“a stray chicken in a world of foxes.”
This metaphor is directly applied to Lady Frances Carfax as a way for Holmes to admit to Watson that he fears the woman’s disappearance is act of some agency of evil. The metaphor only builds deconstructs down to that specificity, however, as it begins as a more broadly observed classification of a certain type of person belonging to a class Holmes deems the most dangerous in the world: the woman of enough means with not enough friends to allow her go drifting off on her own with the inevitable threat of being taken advantage of.
The Tiger of San Pedro
For those in Britain, he is just the wealthy and vaguely mysterious Mr. Henderson. What those who know him in England do not realize is that Mr. Henderson is actually Don Murillo. Don Murillo was once one of the most feared tyrannical dictators in Central America until his regime was successfully overthrown and he fled for his life. Murillo earned one of the greatest metaphorical nicknames of any character—good or evil—in the entire Sherlock canon: the Tiger of San Pedro. Not just a better nickname, but a more appropriate one than the Napoleon of Crime assigned to the distinctly undeserving Professor Moriarty.
“Different threads, but leading to the same tangle.”
In “The Red Circle” Holmes and Scotland Yard detective Gregson are pursuing different lines of reasoning into the same crime that ultimately lead to both of them being in the same place at the same time at the same critical moment in the investigation, but not for the same reasons. The metaphor is a perfect description for both the typically divergent ways that Holmes and the London police pursue an investigation as well as a robust explanation for why a distinctly less sharp series of police detectives often seem to show up independently but often simultaneously with Holmes and Watson.
“My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.”
Sherlock is not often given to philosophical ruminations of self-reflexivity. For one thing, he is usually too engrossed in the investigation to waste valuable time on such narcissistic pleasures. When there is no crime to investigate and his mind has time to become torpid, however, he can usually be counted upon to offer up to Watson some gem of insight into himself. This simile is a perfect example and one of the really fine ones as well. It suggest that this mind is, after all, just human mind like any other, but wire in a way that is not like every other mind. There is both hubris and self-deprecation in this comparison, but most of all there is self-awareness.
The Devil
A list of characters who are referred to outright as "the Devil" within the pages of His Last Bow.
Garcia’s cook, the man who stares through the window of Wisteria Lodge and spooks Watson.
Sarah Cushing, the devious middle sister in “The Cardboard Box.”
Guiseppe Gorgiano, the “Mafia’ assassin in “The Red Circle.”
Sherlock Holmes himself! At least, according to Dr. Leon Sterndale when treated to his first encounter with Holmes’ legendary ability to tell people things about themselves they could not possibly seem to know.
Much of the parish served by Vicar Roundhay or so it seems to him in a moment of hysteria.
Steiner, the fifth unfortunate associated of German spy Von Bork to somehow get nabbed by the British police before his work was done.
Metaphorical devils clearly abound in the universe of Sherlock Holmes. Especially in those stories in His Last Bow.
