Vanishing Girl

something, smiles, and then walks across the empty room to a palatial fireplace. Sherlock is amazed at its size. It looks like it should belong to the queen, like it could heat the entire mansion. The man steps over the old fire screen and stands in the fireplace. Then he sticks his head up the flue: half his body vanishes into it. Sherlock can’t see him anymore, or be sure of what he is doing. The man appears to be making a loud noise up the chimney – it is like a roar. When he steps out, he seems to sense something and turns, facing the den. The boy closes the door as fast as he can.

Did he see me?

When the boy opens the door a crack again a minute later, the staircase looks deserted.

Follow him. See what he does. Stop any villainy. Cry out if you must. The police should be nearing.

He wishes he had his horsewhip.

Sherlock sweeps across the room and ascends the staircase, then goes up the next one, and down the hallways, toward the upper room. He knows the way now. When he draws near, he waits at the T, peeks around the corner, and sees the man opening the door and going in. Then he hears voices. His plan is to intercede only if the woman cries out. He’d like to keep a good distance away, far enough so that he can stay hidden if everything remains calm. But he can’t hear anything from where he is. He moves closer and still can’t hear, so he edges right up to the door. He is so cautious, so alert to flee, that it takes him a while to get there and he doesn’t think about the fact that silence has reigned in the room for several seconds before he arrives. As he looks through the crack in the doorframe, he sees with a start that the man is coming toward him. In fact, he is just a few steps from the door.

Run!

The boy pivots and flies. He rushes past the adjoining hallway he came from and heads for the next one straight ahead. He’ll never make it. He’s still ten feet away as the thief opens the door. But suddenly, Sherlock feels as though someone picks him up and carries him … it’s as if he is weightless … he reaches the next hallway and gets around the corner. He has the sensation of being set down and thinks he sees someone vanishing away in front of him; a woman in an old-fashioned dress – no head upon her shoulders.

Holding his breath, he hears the villain stride along the hallway from the door, turn, and walk away down the other corridor. His footsteps grow quieter.

Sherlock lets out a huge sigh. Then he chides himself. I didn’t see a ghost. Nothing picked me up and carried me.

It is time to stop living in fantasies – he is a detective of facts and data. There is nothing wrong with my mind. The thief must simply have taken a while to bolt the door – that’s what gave me time. It surely must be locked from the outside.

Sherlock Holmes gathers himself and turns to his task. It is time to find out who is in that room.

He walks briskly down the hallway. He examines the entrance closely. No bolt. Then he looks down. Ah. There it is: on the outside of the door after all, in an unusual place near the floor. Someone is indeed being held here against her will.

He unbolts the door … and enters.

Everything in the room is clearly visible this time. And so is its only occupant. She is sitting on a settee next to the window, her head down, the same woman he just saw downstairs in bed and whom he glimpsed before in this very room.

It’s Victoria Rathbone.

There is a steely determination evident behind her frightened expression. He notices that her necklace is a thick chain with a small bell attached.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“Who are you?” she responds.

“I asked first.”

“You know very well … you rogue!” The R is perfectly rolled.

“How can I be certain that you are her?”

“What nonsense is this? Because it is evident, you fool!” Her snotty tone is not without a quaver, but her words are immaculately pronounced. “Are you in concert with those hooligans, or are you a friend?”

“The latter … I believe.”

“Then, whoever you are, remove me from this room. And send for my father. I shall wait in the dining hall until his arrival.”

It’s her, thinks Sherlock, she wants to go home. Had he observed a brat like this in the Rathbone dining room he would not have thought that anything was amiss.

He casts his mind back again to what he saw in the downstairs bedroom and it all begins to make sense. He decides to try one more question to be certain.

“But perhaps you are just pretending to be her?”

“No one can pretend to be me, you idiot!” She stamps her foot and her face goes red.

Ah, yes. We have our girl.

“My name is Sherlock Holmes and I have come to rescue you.” He smiles at his turn of phrase. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Well, it is not likewise. Take me away from here.” Her pout has grown across her lips, which are beginning to tremble. “This has been so horrible. You can’t imagine. I am allowed just four baths a week, I must wear this dress every six or seven days, peasant clothing at other times, and they feed me food barely fit for dogs.”

“You look rather healthy to me.”

“Do you call no Yorkshire pudding for three months, no oranges, no sweets, healthy? I have been forced to eat mutton and bread and milk and cheese and corn and peas and porridge for as long as I can remember. I have changed my mind. I demand that you take me to Belgravia this instant and let the cooks know I am home!” She sobs.

“No.”

Miss Rathbone looks shocked.

“No?”

“You were home just a few days ago, anyway,” he smiles.

“I was?”

“And secondly, we must await the police. They shall be along within an hour or two. Let us hope your captors don’t flee before the Force arrives … or that they don’t discover us … and murder us on the spot.”

Victoria Rathbone gives a little shriek.

Sherlock has put them in a dangerous situation. He can’t risk an escape attempt with her. It is broad daylight. And the fiends have placed that little cast-iron bell around her neck and secured it with a chain so that they will hear her if she tries to get away. It is sealed at the bottom and cannot be silenced.

“If they discover us, they can’t release us, Miss Rathbone. We would be able to identify them. Your father would pursue them to the ends of the earth … and hang them in the London streets.”

He walks to the window and peers out. “So, we must wait quietly and hope.” He can see St. Neots and the railway tracks running southward through a beautiful rolling countryside. He images the telegraph message shooting along the poles to London.

At that very moment, an hour to the south, Inspector Lestrade is sitting on a special train from King’s Cross Station, his son by his side. But he can’t just sit there. He rises, shoves down a window, jams his head out, and screams up the tracks toward the conductor.

“Get this iron horse moving, you imbecile!” he shouts.

He has been in an ugly mood all morning, right from the moment the telegram was delivered by an out-of- breath messenger boy. It arrived almost the instant the senior detective entered his office. He is always there early.