The organization sending the coded messages in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Five Orange Pips” is the Ku Klux Klan.
The story follows John Openshaw, whose relatives receive envelopes containing five orange pips marked with the initials “K.K.K.” The messages demand that papers be placed on a sundial, and the recipients subsequently face danger. Holmes connects the clues to the Ku Klux Klan and traces the family’s trouble to documents brought from America.
“The Five Orange Pips” was first published in 1891 and later collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Its plot reflects contemporary British awareness of political violence and the Ku Klux Klan in the United States.
The initials can be mistaken for a fictional Holmes organization, but Doyle explicitly identifies them with the Ku Klux Klan. The story’s orange pips are warning symbols rather than a secret code invented by Holmes.