Chapter 11: Adelaide's Cipher Breaks Open

The clatter reached Watson before the stairs did — a continuous mechanical percussion rising through the floorboards of the King William Street building, the sound of the exchange below conducting its ordinary commerce in dots and dashes while extraordinary things arranged themselves in the room above it.

Adelaide Marsh met him at the top of the landing without greeting. She was wearing the same dark dress she had worn at their first meeting, or one identical to it, and she carried a leather document case under her arm that she had clearly not allowed out of her possession since it was packed. Her expression communicated nothing except that she had been awake for most of the previous night and had made productive use of the hours.

"You are four minutes late," she said.