The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [56]
He found a copy of Thursday’s Times at a news stand near the tram stop, and tucked it under his arm as he trotted towards the approaching tram.
Forty minutes later, much jostled and aware that he was on edge, he forced himself to pause on the steps of the latest in a series of tram-cars and survey the street. There appeared to be no-one watching—no-one even standing still, at this time of day. Pedestrians and bicyclists wove along the streets and pavements, intent on their evening meal; the only stationary person in sight was a small boy hawking paper twists of warm peanuts.
Since the two men at the central station possessed three times the peanut-seller’s bulk and had shown no inclination for disguise, Holmes thought he was safe enough.
He made his way up the street to the train station, several stops from the town centre. A cautious survey of the platform was similarly reassuring: Either they (whoever they might be) were sanguine that he would appear in central Amsterdam, or their numbers were too limited to cover the outer reaches of the town.
Which might have been reassuring had it not been for the inner voice that whispered, They’re searching the coastland instead.
He bought a ticket for the next southerly train’s final stop; unfortunately, the train would not be here for an hour. An inn directly across the street had a promising-looking restaurant, but he would not sit in a well-lit room a stone’s throw from a station; instead, he walked back the way he had come, to a tiny hotel as neat as anything else he’d seen in this country. This place, unlike the larger hotels, required that he pay before he was given the key, although they, too, accepted without question his statement that his luggage would catch him up later that evening.
He was given a quiet room overlooking a row of gardens and clotheslines. He laid his hat and coat on the bed and dropped into a soft chair, stretching out his tired legs. After a time, he opened the paper.
During his tram-journeys, he’d scanned the agony columns and seen that his own message was there—“BEES may thrive in foreign lands …” He’d also noted the repetition of Russell’s, but that was as far as he’d got. Now, he went over the columns more closely, on the unlikely chance that he had missed a message placed by Mycroft at his most diabolically subtle. But there was nothing.
He let the paper collapse onto his knees, glowering down at the serried gardens. Mycroft was the cleverest man he knew, but it was stretching the bounds of credibility to think that his brother could have found him by deduction alone. He’d have had to know not only that they’d been in Wick, but why; then extrapolate that they would choose the path of least resistance because of Damian’s wounds; and after that, make a close enough analysis of winds and tides to plot a likely course over the waters to Holland. His brother was a genius, but he was not god-like. And for someone other than Mycroft to have done the calculations? Even Russell couldn’t have done it.
Ergo, whoever was responsible for those men had known where he was.
And none of his companions could have given his location away. Had it been Gordon or the doctor, the big Englishmen would have knocked on the VanderLowe front door, not stood for hours in a draughty train station.
No, the betrayal had been his own. And his only points of contact with the world had been the trunk call to Billy—whom he’d as soon mistrust as he would Russell—and the telegrams to Thurso and Wick.
It was true that the men had the look of Mycroft’s agents. Was it possible that he had mistaken their aggressive attitude? That their scrutiny was not due to hostile intent, but, in fact, desperation? Were they trying to keep him from some unseen threat?
Holmes stared at the darkening window, trying to construct an hypothesis to explain Mycroft’s having