He looked at us as if we should have known better.
“I knew he would help me if he could. If he’d bothered to smuggle a message to me, he must be on my side. Even if he only went to Mr Winter and told him that we were friends and I would never have robbed him.”
“And how did you reply?”
“I had nothing that would do for writing on the tray. But with my forefinger I rubbed out the ‘JLP RSVP.’ I collected the chalk on my fingertip and just managed to make a smudgy ‘PR’ so that it read, ‘Linesman’s hut. Sun. 3.30 PR’ If it came from Porson, he would be on the look-out for the maid taking back the tray to the scullery. They pile them up there and wipe them over. He must have been able to get at the tray or he couldn’t have sent the message in the first place. As for Mitzi, she would never take any notice of a chalk mark like that, even if she saw it. I covered the writing with the plate when she took it away.”
To those who knew Holmes well, there was a look of satisfaction on that sharp profile which had not been there since Sir John Fisher first told us his story.
“Good,” he said soothingly. “I believe we have got somewhere at last.”
“It was my one chance,” the boy insisted. “For two days I thought that at last I could talk to someone who would listen to me. Porson would trust me.”
“And then?”
Riley looked at us uncertainly, living through all his difficulties again.
“I thought I should never get to the linesman’s hut, sir. Any master who saw me leaving the building would stop me. There might not be many boys crossing the field at that moment, but I could still get stopped. It was my one chance, Mr Holmes. You do see that, don’t you?”
“I see that, Patrick Riley, plainly enough.”
“I could have watched for Porson, but I hadn’t got a view from this window of anyone walking across the field. I decided the best thing was to leave it till the last minute and then run. I’d be there before they could stop me. About twenty past three I crept down the sanatorium stairs, always looking ahead and round corners first. There’s almost no one about in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. I moved round the edge of the lawn below this window and through the little gate into the main school grounds. Then I ran across the corner of the cricket pitch and into the School Field, as they call it. Even if they came after me and caught me, I might have a minute or two with Porson first. At least long enough to swear to him that I never stole his postal order and knew nothing about it.”
“You looked back several times, did you not?” I inquired, “Particularly as you got closer to the embankment.”
“Yes, sir,” he said uncertainly, and Sherlock Holmes frowned me into silence, “Yes, I did. I wanted to see if anyone was coming after me, but they weren’t. I got across the field, then under the wire and up the embankment. I stood by the linesman’s hut and looked round, but—”
“But Porson was not there,” Holmes said, as if it was the only logical conclusion.
Riley nodded.
“I looked back across the field again, but I couldn’t see him coming. It was almost exactly half-past three by then. I even opened the door of the linesman’s hut—that’s not difficult—to make sure he wasn’t waiting inside. That was the only place he could be. His message could have meant that. He wasn’t there. Then in the distance I could hear the rumble of a train coming from the tunnel. I was wondering whether to hide, and then—”
“Sovran-Phillips,” said Holmes with an air of impatience.
Riley looked at him.
“How could you know?”
“Do not waste my time, young man. It is my business to know such things. Pray, continue.”
“He was there on the far side of the line, laughing at me. Or perhaps not laughing, more like sneering. Then I knew of course that the message on the tray had come from him. But if it was a trap, I couldn’t think what.”
“He would hardly push you under a railway train,” I said humorously as Holmes glared at me again.
“No, sir. That’s what I would have done to him. I thought he was going to fight but he just stood there, just by the line, talking like Petty Officer Carter. He said people of my type were starvelings and they had no business putting themselves up for Dartmouth or Osborne. Especially if we were no better than grease-monkeys in the engine-room. I hadn’t even had a proper father.”
Starvelings! If the boy was right, Sovran-Phillips and Winter spoke the same language in every sense of the phrase.
“Tell me,” I asked, “what was your father’s profession?”
This time Holmes did not glare at me.
“He was a senior cashier, sir, to the Royal Bank of Ireland. After he died, there was only money to keep me here for a year or two. I’ve always known that the only way I could get to Dartmouth or Osborne would be with a Nomination. That’s why I’ve worked for it.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Phillips said he could prove my mother was never married to my father—and he would. I’d never get entrance to Osborne or Dartmouth after that, let alone a Nomination. I’d better take my punishment and go home. If not, his brothers could see that I never got to midshipman. And if ever he saw an announcement of my sister marrying, he’d make sure the man would hear how her brother was the boy who stole the postal order at St Vincent’s.”
“Indeed?” said Holmes gently.
“There was no one else to hear him. He was careful about that. I’ve got no proof of anything he said. But I decided I’d fight him there and I’d fight my case in court. I’d repeat every word of what he said, whether they believed me or not. He said he’d break my head—”
“But he did not?”
“No, sir. Sovran-Phillips is stronger than I am, but I suppose I was angrier than him. We were on top of the bank, by the line, but he tried to pull away. I could see the train coming from the tunnel. He was hitting at me but I just wouldn’t let him go. I was on the track and he was trying to pull away. I said something like, ‘I’ll fight you here, in front of the train. If I’m killed, I’ll hold on tight enough to make sure you go down as well.’ I had him by his coat, trying to pull him on to the track. Then he broke clear. I don’t think I wanted to kill him exactly—and I didn’t want to die. But I was desperate, sir, and I was going to give him a fright he would never forget. I wanted him to know that if ever he hurt my family, I’d kill him by fair means or foul.”
It was something of a wild story, but to hear Patrick Riley was to know that he meant it. As he was describing the incident, I calculated that the stationary engine of the train would have hidden the two boys from Reginald Winter’s observation soon after it came out from the tunnel.
“And then?” Holmes prompted him.
“I shouted after him as he went down the bank on the other side. By then the train was slowing down and he was out of sight somewhere among the bushes on the other side. That’s all I saw, Mr Holmes. I was so mad with hate, I think I could have held him until the engine killed us both.”
With a chill down the spine at these last words, I thought of Holmes and Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Such impulses of mutual destruction are no fantasy, even in children. Holmes, perhaps with the same image in mind, said nothing for a moment. The boy blinked a tear or two from his eyes. Then my friend steered us into calmer waters.
“So far we have talked very little about your work. Are you good at it?”
“I was first of my term for engineering and navigation, sir. Only second in mathematics but first in trigonometry again. I like history, but I can’t do languages well. If I could get to Dartmouth or Osborne, I should like most of all to be on a training cruiser. They teach torpedo and electrics, gunnery as well as engineering.”