Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [51]
‘I think so.’
Stone gave some more examples, and they talked for a while, but the conversation trailed off into silence and Sherlock found himself gazing out of the compartment window. Towns came and went, fields flashed past, and gradually the landscape began to change from the neatness that Sherlock associated with the south of England to a more rugged, overgrown look. Even the cows began to look different – shaggy and brown, with horns that curved out in front of their heads, rather than black and white and short-haired. Once or twice they crossed bridges over large rivers, and Sherlock found himself remembering the wooden trestle bridge that he and Virginia and Matty had walked across when they were in America, escaping from Duke Balthassar.
Virginia. Even just thinking about her name sent a spasm through his heart. He couldn’t deny that he felt something strong about her that he didn’t feel for anyone else, but he couldn’t characterize it. He didn’t know what the feeling was, or what it meant, and its intensity scared him. He wasn’t used to the idea of someone else being part of his life. He had always been a loner, at school and at home. He hated feeling dependent on someone, but that was the way he was feeling now. He couldn’t imagine a life without Virginia in it, in some way.
The train stopped in Newcastle to take on fresh coal and water. The three of them took the opportunity to stretch their legs on the platform and buy some more food that they could eat from paper bags. This time it was apples wrapped in pastry and cooked until they were piping hot. Steam rose from them just like miniature versions of the steam rising from the train’s engine.
After a while Sherlock headed back to the compartment, even though the train wouldn’t be leaving for a few minutes. There was only so much walking up and down the platform that he could manage. The idea of exercise just for the sake of exercise had never appealed to him. He slumped in the upholstered seat, staring at the opposite wall. Train journeys, he decided, were excruciatingly boring. Sea journeys took longer, but there was more to look at, more to do. Ships had libraries, games rooms, restaurants and the whole entertaining routine of shipboard life. Trains had nothing.
Staring at the wall, counting off the minutes before they left Newcastle, he gradually became aware that he was being watched. It wasn’t anything supernatural that led to that conclusion, no prickling of the neck or shivers down the spine. It was something simpler, more prosaic: a pink and red patch at the edge of his vision that refused to move. A face. Two blue eyes aimed unblinkingly at Sherlock.
Without giving away the fact that he had noticed the watcher by moving his head suddenly, he tried to pick up whatever details he could, but the person’s body was partially hidden behind a pile of crates on a trolley.
When he’d squeezed about as much information out of the scene as he could without making it obvious that he had spotted the watcher, he decided to look properly. With no warning he quickly glanced to his right. Straight into the eyes of a man he thought he recognized.
Sherlock’s heart skipped a beat.
He was the image of Mr Kyte, a man who had been introduced to Sherlock as the actor–manager of a theatre company in Whitechapel but had turned out to be an agent of the Paradol Chamber, and part of a plot to assassinate