Sherlock Holmes Never Dies: Collection 06 by Craig Stephen Copland

Author:Craig Stephen Copland [Copland, Craig Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

That Hairy Hound

from Budapest

A t five minutes to seven the following morning I was standing on platform number two at St. Pancras. After leaving Pall Mall, I had made a hurried stop at Thomas Cook’s and secured train, ferry, and hotel reservations through to Buda-Pesth. For the leg from London to Paris, I chose decent second-class seats, but on the now-famous Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul, via Buda-Pesth, I depleted my bank account and booked a first-class cabin. It would be my first voyage to the far side of the Continent and, if Mycroft were footing the bill, I was determined to enjoy the outing.

I was settled in my seat as the final whistle sounded for the train’s departure and from the coach window I could see Holmes running awkwardly across the platform, carrying a suitcase in each hand. He soon appeared beside me in the coach, panting and sweating.

“My goodness,” I said, “we are not going for a month, are we? Are you bringing your entire wardrobe along?”

He handed off one of the cases to a porter but kept hold of the second.

“No,” he said. “but I could not decide which of the many significant files, books, or cases of past correspondence to leave at home. So, I brought them with me. And now I shall return to reading them.”

With that, he opened the case, extracted a large selection of the contents and said no more until we reached Dover two hours later.

At the port, we boarded the ferry to Calais and soon joined the armada of dirty British coasters that were butting their way across the Channel in the mad March days. The wind was cold and damp, and the waves rolling, with a white cap on the crest of every one of them. It was not a smooth crossing, and I gave thanks to Providence that the journey was mercifully short and that April would soon arrive.

In the late afternoon, our train pulled into the enormous, bustling Gare du Nord and, with the help of two strapping Algerian redcaps, we secured our baggage and found a swarthy-looking Frenchman and his cabriolet. Our twenty minutes inside his cab reaffirmed my conviction that Parisiens will never be terrified of bomb-tossing anarchists after having overcome their mortal fear of cab drivers.

After a breakneck journey through the Tenth and Second Arrondissements, we arrived at the select Hotel de Crillon adjacent to the Place de la Concorde.

“Am I to dine alone around the corner at Maxim’s,” I asked, giving my friend a gentle elbow in his side, “whilst you continue to read an entire case of documents this evening?”

“No, my dear Watson, we have an evening in Paris and shall make the best of it. I still have two more days on the train to finish my reading. So, lay on to dinner, and damned be he who first cries ‘Hold, enough.’ ”

Following a delectable and relaxed dinner, we ventured out for a stroll through the Jardin des Tuileries and then along the grand boulevard of the Champs Élysees.

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