Chapter 4: What Mycroft Will Not Say

The Diogenes Club receives its guests the way a court receives petitioners — with the precise minimum of acknowledgment consistent with not being openly rude. The doorman, a man of approximately sixty with the bearing of a retired cavalry sergeant and the expression of someone who has spent decades perfecting the art of making visitors feel they have arrived at the wrong address, examined my card with the elaborate slowness of a man who has never once in his professional life been hurried by another person's urgency.

"Dr. Watson," he said, in the tone one might use to announce a minor administrative irregularity.

"I am known to Mr. Mycroft Holmes," I said. "I should be grateful if you would send word that I am here."