Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [80]
And the train was taking the curving branch, slowing down as it passed through a gap in a fence and headed towards a station that Sherlock could see up ahead.
Not a station, he realized.
A house. A large, white house. And beyond it, what looked like a series of fenced enclosures, walled areas and cages, like a private zoological exhibition.
He scrambled down the ladder as fast as he could and swung himself back into the carriage. The guard was moving down the central aisle, pushing past the uneasy passengers, calling, ‘Unscheduled stop. Please do not alight. This is an unscheduled stop.’
The train drew to a halt in a long chuff of escaping steam. It stopped alongside a long veranda that was attached to the back of the house.
A group of eight or nine men were standing on the veranda.
Any hope in Sherlock’s mind that they were police, or army, vanished when Berle and the other man stepped off the train, holding Virginia and Matty firmly by the arm, and joined them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The train was in chaos. Every single passenger appeared to be shouting at the guard, trying to find out why they had changed train lines, why they had stopped and where they were. The guard didn’t seem to be sure – he was reassuring people, but there was an expression on his face suggesting that he was out of his depth.
‘Unscheduled stop!’ he kept shouting. ‘Please do not disembark here.’
On the platform, the two men were still standing with Virginia and Matty. They were waiting for something. Waiting for him, he suspected. Off to one side he could see John Wilkes Booth. He was standing upright, but he was slowly rocking from side to side and his eyes weren’t tracking anything in particular. Probably drugged to keep him quiet.
One of the men – one he’d never seen before – moved his right hand out from behind his back momentarily. He was holding a gun.
Sherlock didn’t see that he had much choice, so he stepped from the train, down the short stairway to the veranda of the house.
Towards the back of the train he saw that the men who had been waiting on the platform were hauling boxes out of the last carriage. They looked like the boxes he’d seen in the garden of the house at Godalming – the ones where he thought he’d seen something moving inside. As the boxes were removed the men carried them away to a waiting cart. They seemed to be cautious about getting their fingers too close to the gaps between the slats. Two of them cursed as their box suddenly lurched and nearly fell to the ground, although Sherlock couldn’t see what had made its weight shift. Maybe something inside had moved.
Although he didn’t see any signal being given, the train began to heave itself away from the house with a deafening clanking as the metal connections between the carriages were pulled tight. It moved slowly at first, but increased in speed as it got further away.
‘Where’s Ives?’ Berle asked Sherlock, raising his voice above the noise of the train. Berle was holding Virginia’s arm with his right hand. With his left he was holding a carrying handle attached to a box about the size of a football.
‘He dropped off,’ Sherlock replied. He could feel his heart thudding within his chest but he tried to keep calm and project an appearance of control.
Virginia and Matty were both staring at him in concern. He looked at each of them in turn, seeking to reassure them that everything was going to be all right, but he didn’t believe that and he was sure they didn’t either.
‘You mean he fell off,’ Berle said. ‘You killed him!’
‘Ah can smell smoke,’ Booth said from behind them, with his eyes still closed. His voice was distant, dreamy.
‘Quiet!’ growled the third man, the one holding Matty, ‘or I’ll take a brandin’ iron to the other side of your face!’ He’d probably been subjected to Booth’s mania all the way from New York – perhaps all the way from Southampton – and was obviously getting towards his breaking point. Sherlock studied him for a moment. He’d not had a chance to see this man on the train. He was built like a boxer, and wore trousers