From it, Holmes deduces that he was disturbed of mind (because he forgot the pipe); that he valued it highly (because he had repaired it with silver bands which cost more than the pipe cost, rather than replacing it, when it was broken); that he was muscular, left-handed, had excellent teeth, was careless in his habits and was not needed to practice economy.

They find the strange yellow-faced character, and Holmes peels the face away, showing it to be a mask, and revealing a young girl who is half-black.

It is then revealed that Effie Munro's first husband was John Hebron, an African-American lawyer, who did die in America, but their daughter, Lucy, survived.

Upon hearing of this, Effie became overcome with desire to see her child again, so she asked for the hundred pounds and used it to bring Lucy and her nurse to England, and installed them in the cottage near the Munro house.

She feared, however, that Grant might stop loving her if he found out that she was the mother of a mixed race child, so all the while, she had made every endeavour to keep Lucy's existence a secret.

"Holmes excuses himself and Watson, and, that evening, after they have returned to Baker Street, says: Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.Doyle's sympathetic treatment of interracial marriage, between an Englishwoman and a black lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia, appears extraordinarily liberal for the 1890s.

This story, however, should be set alongside Doyle's stereotyped caricature of a thuggish black boxer, in "The Adventure of the Three Gables" (1926).

[4] It was included in the short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes,[3] which was published in December 1893 in the UK and February 1894 in the US.