As Harrison Hunt, Sandy Kozinn, James O’Leary, and Joanne Yates have proven to be deadly accurate in their answers to the previous questions, Buttons has been forced to get off his stool and repair to the library to do research for today’s offering:
“E.C” . . . .? Who is speaking? Which story? What was the screw?
Mr. Hall Pycroft, “a smart young City man, of the class who have been labelled Cockneys”, is the eponymous Stockbroker’s Clerk. He assumes that Watson is not familiar with the great stock brokerages located in the East Central (E.C.) postal district of London. “The screw was a pound a week rise….” Pycroft *does* assume that Watson, that man of the world, knows what a screw is; one’s rate of pay.
Well Done! The “screw” rose from three to four pounds a week. Buttons would settle for one pound.