In Sherlock Holmes’s “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” the American criminal who sends the coded messages is Abe Slaney.
Slaney is a Chicago criminal and the former associate of Elsie Cubitt’s past. The dancing figures are not meaningless drawings: their arrangements form a substitution cipher, with a flag-bearing figure marking the end of a word. Holmes deciphers enough of the messages to identify the danger facing the Cubitt household.
The case ends tragically at Ridling Thorpe Manor. Elsie is seriously wounded, and Hilton Cubitt is killed during the confrontation. Slaney is arrested and later sentenced to death, although Elsie’s condition leads Holmes to hope that mercy may be shown.
Readers sometimes confuse Slaney with the Cubitts, because the family name dominates the domestic part of the story. Another common error is to call the code “hieroglyphics”; Holmes treats it as a cipher based on repeated symbols and frequency clues.