British stage luminary Robert Stephens plays Holmes, and Colin Blakely plays his friend and chronicler Dr. Watson in Billy Wilder's cinematic homage to the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This self-described "hitherto suppressed and thoroughly fascinating" tale entails Holmes' search for a missing mining engineer — a case that may significantly effect England’s national security. While solving the mystery, Holmes finds his first love, an enigmatic foreign beauty named Gabrielle Valladon (Genevieve Page). Wilder emphasizes current topics of the ‘70s such as drug addiction and homosexuality.