"The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905). It was first published in Collier's in the United States on 26 December 1903, and in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in January 1904. Plot Holmes is contacted by Miss Violet Smith of Farnham, Surrey about an unusual turn in her and her mother's lives. Violet's father has recently died and left his wife and daughter rather poor. There was an ad in the news asking about their whereabouts. Answering it, they met Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Woodley, the former a pleasant enough man, but the latter a bullying churl. They had come from South Africa, where they had known Violet's uncle Ralph Smith, who had now also died in poverty and apparently wanted to see that his relatives were provided for. This struck Violet as odd, since she and her family had not heard a word from Smith since his departure for South Africa 25 years ago. Carruthers and Woodley explained that before dying, Ralph had heard of his brother's death and felt responsible for his survivors' welfare. Carruthers began by offering Violet a job as a live-in music teacher for his ten-year-old daughter at £100 a year, about twice the going rate. She accepted after Carruthers said that she could visit her mother on weekends. That went well until Mr. Woodley came to stay for a week. He made the most oafish and clumsy sexual advances to her, and boasted that if Violet married him she would have a life of luxury. He even grabbed her and demanded a kiss, precipitating expulsion by his host, Carruthers. Violet has not seen Woodley since. The specific thing that has brought Violet to seek Holmes's services, however, is the strange man who follows her on his bicycle as she cycles to and from the railway station for her weekend visits to her mother. The strange man always keeps his distance behind her and disappears without a trace, never letting her near him, and always along the same lonely stretch of road. Violet does not recognize him, but he has a black beard. Holmes asks her about her admirers, and other than Woodley, if he can be styled as such, she can only think