Vanishing Girl (6 page)

The boy arrives with ten minutes to spare. Observing from fifty feet away, he concocts a plan. The inspector is
turned sideways, examining tickets, a brick wall facing him, an iron gate stretched across most of the gap behind him, leaving just a narrow passageway for travelers to squeeze through to the platforms. There is nothing for it. Sherlock will have to rush past in a crowd. He has something to work with already: the two men with the lady in the wheelchair will be a perfect diversion.

He surveys the crowd and looks for more. He spots a family approaching the gate.
They will do
. They are a good twenty feet in front of the wheelchair group. There are six of them.
Time to move
. Sherlock darts toward them and cuts in front of the father. Then he stops without warning, forcing the whole family to come to a sudden halt: they almost pile into him. He looks down to check if he’s stepped in something and as he does, the wheelchair group catches up to the family. Now there are nine people, ten including Sherlock, bunched up near the gate. The father gives Holmes a stern look.

“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.

A
s 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 to 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.