“ Lost .⁠—Whereas Mordecai Smith, boatman, and his son, Jim, left Smith’s Wharf at or about three o’clock last Tuesday morning in the steam launch Aurora , black with two red stripes, funnel black with a white band, the sum of five pounds will be paid to anyone who can give information to Mrs. Smith, at Smith’s Wharf, or at 221b Baker Street, as to the whereabouts of the said Mordecai Smith and the launch Aurora .”

This was clearly Holmes’s doing. The Baker Street address was enough to prove that. It struck me as rather ingenious, because it might be read by the fugitives without their seeing in it more than the natural anxiety of a wife for her missing husband.