Vanishing Girl

“This is for you,” says the man in a soft voice. Sherlock glances around and sees her take a note from him with a smile. But then her anxious expression returns.

“I came as soon as I could.”

“Your message said so little. Who are these fiends who are hounding your home and your child? Can’t the police do anything?”

“It’s more than you think.”

“More? What do you mean? How can there be more?”

“We’ve had an intruder.”

“An intruder?”

She looks guilty. “He confronted me. I gave him your name.”

“You what?” He almost gets to his feet, but she pulls him down.

“It was just a boy. He broke into my room and found our gloves. I don’t think he really knew anything, but he demanded your name and I had to tell him or he wouldn’t leave, would have alerted the house. He may be after you for money, so you need to be on your guard.”

The man glances around. Sherlock sinks into his paper.

“Do not distress yourself over this. You already have your child to worry about. This blackmailer’s timing is bad, anyway. I … I’m leaving England soon. I would have sent for you today and told you, had you not sent for me. I … I’m going to America. Tomorrow.”

“No.”

“I must. It won’t be for long.”

“But …” She looks him up and down. “Is that why you are out of uniform? What’s happened?”

“I’ve left the navy … the only captain in the ranks who didn’t have blue blood and in command of the smallest boat they ever floated … a sixth-rate vessel … it might as well have been a rowboat. It would have stayed that way forever for me. So I’ve left my post. I’m not of their kind, those prigs.”

“You didn’t say that when they were promoting you. You charmed them out of their socks.”

“Charmed their wives, Pauline, and toiled many extra hours. Let’s be honest.”

“One does what one must to get ahead. We both know that.”

“I hate the blue bloods, all of them…. I hate your husband.”

“I do too, sometimes.”

“But I will show them.”

“Show them? By doing what?”

“It’s only an expression, dearest. I must be off.”

“But I’ve just arrived. Why are you rushing away?”

“It’s simply some business I’ve arranged. Then I must prepare for departure…. I shall write, Pauline. And I’ll be back before long. Read my note.”

As he pulls her to her feet and embraces her, Sherlock makes a mistake. He rises slightly to see them. The captain is lifting her in his arms and turns slightly. Over his shoulder, she sees a lad peering at them above a newspaper.

“The boy!” she cries, pointing at him.

Sherlock rises, poised to run, but it’s the couple who flees. The captain takes Lady Rathbone by the hand and flies out of the square, then lifts her into the hansom cab that still waits on the street. He pounds the roof and shouts at the driver. The cab darts out into the traffic and is gone in seconds.

Holmes stands there, stunned, the newspaper in his hand. But then he notices that the lady has dropped something. He walks over and picks it up. The note! He opens it with trembling hands. This may be the answer to all his questions, to what he and the police and Malefactor and Irene have been pursuing for months. It was obvious from the couple’s conversation that the captain is up to something and that Lady Rathbone knows nothing of it. Is this a confession? Will it say why he is leaving the country?

He opens it.

Dearest Pauline, know that I will always love you.

It’s a love note, a stupid, meaningless love note. The disappointment is hard to bear. He jams it into his frock-coat pocket and heads back into the center of the city, not sure what he should do next. Try to follow the hansom cab? But it has long since vanished. Return to Bush Villas? But they will be on the lookout for him. In fact, Lestrade may have half the Portsmouth constabulary searching for him.

Within a street or two Sherlock feels he is being followed. Someone is lurking behind. He slips away from the bigger thoroughfares and darts down a small road, then a smaller one, then through alleys and mews, going faster and faster. His pursuer seems to be getting closer. But after a few minutes, he thinks he has shaken whoever is on his trail.

When he finally stops, he leans against a clammy stone wall on a narrow, cobblestone lane, trying to discern exactly where he is. He has run so frantically and turned so often that he has lost his sense of direction. He looks up to see where the sun is, to get his bearings.

But it isn’t wise to look anywhere other than straight ahead or behind on the little streets of Portsmouth. Instantly, someone seizes him, and the steely arms that apply the grip aren’t covered with blue-uniformed sleeves.

“Just relax, mate, and we’ll get you stripped down and on yer way in a wink.”

The arms are bare, even in this cold December morning. They are tattooed, hairy, and as thick as mill posts; the breath coming directly into Sherlock’s ear from behind, stinks of beer. The thug grinds his face stubble into the boy’s cheek and holds him uncomfortably close in an iron lock.

This rough will rip off his clothing, take everything he owns, and leave him battered or dead on this nearly deserted street. He is in a very bad part of town.

Then a memory makes a sudden appearance in his brain and the art of Bellitsu is at his fingertips.

“When a gentleman seizes you from behind, he is almost always an unthinking rough of some sort, intent upon doing you some evil, my boy, but without a speck of fighting technique,” cracked Sigerson Bell one day in the lab, wearing his pugilist’s tights. “He shall grip you thusly.” Bell demonstrated exactly the hold that the stinking sailor has on the boy at this very instant, with his meaty arms under Sherlock’s armpits and his hands clasped tightly behind the boy’s neck.

“Throw your arms straight into the air!” the apothecary had shrieked.

Sherlock does so.

“Then drop down to the ground and roll away!”

Sherlock slides out of the grip and rolls when he hits the cobblestones.

“Jump to your feet, take a balanced position, and measure your distance. Then strike your opponent with an oriental martial arts kick to the temple.” At the time, Bell had performed the feat as quickly as a cat and smacked another skeleton’s skull.

Sherlock pivots, dips his hips, and drives the point of one of his heavy Wellington boots into the thug’s temple. The man drops like a stone. But the boy doesn’t wait to see if he rises.

“Then … RUN!!!” Bell had screamed in his high-pitched voice.

Sherlock is off to the races again. He rips down the little cobblestone street and takes the first turn. As he does, he glances over his shoulder and notices someone peering around the corner near the fallen man, as if motioning for him to get up and pursue. It looks like a tall boy in a black tailcoat, and there seem to be a couple of others near his side, one blond, the other dark.

But Sherlock doesn’t allow himself more than a passing glance – he is likely imagining those figures anyway. Within minutes, he somehow finds his way directly to the railway station. Perhaps it is his good sense of direction, now regained, or perhaps fear sends him where he needs to go.

There are many daily trains to London and he is on the next one. He huddles on the wooden bench. As the train pulls out, he thinks about what he’s learned.

There were two men and a girl here, and possibly a local man pulling strings. They used a middle-class neighborhood, not suited for hiding a prisoner. They were only in the house for part of a day, just for hours, or perhaps minutes because they didn’t even go upstairs to the bedrooms. She didn’t try to flee. On that very morning, an anonymous telegram was sent to Scotland Yard. The two men were conveniently gone when the Force arrived, though the police got here on the fly. Did someone intentionally draw Lestrade’s men to Portsmouth?