Vanishing Girl

“It is about the Rathbones.”

“Ah!”

“I must ask you if –”

“I have a question for you first, my boy. Sit down.”

Sherlock sits, his heels tapping anxiously on the floor.

“Why do you do these things?”

The boy doesn’t like the tone of the inquiry. It seems as though the old man may be about to put a stop to his opportunity at the very moment when he most needs his support. Bell opens a door in his glass cabinets, takes down the jar of opium, and looks meaningfully back at Holmes.

“Uh … uh …”

“That doesn’t sound like a good reason.”

“I …”

“Is it for the attention it may bring you? Is it to help these superior-class folks? Is it really in the cause of justice?” Bell looks over his eyeglasses at Sherlock Holmes, then turns back to the opium jar, seals it up again and returns it to the cabinet.

“I …” Sherlock begins, and then thinks. “I would like to help a little boy.”

Sigerson Bell turns sharply back to his apprentice with a look of intrigue.

“Go on.”

“There’s a child in a Stepney workhouse, five years of age, by the name of Paul Waller, who needs medical attention to his eyes. He has a terrible, apparently untreatable infection. His corneas are cloudy and his lids are swollen and turned back. They say he will be blind in a week. Lord Rathbone has the power to help him. He can put the boy into the hands of his personal physician, the only man in London, perhaps in Europe, who can cure him. Victoria Rathbone has promised to make her father do it. But … there has been sensational news … she has been kidnapped again!”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I have my sources.”

Sherlock is a bit taken aback, but he goes on.

“If Miss Rathbone cannot be found, then the little boy will go blind. But … I may know the identity of the fiend we all seek. And I think I can locate him.”

“And you want to do this for the cause of the little boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That settles it then.”

“It does?”

“Whatever you wanted to ask of me, the answer is yes.”

“It is?”

“I am guessing that you want to go to the southern coast … Portsmouth?”

As Sherlock looks at him in disbelief, the old man spins like a whirling dervish and advances toward his little strongbox.

“Yes, I too would make a devilishly good detective,” he smiles. “The first train available to you is the six o’clock morning express. Fare by the London and South Western Railway will be one pound return. Take this and be off with you.” He hands the boy a couple of coins. “School and this shop shall await anyone with such lofty goals.”

An idea occurs to Sherlock.

“Would you come with me, sir?”

The old man is as agile and alert as a rabbit. He wouldn’t be a burden, and his quick mind would help the boy at every turn of the Portsmouth investigation. There shouldn’t be much danger in this outing, and Sherlock likes the idea of having a companion, especially in the person of his dearest friend.

But Bell’s answer surprises him.

“No,” he says instantly, “no, I … uh … I have … work I must do.” He looks like someone who is hiding something. A guilty expression spreads across his face.

I know he can spare the time. What is he up to? And how did he know about Portsmouth?

“Now, I would suggest to you that you clean up this shop and then take to your bed. You have much to do in the south, a long day ahead of you. You must be up early and on your way. Shoo!”

The old man usually rises before the boy in the mornings. Holmes is given to lingering in his wardrobe, pondering his life and then spending a good deal of time at the mirror. Today, Bell is up long before him. Just as Sherlock appears, the apothecary quickly throws a cloth over a vial of liquid ammonia and a shard of yellow sulfur, with which he had obviously been experimenting. He then motions to the table. The boy’s breakfast is already waiting: a display of fried liver and buttermilk arrayed in mortars and tubes. The minute the apprentice has swallowed it, Bell begins rushing him.

“Now go. Go, go, go!” He says, almost shoving the boy toward the door. But just as Sherlock walks through it, the old man takes him by the arm.

“Are you sure that you are doing this for the child?”

Sherlock considers his answer for a few seconds. “Uh … yes, sir.”

When Holmes is almost all the way down Denmark Street in the cold and bustling London dawn, he glances back at the shop. He isn’t sure, but he can almost swear that the front door is held open a crack and one lens of a pair of field glasses is eyeing him as he walks away.

Within the hour, Sherlock Holmes is speeding toward the southern coast.

As the first morning train on the London and South Western Railway from Waterloo Station pulls into the Portsmouth terminal, an hour and a half after departure, Sherlock gets up from his seat and walks toward the doors. He is clutching the backs of the wooden third-class benches, staggering about as the locomotive chugs to a halt, warily watching the passengers, anxious to get out.

He wants to be down near the dockyard now, the area where the Royal Navy has its barracks, its officers’ mess, its magnificent ships in the Portsmouth Harbour. He is telling himself that he has made the right choice coming here. A southern coastal town? A captain in the navy? That must go together. But he has begun to have doubts. His faulty reasoning in St. Neots still affects his confidence, and all the time he had to think on the train has made him wonder why he is assuming that Waller must be involved in either of the crimes. There is really no sound evidence, just clever guesswork, and he remembers how his father felt about guessing. But Sigerson Bell thought Portsmouth a good choice, too. Why, he isn’t sure. Because it is a city known for its crime, the best of all the port towns for getting away by sea?

Then he spots something that puts all his doubts on hold.

There’s a youth, a little older than he, stepping down from the second-class carriage ahead, glancing around in a suspicious manner. Sherlock smiles. The lad wears a beard and mustache. Definitely wears it. Underneath all that hair, Holmes detects a ferret-like face.

He follows young Lestrade along the platform under the curving glass ceiling, through the beautiful booking office and out of doors. On Station Street, he buys the morning edition of the Portsmouth News from a vendor, something to hold in front of his face should his prey suspect a lurker and look back. Lestrade must be on his way to the very spot where Victoria was found the first time she was kidnapped. He will lead Sherlock right to it! Searching for Captain Waller can wait.

Lestrade, heading south and slipping in and out of crowds of pedestrians and often glancing back, is sticking to a main thoroughfare, but when Sherlock looks down side streets he sees the tightly packed neighborhoods for which this gray-and-brown city is known. They house its tough, seafaring class. This is where Charles Dickens came from and it seems fitting. There appear to be pubs on every corner, drinking holes for sailors, and a sense of danger hangs in the air.