can you tell me of his activities at the shipyard and munitions factory?” “I know this is great interest in the HMS Dreadnought of the Royal Navy. It is one of your newest ships, having entered service just last year in February. So advanced is this ship of yours that I believe it has made obsolete all your previous builds. It is the first battleship we have seen to have a uniform main battery, rather than having a few large guns being with a heavy secondary battery of smaller guns. She is also the first major warship to be powered by steam turbine, making her the fastest battleship in the world. We will have much to do to catch up to this ship.” The Duke reached into his jacket and produced a thick envelop. “Here is a translations of reports given to me by my people, for I also had these questions.” He leaned over and placed it into my hands. “Perhaps you can see this get to the appropriate agency through your brother, Yes?” “I will do this, your Majesty,” I continued to use a formal tone with the Duke, since he was obviously doing a great service to us which might be extremely detrimental to his Kaiser’s intentions. “Here is a card of my man who will be your contact with me, as I cannot of course be known to have been here or to be involved with anything openly with your investigations.” He presented me with a card with a name and address. “I shall be sure contact with this man will be discreet.” I assured him. ‘Now that I have stirred the porridge pot, I must leave. I have most confidence in you Mr. Holmes.” The Duke stood up, bowed and left. His carriage which had propitiously returned to my front door, whisked the Duke off to return to the Continent. I hastened to my research books and looked up the Schichau-Werft shipyards, and the Krupp munitions factories in Essen. There was of course nothing to tie in Moriarty. But I wanted to familiarize myself with his environs. I found no mention of the shipyards or Krupp in any of my newspaper recently. But now because of a concerned King, I had confirmation of my alarmed surmise from reports submitted my own Continental connections.
Nobel Assassination The next day I left for London to urgently meet with Mycroft. I gave him the King of Bohemia’s secret reports and briefed him on what was bothering the King. Mycroft sent Scotland Yard to find out about Robert Catesby and discover if and when he visited England. He sent orders that the shipyard and munitions factories be monitored for anything new. “There is something malevolent brewing in Europe, Sherlock. I have recently received this report from Jack Grimm.” Mycroft stated as he handed over a binder. “It does not bode well with us that Moriarty’s agents are not only working devilish murders here at our doorstep, but across the Channel as well.” The first paper, background on a recently murdered scientist, was on Antoine Henri Becquerel who was born in Paris on December 15, 1852, a member of a distinguished family of scholars and scientists. He was a Professor at the French Polytechnic. Becquerel's work was concerned with the plane polarization of light, his doctorate thesis was on the phenomenon of phosphorescence and with the absorption of light by crystals. He also was an expert on the subject of terrestrial magnetism. Recently in 1896, he discovered the phenomenon of natural radioactivity. Following a discussion with Henri Poincaré on the X-rays which had recently been discovered by Röntgen, Becquerel decided to investigate whether there was any connection between X-rays and naturally occurring phosphorescence. Becquerel showed that the rays emitted by uranium, which for a long time were named after their discoverer, caused gases to ionize and that they differed from X-rays in that they could be deflected by electric or magnetic fields. For his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity Becquerel was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, the other half being given to Pierre and Marie Curie for their study of the Becquerel radiation. He was murdered at Le Croisic on February 25, this year. He apparently came upon burglars that were ransacking his home laboratory. Without hesitation they struck him down, and he later died from his head injuries. The only item missing was a heavy metallic meteor that he had been investigating. It had formerly been kept at his university lab, but unexplained illnesses since it was brought to the laboratory had caused him to remove it to keep it in a heavy safe at his own home. The cracking of that safe is what aroused the Doctor and caused him, to his peril, investigate the disturbance. The authorities have no idea the worth of the object, nor why anyone could conceivably do with it. It was an oddity that had nothing other than academic interest as far as anyone could discern. The meteor was unusual in that it had a high content of the new mineral, uranium. It had been found at the bottom of a geological lake that had been dredged for a new increase in larger shipping vessels.