Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [66]
They were interrupted by a commotion among the passengers at the front of the ship. Land had been sighted!
Sherlock rushed to look. The trip had been long enough that he’d almost forgotten what it was like to walk on a surface that didn’t move under his feet.
America was a dark shape on the horizon that, over the course of several hours, resolved itself into a craggy line of hills and cliffs topped with trees. Strangely, it didn’t look much different from the landscape of southern England, but there was something in the air, some indefinable scent, that suggested they were indeed somewhere else.
From there the ship turned so that it was heading down towards New York with the coastline on its starboard side. Despite the fact that there were still several hours to go before reaching port, some of the passengers rushed off to pack their bags.
The last meal before they arrived was a party, with special courses and a celebration cake, along with crates of champagne. Sherlock ate sparingly, and left as soon as he could in order to get some sleep before arrival. He had a feeling he was going to need it.
And then they were arriving in New York harbour. Despite his intentions, Sherlock stood out on deck with everyone else, watching the various small islands slide past them. The ship moved carefully, cautiously, under the control of the pilot – the local expert seaman who had joined the ship from a small boat that had come up alongside it.
‘Complex area,’ Amyus Crowe said from beside Sherlock. ‘One of the most intricate harbours in the world. There’s three separate bodies of water meet here – the Atlantic Ocean, the Hudson River and the Long Island Sound. Add that to the fifty-odd islands in the vicinity, along with the thirty-odd rivers, creeks an’ streams apart from the Hudson that empty out here, an’ you get a very complicated system of tides an’ currents.’
‘What do we do now?’ Sherlock asked.
‘First thing I got to do is make contact with the authorities. We’re goin’ to need help in this business, an’ I owe it to them to tell them I’m back. There’s men around this city that owe me some favours, an’ I intend callin’ in those favours, see if anyone remembers seeing young Matty and his captors, for a start. Your brother should have already telegraphed them to let them know we’re comin’, so I’m expectin’ to be met at the dockside. And then we find out when the SS Great Eastern docked, as-sumin’ it already has. If not, we wait for it. If it’s already here then we track down where three men, one of them a mental invalid, along with a child, went. We can find them, I’m sure of it.’ There was something hard in his voice, and when Sherlock glanced up it was as if Crowe’s face was carved out of some heavy stone. ‘An’ when we do find them, they will wish they had never been born.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Disembarkation at New York was a chaotic affair. Everyone was trying to get down the gangplank at the same time with their luggage, and the number of passengers suddenly seemed to have doubled, with everyone from steerage suddenly appearing on deck and blinking at the bright sunlight. Eventually, however, all the passengers ended up in a large warehouse-type building, where lines formed and people were called forward to a row of desks where immigration officials in uniforms and with serious, humourless faces checked everyone’s documents. Sherlock could make out hundreds of voices talking in as many different accents, and mentions of final destinations like Chicago, Pennsylvania, Boston, Virginia and Baltimore.
Sherlock caught sight of Rufus Stone in a different queue. The violinist had his case slung over his shoulder. Apart from that he seemed to have precious little in the way of luggage. He turned and caught sight of Sherlock, and winked. Sherlock