A Study in Silks

fine wool of his coat itched abominably. Keating wrestled with his top button, setting his jaw. The footman had sent his card up to the Great Detective, so what was Keating waiting for? Word that the man was receiving visitors? He was the Gold King. No one dared to turn him from the door.

But that unthinkable event might happen. A middle-aged woman—no doubt the landlady—was standing at the threshold talking to the footman and shaking her head regretfully. Bitter bile caught in the back of Keating’s throat. This was insufferable.

With a barely polite nod, he marched up the walk and pushed past her into 221B Baker Street. Without pausing, he spotted the staircase and mounted the steps to the rooms above.

“Sir!” the woman bustled after him with a rustle of heavily starched petticoats. “Sir, Mr. Holmes is still at his breakfast!”

Keating was already at the top of the stairs, his impatience mounting with her every word. “I’m sure the man can eat his toast and listen at the same time.”

“But Mr. Holmes …”

“Do you know who I am?” he thundered.

That took her aback, a glisten of fear filling her eyes. “But sir!”

Silly, twittering creature. He relented. “I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Holmes you’re not to blame for my intrusion.” And Keating pushed open the door to Holmes’s room.

His first impression was one of chaos. He looked from left to right, quickly cataloguing what he saw. In one corner stood a table littered with scientific equipment of some kind, racks of glass bottles hinting at research of a chemical nature. Next to that was a desk where no paper had ever been neatly squared. It looked more like a badger had been at the stack of papers, books, and empty plates piled there. Keating could not repress a shudder at the mess.

Straight ahead was a fireplace with a large bear skin before it. The skin was flanked by a settee and pipe rack on one side and a basket chair on the other. On the Baker Street side of the room was a table and chairs. The table was set with a breakfast redolent of kippers. One chair was occupied by a tall, angular man with an ascetic air and lean face.

“Holmes, I presume?” Keating said. “I am Jasper Keating.”

“Indeed you are,” said Holmes absently. “Might I offer you tea? Breakfast? Mrs. Hudson’s scones are quite delightful.” The man barely looked up from the copy of the newspaper he was perusing, instead awarding Keating an indifferent glance.

Stung, Keating narrowed his eyes. “I come in the character of a client, not a breakfast guest.”

Holmes at last lifted his eyes from the very same article on Nellie Reynolds that Keating had been reading in the carriage. His brow furrowed. “I apologize for the informal reception, but I had no intention of seeing anyone for at least another hour.”

“And I had no intention of waiting.”

Holmes compressed his lips with displeasure, but a beat later a mask of politeness visibly slid over his features. It was somehow more demeaning than outright rudeness. “I take it you have a matter to discuss which you consider to be an emergency?”

“So it is.”

“I should sincerely hope it is nothing less, since you have trampled my housekeeper and interrupted my meal.” Holmes flipped his napkin from his lap and dropped it to the table. The gesture held all the irritation Keating felt.

Keating gripped his walking stick more tightly, banking his temper. I must tread carefully if I want his help.

“May I take your coat, sir?” The landlady was hovering uncertainly at the door, looking as if she preferred to bolt.

Annoyed at being caught wrong-footed, Keating shed his coat and hat and handed them to her, along with his walking stick, lest he be tempted to teach Holmes some manners. The woman gave a curtsey and left.

Holmes had risen from the table and crossed to the basket chair by the fireplace. With a sigh, he subsided into the chair with a graceful collapsing of his long limbs. With one hand, he indicated the settee with an airy wave. “Please be seated, Mr. Keating, and tell me how I may serve you.”

Keating sat, suspicious of Holmes’s heavy-lidded regard. Annoyance prickled whenever the detective’s gaze flicked to Keating’s face, but in the end it didn’t matter. Holmes was listening. The Gold King had power even with this contemptuous bounder, and that was all that mattered if he wanted this matter of Athena’s Casket resolved.

But how did he explain the theft of the casket, which he had learned of only this morning, without actually explaining the item itself? It was a risk. Holmes was intelligent. He might find out more than Keating wanted him to know. Don’t be daft. Keep it to the facts he will understand. No one would believe the rest, anyway.

“I have an interest in archaeology,” Keating began.

“As did your father before you,” Holmes countered.

Keating frowned. “I heard that you perform an amusing parlor trick, telling a man all about himself using seemingly insignificant details.”

Holmes stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles, and made a steeple of his fingers. He looked utterly at home and relaxed. It was annoying.

“I can,” he said with barely concealed smugness, “but it is your ring that gives you away. It is etched with a likeness of the Acropolis, and it is of an age that suggests you did not purchase it yourself, but rather someone from the previous generation. Your father, I understand, was a bishop in Yorkshire, and therefore well educated. It was not an enormous leap of logic that the ring would be his.”

Pompous idiot. “You are quite right,” Keating said, gathering up his train of thought once more. The interruption had distracted him and inserted unwelcome memories where his tidy narrative had been a moment before. Thinking about his father was never pleasant. “As I said, I have an interest in archaeology. I funded an excavation in Rhodes recently. You have heard of Heinrich Schliemann?”

“Of course. He claims to have rediscovered Troy.”

“Among other sites. Like so many of his ilk, he is perpetually short of funds. I met the man some years ago. At the time, he had found another site, not so glorious as Troy, but of some interest. He petitioned me for financial assistance.”

“Where was this site?”

“On the Greek island of Rhodes.” Schliemann had found the site where Athena’s Casket was believed to be buried. He had promised to fund Schliemann if the archaeologist would hand over the casket. Of course, Holmes would get a slightly different version of the truth. “I gave him the cash to do his digging on the condition that I be allowed to sponsor an exhibit of his findings here in London. It was my intention to open a gallery, and this seemed the perfect opportunity for an initial show.”

Holmes smiled, looking too damned amused. “Ah, yes—the crowd of rich patrons, snowy-browed scholars, and all those reporters drinking far too much of the free wine. It would have been quite an evening.”

“Indeed.” That was, in fact, fairly close to how Keating had imagined it. There might have even been an accolade or two for his outstanding benevolence in the service of scholarship. Perhaps an honorary degree?

The abominable detective was chuckling. “How unfortunate it is that Dr. Watson is no longer resident here. I can almost see him coming down with writer’s cramp in his haste to get every word of this committed to paper.”

“This is entirely confidential!” Keating snapped.

Holmes sobered instantly. “As you wish. So tell me, Mr. Keating, what was to become of this treasure once the great reveal was accomplished?”

“My plan was to donate it to the British Museum.”

Holmes raised an eyebrow. “You did not intend to keep and sell the items?”

Keating fidgeted with a throw cushion on the settee, settling it so the edge was level with the pattern on the seat cover. “May I be entirely frank, Mr. Holmes?”

“I count on it.”

“I am first and foremost a businessman, but I have my ambitions. I also have a profound sense of what is