"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" is one of 12 Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in October 1921, and was also published in Hearst's International in the United States in November 1921. The other is "His Last Bow". "The Mazarin Stone" was written this way because it was adapted from a stage play, The Crown Diamond, in which Watson hardly appeared. Its adaptation from the theatre also explains why the action in this story is confined to one room. The plot twist in which Holmes reveals he had been listening to the two criminals as they spoke freely would also not have been possible using a first person narrative.
The Crown Diamond, subtitled An Evening with Sherlock Holmes, was first performed on 2 May 1921 at the Bristol Hippodrome, and was written before the short story, which was first published in October 1921. However, historians do not agree on when the play was written, with some believing it was penned in early 1921 while others believe it was written years earlier. In the original play, the villain was Holmes's enemy Colonel Sebastian Moran of "The Adventure of the Empty House" infamy, not Count Negretto Sylvius.
Publication history
"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" was published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in October 1921, and in the US in Hearst's International in November 1921. The story was published with three illustrations by Alfred Gilbert in the Strand, and with four illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele in Hearst's International. It was included in the short story collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,
Adaptations
Film and television
A short silent film based on the story was released in 1923 as part of the Sherlock Holmes film series by Stoll Pictures, with Eille Norwood as Holmes and Hubert Willis as Watson.
An episode of BBC's For the Children adapted the story for television in 1951. Featuring Andrew Osborn as Holmes and Philip King as Watson, no footage is believed to have survived. The most noticeable change is that Holmes does not feature except in the prologue and final scene (actor Jeremy Brett was away due to illness). It is Mycroft Holmes (Charles Gray) who takes up the case of the stolen diamond, while Watson is retained to look into the Garrideb mystery.
Audio
"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" was adapted by Edith Meiser as an episode of the American radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The episode aired on 9 February 1931, with Richard Gordon as Sherlock Holmes and Leigh Lovell as Dr. Watson. Another dramatisation of the story adapted by Meiser aired on 23 May 1936 (with Gordon as Holmes and Harry West as Watson).
Meiser also adapted the story as episodes of the American radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes that aired on 5 January 1941 (with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson) and 4 January 1948 (with John Stanley as Holmes and Alfred Shirley as Watson).
Two BBC radio adaptations of the story aired as part of the 1952–1969 radio series starring Carleton Hobbs as Sherlock Holmes and Norman Shelley as Dr. Watson. The first aired on 2 December 1954 on the BBC Home Service and was dramatised by Felix Felton, with Ralph Truman as Count Negretto Sylvius. The second aired on 4 September 1962 on the BBC Light Programme, and was dramatised by Michael Hardwick, with Francis de Wolff as Count Sylvius.
"The Mazarin Stone" was dramatised for BBC Radio 4 in 1994 by Bert Coules as part of the 1989–1998 radio series starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson. It featured Anthony Bate as Lord Cantlemere and Nigel Anthony as Count Sylvius.
In 2006, the story was adapted for radio as part of The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a series on the American radio show Imagination Theatre, with John Patrick Lowrie as Holmes and Lawrence Albert as Watson.
In 2025, the podcast Sherlock & Co. adapted the story in a three-episode adventure called "The Mazarin Stone", starring Harry Attwell as Sherlock Holmes, Paul Waggott as Dr. John Watson and Marta da Silva as Mariana "Mrs. Hudson" Ametxazurra. George Greenland voices Greg Cantlemere.