The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols by Nicholas Meyer

Author:Nicholas Meyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

When we looked out our window again, it was morning. The blizzard had stopped, and our two watchers had vanished.

“They left hours ago,” Holmes declared, vigorously rubbing his thin upper arms.

“How can you be sure?”

“Their footprints are entirely obscured by fresh snow.”

So they were.

Meeting Mrs. Walling half an hour later in the confining vestibule of the Esmeralda, a cab was summoned, but Holmes waved it off, first paying the driver and ordering him to proceed to the Gare de Lyon, with neither fares nor luggage. His action appeared to baffle Anna Walling, but I knew from experience what this dodge was meant to accomplish.

Sure enough, as we watched from within the hotel, two ruffians emerged from behind the corner at the bottom of the road and hastened after the cab, shrieking for another as they kicked up the fresh snow.

“Never take the first cab,” Holmes explained.

Mrs. Walling, I could see, was impressed.

Our hack, when it arrived, brought us instead to the Gare de l’Est, where we boarded the Orient Express, première classe, entirely undetected, so far as I could determine, by our pursuers.

“Première classe?” I asked the detective. “Isn’t this rather rich for our blood? I understood Mycroft to say we were traveling second class.”

As we stepped aboard, Holmes allowed himself the gleeful smile of one sibling who has outwitted another.

“An oversight, surely. The man is so terribly busy. I had Cook & Son correct our booking.”

Smartly uniformed porters adroitly handling our bags were a welcome change from the Esmeralda.

“We have certainly earned it,” I allowed.

“By the by, Watson, I infer from your new hat that your marriage is flourishing.”

The train in question was simply enormous, stretching over fourteen hundred handcrafted feet and comprising no fewer than eleven sleeping carriages, many with individual names such as Perseus, Minerva, Ibis, Ione, and so forth mounted in raised brass on their vestibules and painted in gilt on their sides as if they were ships. There were in addition several so-called “Continental” Pullmans that could only boast numbers. In addition to the sleeping carriages, there were three restaurant cars, two “parlour” or bar cars, and a new innovation, a “business car,” boasting ten typists on call at the push of a button, day or night, ready to transcribe important communications on diverse typing machines in as many languages for whichever diplomats, royalty, or titans of industry had need of their services.*

“How convenient for you, Watson,” Holmes remarked. “Your memoranda can be transcribed en route.”

“Holmes, I—”

EDITOR’S NOTE: IT IS AT THIS POINT THAT THE DIARY PAGES HAVE MADDENINGLY GONE MISSING, SEVERAL EVIDENTLY TORN OUT. THE NARRATIVE, AS WE SHALL SEE, RESUMES OUTSIDE VARNA, AND SO WE MUST CONTENT OURSELVES WITH LISTING THE KNOWN STOPS MADE AT THAT TIME BY THE CELEBRATED TRAIN. FROM PARIS, THE ORIENT EXPRESS STOPPED IN MUNICH AND THEN VIENNA, BEFORE WENDING ITS WAY SOUTH TO GIURGIU IN ROMANIA AND FROM THERE STILL FURTHER SOUTH TO VARNA, ON THE BLACK SEA.* NORMALLY THE JOURNEY TOOK FIVE DAYS, WITH OCCASIONAL

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