Hee! Yeah, very true. It's a bit unfortunate that later adaptations always want to turn Irene into either a villain or a love interest - though it's true that it's hard to really expand upon the original story without ruining it, since the whole point of it us that a) Irene treats Holmes as a minor nuisance and nothing more, and b) that is exactly what impresses Holmes so much.

And yeah, that zinger he gives the King at the end is just marvelous. ;)