in the rose-bushes, coming to hours later by a hedge near the rail station. Holmes then makes sense of the happenings, recognizing Stark and his allies as counterfeiters (the machine had been to used to press the metal for half crowns; Hatherley's story also helps Holmes solve the mysterious disappearance of another consultant hydraulic engineer a year before, but he, Watson, and the police arrive too late: the house is on fire, and the perpetrators have fled. The press was destroyed when Hatherley's lamp was crushed inside it, setting the machine on fire and ruining the criminals' operation, although they escaped with several "bulky boxes" presumably containing counterfeit coins toward the direction of Reading, Berkshire. This case is one where Holmes fails to bring the villains to justice. Publication history "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" was first published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in March 1892, and in the United States in the US edition of the Strand in April 1892. The story was published with eight illustrations by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine. It was included in the short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which was published in October 1892. Adaptations Film and television A silent short film adaptation was released in 1923 as part of the Stoll film series starring Eille Norwood as Holmes. The story was adapted for an episode of the 1954–1955 television series Sherlock Holmes starring Ronald Howard as Holmes and Howard Marion Crawford as Watson. The episode was titled "The Case of the Shoeless Engineer" and the story was altered so that Hatherley loses a shoe rather than his thumb, and Stark and his co-conspirator are captured by Lestrade with the assistance of Holmes. The story was additionally adapted for the TMS Entertainment anime series Sherlock Hound, specifically in the episode "A Small Client" (1984). The general gist of the story was retained, but contained several differences, namely Professor Moriarty being in charge of the counterfeiting instead of Stark (who is not present in the episode at all), and the case being brought to Hound's attention through the engineer's young daughter instead of the engineer himself, who is being kept prisoner for the majority of the episode. The story was also adapted in the 1986 Soviet TV movie The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson – The Twentieth Century Approaches. There, the criminal (Col. Stark) is Eduardo