Do try to make sure that Escardos exercises more caution with who he tells. I think this weekend gave him a good taste of what can happen when an entire crowd even learns that they exist.
[ nevermind learning who. ]
Tell me a story, and find out the team of one other person you didn't already know. You already did the major legwork to get the gun in the first place, so it's simply paying for the chemicals, now, so to speak.
Anyway. She immediately looks extremely enthusiastic.]
This is the story of a visit the King of Bohemia, Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, paid to the great consulting detective Herlock Sholmes! The king arrives to the famous 221B Baker Street wearing a mask to disguise his identity. You see, the man is set to marry a princess of good breeding, and he fears her family will learn of a terrible scandal and will refuse to allow them to wed. Some years earlier, the king had been in a secret affair with an American opera singer of some renown. In her possession, she has a photograph of the two of them together, and he fears she means to blackmail him. So he wished to engage the great detective to recover that photograph!
The detective, with help from his partner Dr. Wilson, tails the woman to her apartment. When she leaves her carriage, a group of men rush to assist her, and Mr. Sholmes pretends to be one of them. He feigns an injury, and she brings him inside to tend to it. There, while in her sitting room, Mr. Sholmes signals to Dr. Wilson, who releases smoke and cries fire. As Mr. Sholmes deduced, the lady rushes to find her most valuable possession, and thus the location of the photograph is revealed -- behind a sliding panel above the bell pull.
The next day, Mr. Sholmes, Dr. Wilson, and the King arrive at the lady's apartment to obtain the photograph. However, they learn she has already departed the country with her fiancee. In the secret compartment, Mr. Sholmes finds not the desired photograph, but one of the woman alone, and a letter explaining the truth. She had deduced herself that the man inside her apartment was a detective. She had allowed him to think he had deceived her to buy time to steal away in the night. Furthermore, though she will hold on to the photograph, she does not mean to blackmail the king. Rather, he had treated her poorly during their affair, and she feared he would take further action against her. Keeping the photograph would ensure he would do her no harm.
Mr. Sholmes realizes he has been outwitted, and is impressed! He declines any reward from the king, instead wishing to keep only the photograph as a memento of the lady's cunning.
baraqiel mouths wilhelm gottsreich sigismond von ormstein to themself, because white people, but otherwise doesn't interrupt her as she goes on her tale. ]
... rather clever of her. For how Sholmes so often is, I can't deny that he's got some kind of brains in there.
Better, still, that she was able to leave before something came of her.
Indeed. He is a brilliant man, but it is quite noble of him that he will admit it when he has met his match, don't you think?
[Well.]
. . . Of course, the stories of his exploits are lightly fictionalized. So I couldn't say whether it actually happened precisely as I said. That is the version I read in Randst Magazine.
Of course his exploits are fictionalized and spread like that, I can't say I'm surprised. That sort of thing is done where I'm from, as well, although it's usually through plays and performances instead. The average person can't read, usually.
Or they don't have the attention span for it, and would rather watch tales be reenacted.
Either we are from similar places, or human nature is quite the same everywhere. There is a thrill from stories, but the thrill is even greater when one believes the stories to contain grains of truth.
[. . .]
It is his daughter Iris who writes them. She has quite a flair for the dramatic. For example . . . the first time I encountered Mr. Sholmes, he had come up with a theory of a murder. He theorized that a young woman had trained her pet poisonous snake to commit murder, by sending him through the vents to crawl down a bell pull into an adjoining room, and whistling her commands. I was forced to correct dear Mr. Sholmes on certain attributes of the biology of snakes, namely that they do not have ears and cannot crawl vertically in that manner. It fact, the circumstances of the crime turned out to be rather different and did not involve a snake at all.
But young miss Iris rightly recognized that the public would likely find the snake theory more interesting, and would not be overly concerned with these facts of biology.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Easier, now, I think. Always easier away from the public group.
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[ d...ry... ]
Though if that keeps happening to us, it's going to trickle down to all of you, eventually.
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[. . .]
I wonder. . . why do you think your higher ups want it to remain secret?
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Although we've been making use of it to our advantage more than theirs.
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[Hmm.]
I also ought to ask you - it seemed my gun is out of chemicals. Is there anything I ought to do to refill it?
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[ nevermind learning who. ]
Tell me a story, and find out the team of one other person you didn't already know. You already did the major legwork to get the gun in the first place, so it's simply paying for the chemicals, now, so to speak.
no subject
Anyway. She immediately looks extremely enthusiastic.]
This is the story of a visit the King of Bohemia, Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, paid to the great consulting detective Herlock Sholmes! The king arrives to the famous 221B Baker Street wearing a mask to disguise his identity. You see, the man is set to marry a princess of good breeding, and he fears her family will learn of a terrible scandal and will refuse to allow them to wed. Some years earlier, the king had been in a secret affair with an American opera singer of some renown. In her possession, she has a photograph of the two of them together, and he fears she means to blackmail him. So he wished to engage the great detective to recover that photograph!
The detective, with help from his partner Dr. Wilson, tails the woman to her apartment. When she leaves her carriage, a group of men rush to assist her, and Mr. Sholmes pretends to be one of them. He feigns an injury, and she brings him inside to tend to it. There, while in her sitting room, Mr. Sholmes signals to Dr. Wilson, who releases smoke and cries fire. As Mr. Sholmes deduced, the lady rushes to find her most valuable possession, and thus the location of the photograph is revealed -- behind a sliding panel above the bell pull.
The next day, Mr. Sholmes, Dr. Wilson, and the King arrive at the lady's apartment to obtain the photograph. However, they learn she has already departed the country with her fiancee. In the secret compartment, Mr. Sholmes finds not the desired photograph, but one of the woman alone, and a letter explaining the truth. She had deduced herself that the man inside her apartment was a detective. She had allowed him to think he had deceived her to buy time to steal away in the night. Furthermore, though she will hold on to the photograph, she does not mean to blackmail the king. Rather, he had treated her poorly during their affair, and she feared he would take further action against her. Keeping the photograph would ensure he would do her no harm.
Mr. Sholmes realizes he has been outwitted, and is impressed! He declines any reward from the king, instead wishing to keep only the photograph as a memento of the lady's cunning.
no subject
baraqiel mouths wilhelm gottsreich sigismond von ormstein to themself, because white people, but otherwise doesn't interrupt her as she goes on her tale. ]
... rather clever of her. For how Sholmes so often is, I can't deny that he's got some kind of brains in there.
Better, still, that she was able to leave before something came of her.
no subject
[Well.]
. . . Of course, the stories of his exploits are lightly fictionalized. So I couldn't say whether it actually happened precisely as I said. That is the version I read in Randst Magazine.
no subject
Or they don't have the attention span for it, and would rather watch tales be reenacted.
no subject
[. . .]
It is his daughter Iris who writes them. She has quite a flair for the dramatic. For example . . . the first time I encountered Mr. Sholmes, he had come up with a theory of a murder. He theorized that a young woman had trained her pet poisonous snake to commit murder, by sending him through the vents to crawl down a bell pull into an adjoining room, and whistling her commands. I was forced to correct dear Mr. Sholmes on certain attributes of the biology of snakes, namely that they do not have ears and cannot crawl vertically in that manner. It fact, the circumstances of the crime turned out to be rather different and did not involve a snake at all.
But young miss Iris rightly recognized that the public would likely find the snake theory more interesting, and would not be overly concerned with these facts of biology.