Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [20]
He was in a small room that was empty of people but filled with boxes. Up against one wall was a wooden chute like a child’s slide, set on its end. The floor was about five feet below the edge of the windowsill – obviously built up a couple of feet from where the ground was. That made things easier. He lowered himself to the floorboards, turned and leaned out of the window. Matty was looking upward expectantly. When he saw Sherlock he extended his hand. Sherlock reached down and pulled him up. His friend was surprisingly heavy, and Sherlock felt the muscles in his back protesting, but he managed to haul the boy in through the window without causing himself permanent damage.
Together they moved past the boxes to where a door interrupted the wall. It was closed. Sherlock turned the knob and edged it open an inch.
Through the gap he saw a large room that occupied the centre of the building. A raised walkway ran around the edge of the room, with several doors leading off and a gap on the right that presumably led to the door to the street, but most of it was at the same level as the ground outside. In the middle of the room were four wooden vats, like the bottom halves of enormous barrels. Inside each one was a liquid. In two of the barrels the liquid was discoloured and lumpy, like soup, with bubbles rising slowly to the surface, but in the other two it was clearer, more like water.
The smell rising from the vats was so strong that Sherlock could swear he saw the air itself rippling above them.
‘I ain’t going to eat for a week now,’ Matty complained in a whisper.
‘Breathe through your nose,’ Sherlock suggested.
‘I am. What I need to do is breathe through my ears.’
There was no sign of Josh Harkness, but there were two other men in the room. They were moving from vat to vat, using wooden poles as long as their bodies to swirl the contents around. Each time they did so, the smell got momentarily worse.
‘I know those blokes,’ Matty said. ‘They go round town collecting cash for Harkness. They’re bad news.’
Sherlock looked at the various closed doors. One of them presumably sheltered Josh Harkness. He didn’t dare explore until he knew where the blackmailer was.
As the thought crossed his mind a door across the other side of the room opened and Harkness emerged. He wasn’t holding the letter any more.
‘Keep stirring them leathers,’ he yelled at the men by the vats. ‘That last batch came out patchy and baggy. I ain’t paying you to stand around doing nothing.’
‘It ain’t got nothin’ to do wiv us stirrin’ or not stirrin’, boss,’ one of the men yelled back. ‘It’s got to do with the quality of them skins. The cows you’re usin’ are’s old as my gran. Their skins are just as baggy an’ just as blotchy. You want better leathers, you get better skins for us.’
‘Don’t give me none of your lip!’ Harkness shouted. ‘If you think you can do it better, then you set up your own tannery! Until then, you work with whatever you’re given!’
The men shrugged, looked at each other and got back to stirring. Harkness glowered at them for a few moments, then stomped along the raised walkway to where some steps led down into the centre. He walked over to one of the vats and looked inside, having to stand on his toes to do so. The smell didn’t seem to bother him.
‘There’s not enough skins in here,’ he shouted. ‘Throw some more in.’
The two men headed over to an area hidden from Sherlock’s view by the vats. Harkness stomped across to join them. For a moment the room seemed empty.
Sherlock took his chance. He quickly and quietly raced out on to the wooden walkway and ran along it to the door from which Harkness had emerged moments before. Matty followed silently.
He got to the door, quickly opened it and