The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [96]
When the alarm was raised, every crew member within shouting distance responded at the run, leaving several tills unguarded. Holmes helped himself and made for the lower decks.
A sad story to a likely face (about a bill collector waiting on the docks, to a man whose nose bloomed with the veins of strong drink) and one of his stolen bills into a meaty palm, and Holmes became an honorary member of the crew off-loading Dutch goods and passenger rubbish.
He pulled on his newly acquired jacket and a cap he fervently hoped was not inhabited, then set a large bag of post onto his shoulder and joined the trail of laden men, trudging along the gangway, down the pier, and past the watcher. Few passengers trickled off the steamer now, and the feet beneath the tan coat—which were all Holmes could see of him around the burden—moved restlessly. Holmes moved down the boards to deliver his sack to His Majesty’s waiting lorry, then kept walking, along the front to a warehouse. There he found a place where he could watch the watcher.
The man waited long after the last passenger came off, but he did not, Holmes was interested to see, then go on board and conduct a search. This could mean he had no authority to do so, or that he had been told not to draw attention to himself. On the other hand, it could indicate an excess of confidence in his own invisibility and his quarry’s lack of skill.
Eventually, the man abandoned his position and strode down the pier. Holmes eyed the few remaining taxis, but the man did not turn towards them, nor towards the nearby parked motorcars. Instead, he went into the hotel directly across the way.
Checking out? Having a meal? Reluctantly, Holmes settled into his corner, but in the end, the man was back out on the street in four minutes, and walked directly to a car parked on the front. Holmes readied himself for a sprint to the taxis, but to his surprise, the man walked around to the passenger side, tossed in his hat and coat, and got in. There was a flash of white: a newspaper.
He was waiting for the next steamer.
Holmes stayed in the shadows.
Half an hour later, a boat drew in, but the man merely leant forward to see where it was docking, then went back to his paper.
He was not waiting for just any steamer, but specifically the next one from Holland. Which would be the boat from Amsterdam, arriving in—Holmes checked his pocket-watch—approximately two and a half hours. Adding the forty minutes the man had waited before abandoning his watch the last time, that gave a tired and hungry detective nearly three hours in which to assemble the materials he required.
Holmes turned and went into the town.
He returned two and a quarter hours later, stomach filled, beard trimmed, wearing a clean shirt, carrying the tools he needed to break into the watcher’s motorcar.
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