Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [59]
Sherlock let his body drop, as if he’d run out of energy. Grivens, taken off-guard, let him drop. Instead of falling to his knees, Sherlock shifted his hands from the steward’s fingers to his leather belt. Grabbing the belt, he straightened up again, pushing as hard with his legs and pulling as hard with his arms as he could. Grivens’s feet left the walkway as Sherlock lifted him up by his belt. Already twisted around, the weight of Grivens’s body carried him sideways over the edge of the barrier. Sherlock expected him to let go then, scrabbling for purchase on the barrier, but he kept his grip on Sherlock’s throat, pulling him over as well.
Until his sleeve caught in one of the pounding cams. It caught the material and pulled. Grivens screamed – a short, despairing cry of fear and rage – as his body was jerked off the walkway and into the machinery. Sherlock let go of the man’s belt and brought his arms up, knocking the steward’s hands away from his throat and allowing him to take a lifesaving breath as the steward’s body was pulled away wrapping itself around the rotating axle and catching in the cams as they hammered up and down.
The engine didn’t even falter, but Sherlock had to turn away before he saw more than a fraction of what happened to Grivens’s body as it was pulled into the rotating metal.
Sherlock bent over, hands on his knees, trying to pull as much of the hot air into his lungs as possible. For a few moments he thought he was going to suffocate, as his body demanded more oxygen than he could give it, but gradually his breathing subsided. When his vision wasn’t red and blurred any more, and when he could breathe without his chest hurting, he straightened up and looked around.
There was no sign of Grivens. The black grease on the axle and the cams looked redder and shiner than it had before, but that was all.
Eventually Sherlock climbed down the ladder and crossed the engine room, looking for a way out. He wasn’t sure if the door he eventually found was the one he’d entered through or another one, but it didn’t matter. Outside, it was cool and the air was fresh. It was like leaving Hell and entering Heaven.
People stared at him as he eventually emerged on deck, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get back to his cabin, wash the grime and the grease off his body and change his clothes. He would put the ones he was wearing into the laundry. Maybe the laundresses on board could clean them, maybe they couldn’t. In the end, he just didn’t care any more.
Amyus Crowe was in their cabin when Sherlock pushed the door open. ‘I think someone’s been in here, searchin’,’ he said, then turned and saw the state of Sherlock’s face and clothes. ‘My God, what happened?’
‘The people we’re following to New York – they spread some money around the port,’ Sherlock replied wearily. ‘There’s probably one man on every ship leaving this week who’s been promised money if they kill the three of us.’
‘At least one,’ Crowe said. ‘But we can worry ’bout that later. Who was it?’
‘One of the stewards.’
‘An’ where is he now?’
‘Let’s just say they’re going to be one member of staff down at dinner,’ Sherlock said.
He told Crowe the whole story while he washed and changed clothes. The big man listened silently the whole time. When Sherlock started repeating himself, Crowe raised his hand.
‘I think I understand the full story,’ he said. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Tired, dehydrated and sore.’
‘That’s understandable, but how do you feel?’
Sherlock glanced at him in puzzlement. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean a man’s died, an’ you were the cause. I’ve seen men spiral into a morass of guilt an’ sadness after an event like that.’
Sherlock thought for a minute. Yes, a man had died, and Sherlock was responsible, but it wasn’t the first. Baron Maupertuis’s thug Clem had almost certainly drowned when he fell off Matthew Arnatt’s boat, but that had happened because Matty had hit him on the back of the head with a metal boathook. Maupertuis’s right-hand man Mr Surd had been stung to death