Holmes sat with the spoon suspended, considering the implications. He had seen the newspaper for the fourth of January, which did, as Mycroft said, contain a small piece about the train he and Russell had been forced to catch at an unscheduled stop in the snow-covered wilds of Kent. He had not seen that of the following day, as by that time they were out to sea and the papers themselves became so sporadic and delayed as to be superfluous. Plus, he'd been otherwise occupied.

And Mycroft had not, of course, thought to take the question a step further, since Holmes had not let his brother know what the problem was. Another telegram would be required.

It did, however, solve one knotty part of the problem, he thought as he broke a slice of chewy bread into pieces: that of the very beginning. Their trip to India had been sudden and unexpected: If the Savannah woman—“Lilly Montera” had to be a pseudonym—had been on their ship, it was due either to coincidence or deliberation. If coincidence, Holmes could live with that: Heaven knew he had made enough enemies over the years to stumble across one with some regularity. But if her presence had been deliberate, an entire Pandora's box of problems opened up, for it could only indicate that she knew everything about their movements in England, almost before they themselves did. That degree of intelligence coupled with the almost instantaneous planting of an operative on board the very ship they were joining would have indicated an enormously, even frighteningly, sophisticated operation.

On the other hand, the woman had openly questioned the young American Bolshevik, Thomas Goodheart, about the older man he had befriended on board the ship. In addition, if indeed the collapse of a balcony on their heads in the Aden bazaar had been purposeful and not an accident, it was hardly sophisticated. Clever, perhaps, and very nearly effective, but a group who had been given time to plan could have arranged for a sniper on a hillside or a bomb in a cabin or any of a hundred other deadly ambushes.

Coincidence, or deliberate? Watson's information could easily lead to the first conclusion: an old foe who boarded the ship, happened to spot Holmes before he saw her, and spent the rest of the voyage hiding in her cabin, leaving the ship at the first possible opportunity—though not without first making an attempt at murder-by-balcony. If that was right, the spectre of an organisation of considerable size and expertise receded considerably.

Mycroft's news, however, rather complicated the issue, introducing the remote possibility that a person had seen the name Sherlock Holmes in the Times Saturday morning, then spent the next three days (and considerable resources) racing to Port Said before the boat put in there. It would have been very difficult, but possible.