While investigating the case, Holmes and Watson encounter two extraordinary—and contrasting—characters. The first, the missing man’s uncle and his only living relative, Lord Mount-James, is one of the richest men in England but also a mean-spirited miser who is spectacularly uninterested in his nephew’s whereabouts. The second, Dr. Leslie Armstrong, is a “grim, ascetic, self-contained, formidable” figure who is deeply suspicious of Holmes, regarding him as a meddler in search of a scandal. Bad-tempered and defensive, his unprovoked hostility toward Holmes seems likely to be masking criminality. Holmes even goes so far as to say that he has not “seen a man who, if he turns his talents that way, was more calculated to fill the gap left by the illustrious Moriarty.” In fact he could not be more wrong.

In addition to exploring how appearances can be disturbingly deceptive—how it is imperative to penetrate beneath the surface to find true motivation—this story explores the dangers of idleness. It opens on a gloomy morning in February when Holmes has little to do and is deeply bored. Watson is alarmed because he fears that the understimulated Holmes could relapse into his former drug addiction, the “fiend” that “was not dead but sleeping.”

The client is Cyril Overton, captain of the Cambridge University rugby team. His star player, Godfrey Staunton, a “three-quarter,” has gone missing just days before he is due to play in an important match against Oxford University. Holmes searches Staunton’s London hotel room, where he discovers part of a telegram message imprinted on blotting paper, then charms a post office clerk into revealing the telegram’s destination.

This leads him to the recalcitrant Dr. Armstrong in Cambridge. A cat-and-mouse game then ensues, with Holmes being led a merry dance as he tries to trail the doctor’s carriage, while his quarry becomes more and more incensed by the pursuit.

One morning, two days into their quest, Watson is panicked when he sees Holmes holding a syringe. In fact, the detective has just used it to squirt aniseed on the carriage wheels so they leave a scent trail for a sniffer dog, Pompey. The dog duly leads Holmes and Watson to a remote cottage where they find Staunton weeping over his wife, who has just died of tuberculosis. He had married her secretly and kept her hidden in the knowledge that his uncaring uncle, Lord Mount-James, would be enraged by her humble birth. Armstrong had been treating her illness, and turns out to be the kindest of men—deeply loyal and protective of his friend, Staunton. Conan Doyle himself was only too familiar with the horrors of tuberculosis. His first wife, Louise, was diagnosed with the disease in 1893, succumbing to it in 1906.

No crime has been committed, but Staunton has suffered a tragic loss. Holmes insists that he will do his utmost to keep the truth from the papers. He and Dr. Armstrong have misjudged each other, and their gaining of mutual respect is the true climax of the story.

First played in 1872, and continuing to today, the Varsity Match is a hotly contested annual game of rugby union between the universities of Cambridge and Oxford.