Andrew Lane - Red Leech

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 its own station in New York. They have a line heading to Virginia. That’s where they’re taking Matty. Must be.”

“We need to find your father and tell him.”

“There’s no time,” she said. “If they’re heading for the station then we need to get there now and intercept them, try to get Matty back. We can’t wait for Pa. I’ll leave a note.”

She moved quickly towards a table, opened a drawer and took out a roll of bank notes. “Pa left this here so it wouldn’t get taken from his pocket on the streets. Not that anyone would have tried, but he’s always careful. Anyway, we might need it.”

She scribbled a note to her father on one of the letter-headed sheets from the writing desk, then together they ran downstairs and exited the hotel. A cab was just depositing a passenger at the hotel; Virginia jumped in and pulled Sherlock after her. Virginia called up to the driver; Sherlock couldn’t hear what she said, but the cab set off at a fast trot.

“I promised him double the fare if he gets us to the station in ten minutes,” she said, grinning.

Sherlock and Virginia held on tight as the cab clattered through the streets of New York. Twice, potholes in the road caught the wheels, throwing them together, but they quickly drew apart.

By the time the cab pulled up outside the massive, pillared frontage of what had to be the train station, Sherlock was sore from the bouncing journey. While Virginia paid the driver, he raced into the station.

It was a scene of controlled chaos, with people heading in all directions across a massive marble hall. At the opposite side of the hall a series of arches led to what Sherlock assumed were the platforms. Boards hung on hooks announced the destinations of the trains, and the stops along the way. Even as he watched, some boards were being taken down and others put up.

Sherlock ran along the line of arches, checking all the signs. After a few moments he became aware that Virginia was running beside him.

Chicago, Delaware, Baltimore... It occurred to Sherlock with a sickening lurch that Virginia was a state, but the destinations on the boards were towns. Back in England he would have known that Southampton, for instance, was in Hampshire, but here, in America, he had no idea which state contained which towns.

“There!" Virginia called. “Richmond — it’s the state capital of Virginia. Track 29. Pennsylvania Line.”

She led the way through an arch, and Sherlock followed. A guard in an impressive blue uniform and peaked cap scowled at Sherlock’s ripped jacket and cap and tried to stop them, but Virginia ran past him. He tried to grab Sherlock’s arm, but Sherlock pushed him out of the way.

They were running along the platform now, beside the carriages of a seemingly endless train. The engine at the front was invisible around a curve. Unlike in British stations, where the platforms were raised to the same level as the doors at either ends of the carriages, here the platform was lower and steps led up to each door.

Sherlock was scanning the windows as they ran, looking for Matty’s face, but it was the burned, scarred face of John Wilkes Booth that he saw first. He pulled Virginia to a halt, then back along the carriage to the end.

“We don’t have much time,” he gasped.

Virginia looked in both directions along the train. Apart from a small group of people boarding further up, there was nobody who might help. Even the ticket collector who had tried to grab them just now had vanished — possibly to fetch the police.

“We need to find a guard on the train,” she said, and started climbing up the steps. “He can stop the train from going.”

Sherlock could only follow her up the steps. He wasn’t sure she’d thought this through, but then again he wasn’t sure that he had any better ideas.

They found themselves inside the carriage. An aisle ran down the centre, between wooden seats covered with upholstered cloth.

Halfway down, in facing seats, were Ives, Berle, John Wilkes Booth and, what was, judging by the shape of the back of his head, Matty. The men were talking intensely and Sherlock ducked down between two seats before they saw him.

Virginia looked around for the guard. Sherlock’s heart flipped in his chest when he heard a whistle blow outside; a sharp, shrill burst of sound.

The next thing that happened was that the train began to move.

Sherlock’s initial instinct was to run back to the door and jump off the train. He grabbed Virginia’s arm and pulled her towards him, but she resisted.

“We need to get off!" he hissed. “We haven’t got tickets, and we’re leaving your father behind!"

“We can get tickets from the guard on the train,” she replied, “or tell him that our pa has the tickets and he’s in another compartment. And we can telegraph back to Pa when we stop and tell him where we are. The important thing is that we don’t lose the men who have Matty. If we do, we’ve lost them forever. We need to track them until they settle in another hotel, or a house, or something.”

“But—" he started.

“Trust me! This is my country, I understand how it works. I’ve made train journeys by myself before. We’ll be OK.”

Sherlock subsided. They’d ended up where they were by accident, but they ought to make the best of it, now they were there. Getting off the train and going back to the hotel would waste all the effort they’d gone to in getting to America so far.