Whilst the retired art supplier Josiah Amberley was at the theatre, his wife ran away with a young man and a good deal of their money. Amberley wants Holmes to track her down but the latter is too busy and sends Watson in his stead. But it soon turns out that Holmes is not the only one who has been asked to solve this case. So now the question is: will the pair be able to track the runaway wife down first? And is there more to the story than they have been told?

"The Adventure of the Retired Colourman" is part of "The Case-Book 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.