Vanishing Girl (29 page)

“Never give them an inch!”

They give a whoop of delight.

Amidst the cover of laughter, Sherlock thinks he can step closer. He inches along the wall, getting almost to the doorway … and knocks something over. It’s a vase. It whacks against the floor, a single, loud bang, but it is brass and doesn’t smash or roll.

“Listen!” says one of the men.

Silence.

Sherlock holds his breath.

“Must be one of those beasts!” cries the young woman, and they all laugh again.

Sherlock picks up the vase and gingerly sets it back on its stand. He should tiptoe out of here, try to get off the grounds, and send word to Lestrade in London. But he can’t resist seeing the thieves, confirming who they are: he especially wants to look at the woman. He is right at the door now. Summoning his courage, he peeks his head slightly out to see around the frame, exposing the side of his face.

It is a sitting room of sorts, though it has no chairs. He sees a man … wrapping a cloth around a painting.

Young. Perhaps mid twenties. Dark hair and eyes. Slender but muscular. A scar across his left cheek
.

He sees the other man, putting handfuls of silver cutlery into a big black bag.

About the same age. Red hair, light eyes. Approximately ten stone, slightly under average height, walks with a limp, left leg
.

He can’t see the woman. But then she walks across his sightline, coming directly toward him. Sherlock sees her face. He gasps. Then he turns and creeps away, tight to the wall, back down the hallway toward the vestibule. When he gets halfway, he flattens himself against the paneling, twenty feet from the thieves, trying not to make any noise as his chest heaves as though it will burst.

It was Victoria Rathbone!

S
he has the same strawberry blonde hair kept the identical way, the same pretty face. She looks the right age. She is even wearing the dress she had on yesterday when Sherlock saw her cautiously leaving her father’s Belgravia mansion.
There is no doubt: Victoria Rathbone is working with the thieves! She helped them rob her father! She was in on it all along. She allowed herself to be abducted … twice
.

Then another thought comes into his mind and he whispers it out loud.

“If Victoria is down here …
who
is in that room two floors up?”

The light was still on
.

He moves farther along the wall, tight against it, heading for the entrance of the corridor that leads to the staircase. He shouldn’t go up there.
Don’t be rash
. He has what he needs.
Leave this instant. Return to town and send for the police and the Times reporter
. Sherlock has the criminals, evidence that Captain Waller is involved, his whereabouts known … he has even found the wayward Victoria. It will be a sensation. He will gain Irene’s admiration, secure
his future, and shame that pig, Lestrade, all in one swoop.

But there is unfinished business.
Who
is upstairs?

When he comes to the corridor opening, he stops. He imagines himself turning here, slipping down the passageway, then into the big room with the beautiful carved staircase with the images of Narcissus on the railings, gliding up the steps, reaching the first landing, and ascending to the next floor. He could head through that maze, find the lighted room, enter it, and discover …

It is so tempting.

Don’t be greedy. Do this right
.

“It was a stroke of luck, you know,
Victoria
, our finding you,” he hears one of the men say in the other room.

“For all of us, it was.”

“Can you get us that carton in the hall?”

One of the men advances toward the grand hall. The boy retreats silently and in seconds is in the vestibule and then outside, into the bracing air under the gentle snowfall, looking through the vertical iron spikes of the fence, trying not to rush, remembering how the maze twists and turns. Even though he went right through the tall hedges on his way in, he feels as though he knows the maze well enough now to move along its pathways. He can get off the grounds in a flash – he just has to think about the puzzle for a moment.

But something makes him glance back. The big, arched door:
he has left it open just a crack
. The cold air must be rushing in, air that anyone in the hall would feel – he hears footsteps advancing toward it from the inside. He has no
choice – he can’t stand here remembering how to negotiate the maze.

He scrambles over the fence, lands with a thump on the other side, and races onto the grounds. In a few seconds, he is across the tall grass and into the maze. But the loud smack of his landing must have alerted the animals because almost instantly they are at his heels. He puts his head back and runs. Violins play in his head again. He turns left, right, left, through a hedge, down a passageway, down another, and finally, sees the dim glow of the lights of St. Neots in the sky in the distance above the wall. He makes for it with everything he has, his lungs burning. He executes a leap and reaches for the fence and its spears on top. He misses … and falls to the ground.

Sherlock Holmes twists around to face his fate. This thing, this beast – as black as the night it seems, invisible except for its glowing yellow eyes, will maul him and eat him as surely as one of its ancestors consumed that terrible Grimwood lord who murdered his wife.

But the night is silent and no beast haunts it.

Sherlock gets up and rushes for the wall, climbs it in an instant, and gets over the fence. When he is safe, he looks back up at the house to see that dim light upstairs.
There it is
. A shadow moves in the room. He turns and scurries back down the hill toward the town in the darkness, stumbling and falling, his heart pumping, terror and excitement filling his every pore.

He intends to avoid the town and head for his spot by the riverbanks near the paper mill. He can’t let the locals or
authorities see him sneaking around in the night. Sherlock must hide until the sun rises.

But when he is far out on the marshy fields that separate the town from Grimwood’s hill, he hears voices coming across the open space. He stops and listens for a moment, but can’t make anything out, just people conversing in low tones, moving, it seems, directly toward the mansion. Either they are poor, or are trying to be secretive because they aren’t carrying lanterns.

Sherlock steps quietly out of their path and lies down on the cold, snowy ground, curling up to be both undetectable and warm. The black sky has grown cloudier and he lies very still. Snowflakes land on his face, tickling his nose.

“Shall we take paintings or jewelry, boss?”

Sherlock freezes.

It’s Grimsby
.

Holmes lifts his head slightly and looks up. He sees three silhouettes: Grimsby’s short figure in the middle between a slightly taller and thicker boy behind and a very tall, thin shadow wearing a top hat in front. Sherlock can see the outline of the tails of his coat hanging from his back. He has a thick walking stick in his hand. Malefactor.

There is no sign of Irene.

“What we take is not your concern, Grimsby. I know the value of everything they stole, believe me. We shall have our cut.”

“Will she follow us?”

“Shut your gob! You are not fit to speak of her.”

“Yes, boss.”

“I hate to admit it, but that Jew-boy will solve this. He came here from Portsmouth far too quickly not to know something. He may have the police here by tomorrow. We must get our goods now. And then make ourselves scarce! Pick up your pace, gentlemen.”

Sherlock Holmes has always been suspicious that Malefactor’s connections in the London underworld run deep. He came to believe, for example, that the young crime lord had some association with the Brixton gang. But is his power, his influence, even greater than he suspected? Is this brilliant boy one of the larger spiders in the web of villainy that pollutes London? Has he made himself invaluable to growing numbers who do dirty business in its alleys and inside its homes? Is his knowledge of the streets, his command of quick, little fiends who can go anywhere and do anything something that even the most ambitious criminals employ?

“You knew exactly when Miss Rathbone would be in that carriage in Rotten Row, didn’t you, boss? You knew where they would have to stand to snatch her, didn’t you, boss? You knew how Lord Rathbone would respond. That was brilliant, boss. You knew that they hadn’t seen their daughter for years, didn’t you? You even told that captain that he should get a girl who …”

“Close your hole, Grimsby. The captain came to me because I can get things done. If you don’t believe in your own brilliance, then it is useless. Pride doesn’t go before a fall; it keeps you
from
falling. And word will spread if you have confidence. That’s why he was put in touch with me.
But it is not for
you
to dwell on the details of any job. Do what you are told and do it well, and some day you may find yourself in my shoes … when I have moved on.”

“What if that half-breed gets in our way?”

“Then I shall deal with him.”

“Yes, boss,” says Grimsby.

They move away and their voices begin to fade into the night, going in the direction of the mansion. Sherlock staggers to his feet, his thoughts reeling. There are so many culprits, so many possibilities still attached to this crime.

He finds his spot by the river and tries to sleep, but tosses and turns all night. Snow falls on him in a cold blanket, and he is freezing. He wants to summon the local authorities up to the manor house
right now
and arrest not only the three thieves, including Lord Rathbone’s daughter, but Malefactor and his henchman, too. What an addition that would be to everything he has already discovered! He could wipe a young criminal mastermind from the face of London’s underworld. It would free Irene from that rat’s clutches, too.

But he knows that the local authorities wouldn’t listen to a word of his story – they would arrest him as a vagrant on the spot.

He has to contact the London police and he can’t do that until morning. Even if there was a night train that he could take to the city this instant, Malefactor would have
made himself scarce by the time they returned.

Keep your mind on what is possible. It is enormous. Get word to both Lestrade and Hobbs of The Times the minute the telegram office opens, have all the culprits in the house arrested – Miss Rathbone has to be caught red-handed – the family’s treasures recovered, the captain intercepted. Make sure you are on the scene at Grimwood Hall when it happens. Get the credit you deserve. Secure your future
.

But his mind keeps wandering back to the light in that upstairs room and the shadow moving across it.
Is
Polly Hunt up there? And if it isn’t her, who in the world are they imprisoning? And what are they doing to her? The thought terrifies him. Is it a kidnapping ring? Or is this person not being held at all: is it a fourth member of their gang? What complex game are these criminals playing? Perhaps they knew he was in the house … and the whole manor will be abandoned when he returns.

Whatever the answers, they will come in the morning. But his first job, his duty, will be to speak to Penny Hunt. He dreads what he must tell her and how she will respond.