by Arthur Conan Doyle
Classic mysteryNo. 15958 minSherlock Holmes
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman — when a masked stranger calls at 221B Baker Street after dark claiming to be the agent of a European royal house, Holmes sees through the disguise before the man finishes his first sentence: the King of Bohemia is about to marry, and a single photograph in the hands of Irene Adler, an opera singer with a brain of the first order and the face of the most beautiful of women, could shatter the engagement and shake a throne; armed with disguises, a smoke rocket, and the cold certainty that no one has ever beaten him, Holmes sets out to recover the photograph — and meets the only adversary who ever saw through him in return; this is the very first Sherlock Holmes short story ever published, the case that made Doyle's detective the most famous in the world and the only case Holmes lost, first printed in The Strand Magazine in July 1891 and collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, presented complete and unabridged, exactly as Arthur Conan Doyle wrote it, from the Midnight Archive — Nocturnal Tales' library of the classic detective stories that built the genre.
Free to listen, in full, with no account and no password. Your place is remembered in this browser, so you can stop and come back.
Every story on Nocturnal Tales is free, and stays free. Listeners who choose to give are the reason there is a new one tomorrow.
This is our work and what we live on: two of us, writing and producing a story every night. Giving here goes straight to us, rather than through a platform that can change its mind overnight. Why donations are important.
or
Give with PayPalPayPal opens in a new page. Monthly support is easiest to manage through the card option.
No story is ever locked. Payment is handled securely by Stripe — we never see your card details. You can change or cancel your support at any time, from this page, with no explanation needed.
Tell us what you made of this one. No account and no password — just a name.
Max Carrados
It begins with Max Carrados greeting his friend Carlyle at the door and remarking that he has a mystery about him somewhere. He can hear it in the man's step. The mystery is a railway disaster.
by Ernest Bramah
1 hr 7 minNo. 247
A. J. Raffles
Two cases tonight from the gentleman thief who has drawn more requests than anybody else in the Archive. WILFUL MURDER is the darkest thing in the whole collection. Bunny warns us at the outset that most of their robberies will not bear telling at length.
by E. W. Hornung
1 hr 13 minNo. 246
Hercule Poirot
Mexico City, the summer of nineteen twenty-eight. A banquet is given for the man who is about to become President — a soldier who won a civil war, lost an arm doing it, and has spent the years since collecting enemies with the same efficiency he once collected territory.
1 hr 20 minNo. 245
Loveday Brooke
Somebody has got hold of Miss Loveday Brooke's private address, which she had given strict orders was to be handed to nobody at all. Her holiday lasts precisely as long as it takes to read the note.
by Catherine Louisa Pirkis
55 minNo. 244