Answer in about 50 words to the questions given below : (4 marks)Q.5 (D) (I) Sherlock Holmes established a connection between Captain Morstan’s disappearance and receipt of pearls in ‘The Sign of Four.’ Elaborate. (2)

Answer: Holmes noticed that the pearls began arriving soon after Major Sholto’s death; since Sholto was Captain Morstan’s only friend in London, he concluded that the sender was connected with Sholto and was making amends to Mary for a wrong done to her father.

Captain Morstan disappeared mysteriously in London in 1878. About four years later, in 1882, an advertisement asked for Miss Mary Morstan’s address, and from then on she received a large, lustrous pearl every year. Holmes learned that Major Sholto, Morstan’s only friend in London, had died in April 1882, just before the advertisement. He reasoned that Sholto’s heir knew some secret about Morstan and was compensating his daughter with the pearls — which turned out to be Thaddeus Sholto’s share of the Agra treasure.