Vanishing Girl

“Gone by morning, America for Christmas!” giggles the young woman, rolling her Rs.

“You will travel lightly, my dear?”

“Oh, heavens no, sir,” she sighs, “I shall have the Rathbone fortune with me!”

It’s them. There is no doubt.

But Sherlock wants to see them clearly. All he can make out from where he stands shaking in the hall are figures moving back and forth, apparently filling suitcases and boxes.

They are getting ready to leave. Tomorrow morning!

“The captain will be pleased. Everything is on schedule.”

Sherlock almost cries out, but puts his hand to his mouth.

“If we were to cut the hands off of England’s thieves, there would be no thieves in London!” barks one of the two men in a pompous, upper-class voice.

They all laugh.

“One must be brutal with brutal people.”

“Never give them an inch!”

They give a whoop of delight.

Amidst the cover of laughter, Sherlock thinks he can step closer. He inches along the wall, getting almost to the doorway … and knocks something over. It’s a vase. It whacks against the floor, a single, loud bang, but it is brass and doesn’t smash or roll.

“Listen!” says one of the men.

Silence.

Sherlock holds his breath.

“Must be one of those beasts!” cries the young woman, and they all laugh again.

Sherlock picks up the vase and gingerly sets it back on its stand. He should tiptoe out of here, try to get off the grounds, and send word to Lestrade in London. But he can’t resist seeing the thieves, confirming who they are: he especially wants to look at the woman. He is right at the door now. Summoning his courage, he peeks his head slightly out to see around the frame, exposing the side of his face.

It is a sitting room of sorts, though it has no chairs. He sees a man … wrapping a cloth around a painting.

Young. Perhaps mid twenties. Dark hair and eyes. Slender but muscular. A scar across his left cheek.

He sees the other man, putting handfuls of silver cutlery into a big black bag.

About the same age. Red hair, light eyes. Approximately ten stone, slightly under average height, walks with a limp, left leg.

He can’t see the woman. But then she walks across his sightline, coming directly toward him. Sherlock sees her face. He gasps. Then he turns and creeps away, tight to the wall, back down the hallway toward the vestibule. When he gets halfway, he flattens himself against the paneling, twenty feet from the thieves, trying not to make any noise as his chest heaves as though it will burst.

It was Victoria Rathbone!

She has the same strawberry blonde hair kept the identical way, the same pretty face. She looks the right age. She is even wearing the dress she had on yesterday when Sherlock saw her cautiously leaving her father’s Belgravia mansion. There is no doubt: Victoria Rathbone is working with the thieves! She helped them rob her father! She was in on it all along. She allowed herself to be abducted … twice.

Then another thought comes into his mind and he whispers it out loud.

“If Victoria is down here … who is in that room two floors up?”

The light was still on.

He moves farther along the wall, tight against it, heading for the entrance of the corridor that leads to the staircase. He shouldn’t go up there. Don’t be rash. He has what he needs. Leave this instant. Return to town and send for the police and the Times reporter. Sherlock has the criminals, evidence that Captain Waller is involved, his whereabouts known … he has even found the wayward Victoria. It will be a sensation. He will gain Irene’s admiration, secure his future, and shame that pig, Lestrade, all in one swoop.

But there is unfinished business. Who is upstairs?

When he comes to the corridor opening, he stops. He imagines himself turning here, slipping down the passageway, then into the big room with the beautiful carved staircase with the images of Narcissus on the railings, gliding up the steps, reaching the first landing, and ascending to the next floor. He could head through that maze, find the lighted room, enter it, and discover …

It is so tempting.

Don’t be greedy. Do this right.

“It was a stroke of luck, you know, Victoria, our finding you,” he hears one of the men say in the other room.

“For all of us, it was.”

“Can you get us that carton in the hall?”

One of the men advances toward the grand hall. The boy retreats silently and in seconds is in the vestibule and then outside, into the bracing air under the gentle snowfall, looking through the vertical iron spikes of the fence, trying not to rush, remembering how the maze twists and turns. Even though he went right through the tall hedges on his way in, he feels as though he knows the maze well enough now to move along its pathways. He can get off the grounds in a flash – he just has to think about the puzzle for a moment.

But something makes him glance back. The big, arched door: he has left it open just a crack. The cold air must be rushing in, air that anyone in the hall would feel – he hears footsteps advancing toward it from the inside. He has no choice – he can’t stand here remembering how to negotiate the maze.

He scrambles over the fence, lands with a thump on the other side, and races onto the grounds. In a few seconds, he is across the tall grass and into the maze. But the loud smack of his landing must have alerted the animals because almost instantly they are at his heels. He puts his head back and runs. Violins play in his head again. He turns left, right, left, through a hedge, down a passageway, down another, and finally, sees the dim glow of the lights of St. Neots in the sky in the distance above the wall. He makes for it with everything he has, his lungs burning. He executes a leap and reaches for the fence and its spears on top. He misses … and falls to the ground.

Sherlock Holmes twists around to face his fate. This thing, this beast – as black as the night it seems, invisible except for its glowing yellow eyes, will maul him and eat him as surely as one of its ancestors consumed that terrible Grimwood lord who murdered his wife.

But the night is silent and no beast haunts it.

Sherlock gets up and rushes for the wall, climbs it in an instant, and gets over the fence. When he is safe, he looks back up at the house to see that dim light upstairs. There it is. A shadow moves in the room. He turns and scurries back down the hill toward the town in the darkness, stumbling and falling, his heart pumping, terror and excitement filling his every pore.

He intends to avoid the town and head for his spot by the riverbanks near the paper mill. He can’t let the locals or authorities see him sneaking around in the night. Sherlock must hide until the sun rises.

But when he is far out on the marshy fields that separate the town from Grimwood’s hill, he hears voices coming across the open space. He stops and listens for a moment, but can’t make anything out, just people conversing in low tones, moving, it seems, directly toward the mansion. Either they are poor, or are trying to be secretive because they aren’t carrying lanterns.

Sherlock steps quietly out of their path and lies down on the cold, snowy ground, curling up to be both undetectable and warm. The black sky has grown cloudier and he lies very still. Snowflakes land on his face, tickling his nose.