Free The Baker Street Boys - The Case of the Stolen Sparklers by Anthony Read Page B

did.
    “We’ll just have to let him lead us to wherever he’s going,” he said.
    The fog had thickened during the night. As the Boys took up their positions in the street outside Mountjoy House, it lay over London like a woolly blanket. But unlike a blanket, it did not keep them warm, and they shivered in the morning chill.
    “We’ll warm up when we start movin’,” said Sparrow, trying to stay cheerful.
    “Can’t be no colder than hangin’ about ’ere,” grumbled Shiner. “I hope ’e comes out soon.”
    “And he’d better not go too fast when he does,” said Wiggins. “Don’t want to lose him in this blooming fog.”
    “Yeah,” Beaver agreed. “Can’t see to the end of the street. We’ll have to stick close to him.”
    “Right, but not too close. He mustn’t know we’re following.”
    “And not all in one bunch,” added Gertie. “We’d better split up into two lots, three of us in each.”
    “Yeah. He’d be sure to notice six of us all together if he looked round,” Rosie said.
    “All right, let’s split up now,” Wiggins told them. “Beaver, Rosie, Shiner, you go on the other side of the street. Sparrow and Gertie stay with me.”
    They had only just separated when the front door of Mountjoy House opened and Gerald came out. He pulled on a pair of gloves, wrapped his scarf more firmly around his neck and set off at a brisk pace. The two groups of Boys followed, trying to look casual.
    Keeping Gerald in sight was quite easy at first, since there weren’t many people on the quiet streets. When he reached Baker Street, with its crowded pavements, it became much harder, but the Boys still managed. Then he stepped out into the road, hailed a hansom cab and climbed into it. Wiggins was quite close behind him, but not close enough to hear the address he gave to the driver. All the Boys could do was trot along behind the cab and hope they could keep up with it.
    Fortunately the traffic was heavy, as usual. The streets were packed with cabs and carriages, vans and omnibuses, and the fog made them all go slower than normal, so the Boys were able to keep the cab in view. Their only fear was that with so many cabs all looking the same, it would be easy to mix them up and follow the wrong one. From behind, they could not see Gerald inside it. But luckily the cabbie, perched high up on his seat at the back, had a big red scarf wrapped round and round his neck and mouth and they kept their eyes fixed on that.
    Wherever Gerald was going, it seemed a long way. The cab headed east towards the City, past the shops and new department stores of Oxford Street and on for nearly two miles. They were not far from Newgate Prison and St Paul’s Cathedral when the cab – and all the other vehicles around it – came to a complete standstill in a massive traffic jam.
    Wiggins pulled out his battered pocket watch and consulted it.
    “Wherever he’s going,” he told Sparrow and Gertie, “he ain’t gonna be there by ten o’clock, unless he gets a move on.”
    “Looks like he knows that,” Sparrow answered.
    Ahead of them, Gerald had leapt out of the cab, handed some money up to the driver and set off on foot, almost running in his hurry. Signalling to Beaver and the others to cross over, Wiggins followed. They came to a shiny new red-brick office building, tall, ornate and glowing; the sign over the main entrance proclaimed it to be the headquarters of a big insurance company. For a moment, Wiggins wondered if this might be where Gerald was going – perhaps he, like Lady Mountjoy, was hoping to claim insurance money for the jewels. But instead of entering, Gerald walked straight past and turned into a small street alongside it. The Boys followed, as closely as they dared, and soon found themselves plunged into a maze of alleyways, with ancient buildings leaning out crazily over their heads.
    Gerald obviously knew the area well, and he scuttled round its many twists and turns so quickly that it became more