one sitting.

The case sees Sherlock Holmes dealing with high political and international intrigue, but at the same time Holmes is arguably more worried about the reputation of the individual, for the honesty of his client, Percy Phelps is being questioned.

Sherlock Holmes of course does a much better job in recovering the missing Naval Treaty than Scotland Yard had done; and there is the theatrical flourish at the end of the case that was so in keeping with many of the cases Sherlock Holmes dealt with.

The Adventure of the Naval Treaty was also adapted by Granada TV for the televisions series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett. This adaptation kept true to the original storyline from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

[Isa Cantos (Crónicas de una Merodeadora)]

Este fue un relato bastante confuso desde el principio, pero, como siempre, Holmes me sorprendió con sus deducciones y con su manera de actuar. Me gusta que incluso logra confundir a Watson, que lleva tanto tiempo a su lado. La resolución me pareció creativa e incluso algo peligrosa. No sé si alguna vez pase, pero creo que llegará un punto en el que Holmes termine de verdad herido por sus pesquisas.

[Jason Koivu]

Political intrigue is le mystère de la journée for Sherlock Holmes. A document has gone missing that could be disastrous if it fell into foreign hands. Who could've stolen it? A charwoman? A crazy man? A seemingly upright nursemaid? A politically-minded lord?

Army doctor and our steadfast narrator, John Watson is literally along for the ride as he and Holmes take a train from the city down to Woking to visit Watson's old school chum, a man now working in the Foreign Office. The man has just recovered from a bout of brain fever and requires assistance in recovering aforementioned document. Intrigued by the details, Holmes takes up the case and lays out a plan of action in hopes of snaring the criminal.

This case is not as diabolically clever as others within Doyle's canon of Sherlock tales. It is, however, tightly paced and interesting enough to hold the reader's attention. I did guess the culprit before the reveal, but admittedly there's only so many people who could've "dunnit". Not a bad one, just not brilliant.

[Razvan Banciu]

Average, as many Doyle works. The story itself is quite ordinary, only to be saved by the detective's usual touch of genius.
It is not the first time I have the impression that Mr. Doyle's stories lack substance, as the plot is secondary to a parade of Holmes's skills. But, as I've said before, sometimes I'm probably too harsh on this gentleman and his products...

[Tonkica]

Preporučila bih za čitanje desetogodišnjacima, kao i prvih šet dijelova. Zabavni su i otvaraju vrata pravom Sherlocku Holmesu, Poirotu, Miss. Mrple i ostaloj detektivskoj ekipi koje će djeca sigurno htjeti upoznati s kojom godinom više.

[Jack Heath]

5 Stars. One of the best Sherlock Holmes short stories. Dramatic with numerous clues for gullible readers like me to miss. Conan Doyle never fails to impress; he not only knew how to craft a great mystery, but was a wonderful writer too. This one at first appears simple but soon balloons to impossible. Dr. Watson gets a letter from a former school mate who had been in fifth form when he was in third. He desperately needs help from Holmes. Percy Phelps had done well in life and now held a responsible post in the Foreign Ministry and his uncle, Lord Holdhurst, is a Minister in the Cabinet. A potential PM too. Britain had just signed a naval treaty with Italy which could upset the balance of power with France and Russia. Wouldn't their embassies like to obtain a copy of that secret treaty! The Minister assigns his trusted nephew to work on it, and Phelps stays late one evening to finish the task. Needing a coffee to stay awake, he left his cubicle in the almost empty building for a few minutes, and the treaty disappeared! Doyle even provides a layout of Phelps' office area and its entries and exits. I challenge you to find the clues. I just loved it. (Au2022/Au2026)

[Claudia DR]

Good story!
8,25

[Katja Labonté]

5 stars & 5/10 hearts. Oh, what a delightful story! The premise/plot is fascinating and mysterious, and the characters are particularly interesting—strong Annie, weak Phelps, noble Lord H., and merry Joseph especially, but the commissioner and his family throw in an extra twist. The humour is excellent—and there’s quite a lot of it!—and Holmes’ character and methods really shine—I especially love his remark on the boarding schools. One of my very favourite Sherlock stories!

Content: Swearing, smoking.

A Favourite Quote: “‘What a lovely thing a rose is! … Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.’”
A Favourite Humorous Quote: “‘If the treaty had reached, let us say, the French or Russian Foreign Office, you would expect to hear of it?’
“‘I should,’ said Lord Holdhurst, with a wry face.
“‘Since nearly ten weeks have elapsed, then, and nothing has been heard, it is not unfair to suppose that for some reason the treaty has not reached them.’
“Lord Holdhurst shrugged his shoulders. ‘We can hardly suppose, Mr. Holmes, that the thief took the treaty in order to frame it and hang it up.’”

[Armita]

"Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers."

[J9]

One of my favorites, I kept fixating on the bell that rung in the room where the treaty was stolen. Why would someone steal something then ring a bell? I had lots of theories and some came close to what I guessed, but it was fun thinking of all the possibilities. This one is about a Naval treaty being stolen and a man who is worried about his job when it gets out. However, no other country has used it which means it hasn't been sold. So why did someone steal it? And why did they ring the bell? And why is someone trying to break into the sick room of the officer after he catches brain fever from nerves from losing the treaty? So many suspects from his boss, to his colleague, to his fiancé, to his brother, to the nurse, to the servants...who could it be? Lots of fun and mystery in this one. Highly recommended.

[Diamond Cowboy]

I will give a full review at a later date.

[Rob Thompson]

Dr. Watson receives a letter, which he then refers to Holmes, from an old schoolmate, now a Foreign Office employee from Woking who has had an important naval treaty stolen from his office. It disappeared while Mr. Percy Phelps had stepped out of his office momentarily late in the evening to see about some coffee that he had ordered. His office has two entrances, each joined by a stairway to a single landing. The commissionaire kept watch at the main entrance. There was no-one watching at the side entrance. Phelps also knew that his fiancée's brother was in town and that he might drop by. Phelps was alone in the office.

Phelps pulled the bell cord in his office to summon the commissionaire, and to his surprise the commissionaire's wife came up instead. He worked at copying the treaty that he had been given while he waited. At last, he went to see the commissionaire when it had taken some time for the coffee to arrive. He found him asleep with the kettle boiling furiously. He did not need to wake him up, however, as just then, the bell linked to his office rang. Realizing that someone was in his office with the treaty spread out on his desk, Phelps rushed back up and found that the document had vanished, and so had the thief.

It seemed obvious that the thief had come in through the side entrance; otherwise he would have passed Phelps on the stairs at some point, and there were no hiding places in his office. No footprints were seen in the office despite its being a rainy evening. The only suspect at that point was the commissionaire's wife, who had quickly hurried out of the building at about that same time.

This was followed up, but no treaty was found with her. Other suspects were the commissionaire himself and Phelps's colleague Charles Gorot. Neither seemed a very likely suspect, but the police followed them both, and the commissionaire's wife. As expected, nothing came of it.

Phelps was driven to despair by the incident, and when he got back to Woking, he was immediately put to bed in his fiancée's brother's room. There he remained, sick with "brain fever" for more than two months, his reputation and honour apparently gone.

Holmes is quite interested in this case, and makes a number of observations that others seem to have missed. The absence of footprints, for instance, might indicate that the thief came by cab. There is also the remarkable fact that the dire consequences that ought to result from such a treaty being divulged to a foreign government have not happened in all the time that Phelps has been ill. Why was the bell rung?

Holmes gathers some useful information at Briarbrae, the Phelps house, where his fiancée, Annie Harrison, and her brother Joseph have also been staying. She has been nursing him days while a nurse has been employed to keep watch over him at night. Joseph, it seems, is along for the ride.

After seeing Phelps at Woking, Holmes makes some inquiries in town. He visits Lord Holdhurst, Phelps's uncle, who gave his nephew his important job with the treaty, but Holmes dismisses him as a suspect, and is quite sure now that no-one could have overheard their discussion about the job. Lord Holdhurst reveals to Holmes the potentially disastrous consequences that might occur if the treaty should fall into the hands of the French or Russian embassies. Fortunately, nothing has yet happened, despite the many weeks since the theft. Apparently, the thief has not yet sold the treaty, and Lord Holdhurst informs Holmes that the villain's time is running out, as the treaty will soon cease to be a secret. Why, then, has the thief not sold the treaty?

Holmes returns to Woking, not having given up, but having to report that no treaty has turned up yet. Meanwhile, something interesting has happened at Briarbrae: someone tried to break in during the night, into Phelps's sick room, no less. Phelps surprised him at the window but could not see his face through the hooded cloak that he was wearing. He did, however, see the interloper's knife as he dashed away. This happened the very first night that Phelps felt he could do without the nurse.

Unknown to anyone else at this point—although Watson infers it from his friend's taciturnity—Holmes knows what is going on. He orders Annie to stay in her fiancé's sick room all day, and then to leave it and lock it from the outside when she finally goes to bed. This she does.

Holmes finds a hiding place near Briarbrae to keep watch after having sent Watson and Phelps to London on the train, and also letting the occupants at Briarbrae believe that he intended to go with them, ostensibly to keep Phelps out of harm's way should the interloper come back.

Holmes waits until about two o'clock in the morning, and the interloper appears—out of the house's tradesman's entrance. He goes to the window, gets it open as before, opens a hidden hatch in the floor, and pulls out the treaty. He then steps straight back out the window and Holmes intercepts him after which they fight with Holmes emerging victorious but having suffered minor injuries.

The treaty has been in Phelps's sick room all the time, while the thief, Joseph, who usually slept in that room, could not get to it. He rang the bell in Phelps's office after dropping by to visit and finding him not there, but then he saw the treaty and its potential value. His inability to reach the treaty explains why there have been no dire political consequences. Holmes explains that Joseph had lost a great deal of money on the stock market, which explains his need for money. Being a very desperate and selfish man, he cared nothing for the consequences Phelps might suffer from the document's loss.

Always one with a flair for the dramatic, Holmes literally has the treaty served up to Phelps as breakfast the next morning at 221B Baker Street, where he has spent the night under Watson's watchful eyes (although there has been no danger). Phelps is ecstatic, Holmes is quietly triumphant, and once again, Watson is dumbfounded.

Holmes explains that several clues all pointed to Joseph: the fact that the thief knew the ways of the office well, given that he had rung the bell before seeing the treaty, and that Phelps mentioned his relatives had been shown around; the fact that Joseph had intended to stop in and see Phelps on his way home, and that the theft had been committed very soon before the train would depart for Woking; that the thief had come in a cab, given that it was a rainy night but that there were no wet footprints in the passage; and the fact that the burglar who tried to break into Phelps' room was familiar with the layout of the house.

A nice tale with some unusual twists and turns. How was it done? Elementary my dear friends. In the end, Holmes can clear Phelps, catch the bad guy and hand back the document before it fell into foreign hands. Doyle takes his time setting up convincing red herrings and several possible suspects. We get a whiff of international political intrigue. This adds gravity to the situation. Holmes is enigmatic and entertaining throughout.

[Jeff Tankersley]

A Foreign Office aide named Phelps is being entrusted with copying a highly-secret document (this tale's "Naval Treaty") late at night in a secure office when a few seemingly-coincidental misfortunes lead to it being stolen. When Phelps fails to track it down the night of the theft, he goes into a fit of apoplexy and brain-fever and is then in an invalid state for nine weeks before being nursed back to health, at which time he asks his old friend Dr. Watson to enlist the help of Sherlock Holmes.

I found "The Naval Treaty" (1893) to be a better plotted mystery than the average Holmes tale.

Verdict: A fun whodunit mystery with some dashes of foreign intrigue and misdirects.

Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG

[Nö Ğå]

من قراءاتي الكثيره لشيرلوك لم يعد يبهرني منها غير القليل اما الكثير منها فمتوسط الاثاره بالنسبه لي.. لم يكن الامر متعبا حتي يعي بان الاوراق لاتزال ف حوزه السارق كل هذا الوقت وهو الامر الذي يدعو الي الشك فورق بقيمته هذه لم يكن لينتظر طوال هذه المده
شيرلوك مدقق جيد ورابط للاحداث حتي وان كانت بسيطه

[Abd Rsh]

اسلوب غامض يتمتع به شارلوك هولمز في حل القضايا يجعلك تستغرب سبب قيامه ببعض الأمور، ويجعلك تعيد النظر بنظرتك للأحداث، وطريقة ربطها مع بعضها بشكل منطقي جميل يتسم وعلى أقل تقدير بالابداع...

[John Yelverton]

This is a wonderful Sherlock Holmes story that is full of intrigue and a very well written mystery which will keep you guessing and pondering until the very end.

[Tirzah]

Holmes & Watson take a break from homocide to focus on theft. I think I like this one due to how well I like the Granada TV adaptation. Basil Rathbone will always be THE Sherlock to me as I grew up watching his movies, but Jeremy Brett is a very close second (I didn't discover him until recently). Brett particularly shines in "The Naval Treaty" for capturing Sherlock's eccentric character and I could not help but picture several scenes while listening to this adventure.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Edward Hardwicke a.k.a. 2nd Watson in the Granada series.

[زيد طوغلي]

ممتعة بتعتمد على لغز رسمي وأدبي في الوقت نفسه. تبدأ القضية بسرقة وثائق مهمة تتعلق بمعاهدة بحرية، وهنا يظهر هولمز كالعادة ذكاءه الحاد في رصد التفاصيل الصغيرة

ما أعجبني أكثر هو الإحساس بالضغط المستمر على الجميع: الحكومة، الضابط، وحتى هولمز نفسه. كل خطوة تحمل احتمال كشف الجريمة أو فشل المهمة، ما يجعل القارئ مشدودًا طوال الوقت

القصة سلسة، مشوّقة، ونهاية اللغز ذكية جدًا. ليست مطاردة مستمرة، لكنها تُظهر قدرة هولمز على الاستنتاج والتحليل بطريقة دقيقة وعملية، وتذكرنا أن أحيانًا القوة الحقيقية في الملاحظة لا في الحركة أو الأكشن..

[Mohamed alrawahi]

أول رواية أقرؤها من سلسلة شارلوك هولمز التي تعد من أهم الشخصيات الخيالية التي اشتهرت في القرن العشرين وزادت شهرتها عن مؤلفها السيد آرثر كونان دويل، تلك الشخصية التي دائمًا ما نتخيلها بقبعتها المميزة والمعطف والغليون. فبعد انتهائي لمشاهدة مسلسل شارلوك هولمز وبعض أفلامه زاد انجذابي لهذه الشخصية العبقرية التي دفعتني الى البدء في قراءة هذه السلسلة الشيقة التي تدور احداثها في القرن التاسع عشر في لندن.
بجانب عشقي لأحداث وتفاصيل القضية فيه هذه الرواية أحببت أيضًا الرسومات الصغيرة

[Book of Sand]

26 წლის ასაკამდე ისე მივაღწიე, რომ შერლოკს მხოლოდ სერიალებითა და ფილმებით ვიცნობდი, ხოდა ეს მოთხრობა ცნობილ შერლოკ ჰოლმსთან პურველი შეხვედრა იყო. ვერ ვიტყვი, რომ აღმაფრთოვანა, თუმცა მგზავრობისას დროის გასაყვანად არაჩვეულებრივი საკითხავია 👌🏻

[Emily]

3.0/5
A longer mystery that involves a case with international importance. It was suspenseful but could have been even better if the point of view had stayed on Sherlock, who discovers, on his own, who the criminal is.

[Nika Vardiashvili]

ნუ, შერლოკისეულ ისტორიებს წინ ვერ აღუდგები ადამიანი. ტრადიციული ჯაჭვი, პატარიან-დიდი რგოლეებით.

[AhmEd MokhtAr]

اسلوب غامض يتمتع به شارلوك هولمز في حل القضايا يجعلك تستغرب سبب قيامه ببعض الأمور، ويجعلك تعيد النظر بنظرتك للأحداث، وطريقة ربطها مع بعضها بشكل منطقي جميل يتسم وعلى أقل تقدير بالابداع... ^_^

[Aalyaa]

الأدلة التي استخدمها شيرلوك للإدانة كانت أمامي طوال الوقت هذا هو ذوقي برغم تخميني لهوية الجاني مبكرا إلا أن التفاصيل راقت لي هذه أحد روايات شيرلوك القليلة التي أحببتها حقا

[Levi Dykstra]

Surprise, caught you red handed.

[Julaine]

À mon avis, l'un des meilleurs!

[Tojuan Gordon]

Sherlock, brilliant as always.

[Sara]

الشيء الساخر هو أنك يمكنك حرفيًا تلخيص القصة في جملة ! ؛ " وثائق اختفت و هولمز أعادها !
لا شيء آخر هنا .. لا شيء .
لا يوجد حتى قصة ..

[Joop]

Een iets langer kort verhaal. Goed geschreven.

[Aurora]

In one of Holmes' more exciting adventures, he saves the reputation of a diplomat and helps to avert a major international scandal.
A great read.