Vanishing Girl

And lately, he’s been in harness even earlier. These last few days have been terribly trying. When the Rathbone home was robbed, the Metropolitan London Police and especially his detective division had been made to look like fools. Now, the girl has been taken again, and he and his men look even worse. There was no sign of her in Portsmouth and he has been completely perplexed. Then came this telegram from that half-breed boy, Sherlock Holmes, he who somehow solved the mysterious Whitechapel murder and, incredibly, handed over the Brixton Gang. Inspector Lestrade cannot, simply cannot, allow this child to outdo Scotland Yard again. But that is what the lad is doing. The senior detective knows for certain that the ransom-note stationery came from St. Neots. If Sherlock Holmes is there and says that the kidnappers are in a manor house nearby … he may very well be absolutely correct. The boy has been almost flawless in his investigations so far.

“Get this piece of junk moving!” Lestrade screams again.

Then he sees something that makes his day even worse. Hobbs, the bespectacled reporter from The Times, is rushing along the platform toward the train.

“Do you know anything about what has transpired here?” Sherlock Holmes asks Victoria Rathbone quietly as he paces in the room, glances out the window, anxiously awaits any sign of the Force coming over the marsh.

“I was kidnapped about four months ago, at the end of the season – such a horrible time to be inconvenienced – and I have been held here ever since.”

“You have never left this room?”

“They let me out for exercise and I go downstairs to a bedroom once a day where I am allowed to choose dresses to wear. They are such horrible rags!”

“Are they are kept in a wardrobe – half silk dresses, half what you’d call peasant?”

“How did you know –”

“Why didn’t you escape through this window at night?”

“You are a greater fool than I thought.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Do you not know about the black tiger?”

“There is no such –”

“Were I to somehow get out this window three floors above ground and climb down the ivy, the beast would hear me even if my bell didn’t make a sound. It would track me and kill me within seconds.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“Have you heard it?”

“Yes.”

Sherlock looks out over the grounds again. Then he remembers something he should have been concerned about long before. To his shame, it has slipped his mind during all the excitement.

Little Paul.

In the Ratcliff Workhouse in Stepney it is breakfast time. Only one small woodstove heats the crude dining hall, and the children, who only eat after the adults are done, can see their breaths as they arrive. The gruel is cold within moments of being ladled into the wooden bowls. Little Paul isn’t there. They call out his name but he doesn’t appear. A man is dispatched to find him. The child is discovered sitting in a hallway. He couldn’t find his way downstairs because everything was a blur.

“I cannot see, sir,” he tells the man.

“Do you recall someone named Irene Doyle?” asks Sherlock, turning from the window to Victoria Rathbone.

“I don’t speak to any family with that name. It sounds foreign to me.”

“She is your relative. Do you not remember speaking to a young lady in your house the day before you were kidnapped, who asked you about helping a little boy in a workhouse in the East End? He is going blind. You said you would make your father help him and have the child taken into the care of his physician, the only man in London who might cure him.”

Miss Rathbone lets out a little laugh, which she then stifles.

“My father never listens to me!” she exclaims, trying to keep her voice down. “He has spoken to me no more than three or four times since I turned ten. I was away in India at school for three years. I don’t think he laid his eyes upon me from the moment I returned until the day I was kidnapped. Yes, he gives me things to keep me happy, but I would never ask for something like that!” She snickers.

“But you told Miss Doyle that –”

“I don’t recall anyone named Doyle.”

“But you –”

“There are times when you must say certain things to keep up appearances. Perhaps I had some friends visiting?”

Sherlock is stunned and angry. Maybe he should just leave this useless girl here, leave her to her fate, whatever it is. Or perhaps he should go downstairs and make a deal with the criminals, take a cut, and let them get away: Eliza Shaw, the two men and the captain.

But then, he wouldn’t get the credit he deserves.

“Maybe I should just lock the door and leave you here,” he says out loud.

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care? You might rot up here. Maybe that would be a good thing.”

“No I won’t, you impertinent boy. That villain, I’m not even sure which one he was – they put scarves over their faces when they speak to me – told me that I will be rescued.”

“What do you mean?”

“When he was here, just now, he told me that they will leave food for me for a week. After that, the authorities will be notified and someone will come and get me.”

“Do you honestly believe that?”

“Why would he bother to tell me and why would he explain it all in such detail if it weren’t true?”

“In detail?”

“Yes, he seemed rather proud of himself. He said that they and a man who shall remain nameless have performed the perfect crime. They would prefer that I live. Within a week, they will be far away, unidentified, and set for life. Did my father actually pay a ransom?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer, so she goes on.

“They have engaged a London man, a boy really (in his words), who is well connected in the crime world and knows I am here. This boy has been helping them all along and is acquainted with a respectable young lady who is the key to my rescue. It is she who will carry a note to Scotland Yard … and because of who she is: they will believe her. I am to be saved on condition that the identity of the London boy remains unknown.”

Sherlock reaches out for a chair.

Irene and Malefactor.

“Does this respectable young lady … do you think … she will know what is in the note?”

“That appears to be the case.”

Why would Irene do this? But he recalls what she said to him after she saved him as he fled the Belgravia mansion, when he refused, once again, to be her friend. “You will regret this, Sherlock Holmes!” He remembers the expression on her face. She wants to save little Paul. And that’s all she cares about. But does she want the child in her life? He thinks of how she responded when he suggested that the Doyles adopt the little boy. Sherlock had expected her to be happy; she seemed the opposite. He wonders now if she ever told her father who Paul “Dimly” really is. Does she simply want to save the boy … and leave it at that?

Even the kindest heart in the world needs the undivided love of a parent. Moreover, Irene is not immune to the thrills that life offers. Malefactor has certainly been working on her, showing her his high-stakes world. Has he convinced her there is nothing they can do to catch the criminals and that Lord Rathbone deserves his fate? And that he can find Victoria and save Paul in the bargain? That might be enough for her. It