Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [72]
This was madness. Whatever message Matty was trying to convey, it wasn’t getting through.
Sherlock was just about to indicate again that he didn’t understand when one of the men crossed the room and grabbed hold of Matty’s shoulder, dragging him away from the window. He didn’t look outside, so Sherlock assumed he had grabbed the boy because he wanted Matty to go with them, not because he’d seen him communicating with someone outside. Sherlock looked away and tried to look inconspicuous. When he looked back, the room was empty. The men had gone, taking Matty with them.
Sherlock rushed down the ladder to the ground and raced across the road towards the boarding house. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he had to do something.
He was too late. While he and Matty had been trying to communicate, one of the men must have come down to get a cab, while another had taken their luggage downstairs. By the time Sherlock had crossed the road they were already climbing into the cab. Sherlock got one last look at Matty’s frightened face before the horses were whipped up and the cab drove off.
He looked around for another cab, but the street was empty of anything apart from people.
He felt a blanket of dark despair falling over him.
No. No time for that. He raced back towards the hotel as fast as he could, retracing the route he’d taken and unconsciously memorized, knowing that he had the hotel’s letterheaded paper in his pocket if he got lost. His mind was working as fast as his legs, trying to work out what Matty’s last message had been. A clue, obviously. An answer to the question Sherlock had asked. But what?
Charades, perhaps? Was Matty trying to spell out the name of the place he was going in the form of syllables? As the stores, hotels and street corners flashed past, and as the air whistled in Sherlock’s throat and burned in his lungs, he tried to decipher the clues.
Writing. Pencil? Pen? Words? Letters?
The windowsill. Did he mean the sill itself, or the stone it was made from?
And the church. As his feet pounded on the pavement and as he pushed past slower pedestrians, Sherlock tried to remember what was on top of the church. A spire, obviously. And on top of the spire was . . .
A weathervane, moving to show the direction of the wind.
And suddenly it all fell into place. Pen-sill-vane. There was a place in America, somewhere nearby called Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Was that what Matty had been trying to convey?
But what about the other message – the two fingers, pointing at himself and Sherlock, then looking confused while holding up three fingers? What did that mean?
Two – that might mean ‘to’. ‘Pennsylvania to –’ where?
The Jellabee Hotel was in sight now. Sherlock’s muscles were screaming in pain, but somehow he kept on running.
Matty and Sherlock and a third thing, something missing. Virginia! It had to be Virginia. That was a place as well as a girl’s name!
‘Pennsylvania to Virginia. It still didn’t make much sense to Sherlock, but Amyus Crowe might be able to explain it.
He burst in through the hotel front door and pelted up the stairs, virtually collapsing against the door to the suite. He hit his fists against it. The door opened and he fell inside. Virginia was standing over him, looking startled.
‘Where’s your father?’ he gasped.
‘He’s not back yet. He must still be with the Pinkerton Agency.’
‘I’ve seen Matty. They’re taking him now.’ He was having to force the words out past his gasps for breath. ‘Matty got a message to me – “Pennsylvania to Virginia”. I think he was trying to tell me where they were taking him, but I don’t understand. Are they going to Pennsylvania or Virginia? Or both? They’re both places, right?’
Virginia shook her head. ‘It’s simpler than that. The Pennsylvania Railroad runs trains out of