Vanishing Girl

doors. Sherlock steps toward it. Victoria stirs in the bed. He stops.

“Rotting royals from Rotten Row … rule …” she mutters, rolling her Rs carefully.

Sherlock stares at her, breathless. Her eyes are closed. She smiles, turns onto her side, and drifts off again. It strikes him that she looks older than fourteen.

He peers into the wardrobe and a curious sight greets him. Beautiful, silk dresses hang on one half of the rack, humble cotton and linen ones on the other. What is this about? He moves to the writing desk and sees two stacks of papers piled beside an inkwell and pen.

“Enter by back door,” reads a sentence across the top of the first page in the first stack, in what Sherlock is certain is a woman’s flowery handwriting. “Kitchen to left downstairs (maids there or on upper floor), dining room to right upstairs on ground floor.” He turns to the next page. “Constable painting, third on dining-room wall on right, is most valuable; Turner behind Lord’s chair is next, the safe is in the lord’s den, first floor behind the watercolor, key in his desk. Lady’s bedroom is on second storey, first door on left. Leave it alone. Captain’s orders.”

Holding the papers up to the light, he can see the mark of the Fourdrinier Brothers.

She was giving the thieves instructions for the robbing of her own home. She must truly despise her father … he has nothing to do with her, rarely speaks to her. The ingenious captain recruited her to commit the crime.

Victoria stirs again.

“Blimey,” she says in a completely different voice, “the ‘ouse is loaded, mates.”

Why is she talking like that? At first he wonders if she may sometimes play at being an amateur actress, that accents might be a hobby of hers. But then something dawns on him. She will need to take on a new name and personality when she gets to America. It makes perfect sense; she will have to become someone else.

He turns to the other stack of papers. He can tell, by the fact that they have been handled more, that these notes were written earlier.

“Pronounce the Rs with a roll of the tongue,” reads the first line. “Remember, the pitch of her voice is higher than mine,” states another. He scans down the page and flips to the next. “Upper class ladies are never alone,” says a line written atop that sheet. “Her father will seldom look at me,” reads the next line. “I will be expected to hold my teacup with the small finger extended … practice French … keep walking with a book balanced on my head.”

What does this mean? Sherlock turns to the woman in the bed. He quickly casts his mind back over everything he has learned: in St. Neots when he first came here, outside the Rathbone mansion, in the dining room and Lady Rathbone’s bedroom, in Portsmouth, and now back here again, especially in this room.

What does this –?

“Eliza!”

The man’s shout startles Sherlock and nearly makes him faint.

They are awake and calling her!

The woman stirs, moans, and then sits up in bed, looking toward the door.

Sherlock drops like a swatted fly and lands as gently as he can on the floor. In an instant, he has silently shuffled under the bed.

“Eliza Shaw! Rise and shine! America awaits!”

Is that her new name for her new life?

The door swings open.

“Robert Self!” Sherlock hears her shriek. “Clear out of me room, you cad!” Then she giggles.

“Of course, Miss Rathbone. Now get thee into thy frock, wench, and let us fly to the land of opportunity and wanton behavior.”

“Then leave my boudoir, Sir Robert … and I shall,” she coos.

He hears her rise, sees her bare feet pad across the floor to the wardrobe.

Sherlock is trapped in the bedroom. She will surely see him. Have I come this far to lose everything? With the police on their way. I should have stayed outside.

Victoria hums happily as she slides the dresses along the rack. She finds one and begins to disrobe. Sherlock has to escape. Now. He glances frantically around the room.

“Eliza?”

It’s the dark-haired man with the scar again and this time his voice is serious. It has a suspicious tone.

“I am half-clothed, Robert … come in.”

She goes to the door with a little laugh.

“Did you leave this open a crack?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought you always closed the door tightly.”

“I do … to keep you animals at bay. You might turn into black tigers in the night.”

“I am not joking, Eliza, your entrance was ajar.”

Sherlock spots a little door of some sort, about two feet high, all the way across the room near the wardrobe. He slides out from under the bed, slithers on his stomach and reaches it. There’s a small handle. He opens it quietly and slips inside. He can still hear them talking.

“Are you sure?”

Sherlock is coiled up into a ball in the tight confines holding his breath, but when he glances around, he observes that within six feet this narrow area opens up into a wider tunnel. There is a little hole in the wall near him and he notices that he can see through it back into the bedroom. He is in a secret passageway.

“Look under the bed!” he hears the woman exclaim.

Sherlock starts to wriggle, moves along the six feet of narrow space and sees that he will be able to stand in the wider part. In an instant he is walking along it. He is between the walls.

“No one there,” says the man in the distance. “What about in here?”

Sherlock hears him fumbling at the door to the passageway. The boy is near a corner. He turns around it and stops, holding his breath.

“Nothin’.”

“You are imagining things, Robert.”

“But I –”

“An hour or two and we’re gone. You two are the professionals. Stay calm, remember?”

“I suppose I could be wrong. I must be getting itchy to go. It’s time to do what I have to do upstairs.”

The passageway door closes and Sherlock lets out his breath. The man’s last words are ominous. They were spoken in deadly earnest. It is time to do what I have to do upstairs. What does he HAVE to do? Eliminate a problem before they flee? One they can’t leave behind? Sherlock has to get out of this tunnel without going back the way he came … and then get to that upper room. Foul play of the worst kind may be at hand. Who indeed, is up there? Sherlock’s mind is racing over everything he has seen and heard in the last few minutes.

For a while, it seems as though he may be trapped. He scurries along the passageway and it goes on forever, twisting and turning through the strange house. Every so often he notices holes in the walls and when he glances through them, sees into other rooms. He also finds a tight little staircase going straight up. Does the young woman downstairs go upstairs this way? And if so, for what purpose? He is tempted to ascend. If his sense of direction isn’t betraying him, he is directly beneath the room two floors up. But he can’t go up these stairs and take the chance of getting lost. He keeps moving through the tunnel. He seems to be going in circles in a maze as complex as the one on the grounds. But it finally comes to an end and narrows and shortens again. He gets down on his hands and knees, struggles through another six-foot stretch and slowly opens the short door he finds at the end. He emerges into a den.

There are many dusty, cobwebbed bookshelves in the wood-paneled room. There seems to be no one about. Sherlock scoots across to the outer door and opens it just a crack. He sees the grand staircase rising about fifty feet away and the dark-haired man with the scar rushing to its foot, about to ascend. He carries a scarf in his hand. What is that for? To bind or suffocate his victim? The thief stops. He seems to think of