Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [103]
‘Aye. I will.’ A corner of his mouth turned up. ‘I’ve always had a soft spot for Aggie. I’ll do whatever I can to get her out. But what about you?’
Now Sherlock did look at his watch.
Ten past one. He had less than an hour to make it back and convince Macfarlane that he could clear Aggie’s name.
‘I have to run,’ he said. ‘I need to be somewhere else in a hurry.’
And he did run. He ran all the way back to the house, to where Dunlow and Brough were waiting for him. Before he even got to the carriage he was shouting, ‘Quick! We need to get back!’
As he climbed into the carriage, which was already pulling away, Sherlock glanced back at the manor house. He thought he saw the butler staring at him from a downstairs window, but the carriage was jolting too much to be sure. As they drove away Sherlock couldn’t help thinking about Mrs Eglantine. Were all staff who ran households potential murderers?
He kept his watch in his hand as the carriage rattled through the streets, lanes and alleys of Edinburgh. His heart was pumping, and he could feel a pressure in his ears and temples. He wanted to jump out of the carriage and run, but that wasn’t logical. It wouldn’t have done any good. The carriage was already going faster than he could.
He hated waiting. He hated relying on other people. He wanted to be doing something.
He glanced out of the window for the thousandth time. Walls, windows, street signs and street lamps flashed past, blurring into an amorphous mass. He was sure Edinburgh was a wonderful place, but at the moment he hated it.
He realized that they were getting close when he started to see warehouses rather than ordinary houses go past. As they slowed to a halt he jumped out and sprinted towards the particular warehouse he recognized from earlier. Macfarlane’s base.
‘Kid,’ Dunlow shouted, ‘wait for us!’ Sherlock pelted full speed through the front door. Men standing guard tried to stop him, but he managed to evade their reaching hands. He left a wake of shouts and yells behind him as he ran onward through the dog-fighting room and through the room where the two men had been boxing.
‘I’ve done it!’ he cried as he sprinted into the room where Macfarlane held his court. He spotted Amyus Crowe, standing protectively next to Virginia, and Rufus Stone, and Matty. Their gazes intersected on him, amazed, as he skidded to a halt in front of Macfarlane’s dais. ‘I’ve done it!’ he repeated. ‘I know who killed Sir Benedict Ventham, and it wasn’t your sister! It was the butler. I don’t know why, but I know it was him.’
‘That’s good news,’ Macfarlane said. There was something grim about his voice, and his previous good humour had evaporated. ‘I owe you, laddie, as we agreed. The problem is, I’m not in a position to pay and you’re not in a position to collect.’
Sherlock was about to ask what he meant, to point out that they had a deal, but he suddenly realized that most of the eyes in the room weren’t looking at him or at Macfarlane, but were looking past him, towards the door. Already knowing what he was going to see, he turned round.
Ten men were standing along the wall, invisible to anyone looking into the room. Nine of them were pointing crossbows at Macfarlane and his men, and at Sherlock. The tenth man stood calmly a pace in front of the others. He was below average height, and had short hair brushed neatly across his forehead. His clothes were tailored to a perfect fit. He rested his hands on a black wooden cane, the point of which rested on the floor between his feet. The head of the cane was a golden skull. All of this Sherlock noticed in a flash, but it was the man’s face and hands that fixed his attention. There wasn’t a square inch of skin that didn’t have a name tattooed on it. From where he stood Sherlock could see ‘Alfred Whiting’, ‘Cpl Bill Cottingham’, ‘Winnie Thomas’ and ‘Paul Fallows’. They were all written in black, but