Free The Baker Street Boys - The Case of the Disappearing Detective by Anthony Read Page A

the counter.
    The man stared at the money, then at Wiggins. “How old are you?”
    “I don’t— Fourteen?”
    “Pity,” the man said. “Under fourteen you only need a half fare.”
    Wiggins thought hard. “They ain’t fourteen yet,” he said, indicating the others.
    “I can see that.”
    “And I might only be thirteen. I ain’t sure.”
    “Then you might be fifteen. If I sold you a half-fare ticket and you were fifteen, I could be in trouble with the inspector.”
    “Never mind, then. Just give me the tickets.”
    Wiggins pushed the money across the counter.
    “Right. One and three halves it is,” the clerk said, and started to count the money. “Going to see Her Majesty the Queen?”
    “Yeah. We’re in a hurry.”
    The man finished counting. He looked up and shook his head. “There’s only enough here for three halves.”
    Wiggins was stunned. He didn’t know what to do, and time was running out.
    “Well?” the clerk asked. “Do you want them? I haven’t got all day, you know.”
    While Wiggins tried to make up his mind, Shiner pushed forward. The man recognized him and even managed a small smile.
    “Hello, young Shiner. What are you doing here? Having a day off with your chums?”
    “Yeah,” Shiner answered. “We’ll take the three halves.”
    Wiggins started to protest, but Shiner shut him up with a swift kick on the shin. He picked up the three tickets and the few pennies change, then grabbed hold of Wiggins’s sleeve and pulled him away.
    “What you playing at?” Wiggins demanded furiously. “You can’t go without me.”
    “Nor will we. This way. Quick!”
    He led Wiggins and the others out of the ticket office and round the side of the station, past a line of luggage trolleys.
    “In here,” he told Wiggins, pushing open a door. “You two stop here and keep cavey, right?”
    “Where we going?”
    “Porters’ room. Come on.”
    They were only inside for a few moments. When they came out again, Wiggins had swapped his billycock hat and old coat for a porter’s cap and jacket, which they had found hanging on a hook. He grabbed one of the trolleys.
    “Right,” said Shiner, grinning. “Platform 7.”
    They hurried across the station concourse, Wiggins following a little behind the others. While they were having their tickets clipped at the barrier, he pushed his trolley purposefully through the gate, like a real porter. Halfway down the platform, he paused and leant on the trolley, watching as the other Boys found an empty compartment and piled in. A minute later, the guard blew his whistle and waved his green flag to the driver. As the train began to pull out, Shiner and the others held open the door. Wiggins jumped aboard, and they were on their way.

 

A Race against Time
    Just being on the train was so exciting that for the moment the Boys quite forgot how urgent their journey was. Luckily they had been able to get a compartment to themselves, so they were free to explore and investigate it. They bounced up and down on the padded seats. They stared in wonder at the framed photographs of seaside resorts screwed to the walls above the seats, and at their own faces in the narrow mirrors fixed between the pictures.
    Wiggins thought he looked very good in the porter’s cap, and the others laughed when he tilted it rakishly over one eye, like a fashionable young man-about-town. Gertie, however, was so shocked at the sight of her shaggy, scraggy, red hair and the hundreds of freckles on her nose and face that she screwed her eyes tight shut and refused to look again.
    Sparrow was not interested in how he looked – he had seen himself many times in dressing-room mirrors at the theatre. He was having fun climbing up into the luggage rack, which was like a long net above the pictures and mirrors. When he lay down in it, he could pretend to be a sailor in a hammock, though it really wasn’t very comfortable.
    Shiner was the most excited of them all. He could hardly believe that he