Vanishing Girl

the aisle.

The locomotive gives a heave and decelerates rapidly. The guard almost falls on his face. Sherlock slips into the aisle and races for the door. Can someone actually survive a leap from a moving train?

“You! Young lad!” shouts the guard, so loudly that everyone hears him above the engine chugs and clacking iron wheels.

Arriving at the door, Sherlock seizes the belt on the window and pulls it. The window falls open. He feels the cold air on his face.

“Don’t do it, lad!” shouts the guard. He stops no more than six feet away.

The train rocks violently as its brakes squeal.

Sherlock looks outside. The ground is still a blur. He doubts he can struggle through the opening without the guard seizing him.

They must be about to enter Potters Bar. That’s why they are slowing. It is still countryside out there. As Holmes hesitates, the guard takes a step toward him. The boy looks out again. He can’t be caught.

He puts his hand through the open window, draws the bolt on the outside, and snaps the door open. Now the freezing air hits him like a gale.

The guard lunges.

Sherlock jumps.

Ten minutes later he is still lying where he landed, but alive. He wouldn’t be, if the train had not slowed before he leapt. Still, he’s feeling sore all over as he lies in the tall grass, reluctant to move in case someone spots him. But he must get up. He rises and staggers about for a moment and then gets control of his legs. He knocks the dirt off his frock coat and carefully fixes his hair. There don’t appear to be any broken bones. He can see Potters Bar just up ahead. No one is approaching. When he thinks of it, he figures that such a passenger as he isn’t worth an investigation. The train will just move on from the village. He will simply be in the guard’s report. He starts to walk. It is still many, many miles to St. Neots.

Sherlock avoids Potters Bar, makes a wide detour through a field, and then returns to the rail line on the village’s north side. Stick to the tracks, he tells himself, that’s how to find your way. He wonders if there is any chance there’s another train on the Great Northern line this evening. Not likely. He shivers and wraps his coat tighter. He can see his breath in the dimming light.

He passes many farms and a village but it takes about an hour before he sees the lights of a substantial place in the oncoming dusk.

“Finally,” he sighs as he slows his pace and steps up onto the slippery black tracks. He holds his arms out from his sides to walk the rails like Blondin balances high above the crowds. But then he hears something in the distance behind him, growing louder. It is blowing and puffing, sounding its horn.

Another train. And it’s coming right at him.

He jumps off the rails and starts to run. This has to be the last locomotive going north tonight. In seconds it is upon him, then flying past just yards away, screaming, fouling the air, the wind of its wake almost knocking him down.

He is pumping his arms now, running with everything he has. He must make it to the town before the train leaves – he cannot waste more precious time – the last carriage grows smaller out in front of him, and for an instant he feels like stopping.

Then the train begins slowing to enter the station.

Sherlock picks up his pace again, his long legs advancing as fast as he can make them go. He runs past the rear of the first buildings – a green grocer shop, a tobacconist’s – his eyes never leaving the train coming to a halt in the station up ahead. He can see a few passengers disembarking, others heading for their carriages, a porter hastily pushing a barrow heaped with luggage. On he goes, his breathing growing heavier. The porter deposits his load; the passengers sit; two guards close the doors. The train will pull out immediately. He notices the guards signaling the conductor, turning their backs, returning to the stationmaster’s office. Sherlock is straining with all he has, his arms whipping the crisp, coal-contaminated air.

He draws within one hundred yards … fifty. Iron fences line both sides of the tracks and the rails descend below the platforms. As he enters the station, the platforms are above his head. No one will look for someone running up the tracks to illegally board the train. Not at this last moment.

One of the guards turns to take a final look at the engine. A fireman is stoking it with coal. Smoke puffs out in rancid clouds and the locomotive begins to move, easing out of the station.

Sherlock sprints … and leaps up onto the platform in a single bound. He races past the rumbling luggage carriages and seizes a door in third class. The train jerks and speeds up. He hangs on, fumbles for the latch, and shoves out the bolt. The door swings open and he with it, clinging for dear life.

The guard turns back again, as if he senses that something has happened. He looks along the platform and through the windows of the receding carriages, but doesn’t see anything. Then he notices that a door appears slightly open. How is that possible? It slams shut. He shakes his head, shrugs, and the train whistles away. When he gets to the office he sends a telegraph up the line, just in case.

Every face in the third-class carriage turns when the boy suddenly smashes through the door and lands inside on the fly. Sherlock offers his audience a weak smile. He pulls the belt and drops the door window down, reaches out, locks the bolt on the outside, and shoves the window back up. But when he turns again, all eyes are still on him.

“Stopped for tea,” he says.

There are no seats available near the door, so he makes his way down the aisle until he comes to an empty bench. He slides in and slouches even lower this time. The train speeds up. Outside, the countryside is becoming black, lit dimly by occasional candles glowing in farmhouses.

A lady in a flower-patterned bonnet in the seat in front of him is talking to her young daughter.

“I will warn you here, child, don’t look out when we passes St. Neots.”

“Why, Mamma?”

“There’s bad luck there, I’ve heard tell. We’ll talk no more of it.”

Sherlock also wants to ask why, but he must keep to himself. Really no need to know anyway: superstition is rife in the working classes.

A short distance farther up the line, at the Stevenage stop, the train idles for an extended period. They weren’t this long at other places. There appears to be some activity in the supervisor’s office too, which is in plain view through windows. Several train employees are conversing. Sherlock’s foot thrums on the floor. How will he get past the ticket inspector at the little St. Neots station? He drops his gaze down and concentrates. It’s just moments later that he feels the carriage moving.

Several passengers have boarded. Once the locomotive is moving at high speed again, he is curious to see who they may be. When he looks, it makes his heart pound. The railway guard, the very one who had tried to stop him from jumping off the first train, is standing in the aisle holding a telegram, examining the door at the other end of the carriage! The man must have disembarked at the Stevenage station, perhaps had some business there, and for some reason, has been asked to check the doors.

Sherlock sits bolt upright, actually lifts slightly out of his seat, staring at the guard in disbelief. He realizes his mistake too late, for the man turns to look down the carriage in the direction of the other door, and sees him. The guard’s eyes bulge. Sherlock reads his lips clearly.

“You!”

This time the railway employee comes at him with great speed, stumbling forward, falling into passengers and benches, apologizing as he goes. If Sherlock is caught for twice illegally boarding a train, they will surely jail him.

That’s where he’ll be when the kidnappers murder Victoria Rathbone.

Holmes jumps to his feet.

He can’t make it to the door this time. It is too far away. And besides, they can’t be near a village yet. A leap will kill him. He glances up and notices the round opening to the ventilation can again, one of many that provide air