In Sherlock Holmes’s “The Five Orange Pips,” the threatening orange seeds are sent by the Ku Klux Klan.
The story follows John Openshaw, whose family receives envelopes marked with the initials K.K.K. and containing five orange pips. Holmes connects the messages with a violent organization operating in the United States after the American Civil War. The seeds function as a warning that the recipient has been marked for death.
Doyle published the story in 1891, during the period when the Ku Klux Klan had become known internationally through reports of political violence and intimidation. The fictional case uses the organization as a distant but frightening source of threat.
The orange pips are not a Holmesian code used by Scotland Yard or a secret society invented for the story. They are the signature warning associated with the Klan in Doyle’s plot. The case ends with Holmes identifying the likely pursuers, although justice does not arrive through a courtroom trial.