Embassy Row

Paterson Guthrie, Mycroft Holmes' secretary, is accompanying his employer to secret negotiations with the Japanese, intended to secure England's position in Japanese-controlled waters. But many highly placed Englishmen do not wish to ally themselves with a people they consider inferior, and the Japanese are wary of close ties with a society they find increasingly hostile. And why is the flirtatious Miss Gatspy, sometime spy, sometime assassin, lurking around the embassy—is she after information, or Guthrie?

Despite misunderstandings and suspicious "accidents," the agreement is near completion. But the night the papers are to be signed and sealed, a British diplomat firmly opposed to the negotiations is found dead with a Japanese dagger in his back. Mycroft and Guthrie must solve his murder, expose the agitators behind it, and see to the finalization of the agreement—without finding themselves on the wrong end of the knife.