The Adventure of the Creeping Man

"The Adventure of the Creeping Man" (1923) is one of 12 Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle collected in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). The story was first published in the Strand Magazine in the UK and Hearst's International in the US in March 1923.
A man named Trevor Bennett comes to Holmes with a most unusual problem. He is Professor Presbury's personal secretary, and Mr Bennett is also engaged to the professor's only daughter, Edith. Professor Presbury is himself engaged to a young lady, Alice Morphy, a colleague's daughter, although he himself is already 61 years of age. Their impending marriage does not seem to have caused a great scandal, so that is not Mr Bennett's problem. Nonetheless, the trouble seems to have begun at about the time of Professor Presbury's and Alice's engagement. First, the professor suddenly left home for a fortnight without telling anyone where he was going. He returned looking rather travel-worn, and it was only through a letter from a friend sent to Mr Bennett that the family learnt that Professor Presbury had been to Prague. Upon returning from Prague, Presbury told Mr Bennett that certain letters would arrive with a cross under the stamp, and that he was not to open these. Until this time, Mr Bennett had enjoyed the professor's implicit trust and had opened all his letters as part of his job. As the professor said, such letters did arrive, and he gave them straight to the professor. Whether any replies were sent Mr Bennett does not know, as they never passed through his hands. The professor also brought a small carved wooden box back with him from Prague. One day, as Mr Bennett was looking for a cannula, he picked the box up, and the professor became very angry with him. Mr Bennett was quite shaken by the incident...
Famous works of the author Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Stories of Sherlock Holmes, The Lost World.