Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [70]
Sherlock estimated that he had just over forty newspapers left, and even if it was fifty the total price would only be five dollars. ‘I’ll give you five dollars for the lot,’ he said.
‘Done!’ the kid cried. He handed over the pile of newspapers, and Sherlock gave him five dollar bills. As the kid ran off, waving the money in the faces of his friends and laughing, Sherlock started to sell newspapers.
‘Read all about it!’ he cried in the best approximation of a New York accent he could manage. He knew it was probably mangled by having been listening to Amyus Crowe and Virginia for so long, but as long as it wasn’t an English accent it probably didn’t matter that much.‘Terrible murder at –’ his mind raced ‘– Five Points! Police baffled! More murders expected!’
The other paperboys checked their headlines, wondering where he’d got that from, but he’d already got three customers taking newspapers off him when the man in the brown bowler hat came around the corner.
It was Ives – the man from the house in Godalming. The blond-haired, close-cropped man with the gun.
Sherlock tried to scrunch himself down, letting his shoulders drop and hunching himself, as though he was tired and hadn’t eaten properly for a while. It worked. Ives’s gaze passed over Sherlock, ignoring him in the same way a man might ignore a gas lamp or a horse trough. He stopped, scanning the street ahead, presumably looking to see where Sherlock had gone. When he couldn’t locate him, Ives cursed under his breath. He stood there uncertainly for a moment, barely six feet away from the boy he was searching for, then abruptly turned around and walked away.
Sherlock threw the papers at the feet of the nearest paperboy. ‘Here, sell these,’ he said.
‘That’s the Sun,’ the kid said. ‘I only sell the Chronicle.’
‘Expand your product range,’ Sherlock replied, and sped off after Ives.
Ives headed off at a fast walk, head down and hands in his pockets. He looked dejected. Perhaps whoever his employer was would be angry at the fact that he’d lost Sherlock. The fact that he didn’t head back to the Jellabee Hotel meant that he probably didn’t know where Sherlock and the other two were staying.
The sun was slipping down in the sky now, barely clearing the tops of the buildings and casting an orange light over everything. The sun shone directly into Sherlock’s eyes, making him squint. It was hard to track where Ives went. They must have covered five blocks or more before Ives turned off the street and headed into a boarding house.
Sherlock looked around uncertainly. He didn’t know if this was Five Points or not, but it certainly didn’t look as appealing as the area where the Jellabee Hotel was located, despite the presence of a dilapidated clapboard church with a wonky steeple at the end of the street. It still stank, but he wasn’t sure if it was the smell of turpentine distilleries and slaughterhouses or just the general smell of decay and sewage that seemed to hang over New York like an invisible fog. This place looked dangerous. The people hanging around on street corners weren’t paperboys any more, they were men in ripped shirts and dirty trousers who watched everyone going past with hard eyes. Somewhere, a man was playing a mournful trumpet. The instrument was out of tune, but so much else around there was out of tune as well that it seemed to fit.
Sherlock needed to blend in even more than he had earlier. He ducked into an alley and rubbed his cap in the dirt, then ripped one of the sleeves of his jacket so that the lining was exposed.
That should do the trick. He looked like he belonged now.
Heading back to the street, limping slightly to make his gait appear different, he walked down to the boarding house. The door was open, and he glanced inside.
There was no lobby, as there was back in the Jellabee. If he walked into the hall he would just have a choice of doors or the bare stairs. It wasn’t like he could go around knocking on doors looking for Matty.