to the stifling, smoky carriages on hot days. It is a good four feet up, a small circle narrower than his shoulders. Even Pierce, the little “snakesman” whom Malefactor employs for cracking houses, would have problems wriggling up through there. Certainly no grown man could make it. The boy recalls Pierce giving a demonstration to the Irregulars once, which he observed from a distance. “Sherlock,” his mother used to laugh as she watched him get ready for bed, “you are the thinnest thing in London!”
The guard is within a few strides.
Sherlock jumps up onto the bench, then onto its back, his frame so long that his shoulders reach the ceiling. He shoves his hands up through the vent and slams open the steel cover. It rattles on the roof of the train.
“You can’t go up there, lad!”
Passengers scream.
Sherlock grips the sharp rim of the ventilation can and pulls himself up. He can feel it cutting into his fingers. This will take not only arm strength but abdominal muscles.
“One! Two! Three! Four! …” Sigerson Bell often counts off their calisthenics in the laboratory. The old man does the exercises with the same verve that he insists the boy utilize. Sometimes with too much: flasks go smashing on the floor, pickled human organs end up hanging from their crude chandelier. “This shall be useful to you some day, my boy!”
Sherlock gets his head through the opening and the blast of air is alarming. In fact, it feels as though it will pull him out of the train and pitch him overboard. But he keeps drawing himself up, folding his shoulders inward, just like Pierce. Blood is trickling down his hands onto his wrists, but he ignores it. He sucks in his breath and yanks his torso upwards. The vent feels as though it will squeeze the life out of him, pressing on his ribcage as he holds his breath as deeply as he can. But he pulls hard and his torso literally pops out of the opening. He bends over the top of the rim onto the roof.
Then he feels the guard’s hands gripping his ankles, pulling him downward! His thighs are held tightly together by the narrow opening, but Sherlock kicks a foot as hard as he can, feels it connect, hears a groan, and the man’s hands release him.
Holmes gets his slim hips out, his legs, his boots … and lies flat on the curved roof, holding onto the ventilation can for dear life. The wind is incredible. It feels as though God himself is using all his strength to sweep him off the train. The skin on his face is rippling like putty. Sherlock looks down through the vent and sees the guard lying on top of a middle-aged widow, dressed in black. She is smiling; he isn’t: he’s glaring through the opening at the boy.
Holmes slams down the lid. The train rocks from side to side, jerking back and forth. He imagines what would happen if he were to fall off. Fractured bones from head to toes: a broken neck, a crushed skull. They would find his corpse limp some distance away. And if he were to be swept under the wheels, he would be severed in half.
The train chugs and he tries to keep his grip on the vent, wound into the tightest ball he can create, eyes protected from the cinders floating in the locomotive smoke by pressing his forehead to the roof. His arms are tiring, his fingers want to release. He wonders if the railway guard will open the door and try to climb up the ladder at the end of the carriage. Probably not. He will think the boy is done for … either in a gruesome fall or arrest at the next station.
The boy hangs on for what seems like an eternity. Just as he feels he cannot last any longer, the train starts to slow.
Sherlock lets go of the ventilation can.
The wind blows him down the slope of the roof toward the edge. Crying out, he spreads his fingers and flattens himself to the surface like a spider – and stops sliding. Then, ever so slowly, he inches his way toward the end of the carriage. Thank goodness it isn’t far. The train keeps decelerating. He gets to the end, finds the top of the ladder with a foot, and descends.
When he reaches the bottom, he hears something to his right … and sees the railway guard coming around the corner, his boot tentatively groping out for a rung, his face contorted with fear as he tries to negotiate his way onto the same ladder. The train is still moving at a mighty speed. Holmes steps off the bottom rung and onto a ridge low on the carriage, cricks his neck around to see the passing countryside, spots a grassy field … and jumps.
Sherlock’s arm is screaming. And it is pitch-black. He struck a rock soon after hitting the ground and then whirled around countless times until he came to a stop. Fortunately, he had kept his head tucked into his chest.
He is near Biggleswade village, the last stop before St. Neots. There is no need to hide here. Though the railway guard will be livid and the local constable may be called from his home for a search, that will likely be the extent of the inquiry on this cold, dark night. Sherlock can’t see more than a few feet in front of his face; just a scattering of lights show dimly in the distance.
He crawls to his feet and begins to walk, clutching his throbbing arm, which aches at the elbow joint. St. Neots can’t be more than an hour away. He takes a big detour around Biggleswade and keeps going. When he feels something dripping from his hands, he remembers the rim of the steel vent slicing into his fingers. He opens his coat and wipes little streaks of drying blood onto his waistcoat, then buttons up again. Later, he stumbles into a stream and cleans his hands as best he can.
But Sherlock stops before he’s certain he is at his destination. He can’t go on: the pain in his arm bothers him too much, and he doesn’t want to be seen coming into the town in the middle of the night. Besides, fatigue is consuming him.
He steps over a stone fence within a football pitch or two of the first lights of the town. Shivering, he curls up and gets as close to the fence as he can. Lying there, he surveys the dark, starlit sky.
This harrowing trip will be worth it, he tells himself, if it saves a human being’s life, if it secures his own future … if he gets to see defeat on Lestrade’s face.
But it is dawning on him just how rash he’s been. When he left London he was enraged and full of thoughts of vengeance, trying to do something very adult. Perhaps his actions today have proven his immaturity.
Why did he come here with so little evidence? It is against everything he believes a scientific detective should do. Where will he search in the morning? Will anyone speak to someone like him? Will the parish constable be called in to collar him and take him away? Even if the paper is made here, the culprits could have purchased it somewhere else. He was
Sherlock examines himself. He is a mess. He had preened himself early this morning, like a monotoned peacock. Now, he isn’t even presentable.
He twists around on the cold, damp ground like a stirring child in the womb. But finally, sleep begins to descend upon him, so he isn’t sure whether it is a dream or not when he sees something eerie on a hill in the distance. It is a manor house, big, dark, and spooky on the horizon. Only a single, weak light shines from one part of its innards. He hears the frightened calls of animals, exotic beasts, crying and growling way off on its grounds. Or is it the wind? Then a shadow lurks up above it all, like a gigantic phantom against the moonlight, rising in the glow of a lamp that is being carried across the grounds, the light swinging back and forth as if someone were walking with it in the middle of the night. The phantom seems to snarl.
“A dream,” he whispers to himself.
Then he drifts off.
Sherlock Holmes is surrounded when he awakes. A circle of little people are looking down at him. The sun is bright directly behind them in the cold, early morning and he can barely make them out. Their faceless heads are ringed with black lines, and their breaths hang in clouds.
“Is it real?” asks one.
“Course it’s real, donkey-face, but it ‘as a costume on, it does.”
One of them pokes Sherlock with a stick. The boy decides he’s had enough. He jumps to his feet, feeling pain in his arm and surprised to find his whole body aching. They all step back, five farm boys and a girl, all dirty, all wrapped in layers of heavy clothing, every one in bare feet. The fear in their faces betrays their readiness to
