His Favorite Melody

Five More Minutes

The Baker Street flat filled with boxes and boxes of books. Everywhere they piled high, making it harder and harder to move around. Melody tapped Johns shoulder and held out her phone for him to read her message. He looked at her and chuckled.

"Yes, I suppose you can get some sleep. You don't seem to be showing any signs of a concussion. But we'll be waking you up every three hours to check on you." John said, looking at her with a stern expression.

"Sleep in my room." Sherlock said, causing Mel to look over at him. "I won't be in there tonight, and it will be easier for us to come check on you. My pyjama bottoms are in the bottom drawer. Feel free to use a pair."

Mel just nodded in mild shock. She waved at the boys before turning and heading back to Sherlock's room. John looked at the Consulting Detective with a knowing smirk.

About ten minutes later, a couple of constables brought in more boxes, finishing off the delivery. Some boxes were labelled Van Coon, some were labelled Lukis. Sherlock and John sat amidst a huge stack, slowly sifting through book titles.

"So. The numbers - they're references." Sherlock explained.

"To books?" John asked.

"To specific pages. And specific words on those pages."

"Right. So... '15' and '1'... That means.."

"You turn to page fifteen and it's the first word that you read."

"OK. So? What's the message?"

"Depends on the book. It would never be the same book twice. That's the cunning of a book code." Sherlock said, staring at the burgeoning piles. "It's got to be something they both own."

"OK, fine. Well this shouldn't take too long, should it?" John started to make a painstaking list of all the books and then attempts to cross-reference them.

Dimmock entered, carrying a stack of papers sealed in an evidence bag. "We found these. At the museum. Is this your writing?" he asked, putting them under Sherlock's nose. It's the pages of scribbled ciphers that he asked Soo-Lin to translate.

"We hoped maybe Soo-Lin could decipher it." John explained.

Neither of the men examined it. Instead, Sherlock grabbed the bundle of evidence and flung it on his desk amidst the jumble.

Dimmock hovered for a moment - trying to see what they were doing."I see Melody isn't here. is everything alright?"

"She went to get some rest. I gave her the go ahead. She looked like she needed it." John informed him.

"Ahh. Anything else I can do? To assist you, I mean." Dimmock asked, hoping to get in on the action.

Without looking up, Sherlock spoke in a monotone voice. "Some silence would be marvellous."

Dimmock sloped out, disappointed to not be one of the gang.

In the coming hours, John located identical pairs of books and handed them to two intermittently woke Melody,making sure she was doing alright. Through a series of attempts to match the numbers to words in different books, nothing was turining out. The fifteenth page and the first word written there were always something insignificant. The word was always something innocuous like 'and' or 'the'. Or occasionally something saucy like 'bum'.

"The thing about a book code - it has to be a book that all of the gang members own. And one that they all have access to..." Sherlock mumbled.

"Can't run around town with the works of Shakespeare in your pocket." John mused.

An alarm clock rang loudly, signaling that they had worked through the night.

"I've got to get ready for work. Do me a favour, check on Melody would you?" He asked, standing up and stretching.