Vanishing Girl (7 page)

One of the guards turns to take a final look at the engine. A fireman is stoking it with coal. Smoke puffs out in rancid clouds and the locomotive begins to move, easing out of the station.

Sherlock sprints … and leaps up onto the platform in a single bound. He races past the rumbling luggage carriages and seizes a door in third class. The train jerks and speeds up. He hangs on, fumbles for the latch, and shoves out the bolt. The door swings open and he with it, clinging for dear life.

The guard turns back again, as if he senses that something has happened. He looks along the platform and through the windows of the receding carriages, but doesn’t see anything. Then he notices that a door appears slightly open.
How is that possible?
It slams shut. He shakes his head, shrugs, and the train whistles away. When he gets to the office he sends a telegraph up the line, just in case.

Every face in the third-class carriage turns when the boy suddenly smashes through the door and lands inside on the fly. Sherlock offers his audience a weak smile. He pulls the belt and drops the door window down, reaches out, locks
the bolt on the outside, and shoves the window back up. But when he turns again, all eyes are still on him.

“Stopped for tea,” he says.

There are no seats available near the door, so he makes his way down the aisle until he comes to an empty bench. He slides in and slouches even lower this time. The train speeds up. Outside, the countryside is becoming black, lit dimly by occasional candles glowing in farmhouses.

A lady in a flower-patterned bonnet in the seat in front of him is talking to her young daughter.

“I will warn you here, child, don’t look out when we passes St. Neots.”

“Why, Mamma?”

“There’s bad luck there, I’ve heard tell. We’ll talk no more of it.”

Sherlock also wants to ask why, but he must keep to himself. Really no need to know anyway: superstition is rife in the working classes.

A short distance farther up the line, at the Stevenage stop, the train idles for an extended period. They weren’t this long at other places. There appears to be some activity in the supervisor’s office too, which is in plain view through windows. Several train employees are conversing. Sherlock’s foot thrums on the floor.
How will he get past the ticket inspector at the little St. Neots station?
He drops his gaze down and concentrates. It’s just moments later that he feels the carriage moving.

Several passengers have boarded. Once the locomotive is moving at high speed again, he is curious to see who they
may be. When he looks, it makes his heart pound. The railway guard, the
very
one who had tried to stop him from jumping off the first train, is standing in the aisle holding a telegram, examining the door at the other end of the carriage! The man must have disembarked at the Stevenage station, perhaps had some business there, and for some reason, has been asked to check the doors.

Sherlock sits bolt upright, actually lifts slightly out of his seat, staring at the guard in disbelief. He realizes his mistake too late, for the man turns to look down the carriage in the direction of the other door, and sees him. The guard’s eyes bulge. Sherlock reads his lips clearly.

“You!”

This time the railway employee comes at him with great speed, stumbling forward, falling into passengers and benches, apologizing as he goes. If Sherlock is caught for
twice
illegally boarding a train, they will surely jail him.

That’s where he’ll be when the kidnappers murder Victoria Rathbone
.

Holmes jumps to his feet.

He can’t make it to the door this time. It is too far away. And besides, they can’t be near a village yet. A leap will kill him. He glances up and notices the round opening to the ventilation can again, one of many that provide air to the stifling, smoky carriages on hot days. It is a good four feet up, a small circle narrower than his shoulders. Even Pierce, the little “snakesman” whom Malefactor employs for cracking houses, would have problems wriggling up through there. Certainly no grown man could make it. The boy
recalls Pierce giving a demonstration to the Irregulars once, which he observed from a distance. “Sherlock,” his mother used to laugh as she watched him get ready for bed, “you are the thinnest thing in London!”

The guard is within a few strides.

Sherlock jumps up onto the bench, then onto its back, his frame so long that his shoulders reach the ceiling. He shoves his hands up through the vent and slams open the steel cover. It rattles on the roof of the train.

“You can’t go up there, lad!”

Passengers scream.

Sherlock grips the sharp rim of the ventilation can and pulls himself up. He can feel it cutting into his fingers. This will take not only arm strength but abdominal muscles.

“One! Two! Three! Four! …” Sigerson Bell often counts off their calisthenics in the laboratory. The old man does the exercises with the same verve that he insists the boy utilize. Sometimes with too much: flasks go smashing on the floor, pickled human organs end up hanging from their crude chandelier. “This shall be useful to you some day, my boy!”

Sherlock gets his head through the opening and the blast of air is alarming. In fact, it feels as though it will pull him out of the train and pitch him overboard. But he keeps drawing himself up, folding his shoulders inward, just like Pierce. Blood is trickling down his hands onto his wrists, but he ignores it. He sucks in his breath and yanks his torso upwards. The vent feels as though it will squeeze the life out of him, pressing on his ribcage as he holds his breath
as deeply as he can. But he pulls hard and his torso literally pops out of the opening. He bends over the top of the rim onto the roof.

Then he feels the guard’s hands gripping his ankles, pulling him downward! His thighs are held tightly together by the narrow opening, but Sherlock kicks a foot as hard as he can, feels it connect, hears a groan, and the man’s hands release him.

Holmes gets his slim hips out, his legs, his boots … and lies flat on the curved roof, holding onto the ventilation can for dear life. The wind is incredible. It feels as though God himself is using all his strength to sweep him off the train. The skin on his face is rippling like putty. Sherlock looks down through the vent and sees the guard lying on top of a middle-aged widow, dressed in black. She is smiling; he isn’t: he’s glaring through the opening at the boy.

Holmes slams down the lid. The train rocks from side to side, jerking back and forth. He imagines what would happen if he were to fall off. Fractured bones from head to toes: a broken neck, a crushed skull. They would find his corpse limp some distance away. And if he were to be swept under the wheels, he would be severed in half.

The train chugs and he tries to keep his grip on the vent, wound into the tightest ball he can create, eyes protected from the cinders floating in the locomotive smoke by pressing his forehead to the roof. His arms are tiring, his fingers want to release. He wonders if the railway guard will open the door and try to climb up the ladder at the end of
the carriage. Probably not. He will think the boy is done for … either in a gruesome fall or arrest at the next station.

The boy hangs on for what seems like an eternity. Just as he feels he cannot last any longer, the train starts to slow.
The next station!
It gives him an idea. The train heaves and slows again. The whistle sounds.

Sherlock lets go of the ventilation can.

The wind blows him down the slope of the roof toward the edge. Crying out, he spreads his fingers and flattens himself to the surface like a spider – and stops sliding. Then, ever so slowly, he inches his way toward the end of the carriage. Thank goodness it isn’t far. The train keeps decelerating. He gets to the end, finds the top of the ladder with a foot, and descends.

When he reaches the bottom, he hears something to his right … and sees the railway guard coming around the corner, his boot tentatively groping out for a rung, his face contorted with fear as he tries to negotiate his way onto the same ladder. The train is still moving at a mighty speed. Holmes steps off the bottom rung and onto a ridge low on the carriage, cricks his neck around to see the passing countryside, spots a grassy field … and jumps.

Sherlock’s arm is screaming. And it is pitch-black. He struck a rock soon after hitting the ground and then whirled around countless times until he came to a stop. Fortunately, he had kept his head tucked into his chest.

He is near Biggleswade village, the last stop before St. Neots. There is no need to hide here. Though the railway guard will be livid and the local constable may be called from his home for a search, that will likely be the extent of the inquiry on this cold, dark night. Sherlock can’t see more than a few feet in front of his face; just a scattering of lights show dimly in the distance.

He crawls to his feet and begins to walk, clutching his throbbing arm, which aches at the elbow joint. St. Neots can’t be more than an hour away. He takes a big detour around Biggleswade and keeps going. When he feels something dripping from his hands, he remembers the rim of the steel vent slicing into his fingers. He opens his coat and wipes little streaks of drying blood onto his waistcoat, then buttons up again. Later, he stumbles into a stream and cleans his hands as best he can.

But Sherlock stops before he’s certain he is at his destination. He can’t go on: the pain in his arm bothers him too much, and he doesn’t want to be seen coming into the town in the middle of the night. Besides, fatigue is consuming him.

He steps over a stone fence within a football pitch or two of the first lights of the town. Shivering, he curls up and gets as close to the fence as he can. Lying there, he surveys the dark, starlit sky.

This harrowing trip will be worth it, he tells himself, if it saves a human being’s life, if it secures his own future … if he gets to see defeat on Lestrade’s face.

But it is dawning on him just how rash he’s been. When he left London he was enraged and full of thoughts
of vengeance, trying to do something very adult. Perhaps his actions today have proven his immaturity.

Why did he come here with so little evidence? It is against everything he believes a scientific detective should do. Where will he search in the morning? Will anyone speak to someone like him? Will the parish constable be called in to collar him and take him away? Even if the paper is made here, the culprits could have purchased it somewhere else. He was
far
too impetuous. It isn’t smart to be so driven.

Sherlock examines himself. He is a mess. He had preened himself early this morning, like a monotoned peacock. Now, he isn’t even presentable.

He twists around on the cold, damp ground like a stirring child in the womb. But finally, sleep begins to descend upon him, so he isn’t sure whether it is a dream or not when he sees something eerie on a hill in the distance. It is a manor house, big, dark, and spooky on the horizon. Only a single, weak light shines from one part of its innards. He hears the frightened calls of animals, exotic beasts, crying and growling way off on its grounds. Or is it the wind? Then a shadow lurks up above it all, like a gigantic phantom against the moonlight, rising in the glow of a lamp that is being carried across the grounds, the light swinging back and forth as if someone were walking with it in the middle of the night. The phantom seems to snarl.

“A dream,” he whispers to himself.

Then he drifts off.