The Case of the Spellbound Child Read online

  “How?” Suki demanded. “He can’t put a whole herd of perlice t’sleep!”

  “No, but . . . I’m sure he could find another way to escape, like—” John was at a loss for an answer.

  But Mary had one that would satisfy Suki. “We already know he can make himself look like a demon. He can use the power to make himself look like a constable. All he needs to do is hide until the police break in, then mingle with them, and escape that way. This won’t be a situation where the police all know each other—there are not enough men in Yelverton, the chief constable will want to make a raid in force, and he will take the time to recruit more men from Milton Combe or Tavistock or even Buckfast. It will be easy for this man to hide himself among policemen who do not know each other.”

  “But—” Suki protested, still wanting to see and be part of a rush of angry, determined police, maybe even with pistols! Nan saw it all in the child’s mind, and honestly, Nan couldn’t blame her.

  “And if he waits to recruit men from outside Yelverton, there is always the chance that someone here will warn him. And if that happens, he’ll murder the children for their power, call a moor pony, and ride away to freedom with no one the wiser,” Holmes added. “When the police raid comes, they will find an empty cottage and eleven dead children.”

  Crestfallen, Suki subsided. Nan gestured to her to come, and Suki got up off the bed and came to her for a comforting hug.

  “I wanta get him,” she murmured into Nan’s side. “Lookit what he done to Helen an’ Rose!”

  “And we want to get him too. That’s why we’re working out the perfect plan to do just that, so he can’t get away.” Nan gave her another squeeze; she sighed, and reluctantly pulled away, going back to the bed to sit.

  “Well, let’s see if we can eliminate all the other possibilities of taking the monster in its lair,” Mary suggested. “No matter how ridiculous they are.”

  “Get dynamite? Blow ’em up?” Suki suggested hopefully, then sighed. “No, that’d blow up the children.”

  “What if you approached the cot alone, Holmes, got him to invite you inside, and slipped chloral hydrate into his scrumpy?” Nan asked, thinking of the sort of plot one would find in a penny-dreadful.

  “He’ll want very much to know how I managed to remember where his cot is,” Holmes replied. “And as Watson pointed out, he can probably render me and the rest of you unconscious.”

  “What if you meet him tonight and—” John looked at his watch. “Hrm. Probably not tonight; if he came here to drink tonight he is probably gone now. Well, tomorrow night, then.”

  “I could crawl the pubs looking for him, but it’s pure luck if I’d find him. I haven’t been meeting him every single night,” Sherlock replied. “But go on. You were going to suggest?”

  “We know he’s got jewelry. I don’t think he’s disposed of it. There’s no pawnbroker here in Yelverton,” John pointed out. “What if you told him you were making a little trip to Plymouth and suggested that if he had anything he wanted to change for money, you could do that for him? Show some loot of your own; Mary has a couple of pieces of jewelry you could borrow.”

  “I’d give them to you outright if it would help,” Mary encouraged.

  “And you can have my watch,” Nan offered.

  “And then get him to take you back to his cot,” John finished. “Then, chloral hydrate in the scrumpy, tie him up and gag him, call the chief constable. A room full of children in chains is going to be hard to explain away, not to mention stolen goods. And I may not be Sherlock Holmes, but I am John Watson. Some of your cachet rubs off on me. You disappear after we make him mute and paralyzed even if he wakes from the chloral hydrate, Mary goes for the chief constable, when he gets there I say, ‘Look, sir, I have tracked the blackguard to his den, rendered him helpless, and solved the case we have been working on! No, no, sir, I am modest, you take all the credit!’”

  “That does sound very like you, Watson,” Sherlock said dryly. “You gave away all the credit for the Battersea case to Lestrade.”

  Watson shrugged. “Why not? It does the man good. He’s competent on his own ground. And it’s not as if I can write about my own cases, only yours.”

  Sherlock raised an eyebrow at him. “And do you have chloral hydrate with you?”

  John actually looked a trifle offended. “Even if I didn’t take my doctor’s bag with me everywhere, and I do, I am never without every usual and unusual weapon I have at my disposal when I am on a case.”

  “But hold that thought about the stolen goods,” Holmes said, light suddenly dawning in his eyes. “I think I have a plan. A plan that will not put the children in danger.” He glanced over at Suki, and smiled at her. “And will need all of us.”

  19

  NAN watched the little cot at the back of the wooded combe through Neville’s eyes. He complained a bit—but only a little bit—about having to soar in circles above the general area, but he understood the urgency of their task, and his complaints were, she suspected, more for show than anything else.

  Understanding Neville took some sideways thinking. He did not understand altruism except when it pertained to his flock. He didn’t care one bit about those eleven children; they weren’t in his flock. He didn’t care if they were rescued, murdered, or remained enslaved. But the thought of Suki being in such a position put him in such a red rage Nan could not control him. The best she could do to keep him interested in this dull task was to remind him that these children were like Suki, and she wasn’t entirely sure he grasped that idea, but at least he understood that it was important to her, and therefore he should keep doing it.

  He’d already delivered a reassuring letter to Maryanne Byerly with a few tidbits of new information, enough to let her know that everyone was still focused on finding her children. He’d delivered a second to Gatfer Cole at Maude’s cot, that should get the Gatfer in place by noon. Now he circled over what was a tantalizing blue dot on the map, and had proven to indeed be a wooded combe, with a stone cottage with a slate roof at the rear of it, a garden surrounding it, and what looked like a matching chicken coop, stone walls, slate roof, and all.

  And now the door was opening. A black-haired girl, her hair chopped off roughly at chin-level, and dressed only in a man’s smock, came out, with a careful look over her shoulder, as if to make certain that she was not going to be interfered with. The glance must have reassured her, because she went around the side of the cottage to open the chicken coop, which disgorged an orderly procession of hens.

  Call to her, Neville, Nan said.

  Obediently, Neville let out a raucous series of loud quorks. The girl looked up, pulling lank-looking black hair out of her eyes.

  Deborah, Nan thought with satisfaction, recognizing the girl from Helen’s memories. This was the right place.

  And that meant that if you drew a straight line from here to Yelverton, Gatfer Cole’s cottage would be close enough to that line that someone sitting at the east window with a good pair of binoculars would be able to see anyone heading from the cottage into the village.

  All right, Neville. Go to Gatfer Cole’s and wait for Mary.

  With great relief, the bird stopped circling and headed straight for Gatfer. He liked the old man very much. The old man was almost flock. Certainly Neville would have been willing to share a dead sheep with him.

  If the situation had not been so serious, Nan would have laughed at that. Instead, she turned to Mary Watson, who stood patiently beside her, wearing her split skirt for riding, watching her with bemusement. “All right, Mary. I have definitely seen and recognized one of the kidnapped girls.”

  “Time for me to go to Gatfer Cole’s, then,” Mary said with satisfaction. “There should be enough leeway for me to get something nice for him from the kitchen before I go out there and start making requests of him. It only seems polite.”

  “Something
out of the ordinary—cakes, perhaps?” Nan suggested. “That’s the one thing he didn’t offer us for nummet. Good luck. You don’t think you’ll have any difficulty persuading him to come with you?”

  “None whatsoever,” Mary said firmly. “And good luck to you.”

  Mary left, and a few moments later, Nan saw her pass beneath the window, riding one of the hotel’s horses and leading a moor pony, also saddled and bridled, and bearing two wicker panniers behind the saddle.

  Now it was just a matter of waiting.

  Waiting was always the hardest part.

  * * *

  Simon had no idea how Deborah and Jess managed to do their work after two episodes of the Dark Sleep so close together. But somehow, they’d been working all day, although by common consent the daily sweeping of the prison room had been skipped, and the cleaning of the outer room much skimped. The Dark One didn’t seem to care; he was in fine fettle, hadn’t even bothered putting his robe and frightening shadow-face on, and indulged himself from cock-crow in quite a few drinks from a tall brown bottle. Whatever was in that—gin, probably—it had made him very confident.

  It also made him indulge in something else: petty cruelty. He’d spill things, call one of the girls over to clean it up, then trip them or kick them or slap them with the back of his hand, and laugh uproariously.

  Finally he grew bored even of this, and got to his feet. Simon expected him to say something as he moved—his gait only a little unsteady—to the doorway of the prison room. But he didn’t. He just stood there, looking at them as if they were all sweeties he was about to eat.

  Simon whimpered. He knew it. He could sense it coming. Three days in a row! Surely this time the Dark Sleep was going to kill them all, or they’d be like Rose and never come out of it again.

  The Dark One surveyed them all with an air of superiority, and despite his scrawny stature, his weak, petulant face, his bald head, with ears like a pair of jug-handles, Simon was even more terrified of him than he had been of the robe-shrouded, shadow-faced thing that had tormented them for so long. This was worse, because Simon could see the evil in his eyes—and he looked so ordinary!

  Every single bad thing he’d done, from throwing stones at birds to spilling the supper milk, had led to this. He was here because he’d been wicked. That was the only explanation. And now he was being tormented by a devil on earth, and when the devil here finished him and he died, he’d be tormented by devils all over again. And he deserved it.

  “Right, m’wee bees,” the Dark One slurred. “Time t’take tha’ ’oney.”

  * * *

  This time when Simon crawled out of the horrific embrace of the Dark Sleep, the Dark One was already gone, and Jess was shaking him fearfully by the shoulder. “Simon,” she was saying, over and over. “Simon. Tha’ gotter wake oop an’ et! If tha’ don’ wake oop, Dark One’ll do t’ ee what ’d did t’Rose!”

  “Wha’?” he managed, thick-tongued and mazed. He tried to sit up, and nothing happened. “Es—ah—”

  Jess popped a bull’s-eye into his mouth. “Suck on sweetie,” she urged. “It’ll he’p.”

  The peppermint seemed to clear his head a bit, and the sugar did seem to help give him strength. She brought him water and another sweetie when the first was gone, and finally he could manage to sit up on his bed and look around, though everything was foggy. Was this how Rose had felt, before she fell into the Dark Sleep and never came out again?

  The others didn’t seem quite as drained as he was, though no one but Jess and Deborah looked as if they were in any condition to move, even to piss in the bucket. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but they were all eating, and their loaves were stuffed with bacon and vegetable stew and sugar-stewed rhubarb. Deborah brought him the latter, put it in his hands, and had to bring it to his mouth before his mazed brain reminded him he had to actually bite into it and chew it before it would do him any good.

  He couldn’t manage to hold onto any thoughts for long, although a murderous despair gripped him so hard that slow tears fell down his face while he ate. He was so tired he was actually feeling all aquott and sick from the food, which used to give him the only pleasure he had in this place, and from the look of the tear-stained cheeks of the others, he was not alone in this.

  When he had finished a second round of bread and rhubarb, urged on him by Deborah with awkward pats and vague murmurs of comfort, he lay back down on his bed, trying to keep something like coherent thoughts in his head.

  And that was when the two utter strangers burst in the door.

  He didn’t even have the strength to feel anything. Not fear, that it was the Dark One back again in a new disguise. Not hope, because that had died. Not—anything.

  At least that was true until Deborah suddenly shrieked, “Gatfer Cole!” and flung herself into his arms.

  And the old man took her and hugged her and called out, “Chillern! Be no afeerd! ’Tis Gatfer Cole an’ a bowerly leddy come t’ he’p ’ee!”

  * * *

  It was late afternoon, almost dinnertime, when Neville came flying in, the brilliant sun gilding his black feathers, and landed on the windowsill, although he had alerted Nan that he was coming long before he arrived. By this time everyone else in the group had gathered in the girls’ room, clad in a bewildering variety of costumes. Nan was dressed in a brown fustian skirt, unbleached linen blouse typical of the area, and white apron, purchased that very morning—to her astonishment—from one of the hotel barmaids. “It’s for a costume party when I get back to London,” Nan had lied. And since the price Nan had offered was enough to purchase two such outfits, brand new, from the village seamstress—meaning the girl would not even have to sew her own replacement clothing—the bargain had been struck on the spot.

  Holmes was wearing the sort of worn-out moleskin trousers, patched boots, faded gray linen shirt, wool waistcoat, and flat cap most workmen around here wore. His shirtsleeves were pushed above his elbows, and his hands looked dirty. They weren’t; it was some sort of stain, artfully applied to give the impression of ground-in dirt.

  Suki was dressed in one of her Irregulars costumes, as a boy, her curls stuffed into a flat cap of her own. She looked just about as disreputable as Holmes.

  In contrast, Sarah wore one of the walking suits that Alderscroft had sent with them in a blue that matched her eyes, a truly stunning new bonnet, and expensive walking boots. Watson was in a good black linen suit, an immaculate white shirt, School Tie, and shining black shoes, with a respectable black Derby, all new, all gifts from Alderscroft.

  “He’s on the way?” Holmes asked Nan, who nodded. “I’m off, then.”

  Holmes left the room. Neville joined Grey on his perch, and proceeded to tuck into the food waiting for him there—as a reward, he was getting a mix of hard-boiled egg and cheese, his favorite meal. Their part in this was done.

  “Time for us to go as well,” John said to Sarah, who nodded. “We should get ourselves dinner and established in place.”

  “I’ve been nearly bursting with impatience,” Sarah replied. “I have practiced that spell you taught me until I could do it in my sleep! And finally, finally, I have a use for all that magic power I’ve been gathering!”

  “Good, because when you need to set it, you may not have much time,” Watson told her. He offered her his arm, as she rose. “And off we go to the Drake.”

  Nan and Suki waited a good ten minutes by her watch. When the last second had ticked by, she got to her feet as well. “Time fer usn’s t’flit,” she said to Suki, who grinned at her.

  They made their way down the back stairs, the ones the hotel servants usually used, and out the back way, through the stableyard. The kitchen was busy preparing supper, and wonderful scents emerged from that door, the stable staff feeding the horses their evening meal with the sound of contented horses whickering, and no one even noticed as they passed out into the str
eet, then headed down the street toward the bridge across the Dart river.

  They were headed toward the Drake Manor Inn—technically not in Yelverton at all, although whenever anyone in any other village would ask about it, the answer would be, “T’ one i’ Yelverton, aye?” It was a good two and half miles, so it would be a good brisk walk, but they were wearing the sturdy shoes for it. No one paid them any attention at all, but that was as planned. John had cast a very peculiar illusion spell over both of them—not exactly an illusion, but an effect. Anyone who saw them would see two people—a young woman about Nan’s age, and a young boy about Suki’s age—whom they knew and expected to see together. The illusion would only break if someone tried to stop them and talk to them. But no one would. It was about suppertime, and anyone who wasn’t already inside eating or waiting for supper to be ready was hurrying home or to some other place where he or she expected to get a meal. And in fact, it was possible to tell exactly what every family was having by the aromas coming from their open doors.

  John had hired a chaise to make the journey; they’d have to walk back, of course, but meanwhile the presence of the chaise established him and Sarah as a couple of means. This was very important to their plan.

  The Drake Manor Inn was allegedly a very old establishment, dating right back to Tudor times, and supposedly once part of Sir Francis Drake’s actual manor. That was all that Nan really knew about it, other than the fact that if the Rock Hotel was at the upper end of the scale of establishments in Yelverton, the Drake was the accommodation of choice for the relatively prosperous farmer. That meant that, unlike the Rock, people of means like John and Sarah would not be out of place, but neither would a working man, provided he established quickly and early that he had the ready cash to pay as he went.