(Drabble: 221 words. Based on characters and situations created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)

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"Foolishness," growled Mycroft Holmes again, upon re-decoding and re-reading the telegram. There was no-one else in his Pall Mall lodgings, of course, but the foolishness warranted noting aloud nonetheless.

True, he reflected, there was no real risk of exposure from this slip, but as it was Sherlock himself who had insisted on this level of secrecy—everything in code, messages brief, identifying information limited—one would have thought that he would be more careful. Instead, he had lengthened his usual message (PLEASE SEND MONEY SH), probably spending enough on the extra words for a day's food in that region, and providing meanwhile more material for cryptographers if any were monitoring the communication. A reckless departure from his own protocol.

Mycroft wondered idly if there were a way to encode a chiding to this effect into his reply without committing the same breach himself. It did not for a second occur to him to make any substantial effort toward answering the extra words, for—and this was all the more frustrating—the question they posed was downright trivial. It was unlike Sherlock to waste time and resources on small talk. Mycroft merely made a mental note—he never wrote anything down—to send the requested funds, and put aside the offending missive (HOW IS JW PLEASE SEND MONEY SH) to be burned.