Some time after the events of Fiendish Schemes George Dower finds himself a widower of sorts On her deathbed Miss Mc Thane entrusts Dower with a small ticking clockwork box The box is mysteriously linked to her When she breathes her last the box stops ticking & Dower is able to open it to find hundreds of letters
- written in an unknown hand signed only with the initial S They're not love letters but refer instead to the letter-writer's ongoing search for some other person The last is a simple note reading Found him