Vanishing Girl by Shane Peacock Read Free Book Online

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, locksthe 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 theymay 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 to the stifling, smoky carriages on hot days. It is a good four feet up, a small circle narrower than his shoulders. Even Pierce, the little “snakesman” whom Malefactor employs for cracking houses, would have problems wriggling up through there. Certainly no grown man could make it. The boyrecalls Pierce giving a demonstration to the Irregulars once, which he observed from a distance. “Sherlock,” his mother used to laugh as she watched him get ready for bed, “you are the thinnest thing in London!”
    The guard is within a few strides.
    Sherlock