I must have presented a very peculiar image to the inhabitants of the mews as I crossed towards the servant's entrance of Lord Haversmith's huge, gray stone faced London domocile on Soho Square. I was carefully and simultaneously avoiding horse depositions in the narrow alley and the rain slicked surface, on one hand, whilst juggling bottles of gin, to loosen the tongues of the denizens therin, and packages of tobacco to reward their responses to my queries, on the other. I barely made it to the rear entrance of his huge townhouse with my dignity intact.

After many encounters with the several people wandering the mews on their daily rounds, I was finally directed to a groom in the employ of Lord Haversmith. My lack of thesbian accumen obviated any attempts at disguise or subterfuge. Consequently, I needed to use another tact adopted from my experience with Sherlock Holmes to gain access to the servants of their wealthy employer. I knew that a direct query would likely arouse suspicion and resistance, producing a negative response. Subterfuge was the order of the day.

"My good man," I stated to the groom in an exasperated voice, "Would you believe the gall of Sir Richard Young's estate manager who claims that Lord Haverhill is a poor piker, and cannot afford a decent staff. For goodness sake, he even had the audacity to bet me that Sir Richard has a larger and more skilled household than your master. I wagered that he is quite wrong in that regard. Now, I need information to settle this bet."

"Sir," he replied proudly. "We who are in service to the good lord are very proud of our position, and the quality of our fellow workers!"

"Well said, my good man. Will you help me settle this wager. There is money in it for anyone who assists me."

He replied, eyeing my proferred gin and tobacco, "Just what do you need."

"Specifically, a friend of mine bet me ten crowns that Sir Richard's servant staff exceeded that of Lord Haversmith. Being a betting man, myself, I could not resist the offer. Should Lord Haversmith employ more than six people, I'll be one up on him. If you aid me in this effort, I'll be forever in your debt. I am quite willing to share all of my winnings with you and your fellows, since my object is not riches. It is a matter of pride. However, my friend Lord Haversmith must never hear of this, since he would not approve of this arrangement."

Saying this, I offered the groom a swallow of gin and a pipeful of "Ships" to seal the deal.

"Alright, guvner,' he replied. "You win the money. There are seven all told. Now hand over the ten bob"

"Splendid! I will very soon" I replied, "But I must interview each servant in person to certify to myself the veracity of your statement."

Encouraged with another drink of gin, the groom entered the house and returned with a huge man in green livery.

"Good day, sir," I stated politely as if adressing a nobleman, "Would you like to share a drink and a smoke with me?"

Accepting my invitation with gusto, the red-faced clean-shaven man spoke loudly with a strong deep voice. "I am the footman! The rest are coming soon. I had a hard time talking Greenway, the stuck up butler, to come out to the back, but he'd do anything for a crown, a drink, and a pipeful of tobaccco. This here's the coachman, and behind him the upstairs maid, the cook, and the scullery maid. With the groom, that makes seven and you wins the bet."

"Not so soon, my man," said I, "I need each of you to write your name and position on this slip of paper to prove my point. Then, I hand you the rest of the ten pounds plus an extra five to to reward you for your labors on my behalf."

Not wishing to lose the income, the butler, footman, coachman, and cook each scrawled their occupation and name on the foolscap. Being illiterate, the maids and groom placed an "X" mark next to the lines decorously incribed by the butler.

Then came the difficult part. However unlikely it would be to get a proper response, I tried my final gambit.

"Thank you very much for your help, " I enthusiastilly continued. "I certainly put on over on my friend. But I have one more question, don't you also have a young maid named Rachel."

Looking somewhat guiltily at one another, like the cats that swallowed several canaries, all of the assembled staff looked at the ground as they uttered, without much conviction, "No sire. No one by that name ever worked here."

As I expected, they denied her existence, but I surmised otherwise. Hurridly, I left 15 crown coins, and the rest of the gin and tobacco, to be divided as the servants saw fit, and made my way out of the mews toward the center square. I was surprised to see a young boy in buttons steathily approach me as I returned to the main road. He whistered in a tiny pipng voice, " Rachel's been locked up after what happened to Ratface. You must help her."

"Thank you, young man, your information is very useful to me," I said, waving a shilling before his face. "What else can you tell me? Who is 'Ratface'."

"Ratface is what we all call Rachel's brother, Benny."

With that, I gave the youngster an extra shilling, and now unencumbered by gratuities, monetary or otherwise, I made my way to the four wheeler that was awaiting my return. As I rattled my way back to.Sherlock Holmes and 221b Baker Street, I could barely restrain my enthusiasm for the success of my recent mission.

Upon entering our commonly shared central sitting room, I noted that Holmes had an air of ease, as if he had successfully concluded a serious business and was now taking a respite to reinforce his resources.

"I see that you are back, Watson," he said as he buttered his scone. "You are just in time to share a pot of tea and Mrs. Hudon'e exellent victuals. I see that you have accomplished your assignment and would like to share today's adventures with me. Pray do so, after which I will reveal to you what I have gleaned from the mysterious twine."

With that, I related to Holmes how I had used trickery to obtain the names, stations, and hand writings of Lord Haversmith's staff. I then added the final episode regarding the incarceration of Rachel and the fact that Benjamin was kown about the mews as "Ratface."

Holmes rewarded me with one of his few smiles, and congratulated me on my efforts, only to cajole me by stating, "Of course, I would have determined the exact location of Miss Rachel before leaving the site. Overall, you have learned to employ some of my methods with good results. Now look at what I have produced."

Looking to our small writing table, I noted that the floor was littered with wads of crumpled paper and pencil shavings. On the surface of the desk, very neatly written out were the following words: "G-EF-GH-E-DEF-EFBC-DEFAG".

"Holmes, that is all very interesting, but what is the significance of this message and from whom did it come?" I asked.

"It is the message of the twine," he chuckled. "Let us examine what we received. As I indicated before, the knots represent dashes and dots in Morse Code. When translated into English, it read 'G-EF-GH-E-DEF-EFBC-DEFAG'."

"That makes no sense, Holmes. How did you decipher it further."

"I realized that it was a simple substitution cipher. However, I needed the key. You recall the insertion of various ciphers in several of your lurid romances. In the case involving the dancing men, we had a large number of messages about which to organize our inferences. In this case, we only had a single message to decipher. That would not do. On the other hand, we had an obvious letter substitution cipher such as we decoded the message from Porlock. As you may recall, we were able to determine that the key to the cipher was the previous year's Whitaker's Almanac. However, that was a number clue, and did not apply to our current situation. No, a unique solution was required."

Seeing my obvious impatience, Holmes summed it up with the following statement.

"After many trials and false starts, as you can visualize by the floor decorations surrounding us, I finally hit upon the solution. For on thing, there were only eight different letters in the key. Further, from the construction of the sentence, the first word could either be an "A" or an "I". However, the first letter also began the third word, it was more likely an "I' indicating the first vowel in the second word was an "A", which was repeated as a single letter in word four. As I filled in these spots, it occurred to me that the logical eight letter word containing an "A" and an "I" could only be the word Benjamin, the name of our disabled young visitor. After all, someone went to a to of trouble to have us associate the stringed message with the hand of the young urchin. Substituting Benjamin for the first eight letters of the Morse code, we can now decipher the message as the one that you perceive on this slip of paper."

With that, Holmes handed me a piece of paper upon which the following message had be penned in his neat cursive that read

I am in a jam amen jambi

"Here we have it. Now for more information to guide our steps," Holmes continued. What does the word jambi indicate to you?'

"I haven't the faintest idea," I countered. "I have never seen that word."

"Nor I, Watson, but the dictionary informs me that Jambi is a port city in central Sumatra. Tie that in with the nick name "ratface"for the person of the clue, and we have a connection between rat and Sumatra. Does that ring a bell. "

"Holmes!" I expostulated, "Not that confounded rodent again!"

"I'm afraid so Watson, some how the giant rat from Sumatra is tied in with the package containing the mysterious jewel, the injury to poor Benjamin, and the disappearance of his sister Rachel. How this relates to the theft of Haversmith Tiara is yet to be uncovered. Also, Watson, there are the clues provided by the cord itself."

"You mean that there is more to be divined from the string detached from the package?" I asked, becoming more curious by the minute.

"Yes, Watson. The string. As you may not have recalled, I published a monograph entitled 'Strings, Cords, Knots and Their Relation to Crime' covering approximately 100 types of rope, cords, and string and at least 150 individual methods of making knots. You might recall my interest in this subject when I investigated the cord that bound the salted ears. Anyway, to continue, the knotted cord that bound the package was of the very fines silk. This quality is reserved for the craft projects of the wealthiest women in society who pass their spare time crocheting doilies and garments to properly attire the legs of chairs and pianos. Further, the knots were likely made by a fairly strong young woman who ties the knots in a direction that would indicate that she is left handed."

"So Holmes, to sum it up, we need to find a young, wealthy woman who has access to Benjamin and a staff of servant."

"Yes Watson, I know jut where to start our further explorations into this ever more complicated problem. We have grasped, figuratively as well as literally, several threads to follow towards tying up the solution to this conundrum."

Proceed to Part Eight