The Dancing Men, is a criminal code alphabet and a titular villainous tool used in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
There are 26 different symbols of dancing men, one for each of the 26 letters of the English alphabet. To most people, they would seem like children's drawings. But for someone who knows the code, they will be able to read it and know the true meaning behind the "children's drawings". To denote the end of a word or sentence, certain dancing men are given flags.
Overview[]
The Dancing Men, were invented by an unidentified crime lord in Chicago. He and his cohorts used it to convey messages throughout his Empire that the police or public, would be unable to read. Two of the people who knew the code, were the crime lord's daughter, Elsie, and her arranged fiance, Abe Slaney, one of the crime lord's henchmen. Eventually, Elsie grew to hate her father's criminal activities, and fled Chicago, and America, eventually settling in England. There, she met and fell in love with a wealthy man named Hilton Cubitt. The two were married and she moved to his Ridling Thorpe Manor in Norfolk. However, she implored her husband to never ask her about her dark past.
But Elsie's past, was not so easily left behind. Slaney, still felt entitled to Elsie, and was able to track her to England. He began by writing a letter to her, but she burned it. So, Slaney began communicating via the Dancing Men. While Cubitt, initially dismissed them as drawings, Elsie, was immediately frightened by the drawings. Hoping to get to the bottom of this, while keeping his promise to his wife, Cubitt contacted Sherlock Holmes, and hired him to discern what the Dancing Men meant, copying and sending any messages that turn up around the manor and sending them to Holmes and Watson.
Through his powers of deduction, Holmes was able to deduce that the Dancing Men, were a code alphabet. Further investigations, correspondence with Cubitt, and a telegram sent by Holmes to Chicago, allowed Holmes to deduce the meaning of the symbols as well. While all this was going on, Slaney and Elsie, continued communing with the Dancing Men. Slaney kept demanding that Elsie be with him, she continued to refuse. Eventually, Slaney lost his patience and temper, and sent one, final, ominous message. "Prepare to meet thy god."
Slaney broke into Ridling Thorpe Manor, in the middle of the night. He demanded to Elsie, that she return to him. When she refused for the final time, Slaney became violent. The ensuing chaos woke Cubitt, who arrived to find his wife being assaulted. As Slaney made his escape, both he and Cubitt drew their guns, and fired at each other almost at the same time. Cubitt missed, his bullet hitting the window frame. Slaney's shot, found it's mark... and it was fatal shot. Distraught by the death of her husband, Elsie attempted to take her own life with her husband's gun. But she was only able to put herself in a coma.
Holmes and Watson arrived soon after that, and learned that a coma induced Elsie, had been accused of murdering her husband. But an investigation of the house, crime scene, and questioning of the staff, caused Holmes to deduce that Elsie was innocent, and that there was a third man in the room where Cubitt had been murdered. Hoping to catch the criminal, Holmes himself, sent a message to Slaney, via the Dancing Men, pretending to be Elsie. Fooled by the phony code, Slaney returned to the manor, where he was arrested, and confessed the crime.
In the end, the Dancing Men, which had long been used for evil, were finally used for good. Slaney, was initially sentenced to death. But after his testimonies revealed that Cubitt. had fired the first shot, his sentence was changed to manual labor. Elsie, was able to recover from her injury, and continued to live at Ridling Thorpe Manor.