Dancing people

Another case of Sherlock Holmes swirls around strange dancing people - at first glance, an innocent children's drawing.

Sherlock Holmes calls for help a certain Mr. Hilton Kyubit. A year ago, he married Miss Ilsey Patrick, and a month ago his wife received a letter from the United States , and it greatly bothered her. Mr. Kyubit could not find out what was in the letter - he promised her not to ask about it, and the letter was destroyed by Mrs. Kuybit immediately after reading it.

Soon, drawings of dancing people began to appear near Mr. Kewbit's house. When Mrs. Cuybitt saw them for the first time, she lost consciousness, and after her eyes were constantly full of horror. Unable to solve the puzzle on his own, Mr. Hilton turns to the illustrious detective for help.

Holmes and Kyuubit decide that Kyubit will stay at home and monitor all incidents, and send new drawings of dancing people to Holmes.

Of course, Mr. Holmes immediately realizes that this is not just children's scribbles, but nothing more than a cipher. Having accumulated enough dancing people, Holmes reveals their secret and sends a telegram. After 2 days, Kyubit sends new "dancing people." Seeing them, Sherlock decides to immediately go to North Welsh with the words: "We let this business go too far." Having received an ambulance telegram, Holmes says that Kyubit has got into "extremely dangerous web". When, finally, Holmes arrives in North Welsham, he discovers that the Hilton Cuybit has been killed and his wife is seriously injured.

The murder investigation follows and the secret of the cipher is revealed at the end of the story. The dancing little men turned out to be a simple replacement cipher with flags - word separators. Sherlock Holmes, who had previously analyzed 160 different ciphers, cracked the cipher using an attack method based on selected plaintext. The last message said, "ILSY PREPARING FOR DEATH." The killer and author of the drawings turned out to be Mr. Ab Sleni - the former fiancé of Ilsi Patrick, a bandit from the Chicago gang. She fled from him to England, but he sought her out. As a result of their correspondence, she agreed to talk to him through the window at three in the morning, when her husband would sleep, in exchange for Aba's promise to leave her alone. She offered him money to pay off, which made him furious and grabbed her hand, but then her husband came running with a revolver. Ab and Hilton were shot at each other: Kyubit was killed, Sleen remained intact. After that, Ilsie tried to shoot herself.

Sherlock Holmes, having arrived and examined the crime scene, sends Abu Sleen a note in which the dancing men say: “COME IMMEDIATELY”, hoping that Sleen will think that Ilsi wrote the note. Ab Sleni comes, and Holmes catches him.

Ilsi Patrick recovered, and Ab Sleni, admitting his guilt, instead of the death penalty, was sentenced only to hard labor ^[7] .

• Sherlock Holmes - a private detective;
• Dr. Watson is a friend of Sherlock Holmes;
• Mr. Hilton Cewitt of Ridling-Thorpe-Manor in Norfolk is a client of Sherlock Holmes;
• Mrs. Ilsi Cewitt ( Ilsi Patrick ) - the wife of Mr. Cewitt;
• Mr. Ab Sleen is Ilsie Patrick's former fiancé, a bandit of the Chicago gang.

The story "Dancing Men" is very similar to the novel by Edward Alan Poe "The Golden Beetle . " Conan Doyle never hid that the first detective story he read was the Golden Beetle ^[8] .

Initially, Conan Doyle reluctantly acknowledged the influence of Poe and Emil Gaborio on his work. In A Study in Scarlet , Watson tells Holmes that he reminds him of Dupin Poe. To which Holmes replies that “Dupin is not a small fellow,” and then called Lecoc from Gaborio's works “a miserable jerk” ^{[9] [10]} .

Subsequently, Conan Doyle expressed deep gratitude to Poe. When he was in New York in 1884, he was asked if Edgar Allan Poe's work affected him. Doyle replied that Poe's detectives are the best among all fiction, and Dupin simply has no equal. Later, at Through the Magic Door , Doyle described Poe as “the creator of the detective genre, all treasure hunts and clues to ciphers originate from his Golden Beetle,” which Conan Doyle read as a student in Feldkirch ^{[11] [10]} .

Critics believe ^[12] that Conan Doyle contributed to the development of the detective genre. Edgar Allan Poe and Emil Gaborio, who looked back at Conan Doyle, used specific directions of the investigation in their works. Conan Doyle went further, developed these areas, embellished them, endowed Holmes with relevant skills of the late nineteenth century. So, in The Dancing Men, Holmes shines with his knowledge of cryptography and cryptanalysis - the sciences that were popularized while writing the story.

Alphabet

The Chukotsky translation uses an alphabet of 23 characters (men with flags are word delimiters):

Cryptograms

Phrases are encrypted in the work (in chronological order):

• "I am here Ab Sleni"
• “Ilsie, I live with Elridge” (Ab Sleni)  
• “Ilsey Come” (Ab Sleni)  
• Never (Ilsey Patrick)  
• “Ilsi prepare for death” (Ab Sleni)  
• Come Immediately (Sherlock Holmes)  

Decryption

Holmes resorts to frequency analysis . The frequency of letters in the cipher programs he had is very different from the frequency of letters for texts in Russian. In the original, the frequency of letters in cipher programs is similar to the frequency of letters for texts in English ^[13] .

Holmes used an attack method based on selected plaintext. He also believed that the flags in the notes are a symbol of the end of the word. Further in the English and Russian editions, Holmes acted differently due to the different frequency characteristics of the English and Russian languages. The following is a comparison of the decryption process in the Russian and English versions: ^[13]

"English" Holmes ^[14]

Holmes uses the same approach as Legrand, the hero of Edgar Poe ’s short story The Golden Beetle . At first, the decryptor is hampered by a lack of data. Legrand had the only note containing 193 characters. Holmes initially had a note of 15 characters. Having studied it, Holmes decided to build on the same idea as Legrand: the letter E is found in the English letter more often than others ^{[5] [15]} . Holmes also suggested that flags are word delimiters.

After receiving three more notes, Holmes substitutes the letter E, known to him, into one of them (into the fourth, which was added under the third and, according to Holmes, was the answer of Mrs. Cuybit) - .EE . He assumes that this is the word NEVER and receives three letters - N , V , R.

Holmes pays attention to the third note, ... E E ... E. He suggests that this appeal to Mrs. Kyubbit is probably a call - COME ELSIE . So Holmes gets six more letters - C , O , M , I , L , S.

The detective fills the first note with the letters known to him - .M .ERE ..E SL.NE. . Holmes finishes the second word - HERE , picks up the letter A , as it appears three times in the note - AM HERE AE SLANE. and fills in the blanks in the popular American first and last names - AM HERE ABE SLANEY . The resulting letters are A , H , B , Y.

Replacing the little men he knows with the letters in the second note, Holmes receives A. ELRI.ES and assumes this is a description of the place, AT ELRIGES . The resulting letters are T , G. And so deciphering the ciphers, Holmes comes to an answer.

"Russian" Holmes ^[16]

Holmes suggested that the first word of the second and third notes was an appeal to Mrs. Kyubit, ILSI . Thus, he received 3 letters - And , L , C.

Then he drew attention to the second word of the third note - of 7 letters, the third and last - And . From the assumptions about the possible meaning of the record, it followed that it was COMING . Found letters: P , P , X , O , D.

According to Holmes, the fourth note was written by Mrs. Cuybit. Just one word: .I.O.D. - NEVER . Sherlock received the letters: N , K , G , A.

Now the first note looked like this:. .D.S. A. SL.N. Ab and Sleney are common in America, respectively, first and last name. The first word is I , the second is HERE . The whole phrase - I AM HERE AB . New letters: I , Z , E , L , B.

Second note: I. And ... .LRID.A - I LIVE AT ELRIDGE . New letters: Ж , В , У , Э.

The last note by Aba Slheny: ILSI GO.OVSYA TO S.ER.I - decrypted simply ( ILSI PREPARE FOR DEATH ). Received letters: T , M.

Thus, in the hands of Holmes were all 23 letters.

• Ayl Norwood starred as Holmes in the movie "The Riddle of the Dancing Men" in 1923. ^[17]
• In 1943, the film " Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon " was shot. The idea of ​​a code of dancing people was borrowed from the story. The plot describes the struggle of Holmes and Professor Moriarty in the conditions of the Second World War . Basil Rathbone starred in the role of Holmes. ^[18]
• The Dancing Men was adapted for the second episode of the second season of the 1965-1968 television series Sherlock Holmes. Peter Cushing starred in the role of Holmes. ^[nineteen]
• The Dancing Men was adapted for the second episode of the 1984 television series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . The role of Holmes starred Jeremy Brett . ^[20]
• The Dancing Men served as the basis for the eleventh episode of the 1999 animated television series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century. ^[21]
• Also, the idea of ​​"Dancing Men" was used in the second episode of the first season of the BBC television series Sherlock . In the episode Blind Banker, Holmes investigates the cause of strange signs in a locked room. And the signs themselves in the form of dancing little men are shown in the final of the third series of the fourth season. In the role of Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch starred.
• The Adventures of Henry Baskerville and the Dog, an episode of the puppet show (Japanese television and radio company NHK ), is based on The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Dancing Men. In it, Holmes decodes the code found in the school with the study of the real persona “Lord of the Dogs”.

First publication in England

• Doyle AC The Strand Magazine. - London, 1903. - Vol. 156.- (26).

Publications in Russian

• Tugusheva M.P. Under the sign of four. On the fate of the works of E. Poe, A. K. Doyle, A. Christie, J. Simeonon. - M .: Book, 1991 .-- 287 p. - 75,000 copies. - ISBN 5-212-00416-0 .
• The Adventures of the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes / Comp. A. Shaburov. - Yekaterinburg: Clip, 1992. - T. 2. - 480 p. - 200,000 copies. - ISBN 5-87642-001-8 .
• Booth M. The doctor, the detective and Arthur Conan Doyle: a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle. - London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997 .-- 371 p. - 75,000 copies. - ISBN 0-340-64897-X .
• Edwards OD The Quest for Sherlock Holmes. A Biographical Study of Arthur Conan Doyle. - Edinburg: Mainstream Publishing, 1983 .-- 380 p. - 75,000 copies. - ISBN 0-906391-15-6 .
• O'Brien J. The Scientific Sherlock Holmes Cracking The Case With Science And Forensics. - New York: Oxford University Press, 2012 .-- 194 p. - ISBN 978-0-19-979496-6 .
• Pierce JR An introduction to information theory: symbols, signals & noise. - Dover Publications, 1980 .-- P. 64. - 336 p. - ISBN 0-486-24061-4 .