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forcing the whole family to come to a sudden halt: they almost pile into him. He looks down to check if he’s stepped in something and as he does, the wheelchair group catches up to the family. Now there are nine people, ten including Sherlock, bunched up near the gate. The father gives Holmes a stern look.
    “Oh, my goodness!” says the boy. “Apologies, I am sure.”
    He bows, slides behind both groups … and immediately wonders if he’s stepped in something else. So concerned is he that this time he bends down to examine a shoe as the others all turn to the inspector. Staying low, the boy slips through the opening, nine people and a wheelchair blocking the railway employee’s view. It happens in a second.
    Once he is safe on the other side, Sherlock can’t resist a quick glance back. A round-faced child in a sailor suit, no more than five, the littlest member of the family and aboutthe boy’s height when he bent low, is glaring right at him. Holmes turns his head quickly and marches away.
    He moves on the double, way down the train toward the third-class carriages, the only kind he can board. Other-wise, he would stick out like a pauper on Rotten Row.
    The first-class coaches have compartments, each with its own door. The carriage he will ride has rows of wooden benches divided by a narrow aisle, and only two doors all told, one near each end. Both are open, awaiting boarding. He steps up into the train. It is almost full. And it’s loud. He can smell body odor, horse manure, and the animal fats used to grease this long iron horse. He walks to the far end, finds an empty bench, dirty like all the others, and slides in. He moves over to the window and lowers his head, keeping a hand in his pocket as if he were holding his ticket.
    It is such a relief to be safely onboard. It is incredible, really: he will succeed in getting from London to St. Neots, fifty miles, without paying. But as he sits breathing heavily, the magnitude of the chance he is taking begins to dawn on him.
What do they do to people who get caught without a fare?
Turn them over to the Peelers? He was put in a jail once, several months ago, after he became a suspect in the Whitechapel case. He can’t let that happen now. His plans, his chance to save Victoria Rathbone, his hopes for the future, would all disappear. And then Sigerson Bell would likely throw him into the streets. He knows he should have thought of that before he acted so rashly; maybe he should have thought of many things. The old man will be waiting for him back at the shop as the sun descends, deeply concerned.But the chance to get to St. Neots quickly is too alluring for Sherlock Holmes. He will deal with things as they come. Maybe he can return before morning.
    The carriage sighs as a line of people enter: the family of six. The last is the round-faced child. He settles onto a bench next to his mother, on the aisle. As he does, he looks down the carriage … and spots Sherlock Holmes.

A s the train eases out and heads north through the city and into the suburbs, the child doesn’t take his eyes off the older boy, who scrunches down as low as he can in his seat and turns his head toward the window. But he can feel the little one’s glare. All the way to Highbury, it follows him like the beam from a bull’s-eye lantern. Sherlock turns his head farther, so he is almost looking backwards, and watches the many neighborhoods on the north side of London fade one after the other into the distance. They are packed with soot-stained brick warehouses, gray homes with black smoke spreading into the cool, foggy air, vanishing as quickly as they appear.
    The train makes a stop. Sherlock holds his breath. He rubs his face and peeks through his fingers down the carriage toward his tiny enemy. The child is talking to his mother, tugging on her sleeve, pointing up the aisle …
right at him
. But she is engrossed in a conversation with her eldest daughter and angrily shushes him.
    The child