Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [23]
‘Well, I’m stumped,’ Matty said. ‘Let’s just call it a day, shall we?’
‘Let’s not. There has to be a solution.’ He let his mind go blank, hoping that the various pieces of the puzzle that were whirling around his head would settle down into some meaningful pattern. Gradually they did. ‘Right – here’s what we’ll do. You’re going to sneak around the vats to the far side and make a hole in one of them.’
‘With what?’
‘Have you got a knife?’
Matty reached into a pocket and took one out. The blade was folded into the handle. ‘I got this.’
‘Use it to carve out a hole in the wooden slats that make up the side of the furthest vat, or put it between two of the slats and prise them apart. Do it without being seen.’
‘All right. Assuming I’m not seen, what happens then?’
‘The stuff inside the vat starts leaking out. When they spot it, they’ll call everyone over to help seal the hole and mop up the stuff on the floor.’
‘So they’re all distracted for a while. That’s when we take the boxes out and throw them in the nearest vat?’
‘That’s right. Except that we need to find a faster way of doing it. You remember when we came in, we saw a wooden chute leaning up against the wall?’
‘Yeah,’ Matty said dubiously.
‘That’s probably what they use to get the cow hides into the vats. I can’t imagine they hoist them up on their shoulders and throw them in one by one – that would be hard, and very messy. I think they just slide them down the chute. While they’re distracted, I’ll get the chute and run it down from here to the nearest vat. We can slide the boxes down.’
‘It’s a plan,’ Matty said. ‘Not sure it’s a good one, but I can’t think of anything better.’
‘Right – let’s go.’
Sherlock moved to the door and opened it a crack. The eye-watering, nose-grating sewer smell of the tannery intensified. Gazing out, he noticed that the room was still deserted, although he could hear voices. Whatever Josh Harkness was doing with his workers, it was taking time.
He turned his head to see Matty. ‘All right – go!’ he hissed.
Matty squeezed past him and through the door. Moving quietly, he made his way along the raised wooden flooring to a set of steps that led down into the central area of the room, past another of the wooden chutes. He slipped across the room, moving from vat to vat, using each as cover, until he vanished from Sherlock’s view.
The next few minutes were nerve-racking. Sherlock waited, hardly able to breathe, not knowing whether Matty was actually making a hole in the furthest vat. Maybe he was desperately trying to carve his way through wood that was too hard for his blade? Maybe he had been caught by Harkness or one of his men?
A movement off to one side attracted his attention. One of the men with the long hooked poles was coming around the side of a vat. He stopped and started to roll a cigarette one-handed. Sherlock’s gaze flicked across to where he’d seen Matty vanish, but the boy wasn’t visible. The worker didn’t look as if an intruder had just been discovered, so Sherlock had to assume that he was still safe.
Just as he was about to look away, he saw a head peeping out from behind one of the vats. It was Matty. From his position, Matty couldn’t see the man with the hooked pole, but if he moved forward a few feet he would be in the man’s line of sight. Sherlock desperately willed Matty to look his