The daily routine of the voyage to New York was established within the first eighteen hours, as far as Sherlock could tell. Despite the apparently huge size of the ship, the areas where the passengers could walk were pretty restricted. Once a person had walked the deck, taken a meal, checked out the smoking room and the library and had a couple of conversations with other passengers about the unusually calm weather, all the options had been exhausted. Between meals most people seemed to spend their time either alone on deck, reading a book in a comfortable chair, or gathered in small groups at tables in the smoking room or the bar, playing bridge or whist. When the sun went down the ship’s stewards went around the ship turning the oil lamps on, but setting them as low as possible, and everyone headed for their cabins to sleep.
Sherlock had spent the first few hours watching his home country recede away from him until it was just a dark line on the horizon. He missed the moment when it actually vanished. He must have blinked, or turned away to watch something else, but one moment England was there and the next the ship was alone on an endless ocean, heading towards the sunset with the only thing to indicate they were moving being the white wake that stretched away behind them.
He and Amyus Crowe and Virginia had joined the rest of the passengers for dinner, but while Amyus Crowe talked easily with everyone around him Sherlock found that he had nothing to say. He ate his food and watched everyone else, wondering who they were, where they had come from and where they were going. Amyus Crowe had already taught him some of the ways one could tell a person’s occupation — the stains on their sleeves, the patterns of wear on their jackets, the calluses on their hands — and he was pretty sure that he’d already pegged one man as an accountant and two others as horse trainers.
Captain Charles Henry Evans Judkins was a tall man with an impressive set of white whiskers adorning his cheeks. His uniform was spotless, black, and perfectly pressed; decorated with bright gold braid; and he carried himself with an upright, military bearing. He was a hit with the ladies, who had all dressed in their finest clothes for the occasion, and he told many strange stories of his time working for the Cunard Line. The ones that impressed his audience the most were the ones concerning creatures such as whales and giant squid that were sometimes seen in the distance, and about the great storms that sometimes appeared on the horizon like black walls and which tossed ships about on the waves so much that at times the deck appeared to be as vertical as a cliff face. Judkins told these stories with a showman’s flair, pulling his attentive audience in with his words and giving the impression that sea travel was a dangerous activity which they would be lucky to survive, but Sherlock could tell that he was acting the part and providing a form of entertainment that would tinge the way the passengers saw the rest of the voyage. After all, if he told them it was as boring as a walk in the park then what stories would they have to tell to their friends when they disembarked?
One story in particular that he told caught Sherlock’s attention. Judkins had been talking about the various attempts to lay a cable across the Atlantic, from Ireland to Newfoundland, in order to allow the passage of telegraphic communication. If that could be done, then rather than a message taking well over a week to make it across from one country to the other in mail bags in the hold of a ship, information could be passed almost instantaneously via electrical pulses. The idea of telegraphic communication fascinated Sherlock — he could already see, after what had happened back in Amyus Crowe’s cottage, that the letters of the message would have to be replaced by codes that could easily be passed via pulses of electricity — long and short pulses, maybe, or just a simple “on” and “off” arrangement, but the idea of laying a cable some three thousand miles long, from one coast to another, across the bottom of the sea, without it breaking under the strain, made Sherlock’s mind boggle. Was there nothing that the mind of man could not accomplish, once it set itself to the task? The original method, according to Judkins, had two ships starting out in the middle of the Atlantic and laying their cables in different directions until they both hit land, but that had immediately run into problems when the crews tried to splice the cables together in the middle of a storm. The next attempts had taken place with ships setting out from Ireland and heading for Newfoundland, playing out the cables as they went, but the cables often broke and had to be dredged back up so that the crews could repair the breaks and keep going.
“I recall one occasion,” Judkins said in a low, deep voice, “when a broken cable was dredged up from the abyssal depths of the ocean, and there was a creature holding on to it!" He glanced around the table, his eyes bright beneath bushy brows, while the various passengers who were hanging on his every word gasped. “A godless creature like a marine earwig, if you would credit it; white in colour, but fully two feet long and with a set of fourteen clawed legs that gripped hard on to the cable and would not let go. It was still alive when they dragged the cable on to the deck, but it soon died, being removed from its natural habitat amongst the murk of the ocean floor.”
One woman let out an inadvertent shriek.
“I understand from the men who were there,” Judkins continued, “that the creature tasted something like lobster, when cooked.”
His audience dissolved into relieved laughter. Sherlock caught Amyus Crowe’s eye. Crowe was smiling too.
“I’ve heard similar stories,” Crowe murmured, just loud enough for Sherlock to hear. “The things are called “isopods”. They’re something like prawns, but the conditions at the bottom of the ocean allow them to grow to prodigious size.”
The steward who was serving Sherlock’s part of the table — up near the Captain, as Mycroft had promised, was the thin man with a blond crew cut who had helped Sherlock with directions earlier. He nodded at Sherlock as he reached out to place a dish of soup in front of the man sitting opposite.
There was no lobster, which was probably a blessing.
After dinner Sherlock had headed for bed, leaving Amyus Crowe in the bar, and if Crowe had come to bed at all then Sherlock had been asleep in his bunk when he had done so. When Sherlock woke up and got ready for breakfast, Crowe had already left the cabin. He seemed to be able to survive on small amounts of sleep.
Despite the fact that it was being cooked at sea, in a cramped galley, the food was excellent. Each meal had something different in it, and waiting to see what would arrive on the plate at breakfast, lunch or dinner was one of the highlights of the day. Everything was prepared from fresh, of course — it would be difficult to store anything for very long — but even though the numbers of animals on the foredeck would diminish during the voyage there was no obvious sign of them being slaughtered — no washes of blood across the deck, no piteous bleats as the animals were taken away to their final end. The crew obviously had their own routine, which they had been following for years.
The skies on that first day were clear and blue, and the waves were small enough in comparison to the size of the ship that they just slapped across its sides without making it pitch and toss at all. Sherlock had read stories about storms at sea, and he overheard a couple of the passengers who were scaring the rest by telling stories of horrendous previous passages across the Atlantic where vast waves had hung above the ship before crashing down and sweeping the animals overboard, but so far the ocean had been calm enough that some people were actually playing bowls in a clear area of deck.
The steerage passengers had their own fenced-off area of deck for walking and for washing their clothes. It was at the top of the stairs that led down to the dark areas of the ship where their hammocks were slung. The smell that wafted up sometimes was an eye-watering mix of bodily odours. Presumably, down there where there was no breeze and nobody could see the sky and the horizon, seasickness was a constant companion. When they came on deck they either watched the First Class passengers with subdued malice in their eyes or stared at the deck in weary depression. Every time Sherlock passed them by he thanked God that Mycroft had paid for them to travel First Class. He wasn’t sure he could have survived steerage. He wasn’t sure how anyone could.
The massive paddle wheels on each side of the ship were in constant motion, driven by the steam engines whose rumbling could be felt whenever one touched a wooden surface. The paddles which were spaced around their circumference pushed against the sea as they rotated, propelling the ship forward. The captain had ordered the sails to be unfurled shortly after Southampton dropped out of sight over the horizon, but the way they hung limply suggested to Sherlock that there wasn’t enough breeze to keep the ship moving very fast.
Surprisingly, for much of that first day after breakfast he hadn’t seen much of Amyus and Virginia Crowe. She had seemed subdued, and had taken to her cabin, and her father seemed to be spending his time alternately checking that she was all right and brooding in the cabin which he shared with Sherlock. Something was bothering her. Casting his mind back, Sherlock tried to remember whether Virginia had mentioned anything about the trip from America to England that she and her father had taken apart from the fact that they hadn’t travelled First Class but weren’t in steerage either. He had a feeling that she had said something important when they first met, but he couldn’t remember what.
Somewhere towards the back of the ship Sherlock could hear music playing. He turned from his position staring out at the waves, trying to trace its source. The music floated overhead, as light as the seagulls which followed in the wake of the ship and hung in the air, barely moving their wings. It sounded like a violin playing a melody that swept up before pausing at the topmost note and then crashing down again.
Leaving his place at the rail, Sherlock walked back towards the stern, looking for the source of the music. There was precious little entertainment on the ship as it was: anything that broke up the monotony of the day should be investigated and treasured.
Past the long single storey of the saloon, in a clear area of deck, a man stood playing the violin. It was the man he had seen the day before, when they had been leaving Southampton — the man with long black hair and green eyes. He was still wearing the same corduroy jacket and trousers, although he appeared to have changed his shirt. The violin was pressed into his neck and his head was tilted, chin holding the body of the instrument steady while his left hand fingered the neck and his right hand sawed the horsehair bow across the strings. His eyes were closed and his face bore an expression of intense concentration. Sherlock had never heard a piece of music like that before: it was wild, romantic and turbulent, not ordered and mathematical, like the pieces by Bach and Mozart that he was used to hearing in the occasional recitals at Deepdene School for Boys.
Several other passengers were gathered around the man, listening to him with quizzical smiles on their faces. Sherlock watched, and listened, as he swept to a climax, held the note, and then stopped. For a moment he kept the violin up to his chin, eyes still closed and a smile on his face, then he let it fall and opened his eyes. The crowd applauded. He bowed. His violin case was on the deck in front of him, Sherlock noticed, and some of the passengers threw some coins in before they wandered away.
After a few moments, only the violinist and Sherlock were left. The violinist bent to scoop the coins from the case, then glanced up at Sherlock.
“Did you enjoy that, my friend?”
“I did. If I had some money I’d give it to you.”
“No need.” He straightened, having left the violin and bow in the case. “The money supplements my fare, and offsets my expenses, and allows me a little extra for the occasional drink, but I’m not trying to make a living by playing. Not here on the ship, anyway. I do, however, have to practise, and my room-mate does not appear appreciative of anything apart from German polkas.”
“What was that piece?” Sherlock asked.
“It’s a newly written violin concerto in G minor by a German composer by the name of Max Bruch. I met him in Koblenz, last year. He gave me a copy of the score. I’ve been trying to get it right ever since. I think one day it will be a part of the repertoire of every classical violinist.”
“It sounded incredible.”
“He uses some ideas from Felix Mendelssohn’s works, but he gilds them with a particular glint of his own.”
“Are you a professional musician?”
He smiled; an easy, unforced grin that revealed strong white teeth. “Sometimes I am,” he said. “I can turn my hand to many trades, but I seem to keep coming back to the violin. I’ve played in orchestras in concert halls and string quartets in high-class tea rooms, I’ve busked on the streets and accompanied singers in music halls while beer glasses fly overhead and shatter against the stage. My name, by the way, is Stone. Rufus Stone.”
“I’m Sherlock Holmes.” Sherlock walked over and extended his hand. Rufus Stone took it, and they shook for a few moments. Stone’s hand was firm and strong. “Is that why you’re going to America?” Sherlock continued. “To play the violin?”
“Opportunities are drying up in England,” Stone replied. “I was hoping that the New World might have some use for me, especially after the cream of their manhood was cut down in the War Between the States.” His gaze flickered up and down Sherlock’s frame. “You have the build of a good violin player. Your posture is upright, and your fingers are long. Do you play?”
Sherlock shook his head. “I don’t play any instrument,” he admitted.
“You should. All the girls love a musician.” He tilted his head to one side, almost as if the violin was still there. “Can you read music?”
Sherlock nodded. “I learned at school. We had a choir, and we had to sing every morning.”
“Would you like to learn the violin?”
“Me? Learn the violin? Are you serious?”
Stone nodded. “We’ve got a week before we dock, and that time will pass awfully slowly if we don’t find some way to amuse ourselves. When I get to New York I’m going to be looking for employment as a violin teacher. It would help if I could actually say that I’ve taught somebody to play the violin. At the moment I have some good ideas about how to do it, but I’ve never turned them into practice. So — what do you say? Are you willing to help me out?”
Sherlock thought about it for a moment. He didn’t play whist or bridge, and the only alternative was laboriously translating the copy of Plato’s Republic which Mycroft had given him. This sounded far more interesting. “I can’t pay,” he said. “I haven’t got any money’
“There will be no financial encumbrance on you. You’ll be doing me a favour.”
“What can you teach me in a week?”
Stone considered for a moment. “We can start with posture,” he said. “The way you stand and the way you hold the violin. Once I’m happy you’ve got that right, we can move on to getting the various right-hand techniques correct — détaché, legato, collé, martelé, staccato, spiccato and sautillé. Once I’m happy with that, we can move on to the left-hand techniques — finger dropping and lifting, shifting and vibrato. And then, I’m afraid, it’s practice, practice, practice — scales and arpeggios until the tips of your fingers are sore.”
“I said I can read music, but I can’t hold a note,” Sherlock admitted. “Our choirmaster said I had a cloth ear.”
“No such thing,” Stone said dismissively. “You may not be able to sing, but I guarantee I can get a tune out of you by the end of the week that people will throw coins for — even if it is just a German polka. What do you say?”
Sherlock grinned. Suddenly the voyage seemed like it might be a lot more interesting than he’d expected. “It sounds good,” he said. “When do we start?”
“We start now,” Stone said decisively, “and we run on until lunchtime. Now, pick up the violin. Let’s see how good your stance is.”
For the next three hours, running from the end of the breakfast session to halfway through lunch, Sherlock learned how to stand properly, how to hold a violin and how to hold a bow. He even played a few notes, which sounded like a cat being strangled, but Rufus (“Call me Rufus,” he had said when Sherlock called him Mr Stone. “When you say “Mr Stone” it makes you sound too much like a bank manager for my liking’) told him that it didn’t matter. The purpose of the morning’s session, he pointed out, was not to learn how playing the violin sounded but to learn how it felt. “I want you to be relaxed, but ready. I want your arms and fingers and shoulders to know all the shapes that a violin can make against them. I want that violin to feel like an extension of your own body by the time we’ve finished.”
By the end of the time, Sherlock’s body was aching in places he didn’t even think he had muscles, his neck was cramping and the tips of his fingers were tingling from where he’d been pressing the catgut strings down. “I’ve just been standing in one spot!" he protested. “How come I feel like I’ve been running a race?”
“Exercise isn’t necessarily about moving,” Rufus said. “It’s about muscles tensing and relaxing. You don’t often see fat musicians. That’s because although they’re sitting down or standing in one place, their muscles are continually at work.” He paused, face creasing in thought. “Except for percussionists,” he said eventually. “They just get fat.”
“What next?”
“Next,” Rufus said, “we have luncheon.”
While Rufus returned his violin case to his cabin, Sherlock went looking for Amyus Crowe. The big American had emerged from wherever it was he had been sequestered, but there was no sign of Virginia. As they all sat at the communal table, Sherlock introduced Crowe to Rufus Stone.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” Crowe said, shaking Rufus’s hand. “You’re a musician, I perceive. A violinist.”
“You heard me?” Rufus said, smiling.
“No, but you’ve got fresh dust on your shoulder. In my experience dust on a man’s jacket means one of three things: he’s a teacher, he plays billiards or he plays the violin. There ain’t any billiards table aboard this ship, to my knowledge, an’ I’m not aware there are enough children on this ship to make it worth while settin’ up a classroom.”
Sherlock checked the shoulder of his own jacket. Indeed, there was a fine patina of dust across it. He rubbed some between his thumb and forefinger. It was an amber-brown colour, and felt sticky.
“This isn’t chalk,” he said. “What is it?”
“Colophone,” Rufus explained.
“A form of resin,” Crowe interrupted. “Known as “rosin” to musicians. It’s collected from pine trees an’ then boiled an’ filtered before bein’ formed into a cake, like soap. Violinists coat their bows with it. The adhesion the resin causes between the strings and the bow is what makes the strings vibrate. Of course, the resin dries out and becomes a dust, which is deposited on the shoulder as that’s the bit of the body closest to the instrument.” He glanced at Sherlock’s jacket, and frowned. “You’ve been playin’ the violin as well. No, you’ve been learnin’ the violin.”
“Rufus — Mr Stone — has been teaching me.”
“You don’t mind, Mr Crowe?” Rufus asked. “I only offered to help us both pass the time.”
“I never put much store in music,” Crowe rumbled. “The only tune I know is your National Anthem, an’ that’s only because folks stand up when it’s played.” He glanced at Sherlock from beneath shaggy eyebrows. “I was intend-in’ to continue our studies while we were on the ship, but Virginia ain’t taking too well to the voyage.” He shook his head. “I can’t rightly recall if I mentioned it but her mother — my wife — died on the last transatlantic voyage we made. That was from New York to Liverpool. The memory weighs heavily upon her mind. An’ on mine.” He sighed. “Memory’s a funny thing. A person can slide memories of just about anythin’ to one side an’ ignore them, but sometimes the slightest thing can set them off again. Usually it’s smells an’ sounds that recall memories the best. Ginnie’s not talked about her mother for a while now, but the smell of the ocean an’ the smells of the ship have just bought it all floodin’ back.”
“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said. It seemed inadequate, but he couldn’t think what else to say.
“Bad things happen to people,” Crowe said. “It’s the one acknowledged truth of the human condition.” He sighed. “I’m goin’ to trust you to spend time on that translation your brother gave you,” he said. “An’ I’ll try to spend an hour or two a day with you, talkin’ over what your eyes an’ ears can tell you while you’re on this here ship, but the opportunities for proper consideration are scant. The rest of the time is your own. Use it as you will.”
The rest of the meal was conducted in uncomfortable silence. As soon as it finished, Sherlock excused himself. He had a feeling that he’d somehow disappointed Amyus Crowe, and he didn’t want to add to that disappointment by going straight back to his violin lessons. Judging by the slight nod that Rufus Stone gave him as he left, the violinist understood.
He spent an hour in a chair on the deck, reading through the difficult Greek of Plato’s Republic. The process of translating from Greek to English in his head was so laborious that he hardly understood the sense of what he was reading — he could get the words right, but by the end of the sentence he’d lost track of where it had started and what it was trying to say.
He looked up at one point, wrestling with a particularly difficult transitive verb, to see a white-uniformed steward standing beside him holding a tray. It was the same man who had helped him with directions and who had served at dinner the night before.
“Is there anything I can get for you, sir?” the steward asked.
“A Greek dictionary?”
The steward’s lined, tanned face didn’t change. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I cannot help you there, sir. We do have a library on board, but I do not believe there is a Greek dictionary upon its shelves — especially a dictionary of ancient Greek, which is what I suspect you need.”
“Do you know every book that’s in the library?” Sherlock asked.
“I have been with this ship ever since she launched,” the steward replied. “Not only do I know every book in the library, I know every cocktail on the menu, every plank on the deck and every rivet in the hull, yes?” He nodded his head. “Grivens is the name, sir. If you need anything, just ask.”
Sherlock’s gaze was drawn towards the hand that held the tray. It was tattooed from the wrist upward, disappearing into the darkness of the man’s sleeve. It looked to Sherlock like a pattern of tiny scales, coloured a delicate, gold-flecked blue that shone in the sunshine.
The same colour as Sherlock had seen on the wrist of the figure that had been observing him from the shadows the day before. Coincidence, or not?
Grivens noticed the direction of Sherlock’s gaze. “Is something wrong, sir?”
“Sorry” Sherlock thought quickly. It was obvious that he’d spotted something odd, but he had to cover for his gaffe. “I was just noticing your... your tattoo. My... brother... has one just like it.” In his mind he formed a quick apology to Mycroft, who was the last person in the world Sherlock would expect to have a tattoo. Except perhaps for Aunt Anna.
“Had it done in Hong Kong,” Grivens explained. “Before I joined the Scotia, that was.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“The man who did it was a wrinkled little Chinaman in the back alleys of a marketplace in Kowloon,” the steward continued. “But he’s famous among sailors all over the world. I swear there’s nobody to touch him, not anywhere else. There’s colours he uses that nobody else can even mix. Any time I see a tattoo done by him on another sailor, or if another sailor sees my tattoo, we just nod at each other, cos we know we’ve both been to that same little Chinaman. It’s like being in a club, yes?”
“Why do so many sailors have tattoos?” Sherlock asked. “As far as I can tell, every member of this crew has a tattoo of some kind, and they’re all different.”
Grivens glanced away, out to sea. “It’s not something we tend to talk about, sir,” he said. “Especially to passengers. The thing of it is, and forgive me for being indelicate, but if there’s a shipwreck then it might take some time for the bodies of the sailors to wash ashore — that’s assuming they ever do. There have been instances where bodies couldn’t be identified, even by their closest relatives. The action of salt water, harsh weather and the fishes of the deep, if you take my meaning. But tattoos last a lot longer. A tattoo can be recognized long after a face is gone. So that’s how it started — a means of identification. Gives us some measure of comfort, knowing that after we’re gone at least our families have a fighting chance of being able to bury us properly’
“Oh.” Sherlock nodded. “That makes sense, I suppose. Thanks.”
Grivens nodded. At your service, sir. Are you going to be here for a while?”
“Where else would I go?”
“I’ll check back with you later, then. See if you need anything else.”
He moved away, looking for other passengers to serve, but leaving Sherlock thinking. If this was the man who had been watching him from the shadows — if he was being watched from the shadows, which was itself an assumption based on a scuffle and a movement — then why was he so concerned as to whether Sherlock would be staying there on deck? Did he want to search Sherlock’s cabin for some clue as to what Sherlock knew? Or did he intend going after Amyus Crowe and Virginia? Whatever the answer, Sherlock couldn’t stay there. He quickly got up and headed off along the deck and down the stairway to the corridor where his cabin was located.
The door to his cabin was open a crack. Was it the steward, searching it, or was it Amyus Crowe inside?
Sherlock moved closer, trying to look through the crack to see what was happening. If it was Grivens then he would go and fetch Amyus Crowe, tell him what was going on.
Something pushed him hard in the small of his back. He fell forward, stumbling into the cabin. Another push and he was on the floor, just managing to miss the edge of the bunk bed by twisting his head and curling up. The carpet burned against his face as he hit it. He curled round, looking up at the doorway.
Grivens shut the door behind him. His faded blue eyes were suddenly as cold and as hard as marbles.
“You think yourself clever, yes?” he snapped. Sherlock caught his breath at the abrupt change of attitude from servitude to anger. “I’ve broken better men than you in half. You think I didn’t realize you were going to follow me here to see if I was searching your cabin? I noticed you checking out my tattoo, and I could tell by your eyes that you recognized it from yesterday, when I was watching the three of you. So I made you think I was going to search your cabin, and I lured you back here.”
“To do what?” Sherlock asked. He was finding it difficult to catch his breath lying on the floor, twisted around like that.
“To get you off this ship. You, then the other two.”
“Off this ship?” Sherlock’s mind took a second or two to catch up. “You mean — throw us off? Into the Atlantic? But we’ll be missed!!"
“The Captain might even turn around, steam back and look for you, but it won’t do any good. You won’t last half an hour in that water.”
Sherlock’s mind was racing, trying to work out how this had happened. You’re not part of this. You can’t be. The men we’re following wouldn’t have known which ship we were going to take — if we were going to take one at all.”
“All I know is they paid me to keep an eye out for three travellers — a big man in a white hat and two kids. Maybe with another man — a fat man — maybe not. A third of the money now and two-thirds if they see a report in the papers of three or four passengers vanishing overboard.”
“But how did they know we’d take this ship?” Sherlock asked. Then he realized. “They paid off someone on every ship?”
Grivens nodded. “Every ship leaving for the next few days, anyway. That’s my guess. They found most of us in the same place — a bar where the ships’ stewards hang out between voyages.”
“But how much would that cost them?”
Grivens shrugged. “Not my problem, as long as they have enough left to pay me when I get to New York. They didn’t seem short of cash.” He reached forward and grabbed Sherlock’s hair. “They said they’d pay extra if I could get you to tell me how much you know about their plans. You can do it the easy way, without pain, and I’ll do you the favour of making sure you’re unconscious when I throw you over the side, yes? Or you can do it the difficult way, in which case I’ll have to snip your fingers off with a cigar cutter, one by one, until you tell me, and then throw you overboard still conscious.”
“I’ll shout out!" Sherlock blustered. “People will hear.”
“Didn’t I mention?” Grivens said. “I started off as a ship’s chandler, making sails, before I became a steward. Your fingers never forget the feel of an iron needle going through canvas. I’ll sew your lips shut with thick twine, boy, just for the pleasure of looking into your frightened eyes when I throw you overboard.” He paused. “Now, answer the question. How much do you know about the plans of these Yanks?”
He leaned forward, reaching for Sherlock’s hair. The iridescent blue tattoo on his wrist seemed to glow in the darkness of the cabin.
Sherlock lashed out with his booted foot, catching Grivens in the groin. The steward folded nearly double, grunting in pain.
Sherlock scrambled to his feet. Grabbing Grivens’s shoulder, he pulled him forward. The man fell, and Sherlock scrabbled to get past him and through the doorway.
The steward’s hand grabbed for Sherlock’s ankle. He pulled hard, dragging Sherlock back into the room. Sherlock twisted, lashing out with his free foot and catching Grivens above the eye. He released Sherlock with a spat curse and fell backwards.
Sherlock knew that he had to escape, and then he had to get to Amyus Crowe. He launched himself towards the door and pulled it open. The light from the oil lamps hanging on the corridor wall outside streamed into the cabin. He scrambled out, pushing the door closed, and ran off down the corridor. Behind him he heard the crash of the cabin door hitting the inside wall as Grivens pulled it open, and the thudding of feet as the steward chased after him. The corridor ended in a junction; Sherlock went left, heading for the stairs up to the deck and to safety, but he must have gone wrong somewhere because there was no sign of the stairway. Instead the corridors took him deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship.
Faced with the choice of a stairway that led down and going back again, he chose to go down. This wasn’t passenger territory any more: the walls were cruder wood, without the ornate panelling of earlier, and the oil lamps were guttering and yellow. There was only bare wood beneath his feet: not soft carpets.
From somewhere behind him, Sherlock heard footsteps. Grivens was still on his trail. He kept moving.
The sound of the ship’s engines was closer now, like the thudding of some huge mechanical heart, and the atmosphere was noticeably warmer. Sherlock was sweating, partly because of the chase but partly because of the steam in the atmosphere.
He went round a corner to find a large door ahead of him. It was shut. He glanced over his shoulder, briefly, but there was no point going back. He could only go onward.
He opened the door and went through.
Into Hell.