The Adventure of the Man With the Broken Face

 “In Re: Sherlock Holmes”: The Adventures of Solar Pons, 1945

Date - Mid-September, 1929

The Case

Sylvia Norton visits Praed St. to ask Pons to find her missing father, Capt. Hyatt Norton. Norton was a minor hero, being sole survivor of a ship that sank carrying a cargo of diamonds: some of which he saved. A few days before her visit, a horrid face was seen outside a window, terrifying Capt. Norton, who refused to speak of the matter. Norton vanished from his study shortly thereafter.

Quotes

Ø      Pons: Ah! Our fellow with the broken face limps. He has a leg injury then. Or no, I retract that, Parker. He has a wooden foot or leg – see, the difference between the prints is clear and unmistakable in its implications; this foot has not bent; the other has.

Ø      Pons: Suppose you start over, Parker, and take nothing for granted. You may quite possibly have a different light on the matter.

Comments

Ø      The plot of this story resembles that of The Adventure of the Innkeeper’s Clerk, with both victims being hunted for previous sins against a partner related to an illegal undertaking. An undertone from Sherlock Holmes’ case The Adventure of the Crooked Man can be detected, with the dead man’s earlier betrayal resulting in another man suffering horribly and eventually making his way back to England

Ø      Parker evinces the common man in making an assumption and proceeding forward based on it as being fact. Throughout the Pontine Canon, we find cases of Pons questioning underlying assumptions and pursuing a different path than Parker and the police. In the chronicled cases, Pons is inevitably correct in challenging the initial assumption and Parker wrong.

Ø      The man with the broken face is Herbert Farway. The Farway family is at the center of The Final Journey of Mister Farlie. There is no mention of Herbert, but is it possible he is a relative of Charles Farway?

Ø      If the painting of The Monsoon had been in the study earlier, wouldn’t a painting of the ship that had resulted in so much pain in his life have caught Farway's eye? Even if Norton went outside the first time, shouldn’t Farway have seen it when he searched the study after killing Norton? Or was he just so excited at seeing it that he must have thought he missed it previously?

Ø      Farway is the only criminal in The Adventures to be killed by Pons or Parker. A terrible wrong was done to Farway and he is killed after avenging himself. I suspect the reader has more sympathy for Farway than his victim, the “hero,” Captain Norton.

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