Vanishing Girl tbsh-3

by Shane Peacock

  “Oh, my goodness!” says the boy. “Apologies, I am sure.”

  He bows, slides behind both groups … and immediately wonders if he’s stepped in something else. So concerned is he that this time he bends down to examine a shoe as the others all turn to the inspector. Staying low, the boy slips through the opening, nine people and a wheelchair blocking the railway employee’s view. It happens in a second.

  Once he is safe on the other side, Sherlock can’t resist a quick glance back. A round-faced child in a sailor suit, no more than five, the littlest member of the family and about the boy’s height when he bent low, is glaring right at him. Holmes turns his head quickly and marches away.

  He moves on the double, way down the train toward the third-class carriages, the only kind he can board. Other-wise, he would stick out like a pauper on Rotten Row.

  The first-class coaches have compartments, each with its own door. The carriage he will ride has rows of wooden benches divided by a narrow aisle, and only two doors all told, one near each end. Both are open, awaiting boarding. He steps up into the train. It is almost full. And it’s loud. He can smell body odor, horse manure, and the animal fats used to grease this long iron horse. He walks to the far end, finds an empty bench, dirty like all the others, and slides in. He moves over to the window and lowers his head, keeping a hand in his pocket as if he were holding his ticket.

  It is such a relief to be safely onboard. It is incredible, really: he will succeed in getting from London to St. Neots, fifty miles, without paying. But as he sits breathing heavily, the magnitude of the chance he is taking begins to dawn on him. What do they do to people who get caught without a fare? Turn them over to the Peelers? He was put in a jail once, several months ago, after he became a suspect in the Whitechapel case. He can’t let that happen now. His plans, his chance to save Victoria Rathbone, his hopes for the future, would all disappear. And then Sigerson Bell would likely throw him into the streets. He knows he should have thought of that before he acted so rashly; maybe he should have thought of many things. The old man will be waiting for him back at the shop as the sun descends, deeply concerned. But the chance to get to St. Neots quickly is too alluring for Sherlock Holmes. He will deal with things as they come. Maybe he can return before morning.

  The carriage sighs as a line of people enter: the family of six. The last is the round-faced child. He settles onto a bench next to his mother, on the aisle. As he does, he looks down the carriage … and spots Sherlock Holmes.

  As the train eases out and heads north through the city and into the suburbs, the child doesn’t take his eyes off the older boy, who scrunches down as low as he can in his seat and turns his head toward the window. But he can feel the little one’s glare. All the way to Highbury, it follows him like the beam from a bull’s-eye lantern. Sherlock turns his head farther, so he is almost looking backwards, and watches the many neighborhoods on the north side of London fade one after the other into the distance. They are packed with soot-stained brick warehouses, gray homes with black smoke spreading into the cool, foggy air, vanishing as quickly as they appear.

  The train makes a stop. Sherlock holds his breath. He rubs his face and peeks through his fingers down the carriage toward his tiny enemy. The child is talking to his mother, tugging on her sleeve, pointing up the aisle … right at him. But she is engrossed in a conversation with her eldest daughter and angrily shushes him.

  The child seems to give up. They chug out again. The dense population begins to ease. Soon Sherlock spots the construction site of the mighty new entertainment building in Alexandra Park, the Crystal Palace’s new twin on the big hill at Muswell. That means they are truly out of the city. As an image of the Sydenham Palace flits through his thoughts, so does his poor father’s face. Sadness engulfs him. Focus on the task at hand.

  The locomotive whistles and groans; grime billows from it. They shoot through Cockfosters and in an instant, it seems, are in the countryside passing villages at breathtaking speed. This is just the second time Sherlock has been on a locomotive. They are likely exceeding forty-five miles an hour! He gapes out the window.

  But his mind never leaves the other danger, standing now on his seat at the far end of the carriage, dressed in that sailor suit, with a finger up to the knuckle in his nose. The little boy leans forward, to dig even deeper. When he does, Sherlock sees something that makes his blood run cold.

  Directly behind the child, a railway guard sits calmly reading a paper. He must have boarded at the last stop. Sherlock had been too busy looking away. All he can do now is pray that the boy never turns around, that the family is going past St. Neots and so is the railway employee, who perhaps lives farther north.

  But then the little devil drops his sweet – a putrid-purple cane of hard sugar he’d worried a few times before turning to mine the contents of his nose. It drops to the floor. He looks at it, aghast, falls to his knees on the chugging wooden surface and seizes it in a pudgy fist. When he gets to his feet, he turns around, facing the guard.

  No!

  It is as if the child has expression in the back of his head … and that expression says “YES!” In an instant, he is tugging at the blue sleeve of the crisp uniform and pointing up the aisle again toward Sherlock Holmes.

  Lip-reading is a skill that any detective must learn.

  “He has no ticket, sir.”

  Chug-chug. Chug-chug. Chug-chug.

  “Who?”

  “Him, sir. That one with the black hair who is peeking at us. The one in the dirty suitcoat.”

  “Him?” The railway guard points.

  “Yes, him.”

  Up gets the guard.

  The train is still steaming forward at high speed.

  The man pats the child on the head, as if to say “I’m sure you are incorrect, young passenger, but I will ask on your behalf, as a Great Northern Railway employee should.” He fixes his eyes on Sherlock and steadies himself. Then he staggers down the aisle toward him.

  No!

  They are in a sealed rocket. There is no way out. But getting caught is unthinkable. The door at Sherlock’s end of the carriage is several steps up the aisle from where he sits. Glancing around, he notices the opening to a round ventilation can in the ceiling, just slightly narrower than his shoulders. They line the roof every five feet or so.

  Sherlock stands up.

  The sign for Potter’s Bar village flashes by.

  There is no good reason to be on his feet. There is no water closet on this third-class carriage, no place to go for food. It gives away his crime. But he has to do something. What, he isn’t sure. He edges along the bench toward the aisle.

  The locomotive gives a heave and decelerates rapidly. The guard almost falls on his face. Sherlock slips into the aisle and races for the door. Can someone actually survive a leap from a moving train?

  “You! Young lad!” shouts the guard, so loudly that everyone hears him above the engine chugs and clacking iron wheels.

  Arriving at the door, Sherlock seizes the belt on the window and pulls it. The window falls open. He feels the cold air on his face.

  “Don’t do it, lad!” shouts the guard. He stops no more than six feet away.

  The train rocks violently as its brakes squeal.

  Sherlock looks outside. The ground is still a blur. He doubts he can struggle through the opening without the guard seizing him.

  They must be about to enter Potters Bar. That’s why they are slowing. It is still countryside out there. As Holmes hesitates, the guard takes a step toward him. The boy looks out again. He can’t be caught.

  He puts his hand through the open window, draws the bolt on the outside, and snaps the door open. Now the freezing air hits him like a gale.

  The guard lunges.

  Sherlock jumps.

  Ten minutes later he is still lying where he landed, but alive. He wouldn’t be, if the train had not slowed before he leapt. Still, he’s feeling sore all over as he lies in the tall grass, reluctant t
o move in case someone spots him. But he must get up. He rises and staggers about for a moment and then gets control of his legs. He knocks the dirt off his frock coat and carefully fixes his hair. There don’t appear to be any broken bones. He can see Potters Bar just up ahead. No one is approaching. When he thinks of it, he figures that such a passenger as he isn’t worth an investigation. The train will just move on from the village. He will simply be in the guard’s report. He starts to walk. It is still many, many miles to St. Neots.

  Sherlock avoids Potters Bar, makes a wide detour through a field, and then returns to the rail line on the village’s north side. Stick to the tracks, he tells himself, that’s how to find your way. He wonders if there is any chance there’s another train on the Great Northern line this evening. Not likely. He shivers and wraps his coat tighter. He can see his breath in the dimming light.

  He passes many farms and a village but it takes about an hour before he sees the lights of a substantial place in the oncoming dusk.

  “Finally,” he sighs as he slows his pace and steps up onto the slippery black tracks. He holds his arms out from his sides to walk the rails like Blondin balances high above the crowds. But then he hears something in the distance behind him, growing louder. It is blowing and puffing, sounding its horn.

  Another train. And it’s coming right at him.

  He jumps off the rails and starts to run. This has to be the last locomotive going north tonight. In seconds it is upon him, then flying past just yards away, screaming, fouling the air, the wind of its wake almost knocking him down.

  He is pumping his arms now, running with everything he has. He must make it to the town before the train leaves – he cannot waste more precious time – the last carriage grows smaller out in front of him, and for an instant he feels like stopping.

  Then the train begins slowing to enter the station.

  Sherlock picks up his pace again, his long legs advancing as fast as he can make them go. He runs past the rear of the first buildings – a green grocer shop, a tobacconist’s – his eyes never leaving the train coming to a halt in the station up ahead. He can see a few passengers disembarking, others heading for their carriages, a porter hastily pushing a barrow heaped with luggage. On he goes, his breathing growing heavier. The porter deposits his load; the passengers sit; two guards close the doors. The train will pull out immediately. He notices the guards signaling the conductor, turning their backs, returning to the stationmaster’s office. Sherlock is straining with all he has, his arms whipping the crisp, coal-contaminated air.

  He draws within one hundred yards … fifty. Iron fences line both sides of the tracks and the rails descend below the platforms. As he enters the station, the platforms are above his head. No one will look for someone running up the tracks to illegally board the train. Not at this last moment.

  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.