Writings By Me

I first heard about Daniel MacGuinness when my sister and I were in London. We had moved in with another relative, and a newspaper article raved about this young detective who’d been making headlines in all countries around the globe. The son of a poor Irish couple who’d immigrated to America, he learned to read starting with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes. Young Daniel made the logic and learnings of Holmes into his own, the first steps to the acclaim he would come to know everywhere he went.

I do not know why, but I took particular note of a section of the article which read along the lines of, “If you’re ever in trouble, let your story be known to the Irregulars,” a group of orphans known to gather information for the detective. It wouldn’t be until two years — and many relative swaps — later when my sister and I would find ourselves in the detective’s hometown. There I met with the Irregulars, but it was deemed my position being sent from relative to relative was not actually a case, and could not be taken up by the detective. “If ever you really are in trouble,” one of the Irregulars told me, “and the good detective is truly in need, send him a letter with words of mystery.” The Irregular gave me an address to send such a letter to, and I kept that information with me for the following years. I didn’t actually expect to need to until my trip to Taiwan.

In Taiwan, my sister and I were forced to wear clothing and wigs matching the styles of others in our new home: a sweatshop where we’d make bootleg products from before sunrise until after sunset. We were supposedly in the case of a distant uncle, but there was no way so many orphans from different countries were all nephews of that man. I wrote a letter as cryptic as I possibly could, and I sent it off to America, not knowing whether it would reach its destination, or be stopped along the way by that false uncle.

The letter reached its destination. A couple of suitcases appeared in the room my sister and I stayed in. A two-way radio provided us with Detective Daniel’s voice, as he instructed us to wear outfits from inside the suitcases. These outfits would allow him to recognize us among the crowd of teenagers and children who all wore the same outfit and had the same hair.

As my sister and I waited for the detective, he waited for the uncle to follow me and my sister out, then he hurried in to gather evidence and assist the other orphans. There was trouble for my sister when the uncle assaulted her, but Detective Daniel appeared immediately after, and had the man carted off by secret police.

The detective arranged for me and my sister to return to the States with him, and stay in an orphanage near his second floor apartment-slash-office. We have no way to repay him, so I have taken up the pen, and plan to put to paper all the cases he solves. My name is not Watson, and I am unfamiliar with his writings, but I’ll do whatever I can to put the detective’s stories to paper.

❤Jennifer Sheridan❤