Jabez Wilson was the initial client in the short story "The Red-Headed League". He came to Sherlock Holmes after being allowed into the mysterious Red-Headed League, a league for gentleman with very red hair, when a few months later it dissolved and he could find no trace of it or of its founder. It turned out that he was simply being tricked into leaving his pawn shop, so that his employee, Vincent Spaulding, real name John Clay, and the 'founder' of this fraudulent, who was his accomplice, could tunnel under the shop to a nearby bank, where £30,000 worth of French napoleons were sitting underground, unguarded.