“Oh, I suppose you might call him a Chinese fortune-teller.” Hammett shot him a dubious glance before bending to his food. “There's also this,” Holmes added, and slid Mycroft's telegram across the table.

The thin man read it carefully, then asked, “What are these two stones he's lost?”

“Stones? Ah, that's a British weight measurement; fourteen pounds is a stone. My brother's doctors have him on a slimming diet.”

“Got you. You think that's your gal he's found, that she's followed you all the way here?”

“It would fit. She lives in Paris, sees mention of my name in the Saturday Times, scrambles desperately for a means of getting to Egypt ahead of our boat—the weather was vile, which added to her difficulties. She finds one on Monday for a considerable price and boards the ship in Port Said. While we're sailing down the Suez Canal and Dead Sea, she keeps mostly to her cabin while finding as much about us as she can. Then we get to Aden, when she gets off—possibly having arranged with an associate to meet her there and set up a booby-trap. The bazaar isn't that large, so that if we were going to disembark for the afternoon, there was a good chance we'd walk past her trap eventually. I have a friend there I can ask to find out, for a fee.”

“But she missed.”

“If it was an attempt in the first place, and not just a shaky balcony,” Holmes added, to be fair.

“As you say,” Hammett noted. “But by that time, she knew you were headed to San Francisco. So while you and your wife were in India, she came on here.”

“Where she broke into the house, found some papers and burnt them, and lay in wait for our arrival. Which, again, seems to have made it into the papers.”

“But what's she after? Other than your dead bodies, that is?”

“That I hope to learn this afternoon at the house.”

“Well, there's an offer I can't pass up. Give me your finger-prints and I'll see what I can do with them, and meet you at the house later. What time?”

“I am not sure, but perhaps four?”

“I'll be there.”

And he was. At ten minutes before the hour, Hammett stood on the door-step listening to the bell fade and the foot-steps approach. Holmes opened the door with a magazine in one hand, an object that caused Hammett to do a double-take: It was a copy of Smart Set from the previous year, an issue containing Hammett's set of brief reminiscences, “Memoirs of a Private Detective.”

Hammett looked from the magazine to Holmes. “How on earth did you find that?”

“A news-agent agreed to search for your stories. I was curious,” he said, sounding apologetic.

Hammett began to chuckle ruefully. “Have you met Waldron Honeywell yet?”

“The gentleman with the poor opinion of the specialised skills of one Sherlock Holmes? Yes.”

“Sorry about that. It's what sells.”