“But why?” I asked.
“Because of me,” said Irene. “I have two of the nine foci in my possession and the Pinkerton agency wants them, rather badly. We’ve crossed paths a number of times since I left for America, yet they’ve always come up short. It seems they decided to target other people who knew me. They knew I’d worked The Joint. Slaney was vulnerable. True, most of New York and New Jersey’s legal and political operators would not dare to move against him—he had dirt on far too many, you know—but the Pinkertons had no such qualms. They scooped him up and let him know that he could either hang for his crimes or he could help them with their little Adler problem. Probably, they hoped I had stashed what they wanted with Slaney himself—which I never would—but he knew there was somebody I trusted more. He wrote and threatened Elsie.”
“The first coded note!” I proclaimed.
“I tell you, there is no code. But yes. She then wrote to me for help. I hastened here as fast as I could. Yet with the Pinkertons on one’s heels, travel can be difficult. I arrived too late. I had just set up here and was preparing to contact Elsie when the word broke. All I could do was surveil Inspector Stote, dress myself up as a smaller version of him, introduce myself as his new colleague and imply that he’d better impress me with his handling of the case or his bosses might see fit to dismiss him. He was easily manageable after that. I’ll confess, I was rather surprised when the servants showed me a letter their mistress had received the day before from one Dr. John Watson, but at least it gave me the warning I needed to step out for a few moments and turn my eyes brown. Lucky, that.”
“Hmph. Lucky,” I said with a snort. “Quite a story, Miss Adler, but do you have any concrete evi—”
Yet my sentence was interrupted by the timely intrusion of Irene Adler’s concrete evidence. Her agent had arrived. From the stairs outside came a few bumpings and bashings, followed by a clear, strident voice insisting, “No. I’ve told you, I can do it myself.”
Lestrade and I froze. Our mouths dropped open. We stared at each other in guilty horror and mouthed the same word.
“Holmes?”
“What do we do?” I squeaked.
“I think we’re in trouble,” Lestrade counter-squeaked.
“What? Why?” Irene wanted to know, but I took no time to answer her. The clumsy thumpings were in the hall just outside the door by then, so I saw no choice but to bolt under the table and hope that the low-hanging cloth might protect me from the notice of my closest friend.
“What are you doing?” Irene cried, pulling her dress tight against her knees. Funny, it’s the first thing I’d ever seen her do that was in any way shy.
The very next moment came a knock upon the door.
“Um. Yes. Hello, please enter,” said Irene.
I heard the door swing open. Beneath the edge of the tablecloth, I could just see those familiar shoes that often sat by the entry to 221B and the legs of Holmes’s trousers. Which badly needed pressing, I noted. He was dragging a heavy oilcloth bag—the kind sailors use to protect their belongings from the elements.
“Lestrade? And Miss Adler?” said Holmes, with evident confusion. “What are you doing here? I was expecting Watson.”
Lestrade gave a half-choking, half-laughing scoff and asked, “Watson? Here? Why? No. Why would you think such a thing? Watson? No.”
“But I got this note,” Holmes said. He approached us, dragging his odd bag. I could hear the soft rustle of paper as he dropped a single sheet onto the table above me.
I’ll be honest, I had not guessed the nature of the communication Holmes bore, until Lestrade gasped, “Holmes! You can read this? You cracked the code?”
“I’ve told you and told you, there is no code,” said Irene.
“No, it’s just regular,” Holmes concurred. “Look, here are two gentlemen facing each other with their… er… gentleman bits just touching. Together, they make a capital ‘H’, you see? And then there are these three fellows rolling about in a sort of mutual somersault—which looks like a bit of a trick and probably rough on the old spine. Still, if one discounts all the knees and elbows and follows the main line of their bodies, that’s an ‘o’. Then this fellow looks rather lonely compared to the others, except he seems to have found something of great interest in his own bottom. Still, look at how he stands all straight and alone and you’ll note he looks like an ‘l’. That’s the start of my name. It says ‘Holmes’.”
Lestrade and I were utterly dumbstruck. Irene gave a light little laugh. “Oh, Elsie, Abe and I used to love to write each other little notes. Do you know what’s more fun than having a code others can’t read? Having a perfectly plain alphabet that they won’t. We could leave those lying around in plain sight, knowing that if they were ever picked up by the sort of person we didn’t want reading them, they would be crumpled up in disgust.”
“But why?” Holmes wondered.
“Not everybody is like you,” said Irene. “Most people are… shy.”
“Some days I fear I’ll never understand people,” Holmes muttered, but then he caught sight of my wine glass and asked, “Oh,
