The Baker Street Boys: The Case of the Disappearing Detective

by Anthony Read

  The steamboat that Wiggins had noticed was pulling out and steaming away fast downstream. In the stern stood the two Fenians, grinning as they looked back towards the bridge. At the wheel was a gaunt figure Wiggins recognized as Professor Moriarty, wearing a white yachting cap and a grim smile of satisfaction. The other, smaller, boat was still moored under the bridge. The solitary man was sitting upright in its centre, gagged and tied up with rope. He turned his head, and Wiggins saw with horror that it was Sherlock Holmes.

  In a few seconds, the Boys were on the bridge, looking down at the river and the bow of the boat, about fifteen feet below.

  “Hang on, Mr Holmes!” Wiggins shouted, “We’re coming!”

  “Yeah, but how d’we get down?” Sparrow asked.

  “Jump!” said Gertie, clambering onto the parapet.

  “I can’t swim,” Wiggins admitted.

  “Nor me,” wailed Sparrow and Shiner in unison.

  “I can,” said Gertie, launching herself into the air.

  She landed with a splash, struck out swiftly for the boat and hauled herself aboard.

  “Don’t fret, Mr Holmes!” she said, pulling the gag from his mouth. “The Baker Street Boys is here. Soon have you untied.”

  “Never mind about me,” Mr Holmes told her. “You must deal with that first.”

  He turned his eyes upwards. Gertie followed his gaze, and saw a bundle of sticks of dynamite tied to a girder on the underside of the bridge. A fuse dangled from it, sizzling and sparking – it had already burned dangerously low.

  “Can you climb to it?” Mr Holmes demanded.

  “Me, sir? I can climb anythin’,” she answered, and in an instant was shinning up the latticework of the bridge with all the agility of a monkey. As Gertie approached the bundle of dynamite, Wiggins appeared and started clambering awkwardly down the side of the bridge.

  “Pull the fuse out!” he yelled at her.

  “That’s what I am doin’!” she shouted back.

  Gertie yanked the fuse free, and threw it into the river, where it fizzled briefly and went out.

  In the silence that followed, they heard a train whistle, a puffing and hissing, and then a heavy rumble as the royal train passed over their heads. The Queen was safely on her way to London.

  Sherlock Holmes looked up and gave them a grateful smile. “Well done,” he said. “Very well done, my Boys.”

  Inspector Lestrade, Beaver, Queenie, Rosie and Dr Watson were waiting for the rescuers in the station office when they returned with Mr Holmes, who seemed none the worse for his ordeal.

  “Holmes!” Dr Watson burst out, with some emotion. “Are you all right?”

  “Never better, my dear fellow. Thanks to my splendid Irregulars.”

  “Yes, indeed. They have been truly splendid.”

  “The whole country owes them a great debt of gratitude,” the Stationmaster boomed. “I shall make it my business to see that their service is properly recognized.”

  “I fear that may not be,” Mr Holmes replied. “They shall certainly be rewarded, but this whole affair must remain a closely guarded secret. Her Majesty must never know of the plot to murder her.”

  “Quite so,” Dr Watson agreed. “It would break her heart.”

  “And the British public would be alarmed to learn how close the villains came to succeeding,” Holmes continued.

  “Not to mention how they managed to outsmart our greatest detective,” Lestrade added, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  “And Scotland Yard,” Mr Holmes responded, with a cool smile.

  “And the Pinkerton Detective Agency, I have to admit,” Judd said ruefully. “Let’s face it, gentlemen, the kids are the only ones who got it right.”

  “Even though we did have you down as a villain,” Wiggins said, grinning.

  “Well, I guess I can’t blame you, the way I look,” the big American said, fingering the scar on his face. “Though sometimes it helps to look tough when you’re dealing with crooks and gangsters.”

  “Speaking of which,” Dr Watson said, “how did Professor Moriarty come to be involved in all this?”

  “An excellent question, Watson. Wiggins, my young friend,” Mr Holmes said, turning to him. “You appear to have been one step ahead of the rest of us in this business. Do you have any ideas?”

  Wiggins thought for a moment then said, “The way I see it is this: the Professor is Mr Holmes’s sworn enemy – Mr Holmes has beat him in the past, right?”

  “Right,” Mr Holmes affirmed. “Go on.”

  “So he wants to get his own back. Like, revenge. He hears that these Fenian geezers are plotting to kill the Queen … he might even have put ’em up to it.”

  “A good point. Excellent. And?”

  “He reckons if he can trap Mr Holmes, instead of just killing him – what would be too easy for a clever bloke like the Professor – he can make it look like he was in on the plot. And that way, he won’t have just done him in, he’ll have ruined his good name as well. Everybody’d think he’d gone wrong, and remember him as a bad egg.”

  “Bravo, Wiggins!” Sherlock Holmes cried. “I could not have put it better myself.”

  “Well, I never!” Dr Watson was amazed.

  “Fiendish! Truly fiendish!” Lestrade exclaimed.

  Wiggins grinned from ear to ear, and the other Boys gazed at him in admiration.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Beaver, frowning heavily, “is why they had that funny door. Why couldn’t they have had just a good lock and key?”

  “Wiggins?” Mr Holmes asked.

  Wiggins looked perplexed, and shook his head.

  “I mean,” Beaver went on, “it was bound to get noticed.”

  “Precisely,” said Mr Holmes, tilting his head enquiringly at Wiggins.

  After a moment Wiggins’s face cleared.

  “Oh, I get it,” he said. “Bait!”

  “Well done, Wiggins. You’re going to make a fine detective one day. It was indeed bait for the trap. Moriarty knew I would get to hear of the strange door – indeed, he made sure I did by having one of his associates engage me to follow Mr Judd in the belief that he was up to no good. Moriarty guessed that I would be drawn to that door to discover its purpose and who was using it. Once they had me in that alleyway, they were able to overpower me with a liberal dose of chloroform.”

  “The brutes!” Dr Watson cried.

  “Better than cracking my skull with a blow to the head.”

  “But how did you manage to leave a trail, if you was knocked out?” Rosie asked.

  “Ah, the matches!” Mr Holmes smiled at her. “You spotted them.”

  “I did,” she said proudly. “And I smelled the chlorywhatsit, but I didn’t know what it was then.”

  “Well done. Very well done. When I first caught a whiff of the drug, I was able to resist its effects for a little while by holding my breath. Long enough to spill a box-full of matches from my tray as they were dragging me inside.”

  “Good job you did,” Wiggins told him. “Else we wouldn’t have known where you was.”

  “I knew I could rely on my Irregulars,” Mr Holmes replied.

  “I guess I have to take the blame for leading you into his trap,” Judd admitted. “I was so intent on tracking those two Fenians, I never thought there might be another side to it.”

  “No need to reproach yourself on that score, my friend,” Mr Holmes responded generously. “Moriarty’s fiendish cunning has outwitted better men than you.”

  “Well, he sure made a fool outta me.”

  “And indeed out of me. I must confess that I stepped right into his snare. He is certainly a worthy opponent, but he failed to include one important factor in his calculations: my brilliant assistants.”

  “Hurrah!” the Stationmaster cried. “Hurrah for the Baker Street Boys!”

  And the adults in the room all cheered loudly.

  A moment later, there was a knock at the door and the Sergeant entered. “Good new
s!” he announced. “The villains’ steamboat has been intercepted at the next lock down the river. My officers have apprehended two men, and taken them into custody.”

  “Congratulations, sir!” the Stationmaster called out.

  “Well done, Sergeant,” said Lestrade.

  Sherlock Holmes held up his hand. “Two men, you say?”

  “Yes, sir. The Fenians, undoubtedly.”

  “And the third man?” Mr Holmes asked.

  “There was no third man aboard the launch, sir. Only the two Fenians.”

  “I see.” Mr Holmes nodded calmly, the ghost of a smile flickering across his lips. “So,” he continued, “he lives to fight another day. Well, we shall see. For the moment, anyway, we may celebrate another victory.”

  The Boys travelled back to London in the luxury of a first class carriage, with a large hamper of delicious refreshments to eat and drink on the way. Apart from Shiner, that is, who rode on the footplate of the engine, along with the driver and fireman, and was even allowed to pull levers and turn wheels and sound the train’s whistle as they passed through towns and villages. It was a journey he wished would never end.

  Later, after a sumptuous feast provided by Mr Holmes, they were fitted out with new clothes, which Queenie said were far too good for every day and must be kept for special occasions.

  The first special occasion was that very evening, when they were taken to a West End variety theatre, where they sat in the best seats to watch the show. They all enjoyed every minute of it, laughing and clapping and cheering, and joining in the songs. But Sparrow enjoyed it most of all, for the star of the show, at the top of the bill, was his hero, Little Tich.

  After so much excitement, some of the Boys found it hard to sleep that night. Queenie woke up sometime in the small hours, and left her bed to get a drink of water from the big stone jar that they kept near the stove. She found Beaver sitting on his own at the table, with a furrowed brow, writing something by the light of a candle. The tip of his tongue poked out of the side of his mouth and he was concentrating so hard that he did not hear her until she spoke. When she did, he jumped violently.

  “Beaver?” she asked. “What you doin’?”

  He looked up a little sheepishly. “Thought I’d try and write down all what’s happened these last couple of days. Like Dr Watson does for Mr Holmes.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Queenie said. “Have you got a name for it?”

  Beaver sucked his pencil for a minute, thinking hard. Then he grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I’ll call it ‘The Case of the Disappearing Detective’.”

  BAKER STREET

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, the famous detective, was invented in 1887 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote no fewer than sixty stories about him. Sir Arthur gave Holmes and his friend Dr John Watson rooms at number 221b Baker Street, London, which has since become one of the best-known addresses in the whole world.

  The Baker Street Boys – or the Baker Street Irregulars, as Sherlock Holmes sometimes called them – were mentioned in the very first story and in three others. Their leader, Wiggins, was the only one to be given a name by Conan Doyle. The other children have all been created by Anthony Read for this series of original adventures.

  WINDSOR ROYAL STATION

  WINDSOR STATION was rebuilt in 1897 by the Great Western Railway Company to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, when she celebrated sixty years on the throne of Great Britain. It is now a shopping centre known as Windsor Royal Station, but trains still run from it, and still cross the bridge over the River Thames that is featured in this story. A full-size replica of the railway engine that pulled Queen Victoria’s royal train stands in the middle of the station.

  Anthony Read studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and was an actor manager at the age of eighteen. He worked in advertising, journalism and publishing and as a television producer before becoming a full-time writer. Anthony has more than two hundred screen credits to his name, for programmes that include Sherlock Holmes, The Professionals and Doctor Who. He has also written non-fiction, and won the Wingate Literary Prize for Kristallnacht

  The Baker Street Boys is based on Anthony’s original television series for children, broadcast by the BBC in the 1980s, for which he won the Writers’ Guild TV Award. The series was inspired by references to the “Baker Street Irregulars”, a group of young crime-solvers who helped the detective Sherlock Holmes in the classic stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

  First published 2005 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2005 Anthony Read

  Illustrations © 2005 David Frankland

  The right of Anthony Read and David Frankland to be identified as author and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

  a catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-4063-4218-5 (ePub)

  www.walker.co.uk