As every Sherlock Holmes fan knows, 221 B Baker Street is the great detective's London address. When a Press story in TIME'S June 20 issue disclosed that anybody could now get in touch with him there, mystery fans all over the world began to write.

The man who is receiving their mail is Editor Michael Hall of the London Mystery Magazine, a new, highbrow whodunit monthly. As our story said, Hall, an ex-reporter on the Manchester Guardian and a British Army veteran, got the British post office to recognize the mythical 221 B* as a real address and assign it to his forthcoming magazine. A

At this writing Editor Hall has received more than 300 airmail letters. He wonders: "What do you suppose will happen when the boat mail begins to arrive?" Although a majority of the letters bear a U.S. postmark, others have come from Continental Europe, Latin America, and as far away as Wendji-Coq in the Belgian Congo. Furthermore, to Hall's surprise and gratification, 90% of the letters enclose subscription orders. Says he: "What impresses me is the complete faith TIME readers must have in their magazine. Almost every letter had in it money or checks. To have money sent in advance and to be thanked in advance as well is a novel experience."

The last few weeks' mail has also brought offers from three U.S. publishers to distribute Hall's magazine in America, inquiries from newsdealers, bids from European publishing firms for foreign language editions. Two Swedish correspondents and representatives of two Australian newspaper chains have shown up for interviews, and the sedate London Times literary supplement reviewed Hall's magazine. Hall's old newspaper, the Guardian, sent a reporter around, too, and his article began: "The American news magazine TIME has been tickled by the enterprise of a new British publication . . ."

In turn, Hall sent the following note to TIME: "Just a line to congratulate you on your London newshound, Tom Dozier, for smelling out a news story before Fleet Street did. Quite frankly, I was a little alarmed by his 'third degree' methods, but I must hand it to American journalism at its best--you do go after the news and don't wait for the news to come to you."

So far, the only communication that has stumped Editor Hall is a four and a half page letter written by an American entirely in code. Another, from a Missouri schoolboy, asked for Sherlock Holmes's help in apprehending a schoolmate suspected of filching goodies from his classmates' lunch boxes. Hall advised the boy to make sure of his facts before accusing a fellow human being, and told him to do as Holmes did: watch his man. There were other letters which began: "Bless your heart for letting me write a letter at last to 221 B Baker Street and know that I will receive an answer."

Hall is doing the answering, and feels that it will take him quite a while to reply to everybody. "The letters are so very cordial," he says. "It does show that America is willing to help us if we can supply something they want." Three American authors, however, supplied something that Editor Hall wanted: three first-rate manuscripts. Said Hall: "It shows the class of readers TIME must have. They were exactly what we wanted: a modern setting with traditional methods, clean and dignified, no sex and no brutality --just sheer deduction in the grand tradition."

*Chosen by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, when he began writing his Sherlock Holmes stories, because the Baker Street numbers then stopped short of 200.

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