Watson is spending some time in the lodgings he shared with Holmes as his wife is away, visiting her mother.It is a stormy night and someone knocks at the door. It is a man who wants to consult Holmes. His name is John Openshaw, and he says he has a most terrible problem.
John says that his father had a factory, which brought him a good life until he retired. His brotehr, Elias, emigrated to the States where he had a plantation. Then he fought in the Civil War, and he returned to England because he did not agree with the government's decision about the black population. John spent a lot of time with his uncle as the man found him agreeable. John felt at home there, but there was a room in the attick that his uncle kept locked. One day his uncle received a letter from India, and inside the envelope there were five orange pips. John noticed that his uncle looked peaky, and then that night when he entered the room, his uncle had an empty trunk with three Ks engraved, and he saw that in the fireplace there was a lot of ash, which he guessed came from burning papers. The uncle said that he had arranged in his will that all he had would go to his father because he knew that afterwards everything would go to John. A few days later his uncle was found dead, drowned in a pool which contained shallow water, and the conclusion was that he had killed himself.
Everything went to his father. Some years later his father got a letter from Dundee with five orange pips, and in the letter there was a note saying to put the papers on the sundial. John was scared for him and begged him to do what the letter said or go to the police. His father refused saying that he wouldn't be a laughinstock. Then he went to visit a friend of his, and his father died when he was found dead on the foot of some stairs, and his death was considered accidental.
Now John has received a letter from London with the same five pips, and he is scared. He has been to the police who haven't taken seriously, but they have sent a man to his home. It is when he was at the police station that he heard of Sherlock Holmes, so he decided to come for his help. Sherlock Holmes says that he is right to fear, and he tells him to take the trunk to the sundial with the only paper he managed to find from the documents his uncle burnt, and he needs to write a note saying that is all he got. Holmes promises to look into the matter.
When John is gone, Holmes tells Watson that this is the doing of two men, and he asks him if he has heard of the Ku Klux Klan. Watson has never heard of that, and Holmes reads from a book about this racist association, and in the book it is said that the members often sent warnings in the form of orange pips before the recipient was killed.
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