Introduction

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Sabina Fazli
cabinet and is thus falsely accused of the theft. As he does not want to incriminate
his cousin, he refuses to testify. Consequently, an innocent maid servant is suspected
of the theft, and Holmes has to clear up the case on the grounds of circumstantial
evidence.
“The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” 2 (1921) revolves around the theft of
the “Crown Diamond” (“Mazarin” 559), “the great yellow Mazarin Stone” (562).
The thief is the Italian Count Negretto Sylvius, a big-game hunter in Algeria (566).
In criticism, the dependence of The Sign of Four on The Moonstone has often
been remarked and the two texts have been viewed togetherfor example, by Jaya
Mehta who links both texts to colonialism abroad and the “detective romance” at
home (613). Suzanne Daly and John Plotz point out the connection between the
realist domestic novel by Trollope and the detective mystery by Collins. Arndt
Mersmann groups together The Moonstone, The Eustace Diamonds and The Sign of Four
as texts which focus on “the absence of diamonds or jewels” (187). In his discussion
of The Moonstone, Jean Pierre Naugrette also includes The Sign of Four and
briefly touches upon Stevenson’s “The Rajah’s Diamond”. The New Arabian
Nights as a whole seem to have been eclipsed by Stevenson’s other more famous
texts, and critics seem to have largely ignored it. The only other instance in which
“The Rajah’s Diamond” is mentioned together with The Moonstone seems to be
Bhupal Singh’s Survey of Anglo-Indian Fiction of 1934. Singh identifies a set of texts
which centre on “Jewel hunting”, and he lists Stevenson’s short-story as an emulation
of The Moonstone (268). Singh further concentrates on popular adaptations of
the theme in the 1920s and 30s.
A lowbrow forerunner of these can be found in Richard Marsh’s 3 The Datchet
Diamonds (1898). Its plot again consists of the search for diamonds. The Duchess
of Datchet’s diamonds are stolen and ultimately retrieved by detective John Ireland.
Cyril Paxton, a stockbroker, accidentally picks up the wrong suitcase in a
train restaurant and finds himself in possession of the stolen diamonds. He plans
to keep them as he has lost money in his investment in shares and plans to marry.
From then on, he is on the run both from the police and from the original thieves.
In a happy-ending the diamonds are restored to the Duchess, Cyril is pardoned,
and he can marry as a company he holds shares in has discovered gold in southern
Africa. The diamonds are set in “the Begum’s brooch” and “the Rani’s bracelet”
(46) and thus again identified as originally Indian possessions.
2 In the short-story, a “French modeller” named Tavernier is mentioned. He fashions a figure of
Holmes in wax which he places at the window to mislead Sylvius (“Mazarin” 564). Jean-Baptiste
Tavernier, a French eighteenth-century traveller and diamond trader, is one of the most famous
and widely quoted references on historical Indian diamonds. The bulk of information on the
history of diamonds from Persia and India goes back to his descriptions and drawings. The
name might thus be a side-effect of Doyle’s research on diamonds as it is impossible to read up
on diamonds without encountering Tavernier.
3 Pseudonym of Richard Bernard Heldmann.