Irene at Large // A Soul of Steel — Carole Nelson Douglas

Alive and well despite the widely published accounts of her death, the irresistible Irene Adler and her husband, dashing barrister Godfrey Norton, are taking coffee with their friend Nell Huxleigh in a Parisian sidewalk cafe when a stranger dressed in Oriental garb falls at their feet. Surprisingly, it is not Irene's beauty that has felled him, but a does of poison - and even more surprisingly, the friends learn as he recovers that he is an Englishman!
After nine years in Afghanistan, following the disastrous battle of Maiwand, Quentin is on his way to London to find a Dr. Watson who tended his battle wounds, a Dr. Watson whose life may well be in danger. Nell's heart is quickly lost to Quentin, but after a shot through a window, Quentin vanishes. Irene vows to find him, for Nell should not be loved and left. Their search takes them first to a Parisian garret, inhabited only by a dead Lascar and . . . an indecently large cobra! Although Irene dispatches the scaly miscreant handily with her revolver, the game is indeed aslither. The sinuous chase leads through a command performance for the Empress of All the Russias and two visits to Sarah Bernhardt, into a channel steamer and under the desk of Dr. John H. Watson, loops into 221 B Baker Street, and uncoils deadly secrets both past and present.