Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [69]
And someone was following him.
He became aware of it after about half an hour of wandering. The same brown bowler hat kept turning up in the crowd behind him. He recognized it because it had a distinctive green band around the crown. He made a point of checking the crowds for other hats like that, but there was only one and it was always behind him.
He tried going into a shop and looking around at the various ‘notions’ – washing boards, soap, pegs and suchlike – that were on display, but when he came out the man in the brown bowler hat was loitering on a corner, reading a newspaper that he’d obviously bought from one of the street boys. Sherlock then tried ducking down a rubbish-strewn alley to a parallel street, but somehow the man in the brown bowler hat guessed what he’d done and ran down another alley, so that when Sherlock looked behind him again the man was still there. Sherlock couldn’t see the man’s face, but he was bulky and he walked with a roll of his shoulders, as if he’d just come off a ship that had been gently moving under his feet and he wasn’t used to the feel of solid ground.
Sherlock’s mind raced. He didn’t know whether the man had picked him up at the hotel or just seen him in the street and started following. If he’d just seen Sherlock in the street then the last thing Sherlock wanted to do was to lead him back to the hotel where Amyus and Virginia Crowe were staying. He had to get rid of the follower somehow. No, he thought suddenly, he needed to reverse the situation; follow the follower to see where he was based. Because Matty might be held there as well.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
He ducked into another of the general purpose stores. This one seemed to have a fair selection of clothes – jackets, caps and trousers. Estimating that his follower was going to stay outside for a while, Sherlock quickly picked out a flat cap and a jacket and noticed with relief that the shop had another exit – on to a side street. He took his purchases to the counter, where the man looked him up and down and said:
‘You know, a kid like you ought to think ’bout buyin’ a sling. We just got a new batch in. Are you interested?’
‘A sling?’ The word stumped Sherlock for a moment. Was a sling some local term that he ought to know about? Then he remembered, thinking back to Bible study at Deepdene School. Hadn’t David used a sling to kill Goliath in the First Book of Samuel? It was some kind of weapon that you could use to throw stones accurately and with force.
All the boys around here are carryin’ them,’ the man added.
‘How much?’ Sherlock asked.
The price didn’t add much to the cost of the clothes, so Sherlock agreed. If possessing a sling helped him blend in then all the better. After he’d slipped the jacket and cap on he examined it as the man wrapped his own jacket – the one the follower would recognize and be looking for – in brown paper for him to take away. The sling was a simple pouch of leather which would hold a stone, with leather thongs on either side. One thong was designed to be tied around the wrist; the other looked like you held it, whirled the sling around and then released it, letting the stone fly off.
‘You’ll need some ammunition,’ the man said, handing Sherlock the parcel containing his old jacket. ‘I’ll give you a bag of ball bearin’s for free.’
Sherlock paid with the money that Amyus Crowe had given him. He slipped the sling and the ball bearings into a pocket, taking the brown paper parcel tied up with string. He pulled the cap low on his head and left the shop at a fast walk through the side exit, trying to put some distance between himself and the man in the brown bowler hat. When he could see a corner coming up ahead, he accelerated his pace even more.
Heading around the corner, he called to the nearest paperboy.
‘How much for all the papers?’
The kid looked like he couldn’t believe his luck. ‘Ten cents a copy,’ he