The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb

The young engineer Victor Hatherley has been recruited by Colonel Lysander Stark to examine a hydraulic press, for the enormous amount of 50 guineas. He accepted immediately but the situation quickly sours. When he comes to tell Sherlock Holmes his story, he’s missing a thumb.
"The Adventure of the Engineer´s Thumb" is part of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes". Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Scotland and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After his studies, he worked as a ship’s surgeon on various boats. During the Second Boer War, he was an army doctor in South Africa. When he came back to the United Kingdom, he opened his own practice and started writing crime books. He is best known for his thrilling stories about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He published four novels and more than 50 short-stories starring the detective and Dr Watson, and they play an important role in the history of crime fiction. Other than the Sherlock Holmes series, Doyle wrote around thirty more books, in genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, historical novels, but also poetry, plays, and non-fiction.