abstract
| - In the story, a senior British politician receives a strongly worded letter from a European king which criticizes British foreign policy. If the contents of the letter were made public, the reaction of the British people would make war inevitable. When the letter is stolen, the Prime Minister calls on the brilliant consulting detective Sherlock Holmes for assistance. The case is further complicated when Holmes discovers that a foreign spy whom he suspects of stealing the letter was murdered at around the same time that the letter was stolen. In the opening paragraph of the story, Watson says that, following the publication of 'The Adventure of the Abbey Grange", Holmes asked him not to write any more stories about him. Watson was prepared to go along with Holmes' request. He then remembered that he had previously promised to give his readers an account of "The Adventure of the Second Stain" but had to wait until the "time was ripe". In the 1893 Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty", Watson refers to a case called "The Adventure of the Second Stain", about which he says that it will be impossible to write until after the start of the 20th century because it, "deals with intersts of such importance and implicates so many of the first families in the kingdom". Sir Arthur Conan Doyle included "The Adventure of the Second Stain" in a list of his twelve favorite Sherlock Holmes stories which he compiled for The Strand magazine in 1927. The story has been adapted for British television three times and adapted for television in the Soviet Union once.
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