His Last Bow

The story is set in August 1914 and was originally entitled ‘His Last Bow – the war service of Sherlock Holmes’. It concludes the series of eight stories making up the compendium His Last Bow and is the final story, chronologically in the Canon. Holmes, in the guise of an Irish American named Altamont, visits the residence of the master German spy von Bork near Harwich, supposedly to hand over the top-secret code book of British naval signals. His real purpose is to obtain von Bork’s secret correspondence containing details of German agents and supporters. For Conan Doyle, in writing the story, he concluded his account of Holmes’ life by his acting as a patriot at a time when the outcome of the First World War was uncertain. The story is written in the third person and besides not involving any railway stations – Watson drives the getaway car- also contains one piece of information of great importance. Conan Doyle states Holmes was sixty at the time of the incident which means he was born in 1854.