Sherlock Sub lit his pipe—waterproof, naturally—and puffed a ring of smoke that dissolved into the fog.
“Look there, Thorne,” Sub murmured, tapping the sonar. A ghost bloomed on the screen: a wreck, not on any chart.
“Impossible,” Thorne whispered. “They weigh forty tons each.”
“The barges carried industrial diamonds,” Sub said calmly. “You didn’t want the barges. You wanted the cargo. And you hid them here to divert suspicion.” sherlock sub
The Thames had coughed up a mystery. Three barges had vanished from the Surrey Commercial Docks in as many weeks, leaving only a slick of iridescent oil and a single, sodden velvet glove. Scotland Yard’s river police called it current theft. Sherlock Sub called it a lie.
His vessel, the St. Mary’s Log , was a retrofitted salvage submarine, all brass periscopes and humming sonar. His “Watson” was a grumpy marine biologist named Dr. Aris Thorne, who’d rather study bioluminescent algae than chase criminals in the murk.
Sub held up the velvet glove. “The sealant on this glove is the same as the gaskets on the pump. And the manufacturer?” He paused. “They only sell to one person. Irene always leaves a signature. A single, elegant flaw.” “Impossible,” Thorne whispered
The feed flickered to a live sonar image: a sleek, stingray-shaped submersible, bristling with claws. Its pilot? Irene Adler-Nemo, the maritime mastermind who’d once stolen the Cutty Sark ’s rudder just to prove she could.
He’d noticed the glove’s stitching—a rare waterproof sealant used only in deep-sea industrial fans. And the oil slick wasn’ engine oil; it was a synthetic lubricant for hydraulic thrusters . Someone had built an underwater conveyor—a giant, silent pump—to suck the barges into this lair.
Thorne panicked. Sub smiled. “You forget, Irene. I’m a student of pressure.” You wanted the cargo
“Now, Thorne, the game is still afloat.”
“Elementary,” Sub replied, adjusting his waterproof deerstalker. “The thief isn’t a man. It’s a current. Or rather, a manufactured one.”