The Baker Street Boys - The Case of the Disappearing Detective (7 page)

“Drop him down the well,” the Professor hissed. “They’ll never find him there.”

Then Sparrow saw a black hole in front of him, so deep it seemed to have no bottom. The two men from the storeroom appeared from the shadows, seized Sparrow and started to drag him towards the hole…

And then Sparrow woke up, trembling from his bad dream. He was almost relieved to find he was still inside the packing case. It was pitch black and totally silent, and he was very frightened. But he had been so tired after all the events of the day that he had fallen asleep. Sparrow had no idea how long he had slept, but the empty feeling in his stomach suggested it had been some time. He would still have been sleeping, but something had disturbed him. He became aware that someone was moving around the room.

Suddenly alert, Sparrow listened hard. Was it the Professor back again? Or the big man? What should he do? If he called out, he might be in even greater danger, but at least he would be rescued from the packing case. It was a difficult decision. He held his breath in fear. Then someone called out “Ow!” and someone else made a shushing noise.

“Sorry,” the first voice said. “I hurt my toe.”

Sparrow could hardly believe his ears. It was Beaver!

“Oi!” he shouted, as loudly as he could.

There was a scream, and a bump as something was knocked over.

“There’s somebody here!” That was Queenie’s voice.

“Can’t see nobody,” came Gertie’s voice. “Must be invisible.”

“It’s a ghost!” That was Rosie.

“No, it ain’t!” Sparrow shouted. “It’s me!”

“Sparrow?” Wiggins called.

“Yeah! Get me out of here!”

“Where are you?”

“Over here! In the big box!”

A flicker of light penetrated a crack in the packing case, as Wiggins shone his lantern over it.

“What’s he doin’ in there?” Shiner asked.

Beaver lifted off the smaller packing case, which was trapping Sparrow in his hiding place. Wiggins opened the lid, and a very grateful Sparrow popped up like a jack-in-the-box, a grin on his face that seemed to stretch from one ear to the other.

“Am I pleased to see you lot!” he exclaimed happily.

In the light of the lantern, the others grinned back at him – all except Beaver, who was standing holding the smaller packing case and looking puzzled.

“What’s that ticking noise?” he asked.

Sparrow suddenly realized what he had been sleeping with. “It’s a bomb!” he yelled. “There’s a bomb in there!”

Beaver froze. So did all the others.

“Can’t you hear it?” asked Sparrow.

Wiggins nodded, signalled to the others to stand back, and gingerly opened the lid. Inside was an assortment of bottles and boxes, books and bags, and a large brass alarm clock with two bells on top, ticking merrily. As Wiggins picked it up, the alarm went off with a deafening clangour. Rosie and Gertie screamed. Shiner, Queenie and Beaver dived for cover. Sparrow dropped back into his packing case.

Wiggins laughed. “There’s your bomb!” he said, switching off the alarm.

Sparrow emerged from the packing case again, looking sheepish. “Well, how was I to know? It was tickin’.”

“Sure and isn’t that what clocks do?” Gertie teased.

“Never you mind, Sparrow,” Queenie comforted him, helping him out of the case and brushing wood shavings from his hair and clothes. “You was very brave, comin’ here on your own.”

“Very stupid, more like,” said Wiggins sternly.

“I wanted to know if the door worked like I thought,” Sparrow replied.

“And it did,” Wiggins continued. “What d’you think would have happened if we hadn’t found you?”

“Dunno.” Sparrow shrugged, trying not to show how frightened he had been. “You took your time gettin’ here, didn’t you?”

“We didn’t know where you was,” Beaver said defensively.

“If it hadn’t been for Shiner, we’d never have known,” Queenie added. “You should say thank you to him.”

Sparrow grunted at Shiner, and then said grudgingly, “Ta. Ta very much.”

“S’all right,” Shiner said, gloating slightly.

“We never even knew you wasn’t there,” said Beaver, “when we got back to HQ.”

“Shiner was asleep,” Rosie explained. “So he didn’t tell us you’d gone out. We thought you was still at the theatre.”

“We all went to bed,” Gertie said, stifling a yawn at the thought of sleep.

“How d’you find out, then?”

“Queenie stayed up, waitin’ for you to come home,” Beaver told him. “Like she always does.”

Queenie gave a little cough, to cover her embarrassment. “I weren’t sleepy,” she said.

“And when you hadn’t come back by one o’clock, she started worryin’.”

“Like she always does,” Shiner chipped in, with a wicked grin.

“That’s quite enough of that, my lad,” Queenie scolded him. She went on to say how she had woken up Shiner, to ask him if he had seen Sparrow.

“And I told her how you’d got the sack,” Shiner said gleefully. “And all that stuff you was tellin’ me about the trick locks and fake hinges and the door openin’ back to front and everythin’.”

“Yeah, what you didn’t believe,” Sparrow retorted.

“It didn’t make much sense to
me
at first,” said Wiggins. “Particularly the way Shiner told it. But I managed to work it out. And here we are.”

“Lucky for you,” Queenie said. “What’s been goin’ on? Who put you in there?”

“Nobody,” Sparrow said. “I was hidin’. There was these two geezers—”

“Two geezers?” Shiner interrupted. “What if they come back? Let’s get out of here!”

“No, they won’t,” Sparrow said. “When they left, they said they wasn’t never coming back no more.”

“Well in that case,” said Wiggins, “let’s have a bit more light on the scene.” He struck a match and lit the two oil lamps. “There, that’s better. Now we can see what we’re doing.”

They all looked around. Sparrow let out a yelp.

“Oh, it’s gone!”

“What’s gone?” Wiggins asked.

“The trunk. A big cabin trunk, it was. Stood right there. And there was somebody shut inside it.”

“Who?”

“Dunno.” I could hear him breathin’, but I didn’t see him—”

He stopped as the truth suddenly dawned.

“I reckon it was Mr Holmes!”

There was a loud gasp from all the Boys.

“Nah,” Shiner piped up. “Not Mr Holmes. It couldn’t have been.”

“Oh, yes, it could,” Beaver said, holding up something he had found in the smaller packing case. At first sight, it looked like some sort of small, furry animal, but when Beaver put it up to his chin, the others could see what it was.

“It’s a false beard!” Gertie exclaimed. “It don’t suit you at all.”

“The false beard Mr Holmes was wearing!” said Wiggins.

“And look,” Beaver went on. He lifted a tray of matchboxes and an old, floppy hat out of the packing case. “The rest of his disguise. He
was
here.”

“And now they’ve took him away,” Sparrow cried.

“Where to?”

“Dunno. They never said.” Sparrow was on the verge of tears.

“Whoa! Steady on, now!” Wiggins squeezed Sparrow’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

“Wiggins is right,” Beaver reassured him. “Weren’t nothin’ you could do about it.”

Wiggins tipped his hat back on his head and looked thoughtful. “Now then,” he told Sparrow. “I want you to take it slowly and try to tell me everything you saw and heard.”

“And smelt,” Rosie chipped in.

“Smelt?” Wiggins asked, puzzled.

“Yeah. It’s here again – that same smell as before.”

Wiggins and the others all sniffed the air, curiously.

“You’re right, Rosie,” he said. “It is.”

Sparrow nodded vigorously. “Yeah!” he exclaimed. “There
was
a smell. Nearly knocked me out, it did. I heard this other geezer pull a cork out of a bottle…”

“Other geezer?” Wiggins asked.

“Oh, yeah. I didn’t tell you yet, did I? There was this other bloke, like the boss. They called him ‘Perfesser’.”

Wiggins’s eyes narrowed. “Professor? Ha!” He nodded seriously, in his best Sherlock Holmes manner. “Moriarty. The game’s afoot!”

The others looked baffled.

“What game?” Gertie asked.

“Didn’t you hear? Football,” Shiner replied.

“No, no,” Wiggins said impatiently. “It’s what Mr Holmes says when things start to hot up.”

“What if they come back?” Queenie asked, nervously.

“They won’t,” said Wiggins.

“You don’t know where they’ve gone. It might not be far.”

“No,” Sparrow said, remembering. “This Perfesser geezer, he told the others to take everythin’ they needed, ’cos they wouldn’t be comin’ back here. He said they could leave the rest, ’cos it wouldn’t matter after tomorrow.”

Wiggins nodded again. “That means whatever they’re gonna do, they’re gonna do tomorrow. So we ain’t got much time to find out what it is and put a stop to it.”

“And rescue Mr Holmes,” Queenie reminded him.

“Yes, yes, of course. Now then, young Sparrow, just you sit down here and tell us everything you can remember.”

So Sparrow did, trying to recall every word the Professor had said. It wasn’t easy, because he hadn’t heard very clearly, and most of what he had heard hadn’t made much sense. But he did his best, and Wiggins listened hard, his forehead furrowed and his eyes half closed in concentration.

When Sparrow had finished, Wiggins still sat deep in thought, murmuring the key words to himself. Then he stood up and began pacing the room, stopping every now and then to poke about for anything that might give him a clue. Among the tools scattered on the workbench he found a piece of cotton wool, about the size of his hand. He picked it up, sniffed at it, then called Rosie over.

“That it?” he asked her.

She raised the cotton wool to her nose, but quickly lowered it again, blinking rapidly as she nodded. “Cor,” she said, coughing. “Fair makes your eyes water, don’t it? What is it?”

“I reckon that’s chloroform,” Wiggins informed her. “What they use in the hospital to put you to sleep.”

“They must have used that on Mr Holmes!” Sparrow cried.

“Yeah, I ’spect that’s how they captured him,” Gertie agreed, her eyes wide.

“They’d never have took him prisoner no other way,” Beaver added. “Not Mr Holmes.”

Wiggins continued to pace to and fro, deeply puzzled. “You’re right,” he muttered. “But why put him to sleep? If they wanted to do him in, why didn’t they just bash him over the head?

“If we knew where they’d took him, we might be able to tell what they’re gonna do,” Queenie suggested helpfully.

“Bristol!” Shiner shouted. “Don’t you remember? That big bloke got off the Bristol Express.”

“Well done, Shiner,” Queenie congratulated him. “But, what’s at Bristol?”

“Ships,” said Gertie. “That’s where me dad and me landed when we come over from Ireland! They got docks right in the middle of the city.”

“Yeah!” Sparrow called out excitedly. “I remember now, I heard the Perfesser say somethin’ about ‘over the water’ and ‘on the boat’.”

“Now we’re gettin’ somewhere,” Beaver said.

Wiggins stopped pacing and turned back to Sparrow. “But we still don’t know what they’re plotting. Think hard, now. Is there anything else they said?”

Sparrow screwed up his face with the effort of remembering. “There was somethin’ about meetin’ a widow,” he said. “And a train…”

“Yes, yes,” Wiggins encouraged him. “Go on.”

“P’raps there’s somethin’ in that box what might give us a clue,” Beaver joined in. “Or at least help Sparrow to remember.” He started unpacking the contents of the smaller packing case and laying everything out on the floor.

Sparrow looked at each item and shook his head. When everything was laid out, he looked puzzled. “There’s somethin’ missin’,” he said.

“What?” Wiggins asked him.

“Dunno. When I looked in that box, there weren’t all this stuff. They must have put this lot in when they was clearin’ up. But there was somethin’ else…” Suddenly his face cleared. “I know. There was a bundle of sort of cardboard tubes, all tied together.”

“How big? How big were the tubes?” Wiggins asked.

“Oh, ’bout an inch across, and ’bout this long.” He held his hands about nine inches apart. “I thought they might have had cigars in ’em, but they was a bit too big. Then I thought p’raps they was fireworks, but they was wrapped very plain. And there was some cord with ’em, like wick for an oil lamp.”

“Like this?” Wiggins picked up a short piece of cord.

“Yeah, that’s it. Only there was a lot more. All coiled up, it was.”

Wiggins looked very serious. He fingered the cord and sniffed at it, examining it carefully. Then he reached for a match, struck it, and held it against the end of the cord. The cord caught alight. It did not flame, but fizzed and sparked. The Boys watched, fascinated, as it burned down. Wiggins licked his thumb and forefinger and pinched out the spark.

“That ain’t lamp wick,” he announced solemnly. “That’s a fuse. And them cardboard tubes you saw, Sparrow, they wasn’t fireworks. They was sticks of dynamite.”

Six pale faces stared at him, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

“
That’s
your bomb,” he told them. “And wherever them villains have gone, they’ve took it with ’em.”