Chapter 25: Mycroft's Asset and the Palimpsest Registry

The letter from the Bloomsbury library occupied three folded sheets and was written in a hand Watson could not read — not cipher, simply a personal shorthand so compressed by decades of private use that it had ceased to resemble ordinary notation. He had been staring at it for twenty minutes in the safe house kitchen when he heard Lestrade's key in the front door and the particular sound Lestrade made entering any room, which was the sound of a man who has learned to take up less space than his frame requires.

"You've opened it," Lestrade said, from the doorway.

"I have not." Watson set the sheets down on the table beside his cup. "I removed them from the envelope. That is a different action."