But suddenly he hears something that terrifies him, a sound much worse than a nattering bird.
There are footsteps coming. Human ones. At first they are so quiet and distant that he isn’t sure they are real, but then they echo in the cavernous glass palace and grow louder. He ducks under a wagon displaying bushels of Canadian wheat. But he is still exposed to anyone who might walk past. There are empty hempen sacks lying on the wagon, so he jumps up, seizes a couple, and hastily tucks one end of each under the bushels, making a curtain down to the floor, hiding himself from passing eyes.
He lies as still as a corpse.
The footsteps become louder. There seems to be more than one man, and at least one of them is breathing in great gulps.
Sherlock peeks out between the sacks and sees a single figure walking steadily in the center of the hall, heading north, right toward him. Where are the others? Then the boy looks down. The man has two white bull terriers on chains. They are straining against his hold, breathing loudly through their mouths, anxious to move forward. Both have torn ears, as if they’ve suffered injuries in battle. Sherlock can see their fangs as they gasp for air, saliva dripping onto the planked wooden floor. The dogs will smell him, for sure.
They come closer, and closer.
And pass by.
Sherlock breathes a sigh of relief.
But then the dogs stop. Both sniff the air and turn around, pulling their master straight toward the Canadian wheat wagon. The boy tries to draw in every scent he gives off, to arrest the beating of his heart. He clenches his hands into fists, forgetting the wounds from the cactus, and utters a little yelp before he can stop himself.
“Oi!” shouts the short, thick-set guard, his voice bouncing off the distant glass ceiling. “You lot! We ain’t found naught these last twelvemonth and you get to suspectin’ thirty-nine minutes before quittin’? … You’re sniffin’ the dead buffalo again! Mangy ’ounds! This way!” And with that he jerks them away, nearly snapping their wide necks with a violent tug, as he continues his slow march to the north end of the building.
Sherlock feels as though he might be sick to his stomach. But he controls himself, unclenches his sore hands, and tries to think carefully about what he has just heard. This man, apparently the only guard on duty, has thirty-nine minutes before he leaves. Every literate boy in London knows that it is just over sixteen hundred feet from one end of the Palace to the other. The guard has about five or six hundred feet to his destination at the far reaches of the building where Sherlock broke in. He’ll likely pause there, perhaps take a short break, then make one more sweep of the premises. Sherlock considers the man’s pace: about ten minutes to get where he is going now and have his break, ten minutes back to the central transept, ten minutes to the far, south end, and then a final ten back again to the center where he will likely end his watch. That means the guard will reach the central transept for his first pass twenty minutes from now. Sherlock will have that time to walk to the transept, make his first search of the premises, and get hidden away.
The sun will soon be rising, and a pre-dawn light is slowly creeping into the Palace. Its marvelous innards are becoming slightly clearer: lush green plants and white statues set among iron posts, pipes, and frames of red and blue. Sherlock must hurry.
He quietly gets to his feet, pats his hair into place, then checks the disappearing guard and starts moving as fast as he can toward his own destination. He tries not to make the gleaming wooden floor creak as he sneaks along, near the building’s front wall, out of the sightline of his potential pursuer.
Suddenly, he sees a shadowy figure through the glass wall. It is approaching the Palace from the outside, coming right at him, about twenty feet away. The boy ducks down. The figure moves up to the wall and crouches as if trying to peer inside. Sherlock drops even lower, lying flat on the planks behind a statue. The figure pauses and rustles something on the wall. The boy hears a splat, then sees the figure rise and fade into the distance. A stack of something has been deposited on the floor. Getting up and tentatively nearing it, he sees a mail slot above the spot and a collection of letters and newspapers. On top is Sigerson Bell’s favorite, the Daily Telegraph. Something on the front page stops the boy.
“SCOTLAND YARD WONDERS ABOUT THE MERCURE WONDERS,” says the headline. Sherlock can’t resist reading the first two sentences.
“The Metropolitan London Police, under the direction of Inspector Lestrade, has opened an investigation into the alarming accident at the Palace on the 1 inst. Monsieur Mercure, of trapezian constellation, still lingers near death at St. Bart’s.”
Sherlock remembers Lestrade catching him examining the trapeze bar. They are already gaining on me. He has to go, but can’t stop reading.
“‘We have detected some irregularities,’ claimed Inspector Lestrade when contacted by the Telegraph. He could say nothing more, though he did admit that Mercure’s famous son and daughter, the aerialists known as The Eagle and The Robin, were at Scotland Yard, White Hall, last evening for a number of hours of questioning and had been detained overnight. One need not say that this has the makings of a sensation.”
At least, thinks Sherlock, they are on the wrong track. They aren’t suspecting The Swallow, for now. He glances up the long, cluttered hall in front of him and actually starts to run.
The main transept at the middle of the people’s glass cathedral rises a hundred feet higher than the other ceilings, which is why it is used for the great high-wire artistes and trapeze stars’ performances. That, and because up to twenty-five thousand people can stand in its hallway and in the big amphitheater adjoining its south side and look up to see everything that happens in the air along its entire length. Sherlock is rushing forward under the stunning arched ceiling now, the yearning sun still below the horizon, but sending more light through the transparent roof by the minute. He spots the Mercures’ apparatus, still tied to the towers, anchored near the west end of the hall. He surveys it as he moves. Where is The Swallow’s equipment bag?
In seconds Sherlock is standing beneath one of the Mercures’ steel-laddered towers. The police ropes have been removed, the suspicious trapeze bar taken away. But there is The Swallow’s satchel, partway up the tower, maybe twenty feet high, and tied down. Sherlock looks farther up and sees that the swings belonging to the three younger troupe members have been pulled up to the perch, more than a hundred and fifty feet above the floor. He feels dizzy and reaches out to grab the tower.
He had planned to climb boldly to the perch and examine it, and not just because he might find sawdust left behind, but because it is such a marvelous, unreachable place to hide something.
But now, staring up and feeling ill, his ambition wavers. His heart is pounding and his pin-cushioned hands ache. The short distance to The Swallow’s equipment seems daunting enough. But all the way up to the top? He has no idea if he can do it. If he tries, will he freeze partway up? But he can’t falter, not now, not when he’s so close. He is running out of time. He starts arguing with himself, making the point that he may have enough to investigate here on the floor and up there at twenty feet high, where that mysterious –A sound comes down the central transept toward him.
Footsteps again. This time they are moving at a hurried pace. Why has the guard arrived so quickly?
Sherlock considers his situation for an instant. If he runs, his chances of being spotted will increase. And since it seems like the guard knows where he is, the dogs will sniff him out no matter where he goes … that is, if he stays on the ground.