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Holmes.
    He bent down again to make sure he had them all, including a couple of stragglers that had landed under the desk.
    He stood and checked his watch—there was still time before anyone should begin to arrive. He put the letters on the secretary’s desk in front of him, turned on the small desk lamp, and began to shuffle through them.
    He was entirely prepared to buy Dorset House—or possibly even a majority interest in the bank that owned it if need be—to take away the letters and whatever it was about them that had made Reggie more attractive to Laura. But he had no intention of buying a pig in a poke—he wanted to know what he was paying for.
    He began to scan through the letters. He quickly read one after another, trying to understand what could possibly make any of them matter.
    But there was nothing to them. Just nothing. All he could think of was how amazing it was that there were so many losers in the world.
    And then he came to a letter that made him pause.
    He read it through once, and then he repositioned the lamp so that he could read it through again, more carefully.
    It read as follows:
    Dear Mr. Holmes—
    You are receiving this letter because I know that I shall soon pass away.
    Do not grieve. I go to a better place, or at least to one no worse. And as I am writing this letter and recording this document at age 102, I cannot complain about the timing of things. Indeed, my entire life story is one of the most excellent timing.
    Which brings me to the purpose of my letter: I have no heirs. I have outlived them all (even my lovely beagle Paulo, whom I cannot bear to replace). There is no charity that I know well enough to trust, and no political or social cause that I fully believe in. And so I have done the only sensible, logical thing I can do:
    I have willed my entire fortune to you. I know it’s not much; it dwindles away daily, as you might imagine. But what little I still have will be yours.

    Hilary Clemens
    Buxton looked at the return address, which had no street number, but just “Shady Oaks, Texas,” and he started to laugh. It was the name of a rest home, probably. A woman on her deathbed in a rest home was writing to Sherlock Holmes to give him her remaining valuables; no doubt a few coins stashed in a shoe box under her bed, or perhaps a few dollars tucked between the pages of old novels.
    So this was the sort of thing Reggie Heath had to deal with.
    What a git.
    But then Buxton had an inspiration.
    He looked about the secretary’s station until he found some stationery. It had Heath’s law chambers letterhead. Perfect. Then he took the letters and the stationery and went to the small open office.
    He sat at that desk and rolled a sheet into the old typewriter. Yes, he thought, this was indeed a brilliant idea. The damage to Heath’s reputation would be incalculable.
    Then he hammered out a letter:
    Dear Ms. Clemens:
    Thank you for your kind letter, and your interest in bequeathing your entire fortune to me, Sherlock Holmes.
    Your generous gift can enable me to bring many nefarious villains to justice.
    However, I fear it would prove difficult, given the convoluted and irrational intricacies of American law, for your bequest to me to be honored by the court. At best, it would be tied up for years, allowing many scoundrels to continue doing bad deeds unfettered.
    And although I would like very much to meet you in person and explore other possibilities, I will be off to the moors very shortly to deal with an occurrence so evil and borderline supernatural that I hardly dare take pen to paper to describe it to you. Or a typewriter, either.
    However, I have appointed my good friend Reggie Heath to act on my behalf. If you will kindly make your bequest to him, I know that he will see that it is disposed of properly.

    Yours truly,
    Buxton prepared to sign the letter, and then he stopped. He had no real idea what a Sherlock Holmes signature should look