Vanishing Girl (4 page)

“Irene, let’s just … maybe …” he hesitates.

“Whoever solves this will have my father’s eternal gratitude. If someone were to lay the solution at his feet, he would provide that person with anything that is within his power to give.”

Sherlock feels a surge of excitement.
Anything?
He thinks of school – which he must continue to pay for with the meager income that Bell has started paying him – of university after that, of A.C. Doyle’s influence at such institutions and at Scotland Yard.

“I …”

“Yes?”

If Sherlock agrees, it would mean that he would have to include Irene, put her in danger, and share the credit. She thinks she has him right where she wants him. But does she? Surely her father wouldn’t want her involved. In fact, he might very well thank the boy for keeping her out of it.

“Such a case … could be very dangerous.”

This time, when she turns, she keeps moving. She steams east toward central London.

Irene wouldn’t work with Malefactor, would she?

Still rubbing his head, trying to resist watching her walk away, Sherlock turns back toward Scotland Yard. He tells himself that her attractiveness has nothing to do with her golden hair, the sweet sound of her voice, or those beguiling smiles that disarm him…. It’s simply that she may have a tantalizing connection to the kidnap victim, which would indeed be helpful to anyone investigating this case.
What does she really know?
He turns back to watch her. She is far away now, nearing the ornate stone arch that connects The Mall to Trafalgar Square.
I must get her to talk to me
. He wants to run after her. But then several short figures and a tall one appear in the shadows near her. Irene pauses, looks back at Sherlock, and vanishes into the darkness under the arch.

He moves toward the Yard again, thinking about what he’s seen and heard this morning. He has a clue, a good one that he doubts the police have noticed. And if he doesn’t hesitate, looks into the case while he has this advantage, there is an opportunity before him that can change his life. Can he let this chance go?

At that instant, there is a commotion a few hundred feet in front of him.

Inspector Lestrade and his son are attempting to walk out from police headquarters onto wide White Hall Street, where a black four-wheeler awaits them, but the veteran plainclothesman is being hectored by a dozen newspapermen, among them Mr. Hobbs. They surround him like a swarm of bees buzzing with questions. He isn’t answering and looks angry.

This case has been a monstrous public failure for the senior inspector. Sherlock smiles and scoots over. He wants to hear this. It will do his heart good.

“How is it possible, Inspector, to have
no
clues for three months?”

“Do you think she is already dead?”

“Has anything like this ever happened before?”

“Is your job in jeopardy?”

Even that question cannot draw a comment from Lestrade, but the next one does. And not simply because of its content, though that is bad enough. It comes from Sherlock Holmes. With his lust for vengeance growing as he watches the inspector get what he deserves, the boy shouts at him from behind the mob.

“Are you not ashamed?”

There is silence. All the reporters turn to look at the audacious working-class boy who has just insulted the senior inspector at Scotland Yard.

“What was that you said, you young blackguard?” shouts Lestrade. “Step forward!”

The reporters part and Sherlock walks through them like Moses, unafraid, his big nose lifted high and proud.
This
is for his mother.

“I said … are you not ashamed?”

Lestrade reaches out with one hand for the boy, the other balled in a fist, but his son pulls him back.

“I ought to thrash you here in public!”

“Desperate men often resort to violence.”

The newsmen are speechless for an instant. Then
The Times
reporter recognizes the boy.

“Say, aren’t you the lad who –”

“Shut your gob, Mr. Hobbs!” hisses Lestrade. “This child is a loiterer and if he does not move along I shall call a constable.”

“But he isn’t –”

“
SHUT UP
, Hobbs!”

“I have a clue in the Rathbone case,” says Sherlock calmly.

Several reporters laugh.

“You what?” asks Lestrade Junior.

Aha
, thinks Sherlock,
they have none
.

“And I am the Duke of Wellington come back to life,” smirks the inspector. He puts his hands on his lapels, as if
to commence a speech. “This boy is a lunatic. A Jew who wanders the streets, does bit work for an impoverished quack, and several times has pretended to know things about certain well-known crimes. He consorts with young ruffians and has been in jail. We are well aware of him. His parents’ reckless marriage made him a half-breed.”

“Father, I don’t think it is kind to –”

“If you choose to work with me, sir, then you shall be silent.”

The older boy looks at his feet.

“As I was saying, he has delusions and deserves our pity more than anything else. Let me demonstrate. I ask you, Master Holmes, did you not solve both the Whitechapel and Crystal Palace crimes?”

“Yes, I did.”

The reporters roar with laughter.

“Father, we shouldn’t –”

“Silence, boy! I shan’t speak to you again.”

Lestrade is hitting his stride now. He sees Sherlock Holmes shrinking in front of his very eyes and smells blood. It feels so good to get the upper hand for once during this black time. At least he can put an end to this meddler.

“The truth is that his mother was murdered in cold blood by the Whitechapel villain, poisoned like a rat … and
he
, gentleman, was the cause!”

With that, Lestrade steps up into his carriage, pulling his astonished son with him.

The reporters walk off, mimicking the boy in the threadbare dress clothes. “I have a clue,” snorts one in a
child-like voice. They all laugh again, except Hobbs, who gazes at the boy.

With eyes as red as blood, Sherlock Holmes stumbles into an alley off White Hall. He boots over a rotting rain barrel and lets the water in it drain. Then he picks it up and flings it against a wall. When it doesn’t smash, he kicks it, again and again and again … until it splinters into pieces.

“You insult me!” he shouts, “You insult my
MOTHER
!”

If he were a man, he would challenge Lestrade to fight him in a public place. He doesn’t really give a farthing for the life of that upper-class girl, nor does he know anything of that wretched child in the workhouse, but if he has ever been certain of
anything
in his life, it is this: he will find Victoria Rathbone! No matter what it takes. He will gain the keys to his future … and announce his solution for all to hear, right in front of that ferret from Scotland Yard. No one and nothing, not Malefactor, not even his own inexperience, will stop him.

“I challenge you, Lestrade! I cannot fight you with pistols at twenty paces, but
this
will be a duel. I will put a bullet in you!”

He leaves the alley and walks toward Denmark Street, at war with himself.

“Be calm,” he says out loud, grinding his teeth. “Be rational. That is the only way to proceed.”

His mind turns to Irene for an instant.
Don’t think
about her. You don’t need her
. He can’t believe she would work with Malefactor.
Pay attention to what you must do. You have a clue. Pursue it and pursue it now
.

The watermark.

He is nearing the apothecary’s shop.
Watermarks aren’t made by stationers, but by the papermakers themselves
: he’s learned that in school. This was a faint one, very faint, apparently not even seen by the police, only visible when held at just the right position in the noon-hour sun.

The ransom note was sent yesterday and had a three-day deadline. Rathbone
won’t
pay, there is no doubt. There are just forty-eight hours left before they kill his daughter … before opportunity vanishes.

Sigerson Bell is hard at work in the chemical laboratory when his apprentice arrives with a smile pasted on his face, ready to pick the alchemist’s big brain. At first, things don’t seem promising. The old man’s eyes look slightly wild and cloudy, likely from some sort of solution he’s administered to himself. But, as usual, there is a file inside his skull that promises to be of considerable help. They dip into it.

“Yes, I once had a papermaker as a patient,” says Bell. “Something wrong with his bowel, if I recall correctly. Not enough water in the gut was producing a hard stool that smelled like –”

“Uh, sir?”

“Yes, my boy?”

“I’m not certain I need to know about the odor of his stool.”

“Quite. A very good point! More pertinent for your purposes is the question of the watermark.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, let’s see…. This patient was a foreman at one of those new-fangled mills about a forenoon’s walk from central London, out Surrey way to the south where they use wood pulp to make the paper and steam-powered machines to process it. In his earlier day he had toiled at a smaller operation where they used rags, so he was conversant with all aspects of the making of paper. A loquacious sort, he was, though what man in England who has risen above semi-literacy cannot talk your ear right off when given a chance? We are a chatty race. Had terrible halitosis, as I recall, his breath smelled like a dog’s behind after it rolled in …”

“Uh … watermarks, sir?”

“Keep me on the trail, my boy, my nose right to it. Excellent! … What was the trail again?”

“Watermarks.”

“Watermarks! Right you are! Let me see. This gentleman used to speak of the fact that not long ago there were nearly a thousand paper mills in England, but just a hundred or so now, much bigger and more efficient at the art. I recollect him speaking of watermarks indeed, saying they have become much simpler. Just a single letter often suffices now, the sign of the mill. That wasn’t the way in the old days.”

It isn’t much, but it’s a start for Sherlock. The watermark is an old one.

There’s no sense in going to school now: it is early afternoon. It would be impossible to concentrate anyway. The boy works for several hours in the shop, cleaning up around the laboratory, his mind focused on what he should do next. The big clock in the lab seems to be ticking faster and faster. His thoughts wander back to Irene. Her possible contributions remain tantalizing.
Does she really know something valuable?
But it wouldn’t matter if she did. He simply
cannot
share the credit for the solution to this crime.

He grows anxious – he
needs
to come up with something. But he reminds himself to be as emotionless as possible. He sets jars of oozing liquid, containers of severed limbs, mysterious cans of powder that make his nose tingle, all in their proper places. He dusts the many leaning towers of books that make up Bell’s teetering library, and polishes the three precious statues of Hermes.

Trying to construct a theory, he focuses on how he might learn more about old watermarks. Just as he does, he notices an old copy of the
Telegraph
on a stool, and an idea comes to him. When Bell goes off on a mid-afternoon call, he slips out the door. His next stop is Trafalgar Square to speak to the cripple, Dupin, who will be setting up to sell his evening publications. Nothing in the newspaper business escapes the legless man, and Sherlock is betting he’ll know something about the material his sheets are printed upon. An old watermark should be his cup of tea – Dupin adores the history of everything.