Wilson should have seen that the office of this supposedly
important organization established by a millionaire was very sparsely furnished. There
was only one room, and nothing in it but one table, one chair, and a bookcase with only
one volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wilson repeatedly tells
Holmes and Watson that he is a very stay-at-home man, that he seldom gets out for weeks
at a time, that he is very poorly informed about the outside world, etc. This no doubt
is intended to explain why he is not made suspicious by the temporary look of the little
office. He doesn't know what offices usually look like. The two crooks want to make sure
he stays in the room; they don't want him talking to other tenants and learning that
they know nothing about any League of Red-Headed Men.
If
the League of Red-Headed Men was such an important institution, Wilson might have
wondered why this Duncan Ross didn't have his own private office in the building and
perhaps why he didn't have a secretary or an assistant. After all, Wilson himself has
only a tiny business but hires an assistant. They must have given him the
Encyclopedia Britannica to copy in order to keep his mind so
occupied that he wouldn't be asking himself questions or thinking of asking questions of
other people in the building. He quickly learns a lot when the so-called League of
Red-Headed Men is dissolved and he starts doing some
investigating.
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