Vanishing Girl Page 7

  Sherlock ascends again and comes to a hallway. It seems to him that he is on the correct floor now and that the glow he’d seen outdoors came from a room off to his right. He turns that way, though there isn’t any illumination down the passage. Feeling his way along, his heart begins to pound. This is a massive building. He could get lost in here. It may soon be difficult to find his way back; perhaps he should turn around.

  No. It is time to strike.

  He must walk blindly on until he finds that room.

  But something else disturbs him. His mind has been so riveted on the presence of the three people downstairs and the upstairs light, that he has pushed the manor’s eerie history to the back of his mind.

  “It is haunted if ever a house was.” That’s what Penny said. Despite her class, she is a well-spoken woman and doesn’t seem like the sort who is given to wild superstitions. Sherlock feels his stomach burning. Such tales are nonsense, he tells himself. In the end, she is just a poorly educated country woman. Be like steel; use cold reason.

  He feels a sudden breeze blow across his face and through his clothes. The hallway is in the center of the house … without a single window.

  A breeze?

  Sherlock freezes. He is ashamed of himself, but he freezes. Then he thinks he might faint. He sticks out his arms to feel for the walls, to at least hold on to something. An object comes into in his hands. It is cold and round and severed from its base.

  A human head.

  Sherlock does everything he can to keep his scream inside his throat and releases the skull. It shatters on the floor.

  A bust – likely made of porcelain. It must have been sitting on a pedestal.

  There is silence again. The boy pushes the shards off to the side so they settle against the wall. He doubts the crash could have been heard two floors below in this huge house, but if anyone comes up here with a lantern, he wants the pieces well out of the way.

  On he goes, feeling embarrassed, adamant about removing all those ridiculous haunted house ideas from his mind.

  He proceeds in total darkness, edging along corridors, finding nothing. Finally, when he steps into another wall and realizes that he has come to the next T in the halls, he notices something that gives him hope.

  He can see the passageway to his right. It is dim, but he can make out the walls, the outlines of dusty paintings, and a little hall table. There’s light in this direction!

  Sherlock moves quickly down that corridor. He can see the next T too, and the light is slightly brighter around that corner. He rushes to it, looks along the next hall and … spots a glowing line on the floor.

  A door to a lighted room!

  He treads silently up to it and puts his ear against its surface.

  Nothing.

  Then … the faint sound of someone sobbing … a girl.

  He tries the latch, but it’s locked. The girl gasps.

  There aren’t any knobs with keyholes to look through on these old doors, but as Sherlock had crept closer, he’d noticed two very slight vertical lines of light rising from the brighter one on the floor – the entrance isn’t perfectly sealed. He presses his forehead against a crack and tries to peer into the room. At first he can’t discern anything, so narrow is the sliver of light. But then he sees her. She is sitting at a table straight ahead, near a dark window, looking toward the door with what appears to be fear in her eyes. Behind her, through the window, little bits of light from the distant bonfires flicker like tiny sparks and then go out. Her strawberry blonde hair is done up, a necklace glows around her delicate neck – she looks weary and disheveled but highborn: the skin across her high cheekbones is as white as precious china. Sherlock remembers what the newspapers said Victoria Rathbone was wearing on the day of her abduction … the girl in the room is clothed in a fine scarlet dress.

  He has solved it! He has solved this impenetrable mystery in a mere two days. The crime that all of Scotland Yard, all of England, is talking about, has been unlocked by his brilliant deductions. And only he, squatting at this door in this frightening manor house fifty miles north of the city, knows it.

  Sherlock sits still for a moment, smiling. Andrew Doyle will give him whatever he wants, he can put his bullet into Lestrade, and he’s saved two lives as well. Irene will think him a genius and have no need of Malefactor.

  Then he hears a sound in the distance, yet within the building. It is growing louder with every second. Someone is coming up the staircase.

  Sherlock springs to his feet. He has everything he needs. Now he must get out.

  But the approaching person is already on his floor, moving rapidly, and will arrive in no time at all. Sherlock has lost his bearings. It is impossible to know which way to go to get back: he will be lost if he blindly stumbles away.

  An idea comes to him. Go in the direction of whoever is approaching. It will be the way out. It is a reckless thought, but it makes sense.

  The boy is shaking as he starts to move.

  “I am doing the right thing. I am doing the right thing,” he whispers. “Hide when the fiend nears.”

  The footsteps approach. The boy can see the corridor up ahead getting lighter. Whoever is out there has to have a lantern. Sherlock must calculate this perfectly: he must get as close as he can without giving himself away, then duck out of sight and let the villain pass.

  He walks down the hallway and turns at the T. The light appears at the end of the passage and shoots straight toward him. Whoever is coming this way has arrived even sooner than he imagined, too soon! Sherlock has made a big mistake – and there is no time to retreat. The light is glowing on the floor a few yards in front of him and advancing rapidly.

  He drops onto his stomach and rolls against a wall in the wide hallway.

  The footsteps fall heavily on the old wooden floor. The boy hears a bass voice. It is a man, talking to himself. Sherlock peeks up. What he sees nearly makes him black out. The advancing figure has no head.

  But when the man takes a few more steps and lowers the lantern a little so it isn’t blocking Sherlock’s view toward his upper torso, the boy realizes that a cranium is indeed appropriately fastened to his shoulders.

  The man carries a scarf in his hand.

  “One more day. Leave tonight. Get there by dawn. Captain’s orders.”

  Sherlock tries to make himself part of the wall and flattens almost into it. He can hear rats scurrying inside the floor boards. He holds his breath.

  The man comes closer. Three steps away … two … one … and walks past, still talking to himself. His light, and apparently his gaze, are cast straight ahead – he hadn’t expected to see anyone on the floor in the hallway.

  The boy sighs.

  The man stops.

  Sherlock doesn’t know if the crook is looking around because he doesn’t dare move, not even his eyeballs. The man sighs too.

  “Ah, the headless woman again,” he says with a chuckle and resumes his walk, down the corridor and around the corner in the direction of Victoria Rathbone.

  Sherlock waits a long time before he gets to his feet. He hears the man come to the door, hears it open, and the distraught young girl say something.

  Only then does he move, walking as quickly as he can without making a sound. He knows the way out now, follows the direction the man came from, descends the first staircase, the second, and then comes to the ground floor. As he slips through the great hall and heads back to the out side door, the voices of the other two kidnappers are clear in the far room.

  “Rambunctious rebel rogues rule rotting royals from Rotten Row,” says the woman. She is imitating the sound of an upper-class lady, rolling her Rs. She sounds younger than she did when he last heard her speak.

  Sherlock doesn’t have time to listen. The evidence he has is sufficient, and he is beside himself with excitement.

  But then he realizes that he’s forgotten something.

  He still has to get off the grounds.

  Sherlock stands inside
the barred gates at the alcove at Grimwood Hall, looking out into the jungle, wondering where the beast with the yellow eyes is, and what it is. Gifted with the sort of memory that can photograph things it has seen, he casts his mind back to his first passage across the grounds and considers his most direct route out.

  A mist lies heavily over the dark lawns now. There’s no sound or sign of the devil-animal. There is nothing to do but get on with it.

  Sherlock scales the gate and drops noiselessly onto the overgrown grass. He crouches low and moves, slowly at first, across this first stretch toward the labyrinth, looking from side to side into the darkness, then entering the maze and going faster and faster. Soon he is sprinting, twisting and turning along the hedge-lined passages. He tells himself that he knows the route, moves by instinct, and when he emerges on the other side near a particularly large weeping willow, he thinks he has reached his destination … but there’s no sign of the granite wall. In fact, he can barely see anything: it is too dark and murky.

  But there is a sign of the beast.

  That horrible growl; the shriek of a gargantuan cat in the night. It cuts the silence and actually drops him to his knees.

  He must run. But to where? Where?

  He rises and picks a direction: into the mist directly ahead. The wall must be there.

  The instant he begins moving, the beast is after him again. It glides swiftly, but silently – a formless phantom. He can sense it gaining ground. In seconds it will be on him!

  The wall materializes. It rises up so suddenly in the mist that he nearly runs into it. In a flash he is scaling it, clutching the ivy and moss, miraculously holding on and climbing to the top. When he gets over the iron rods, he pauses to look back. He can’t see anything but mist. He peers into it. For an instant, he thinks he sees two glowing yellow eyes again, low to the ground, moving away, in the direction of the manor house.

  It doesn’t take him long to get down the hill and draw close to St. Neots. The bonfires have been put out – he passes mounds of burning embers, smoldering as if some terrible thing took place in the night. He crosses the old stone bridge this time, walks right into the town, and moves through the deserted square. The railway station isn’t hard to find. He is trying to contain his excitement. What he experienced at Grimwood Hall seems like a dream. Did he really see Victoria Rathbone, the girl all of England seeks, in that locked room? He finds a wooden bench outside the station entrance where he can try to sleep until the first train going south to London arrives. The air is frigid, but Sherlock snuggles up, happily hugging himself, and doesn’t feel the cold.

  The train will come soon after the morning light. Sherlock has carefully considered how he will get onto it. He has no choice but to travel by locomotive. Walking to London would take him all day … by then the villains will have murdered the girl. He is certain they will do it: there was malice in their ransom note, almost as if they were daring the wealthy lord to resist them so they could find an excuse to commit their evil deed and show the nation’s most vigorous opponent of crime the power that the dangerous classes possess. Sherlock remembers their nefarious conversation at Grimwood Hall, their excited talk of tomorrow being a special day. Terror is as much their game as kidnapping.

  His plan for getting onto a carriage is simple, but effective. At least, that’s what he thinks.

  With his mind racing, he takes a while to fall asleep and then wakes at the first sound of activity in St. Neots: shop owners moving about, opening shuttered windows, setting out their wares. He makes himself scarce. There are three old oak trees with thick trunks about a hundred yards away, where the tracks run into the station. He slips among them, thankful to be dressed in dark clothes.

  Just as he hoped, the station is soon crowded – even here in little St. Neot’s, there are a great many folks preparing to make their way into the city. This is their busiest time of day. Sherlock plans to enter the station in a crowd of passengers while the ticket inspector is busy, almost the same trick he tried at King’s Cross Station: the boy knows it’s a crude ruse and wishes he had a squad like the Irregulars to work with, so he could create what they call a fakement, a diversion, to turn the inspector’s head away at just the right moment. But he is alone and doesn’t have their skill. He pulls his collar up around his face and slips out from the trees. Instantly he knows he is in trouble. Unlike Londoners, the villagers have queued up in a neat line. Anyone trying to steal inside is going to be easy to spot. He needs a clump of passengers, bunched up, rushing, jostling, being impolite. Or … his own diversion.

  The inspector is watching every approaching person, as if he were counting them. Is he on the lookout for a boy in a tattered black frock coat, streaks of blood on the waistcoat?

  There is a lady in front of Sherlock and he can see a bulge in her pocket on the right side of her dress. He waits until the line is near the entrance. He racks his brains to remember all the subtleties of Malefactor’s art of “dipping.” But this will be more complicated than a simple pluck. He won’t really take her coin purse, but has to make it seem that she has been robbed, and then slip through the line and past the inspector as she raises a hue and cry, as everyone turns to her. He either tries this, or all is lost. He slowly extends his hand toward her pocket.

  Someone seizes him by the arm.

  He turns in horror. He will be jailed, his life destroyed. He won’t make it to London – the fiends at Grimwood Hall will do their sinister deed. No one here will believe a word a pickpocket says.

  It’s Penny Hunt … and a policeman.

  “This is the boy, Constable Bradstreet.”

  “My … my arm still hurts, Mrs. Hunt. I was giving it a stretch.”

  It’s all he can think of. But thankfully, they haven’t noticed his intent.

  “He wants getting home.”

  “Well, the sooner he’s at it, the better.”

  “Master Holmes, I went to see this gentleman last night and told him that you had run away from your London family. It is best that you be moved along. He agreed to see you off.”

  “None of your tricks either, boy. Penny Hunt is a good woman. I watch out for her when I can. If she says you are a good lad, then I will believe it, though I have my suspicions. The children about these parts have encountered you, they have, and don’t like the look of you. I shan’t examine the inside of your frock coat, I just want you gone from St. Neots forthwith. The inspector will let you pass. You can disembark at Hornsey Station, north of the city. We knows the ticket man there. Word is being sent and he will let you by. Be off with you. And if I ever see you in these parts again, I shall place you in the stir and put you before the magistrates.”

  Bradstreet turns on his heels and walks away.

  Penny stays with Sherlock while the line moves toward the entrance. She speaks softly and looks about.

  “I’ll tell you why I asked the constable to move you along: other police was here last night.”

  “Other police?”

  “From London. And do you know where they made their visit? To the paper mill, not long after I left. Must have almost passed you and me by the river. A friend rapped on our door after supper and told me. It was the Force themselves at the mill, Master Holmes: three constables and a detective named Lestrade.”

  Sherlock is stunned. The old inspector isn’t as dull as he looks. It took him a while, but he must have traced the paper, too.

  “My friend heard them talking as they left, mumbling about bad clues and returning to London.”

  “They didn’t go to Grimwood Hall … or Little Barford?”

  “I don’t know why you would ask that, Master Holmes, but no, they didn’t. The foreman spoke to them himself, didn’t allow any worker to even near them.”

  Sherlock smiles. Lestrade’s trail is cold. It died in the paper mill.

  “I don’t like your smiling. Did you lie to me about your father, too?”

  The boy wipes the look from his face.

  “I cam
e here for good reason, Mrs. Hunt, I promise you. I was looking for someone. And I think I found …”

  “Who?” The color has risen in her cheeks.

  Sherlock’s voice drops to a whisper.

  “I can’t say anything more.”

  “Promise me it isn’t you that the London police is after.”

  “No, Mrs. Hunt, it isn’t. I promise you on my mother’s grave. I only lied to you to do good.”

  “That is a queer idea, lad.”

  “I know.”

  “It is my understanding that the police didn’t ask after you. But I thought it best that the constable move you out. He doesn’t seem to have any interest in you – I counted on him just wanting a loiterer gone.”

  “I …”

  “But I surely don’t like you asking about Grimwood Hall, Master Holmes. I don’t know why you wanted to go to there, or if you went, or how you got out alive if you did. It is fortunate for you that you reminds me of my eldest … who left us … stood up to her father, she did…. You have her look, Master Holmes, her stubborn look. Your mother, God bless her, would want me to get you away from here.”

  “Thank you.”

  As he starts to step away, she pulls him back.

  “I know there is bad happenings about. And I know that you are mixed up in them. Let whatever your concern is be, child. Don’t ever come back here. I pray the curse of Grimwood Hall hasn’t touched you … like I fear it has touched my own.”

  The Hornsey Railway Station in North London is more than an hour’s walk from Scotland Yard. Sherlock must speak to the police as soon as possible. The ransom note said the kidnappers would kill Victoria Rathbone before the sun sets today. Every minute that passes puts her in mortal danger. He will barely make it on time to save her, and that’s if there are no delays.

  He sits upright this time on his bench in the third-class carriage. There are so many things running through his mind. Not only does he need to get to the police on time, but he must find a way to immediately draw them out to Grimwood Hall without giving everything away. He simply can’t tell them what he knows because Lestrade would leave him out of it, just as he did twice before. And he must bring witnesses other than the police who will acknowledge that he, Sherlock Holmes, solved this crime. That way, Mr. Doyle will know as well. Could Sherlock do what he did when he found the Brixton gang last summer? Insist that Scotland Yard bring the reporter from The Times? What if Hobbs is not available? And St. Neots is so far away.