Sherlock Holmes: Topic: Secrets
Holmes sits quietly in his usual booth, smoke from his pipe drifting lazily about his head. Secrets, he thinks. What an interesting topic for discussion. Secrets, finding them out, telling them (to the proper authorities) and sometimes keeping them have been his life’s work. Watson had been the soul of discretion when penning the stories of his cases, not mentioning, or changing the names of those involved when necessary, as well as places and dates. In some cases, Holmes had refused outright to have anything about them referred to at all, though he knew quite well that the good doctor had written about them in his private papers. He supposed that in most instances it would do no harm to tell of those adventures. Still, some of them were, or had been, vital to national security and it went against his nature to blather indiscreetly, no matter how long the principals involved had been dead. One he can tell, however. And apparently some people have been curious. “In 1902, I was offered a knighthood but refused. Instead, I asked for a favour to be done, to honour a man who deserved the accolades far more than I. I asked that the head of British Intelligence always be given the code-name ‘M’, for my brother Mycroft, who was the very first to be so designated. I understand that the practice is still followed to this day.”