Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Reigate Squire" twelfth in his list of his twelve favorite Holmes stories.

[1] Watson takes Holmes to a friend's estate near Reigate in Surrey to rest after a rather strenuous case in France.

There has recently been a burglary at the nearby Acton estate in which the thieves stole a motley assortment of things, even a ball of twine, but nothing terribly valuable.

Holmes, apparently still recovering from his previous strenuous case, seems to have a fit just as Forrester is about to mention the torn piece of paper to the Cunninghams.

He sees Alec's room and then his father's, where he deliberately knocks a small table over, sending some oranges and a water carafe to the floor.

He had perceived that one man was young, the other rather older, and that they were related, which led Holmes to conclude that the Cunninghams wrote the letter.

The escape route also does not bear their story out: there is a boggy ditch next to the road that the fleeing murderer would have had to cross, yet there are no signs of any footprints in it.

William then proceeded to blackmail his employers – not realizing that it was dangerous to do such a thing to Alec – and they thought to use the recent burglary scare as a plausible way of getting rid of him.

With his superhuman physical and mental achievement, he has a correspondingly drastic fit of nervous prostration and needs Watson's assistance.

At the conclusion, he tells Watson: "I think our quiet rest in the country has been a distinct success, and I shall certainly return much invigorated, to Baker Street to-morrow.

[7] It was included in the short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes,[6] which was published in the UK in December 1893 and in the US in February 1894.

The short film, titled The Reigate Squires, starred Georges Tréville as Sherlock Holmes.

[12] Another episode adapted from the story aired on 29 February 1936, under the title "The Adventure of the Reigate Puzzle" (with Gordon as Holmes and Harry West as Watson).

[15] An adaptation titled "The Reigate Squires" aired on BBC radio in 1978, starring Barry Foster as Holmes and David Buck as Watson.

The episode, which starred Gordon Gould as Sherlock Holmes and William Griffis as Dr. Watson, first aired in November 1982.