by Anthony Read
Sparrow had barely closed the lid when he heard someone entering the room. The gaps between the boards of the packing case were just wide enough to let air in, but too small to let him see out. It sounded as though there was only one person, moving quietly about. Sparrow thought he heard the catch on the trunk being snapped undone, followed by a slight creak that could have been the lid opening. And then a low, sinister chuckle, so evil it made his skin prickle. A moment later, he heard the unmistakable sound of a cork being pulled out of a bottle, and a sickly sweet smell reached his nostrils, making him feel quite woozy. He fought off the feeling. If he should go to sleep, he might miss something – or he might snore and give himself away, which would be even worse.
The unseen man laughed again. “Enjoy your sleep, my friend,” Sparrow heard him murmur. “It will be your last.”
Sparrow heard the trunk being closed, and then, to his horror, he heard the man’s footsteps approaching his packing case. Sparrow waited in terror for the lid to be opened. His heart was thumping so loudly he was sure it would give him away. But instead of opening the packing case, the man sat down on it, using it as a seat.
After that, there was silence for what seemed to Sparrow like a very long time. Eventually, however, he heard the scraping of the bolts on the iron door, and then the voices of the two men. They stopped abruptly.
“Professor!” one of the men said nervously. “You’re early.”
The response came as a venomous hiss. “Where have you been?”
“Er, we went to get refreshments,” the man stammered.
“That’s right,” the second man added. “We needed refreshments, your honour.”
“You left him alone!”
“Sure, and he’s not goin’ nowheres,” the first man replied.
The man they had called Professor spoke with cold anger. “You fools!” he spat. “Do you not realize with whom you are dealing?”
“Now then, Professor,” the second man said, soothingly. “There’s no harm done, to be sure. He’s still here, is he not? And everything’s ready.”
“Everything?” the Professor asked.
“Everything. All prepared and ready to go for our meeting with the widow. Come see for yourself.”
The packing case creaked as the Professor stood up. The three men moved away to the far corner of the room, and Sparrow found it hard to hear what they were saying, as they talked to each other in low voices. He could only catch the occasional word or phrase, as the Professor gave what were obviously instructions to the two men. There was something about a train, and then a boat. Sparrow could not make out exactly what, but he did hear him say, quite clearly, “over the water”.
Straining to listen, Sparrow tried to twist himself round to press one ear against the side of the case. As he did so, the muscles of his left leg, which was screwed up beneath him, suddenly cramped. The pain was excruciating. He wanted to scream, to straighten up and stretch the leg, but somehow he managed to control himself, clenching his teeth really hard and holding his breath until the cramp gradually eased. The men were still talking. Sparrow did not know how much he had missed, but he heard one of them say something about a grand opening going with a bang, which made the other men chortle. Then he heard the Professor’s voice, quiet but full of menace, saying “utter disgrace … the end of Mr Sherlock Holmes”. This was followed by a particularly nasty laugh.
After a short pause, the Professor announced, “It’s time to go. Anything you need, take it now. There’ll be no coming back to this place after tomorrow.”
Sparrow heard the noise of things being dragged across the floor. The packing case shook, as something was dumped on top of it. There was a dull rumble, as a heavy weight was wheeled away. And then the iron door clanged shut and all was quiet.
In the silence, Sparrow could hear a loud ticking, like a clock, just above his head. He rubbed the leg that had had cramp, which was still sore. He needed to stand up and stretch it, before the cramp came back again. But even more than that, he needed to get out and run to find Wiggins and the others, to tell them what he’d heard.
Sparrow pushed on the lid. It wouldn’t open. He tried again. It was impossible. Whatever had been put on top of the packing case was too heavy. The ticking above his head seemed to get louder and louder. He was trapped – and nobody knew where he was.
A Bomb in a Box
The Great Gandini towered over Sparrow, his face contorted in fury. “I’ll teach you to keep your nose out of my business,” he snarled. He wrapped a chain round the helpless boy, pinioning his arms tightly to his side, and fastened it with a huge padlock. Sparrow suddenly noticed that the magician had grown taller, and was wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a heavy coat with a curly fur collar. He was now, Sparrow realized, the big man they had been trailing earlier. Another man stood behind him, laughing coldly. Sparrow could not see his face, but he knew that it was the evil Professor.
“Drop him down the well,” the Professor hissed. “They’ll never find him there.”
Then Sparrow saw a black hole in front of him, so deep it seemed to have no bottom. The two men from the storeroom appeared from the shadows, seized Sparrow and started to drag him towards the hole…
And then Sparrow woke up, trembling from his bad dream. He was almost relieved to find he was still inside the packing case. It was pitch black and totally silent, and he was very frightened. But he had been so tired after all the events of the day that he had fallen asleep. Sparrow had no idea how long he had slept, but the empty feeling in his stomach suggested it had been some time. He would still have been sleeping, but something had disturbed him. He became aware that someone was moving around the room.
Suddenly alert, Sparrow listened hard. Was it the Professor back again? Or the big man? What should he do? If he called out, he might be in even greater danger, but at least he would be rescued from the packing case. It was a difficult decision. He held his breath in fear. Then someone called out “Ow!” and someone else made a shushing noise.
“Sorry,” the first voice said. “I hurt my toe.”
Sparrow could hardly believe his ears. It was Beaver!
“Oi!” he shouted, as loudly as he could.
There was a scream, and a bump as something was knocked over.
“There’s somebody here!” That was Queenie’s voice.
“Can’t see nobody,” came Gertie’s voice. “Must be invisible.”
“It’s a ghost!” That was Rosie.
“No, it ain’t!” Sparrow shouted. “It’s me!”
“Sparrow?” Wiggins called.
“Yeah! Get me out of here!”
“Where are you?”
“Over here! In the big box!”
A flicker of light penetrated a crack in the packing case, as Wiggins shone his lantern over it.
“What’s he doin’ in there?” Shiner asked.
Beaver lifted off the smaller packing case, which was trapping Sparrow in his hiding place. Wiggins opened the lid, and a very grateful Sparrow popped up like a jack-in-the-box, a grin on his face that seemed to stretch from one ear to the other.
“Am I pleased to see you lot!” he exclaimed happily.
In the light of the lantern, the others grinned back at him – all except Beaver, who was standing holding the smaller packing case and looking puzzled.
“What’s that ticking noise?” he asked.
Sparrow suddenly realized what he had been sleeping with. “It’s a bomb!” he yelled. “There’s a bomb in there!”
Beaver froze. So did all the others.
“Can’t you hear it?” asked Sparrow.
Wiggins nodded, signalled to the others to stand back, and gingerly opened the lid. Inside was an assortment of bottles and boxes, books and bags, and a large brass alarm clock with two bells on top, ticking merrily. As Wiggins picked it up, the alarm went off with a deafening clangour. Rosie and Gertie screamed. Shiner, Queenie and Beaver dived for cover. Sparrow dropped back into his p
acking case.
Wiggins laughed. “There’s your bomb!” he said, switching off the alarm.
Sparrow emerged from the packing case again, looking sheepish. “Well, how was I to know? It was tickin’.”
“Sure and isn’t that what clocks do?” Gertie teased.
“Never you mind, Sparrow,” Queenie comforted him, helping him out of the case and brushing wood shavings from his hair and clothes. “You was very brave, comin’ here on your own.”
“Very stupid, more like,” said Wiggins sternly.
“I wanted to know if the door worked like I thought,” Sparrow replied.
“And it did,” Wiggins continued. “What d’you think would have happened if we hadn’t found you?”
“Dunno.” Sparrow shrugged, trying not to show how frightened he had been. “You took your time gettin’ here, didn’t you?”
“We didn’t know where you was,” Beaver said defensively.
“If it hadn’t been for Shiner, we’d never have known,” Queenie added. “You should say thank you to him.”
Sparrow grunted at Shiner, and then said grudgingly, “Ta. Ta very much.”
“S’all right,” Shiner said, gloating slightly.
“We never even knew you wasn’t there,” said Beaver, “when we got back to HQ.”
“Shiner was asleep,” Rosie explained. “So he didn’t tell us you’d gone out. We thought you was still at the theatre.”
“We all went to bed,” Gertie said, stifling a yawn at the thought of sleep.
“How d’you find out, then?”
“Queenie stayed up, waitin’ for you to come home,” Beaver told him. “Like she always does.”
Queenie gave a little cough, to cover her embarrassment. “I weren’t sleepy,” she said.
“And when you hadn’t come back by one o’clock, she started worryin’.”
“Like she always does,” Shiner chipped in, with a wicked grin.
“That’s quite enough of that, my lad,” Queenie scolded him. She went on to say how she had woken up Shiner, to ask him if he had seen Sparrow.
“And I told her how you’d got the sack,” Shiner said gleefully. “And all that stuff you was tellin’ me about the trick locks and fake hinges and the door openin’ back to front and everythin’.”
“Yeah, what you didn’t believe,” Sparrow retorted.
“It didn’t make much sense to me at first,” said Wiggins. “Particularly the way Shiner told it. But I managed to work it out. And here we are.”
“Lucky for you,” Queenie said. “What’s been goin’ on? Who put you in there?”
“Nobody,” Sparrow said. “I was hidin’. There was these two geezers—”
“Two geezers?” Shiner interrupted. “What if they come back? Let’s get out of here!”
“No, they won’t,” Sparrow said. “When they left, they said they wasn’t never coming back no more.”
“Well in that case,” said Wiggins, “let’s have a bit more light on the scene.” He struck a match and lit the two oil lamps. “There, that’s better. Now we can see what we’re doing.”
They all looked around. Sparrow let out a yelp.
“Oh, it’s gone!”
“What’s gone?” Wiggins asked.
“The trunk. A big cabin trunk, it was. Stood right there. And there was somebody shut inside it.”
“Who?”
“Dunno.” I could hear him breathin’, but I didn’t see him—”
He stopped as the truth suddenly dawned.
“I reckon it was Mr Holmes!”
There was a loud gasp from all the Boys.
“Nah,” Shiner piped up. “Not Mr Holmes. It couldn’t have been.”
“Oh, yes, it could,” Beaver said, holding up something he had found in the smaller packing case. At first sight, it looked like some sort of small, furry animal, but when Beaver put it up to his chin, the others could see what it was.
“It’s a false beard!” Gertie exclaimed. “It don’t suit you at all.”
“The false beard Mr Holmes was wearing!” said Wiggins.
“And look,” Beaver went on. He lifted a tray of matchboxes and an old, floppy hat out of the packing case. “The rest of his disguise. He was here.”
“And now they’ve took him away,” Sparrow cried.
“Where to?”
“Dunno. They never said.” Sparrow was on the verge of tears.
“Whoa! Steady on, now!” Wiggins squeezed Sparrow’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”
“Wiggins is right,” Beaver reassured him. “Weren’t nothin’ you could do about it.”
Wiggins tipped his hat back on his head and looked thoughtful. “Now then,” he told Sparrow. “I want you to take it slowly and try to tell me everything you saw and heard.”
“And smelt,” Rosie chipped in.
“Smelt?” Wiggins asked, puzzled.
“Yeah. It’s here again – that same smell as before.”
Wiggins and the others all sniffed the air, curiously.
“You’re right, Rosie,” he said. “It is.”
Sparrow nodded vigorously. “Yeah!” he exclaimed. “There was a smell. Nearly knocked me out, it did. I heard this other geezer pull a cork out of a bottle…”
“Other geezer?” Wiggins asked.
“Oh, yeah. I didn’t tell you yet, did I? There was this other bloke, like the boss. They called him ‘Perfesser’.”
Wiggins’s eyes narrowed. “Professor? Ha!” He nodded seriously, in his best Sherlock Holmes manner. “Moriarty. The game’s afoot!”
The others looked baffled.
“What game?” Gertie asked.
“Didn’t you hear? Football,” Shiner replied.
“No, no,” Wiggins said impatiently. “It’s what Mr Holmes says when things start to hot up.”
“What if they come back?” Queenie asked, nervously.
“They won’t,” said Wiggins.
“You don’t know where they’ve gone. It might not be far.”
“No,” Sparrow said, remembering. “This Perfesser geezer, he told the others to take everythin’ they needed, ’cos they wouldn’t be comin’ back here. He said they could leave the rest, ’cos it wouldn’t matter after tomorrow.”
Wiggins nodded again. “That means whatever they’re gonna do, they’re gonna do tomorrow. So we ain’t got much time to find out what it is and put a stop to it.”
“And rescue Mr Holmes,” Queenie reminded him.
“Yes, yes, of course. Now then, young Sparrow, just you sit down here and tell us everything you can remember.”
So Sparrow did, trying to recall every word the Professor had said. It wasn’t easy, because he hadn’t heard very clearly, and most of what he had heard hadn’t made much sense. But he did his best, and Wiggins listened hard, his forehead furrowed and his eyes half closed in concentration.
When Sparrow had finished, Wiggins still sat deep in thought, murmuring the key words to himself. Then he stood up and began pacing the room, stopping every now and then to poke about for anything that might give him a clue. Among the tools scattered on the workbench he found a piece of cotton wool, about the size of his hand. He picked it up, sniffed at it, then called Rosie over.
“That it?” he asked her.
She raised the cotton wool to her nose, but quickly lowered it again, blinking rapidly as she nodded. “Cor,” she said, coughing. “Fair makes your eyes water, don’t it? What is it?”
“I reckon that’s chloroform,” Wiggins informed her. “What they use in the hospital to put you to sleep.”
“They must have used that on Mr Holmes!” Sparrow cried.
“Yeah, I ’spect that’s how they captured him,” Gertie agreed, her eyes wide.
“They’d never have took him prisoner no other way,” Beaver added. “Not Mr Holmes.”
Wiggins continued to pace to and fro, deeply puzzled. “You’re right,” he muttered. “But why put him to sleep? If they wanted to do him in,
why didn’t they just bash him over the head?
“If we knew where they’d took him, we might be able to tell what they’re gonna do,” Queenie suggested helpfully.
“Bristol!” Shiner shouted. “Don’t you remember? That big bloke got off the Bristol Express.”
“Well done, Shiner,” Queenie congratulated him. “But, what’s at Bristol?”
“Ships,” said Gertie. “That’s where me dad and me landed when we come over from Ireland! They got docks right in the middle of the city.”
“Yeah!” Sparrow called out excitedly. “I remember now, I heard the Perfesser say somethin’ about ‘over the water’ and ‘on the boat’.”
“Now we’re gettin’ somewhere,” Beaver said.
Wiggins stopped pacing and turned back to Sparrow. “But we still don’t know what they’re plotting. Think hard, now. Is there anything else they said?”
Sparrow screwed up his face with the effort of remembering. “There was somethin’ about meetin’ a widow,” he said. “And a train…”
“Yes, yes,” Wiggins encouraged him. “Go on.”
“P’raps there’s somethin’ in that box what might give us a clue,” Beaver joined in. “Or at least help Sparrow to remember.” He started unpacking the contents of the smaller packing case and laying everything out on the floor.
Sparrow looked at each item and shook his head. When everything was laid out, he looked puzzled. “There’s somethin’ missin’,” he said.
“What?” Wiggins asked him.
“Dunno. When I looked in that box, there weren’t all this stuff. They must have put this lot in when they was clearin’ up. But there was somethin’ else…” Suddenly his face cleared. “I know. There was a bundle of sort of cardboard tubes, all tied together.”
“How big? How big were the tubes?” Wiggins asked.
“Oh, ’bout an inch across, and ’bout this long.” He held his hands about nine inches apart. “I thought they might have had cigars in ’em, but they was a bit too big. Then I thought p’raps they was fireworks, but they was wrapped very plain. And there was some cord with ’em, like wick for an oil lamp.”
