The Story of the Lost Special
"The Story of the Lost Special" | |
---|---|
Short story by Arthur Conan Doyle | |
Country | UK |
Language | English |
Publication | |
Publication date | 1898 |
"The Story of the Lost Special", sometimes abbreviated to "The Lost Special", is a mystery short story by
Synopsis
This story concerns the baffling disappearance of a privately hired train (a special) from the London and West Coast Railway Company on its journey from Liverpool to London on 3 June 1890; besides the train crew of driver, fireman, and train guard the only passengers are two South Americans. The train is confirmed to have passed Kenyon Junction but never have reached Barton Moss. The only clues are the dead body of the engineer found along the train tracks past Kenyon Junction and a letter from the United States that purports to come from the train guard. Authorities fail to discover any traces of the train. A letter to The Times by "an amateur reasoner of some celebrity at that date" is excerpted at one point:
"It is one of the elementary principles of practical reasoning, that when the impossible has been eliminated the residuum, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, must contain the truth. It is certain that the train left Kenyon Junction. It is certain that it did not reach Barton Moss. It is in the highest degree unlikely, but still possible, that it may have taken one of the seven available side lines. It is obviously impossible for a train to run where there are no rails, and, therefore, we may reduce our improbables to the three open lines, namely the Carnstock Iron Works, the Big Ben, and the Perseverance. Is there a secret society of colliers, an English Camorra, which is capable of destroying both train and passengers? It is improbable, but it is not impossible. I confess that I am unable to suggest any other solution. I should certainly advise the company to direct all their energies towards the observation of those three lines, and of the workmen at the end of them. A careful supervision of the pawnbrokers' shops of the district might possibly bring some suggestive facts to light."
This proposition from "a recognized authority upon such matters" meets with heated opposition, although the objectors fail to supply any conceivable alternative. Nevertheless, the responsible authorities do not act on the proposal and the public never shows any interest in the matter, as a political scandal has already attracted their attention.
Eight years later, a criminal called Herbert de Lernac, scheduled for execution in
Publication history
"The Story of the Lost Special" was first published in
Though the "amateur reasoner of some celebrity" referenced in the story is unnamed, some commentators have speculated that the character is Sherlock Holmes, and have also suggested that Holmes is referenced in "The Story of the Man with the Watches".[1] When these two stories were published in 1898, Doyle had killed off Holmes, who had made his "final" appearance in the 1893 story "The Final Problem". Doyle also wrote a very brief Holmes parody titled "The Field Bazaar" that was published in 1896 but not widely seen. Doyle would return to writing about Holmes in 1901, with the beginning of the serialized version of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The story was included in Doyle's 1908 short story collection Round the Fire Stories, published by
It has been included in anthologies of stories by various authors such as Victorian Tales of Mystery and Detection (1992), edited by Michael Cox,[6] and Miraculous Mysteries (2017), edited by Martin Edwards.[7][8]
Adaptations
- The story was loosely adapted into the serial The Lost Special (1932) as a western.
- An episode in the radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was titled "The Case of the Lost Special". Written by Edith Meiser, the episode aired on 18 November 1934. It incorporated elements of the short story "The Final Problem". When the copyright for the script was registered it was titled "The Lost Train".[9]
- The story was adapted as a 1943 episode of the radio program Suspense.
- The story was adapted as an episode of the radio program Escape which aired February 12, 1949. While the episode includes several letters to the Times, the one sometimes attributed to Sherlock Holmes is not among them.
- The Sherlock Holmes pastiche series Solar Pons by August Derleth treated the story as canon with its own version of the story, "The Adventure of the Lost Locomotive" (1951).
- A faithful adaptation was done in 1980 for Radio Mystery Theatre as "The Mysterious Rochdale Special".
- An episode of the The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was based on the story. The episode, titled "The Adventure of the Parisian Assassin", aired in 2011.[10]
- The 2014 Sherlock episode "The Empty Hearse" features a car on the London Undergroundvanishing between two stations.
- A similar scenario appears in the 2014 video game Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments. The correct solution is changed from the one in the story, but all the relevant elements remain.
See also
- The Great Train Robbery, a 1941 film containing essentially the same method for causing the disappearance of a train between stations
- Night Probe!, a 1981 novel containing a similar scenario of a missing hijacked train
References
- ^ ISBN 1-56619-198-X.
- ^ ISBN 0-517-217597.
- . Retrieved 26 February 2021.
- . Retrieved 26 February 2021 – via HathiTrust Digital Library.
- . Retrieved 26 February 2021 – via HathiTrust Digital Library.
- ISBN 0-19-212308-4.
- ISBN 9781464207457.
- ^ "USH Volume 1, Section II -- The Apocrypha". University of Minnesota Libraries. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
- ISBN 978-1629335087.
- ^ Wright, Stewart (30 April 2019). "The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Broadcast Log" (PDF). Old-Time Radio. Retrieved 21 March 2020.
External links
- The Lost Special public domain audiobook at LibriVox