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The motorcar was gone.
The old man in the tea stand informed him that the big man in the tan great-coat had gone into the hotel, then come out and left in a hurry, less than half an hour before. A telephone call, Holmes thought.
Another trail lost.
The delay in Harwich cost him five hours, and his residual wariness drove him to take a most indirect path to London. An eleven-hour trip from the Hook of Holland to Liverpool Street took nearer to twenty-four, landing him in town well after dark on Saturday at London Bridge station, which he judged to be nearly as unexpected for a traveller out of Holland as it was inconvenient. And to prove it, there were no large men lurking near the exits.
Nonetheless, things soon became very interesting, which was how he found himself in a walled-up window, twelve feet above the ground.
Because of the question about the safety of telephones-any organisation capable of manipulating Scotland Yard would have no trouble buying the services of telephone exchange operators-he had not tried to reach Billy beforehand. He set off from the London Bridge station on foot, keeping to the darker streets.
Even with all his senses at the alert, they nearly had him.
He was standing across the street from Billy’s house, wondering if the darkness of its windows and the lack of sound from within were possible on a Saturday night, when the blast of a constable’s whistle broke from a window over his head. One glance at the men who emerged from both ends of the street told him that, whistle or no, these were not the police-and then he was ru
Sherlock Holmes was unaccustomed to having difficulties making his way around London. He once knew intimately all the patterns and sensations of the city (although he had never much cared for the image of a spider web that the great romanticist Conan Doyle insisted on using) and in any neighbourhood within miles of the Palace, he knew the doors left ajar, the passageways that led nowhere, the stairways that gave onto rooftops, the opium dens full of men who would be blind for a trace of silver across their palms.
Then came the War, and the aerial bombing, and the inexorable changes in the city during the years since. He’d been retired for two decades now, and loath as he was to admit it, the speed with which life changed was growing ever faster. Added to eight months of absence from his home, it was making him feel like a man resuming a language once spoken fluently, whose nuances had grown rusty.
He did not care for the sensation, not in the least. And although the older parts of Southwark were little changed, even here his urban geography proved to be ever-so-slightly out of date, gracing a long-disused alleyway with builder’s rubbish, filling an easily prised window with brick. He was grateful the builders had taken the short-cut of bricking the hole in from within, which left just enough of a sill outside for a precarious perch.
Perhaps it was time to acknowledge that his city had passed to other hands.
A figure appeared at the end of the passageway; a torch-beam snapped on. The man saw the scaffolding and came to give it closer consideration, not thinking to do the same to the walls on the opposite side. Holmes kept absolutely still, willing the man to come closer, to stand below him-but then a second torch approached, and this man went to join his partner.
When the passageway was empty again, Holmes cautiously shifted until he was sitting on the ledge, his long legs dangling free. When his circulation was restored, he eyed the ghostly lines of the scaffold. Instead, he wormed his way around and climbed sideways, following a route that he had practiced under the tutelage of a cat-burglar, twenty-three years before. In five minutes, he was on the roof; in forty, when the first faint light of Sunday’s dawn was rising in the east, he was crossing Waterloo Bridge.
Not altogether shabby for a man of his years, working under outdated information.
Still, the day had proved sobering. He’d told Dr He
No, he would not play that card unless he had no other.
He was free, fit, and on home ground. He paused at the end of the bridge, looking upstream. As the light strengthened, he could see the Embankment path, and in the farther distance, Ben’s tower riding over the bulk of the Houses of Parliament and the brick monstrosity of New Scotland Yard. However, his eyes looked not at those centres of authority, but at the Underground entrance that stood, waiting.
Four stops up the Metropolitan Rail line to Baker Street. Half an hour to reassure himself that Russell had made it to Town, that she and the child were safe.
And if he did not appear? She would remain where she was as long as possible; when she did emerge, she would be even more cautious than usual.
He turned his back on the Metropolitan line. There was much to do before the funeral.
Chapter 48
Back at the bolt-hole, I found Goodman reading in front of a low-burning fire. He rose, stretching like a young whippet, and dropped the book onto the chaise longue.
“You look tired,” he observed.
“Very.”
“I, on the other hand, am rested and in need of air. I shall return.”
I started to protest, then decided against it. Even two or three hours of sleep would make all the difference to the day. And after all, no one in the city was looking for Robert Goodman: He was the one person among us who could walk with impunity among police constables and hard men alike, invisible in his i
I changed my protest to a nod, and reminded him to check his surroundings with care before he stepped into or out of the hidden entrance.
As I curled up on the sofa with the travelling rug, I wondered where in this almighty city Holmes might be hiding. I noticed my certainty, and smiled: I had not even questioned that he would be here.
Then the smile faded. If Mycroft lay cold in his coffin, who among us was safe?
When I woke, the coals were grey, the building was silent, and there was no sign of Goodman. I glanced at the clock, and saw to my surprise that it was nearly ten: I had slept almost five hours.
I took a cursory bath and dressed, and still no Goodman. As I took up the pen to write a note, telling him that I would be back shortly, I saw that the letter I had written to Holmes was not on the table. I had not been so heavily unconscious that I would not have heard him pass through, which meant that Goodman had taken it with him when he left.
Why?
I could think of no reason that did not make me uneasy. On the other hand, I could think of nothing Goodman had done or said to threaten betrayal. Perhaps he’d decided to deliver it himself-he knew where the funeral was. I shook off my apprehension, then walked the exit route nearly to its end before diverting into the adjoining building.
The surgeon’s offices might well shut down their telephones with close of business on Friday, but on the other side was a firm of solicitors, some of whom had been known to come in on a weekend. Fortunately, none of the desks were filled with a hard-working junior partner; equally fortunately, the telephone earpiece emitted a lively buzz. So I helped myself to a desk in one of the more impressive offices, dragged a London telephone directory onto the blotter, and phoned Lestrade.