Summary
Watson treats Victor Hatherley, a hydraulic engineer, who has lost a thumb. Hatherley explains to Watson, who brings him to Holmes, the strange circumstances under which he received his injury.
He was approached by a certain Colonel Lysander Stark with a lucrative but oddly secretive deal to inspect a hydraulic press in a house. After repairing the press, Hatherley asked the Colonel the nature of its use, at which point the Colonel locked him in the press and turned it on.
Hatherley escaped with the help of a woman in the house, but while in the process of lowering himself from a window, the Colonel chopped off his thumb. Hatherley made it away from the house to some bushes where he fainted. When he came to, he was alone.
Holmes, Watson, and Hatherley find their way to the house, whose location Holmes has deduced, and they find it up in flames. Holmes realizes this was due to Hatherley's lamp being in the press at the time the Colonel tried to shut it on him. Unfortunately, the so-called Colonel, who was manufacturing counterfeit coins, has already escaped.
Analysis
This particular tale is interesting for the fact that almost the only action in it is told in the young engineer's narrative; by the time Holmes and Watson go with him to the scene of the crime in order to try to confront the criminals, the house is on fire and the culprits have fled. In this case, Holmes' deductions do not really change any material circumstances or lead to an arrest; they only clarify certain unknown aspects of Hatherley's story. Thus, it is fitting that the one thing Hatherley has gained at the end is a story.
"'Experience,' said Holmes, laughing. 'Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.'" (228) This may seem somewhat trite, when Holmes' many other clients gained a marriage or saved their reputations or lives at the end of the story, but we should keep in mind that Holmes' statement applies equally to the narrative that Watson is writing of him. Holmes sees value in the useless but interesting, and to an extent, this is as apt a description for Holmes' own character.
