The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

original instruction stated merely the daily newspapers. Fortunately Mrs Hudson is under instructions to throw nothing away in any circumstances. Let us trust that two months' supply of the London newspapers from the Daily Graphic to the Financial Times awaits us in Baker Street. By God, Watson, if I have thrown our chance away -' He broke off, rare emotion consuming him.

'Who might such a bidder be?' I asked quietly.

'You will recall the matter of the Bruce Partington Plans in `ninety-five; Mycroft informed me there were few who would handle so important an affair. The only contenders worth considering were Adolph Meyer, Louis La Rothiere and Hugo Oberstein. The villainous Oberstein now resides in prison, and thus we are left with La Rothiere and Adolph Meyer.'

'Meyer must surely be our man,' I exclaimed.

'For once I agree, Watson. He still resides in London at 13 Great George Street, Westminster. La Rothiere has been known to me for some years, and I believe we may dismiss him. I have made it my business, however, since 'ninety-five, to find out what I can of Adolph Meyer. The gentleman is plump, portly, a friendly soul, with a passion for music though his execrable taste runs more to Mr John Philip Sousa than to the classical. He favours the tuba, not the violin. Inside that affable shell, however, beats the heart of as evil a man as ever lived. He is unofficial agent to the Baron von Holbach. The name means nothing to you, Watson? I am hardly surprised. He does not seek the limelight, but his Machiavellian hand was behind Bismarck's dismissal, the Kruger telegram, and countless other intrigues. He has the ear of the Kaiser, whereas the Chancellor himself remains unheard. He is no friend to England, and Meyer is his tool. Watson, if I could choose my enemy, send me one that wears the face of evil.'

'And you are convinced he is involved in this affair?'

'Yes. He now knows me well enough to fear my powers though how can I call them powers when my wits have deserted me? Two months in Cornwall, and the Empire at risk!'

He remained plunged in gloom until the train steamed into Paddington station. I shall long remember his long figure hunched at my side as if to spur the cab the faster to Baker Street. On entering the familiar rooms, he did not even wait to remove his ulster (for although it was May, the cool night air had been chilly) and despite the late hour plunged towards the tidy but huge piles of newspaper carefully stacked by Mrs Hudson.

Seldom have I felt more useless. No sooner had I read and absolved a newspaper of containing anything to do with our current problem than Holmes would seize it from me to ensure

I had missed nothing. After three hours I could endure no more and retreated to my bed for what remained of the night. I left

Holmes surrounded by newspapers, now in untidy heaps all around him, and occasionally scribbling a note on a pad. When I awoke in the morning, he was still where I had last seen him, red-eyed but still alert.

'I have it, Watson.' He pushed the pad towards me.

I stared at his work in horror. It consisted merely of childish doodles; circles, squares, dots, crosses, and pin men and women. 'Holmes, my dear fellow, what is this?'

'Hah!' he cried, as he saw the expression on my face. 'You believe I have over-indulged in the syringe! No, my dear fellow.

See, this may be the saving of us.' He thrust a copy of the Daily Mail before my eyes, stabbing with his finger at a message on the front page personal column. The issue was dated 9 March.

'The circle contains a stop,' I read. 'A cipher, Holmes?' I tried once more.

'You think of nothing save cryptograms, Watson. No, no, this explains why we may yet be in time. There is nothing more until the messages resumed early this month.' He placed a second sheet before me.

'Turpin has a dog,' I read. Against it, in Holmes's neat handwriting, was written: 'issue of 6 May.' Underneath were

more senseless jumbles of words. 'Cupid strikes the right fox

four times'; that was the issue of Monday, the 10th. Thursday the 13th bore the legend: 'The smiling cook bears a cross'.

Friday the 14th: 'The pinman and the pageboy take nine paces', and yesterday's, the 18th, the day of our return: 'The circle has a cross.'

'Surely you are mistaken, Holmes? I have passed over many such messages in the personal columns. Why pick upon these?'

'My dear fellow, have you no eyes?' He thrust under my nose the sheet of doodles to which I have already referred. 'We

await only the time of our rendezvous. The date we have.'

He paced the room in a state of combined exhilaration and disquiet, ignoring my request for further enlightenment. 'Thank God we are in time.'

'You speak in riddles, Holmes.'

'Cannot you see,' one finger impatiently jabbed at the doodles. 'Well, well, perhaps you cannot. Argot, my dear Watson,

is a language even more worth studying than the Chaldean, and of more practical use. Consider what profession our Baroness follows.'

'Lady-in-waiting?'

'Burglar, Watson. She has joined the underworld, what more natural than that she should amuse herself with burglar's argot? How often have you passed a garden fence with such childish scrawls chalked upon it? Frequently no doubt, and thought nothing of it. Yet such scrawls are the living language of two groups of outsiders in our world, burglars and tramps. Each has their own code – yes, Watson, your code at last, but these marks are the code of the illiterate. Since prehistoric times, drawings in simple form have portrayed messages left for those that come after. A burglar or a tramp goes about his trade with the same dedication as Mr Didier for his. Where the latter collects ingredients, our lawless and vagrant friends deal in information: which servants have been squared, for example.'

'Ah! The cook bears a cross.'

'You excel yourself,Watson,' Holmes murmured. 'Similarly they convey how many live in the house, whether there are dogs, how many servants, the best means of access; tramps have a similar code, more concerned with what their brethren might expect from the house. Here before us is all we need to know.'

'Turpin?' I enquired.

'An exception, but simple enough. An acquaintance with the Dover Road should tell you that Turpin is associated with The Old Bull coaching inn on the summit of Shooter's Hill in Kent. Hence the reference to a dog. The old Old Bull no longer exists, but a new hostelry of the same name stands there.'

'The meeting is there?'

'No, Watson, no. 'Cupid strikes the right fox four times'.' He pointed to the doodle of an arrow with the figure 4 written by it. 'At the foot of Shooter's Hill stood the old Fox in the Hill public house, conveniently close to the gallows to whet the lips of the onlookers. Both are now vanished, but again a new public house stands close to the old. The hill is lined with villas and I have little doubt that the fourth on the right from The Bull is our place of rendezvous and that therein works a cook who will no longer qualify for the title of faithful retainer. She has been squared, and the gentleman and male retainer of the household step out at nine o'clock, we are informed.'

'And the day, Holmes?' I was by amazed at the depth of my friend's knowledge of the underworld.

' 'The circle has a cross'. A tramp sign conveying that the householder is religious. A little more obscure, but let us take the religious connection. We lack a date and Ascension Day is tomorrow, Thursday the 20th.'

'Suppose it implies Whitsun?'

'Would the gentleman of the house then leave it at nine o'clock? He would be in church or at breakfast. No, no, it is tomorrow, and surely today the last piece of the jigsaw must fall into our hands.'

At this moment Mrs Hudson brought in the daily newspapers and with an eager cry Holmes sprang across the room to receive them from her hands. Mrs Hudson cast one look at the state of the room, then wisely departed without comment.

'I have it! See here,Watson.The cross gains a leg.' In triumph he added it in pictorial form to his list. 'Eleven o'clock.'

'Should we not ask Lestrade to seek out the Baroness?'

'And lose the only hope we have of recovering the letter? No, Watson, we shall attend this auction sale. We