THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING IRREGULARS
(Based on the Grimm Brothers’ Tale of the Children of Hameln)
The knock came as Holmes and I sat down for breakfast. Sherlock paused, his fork and knife suspended above his plate, ready to attack the kipper lying there. “Come in, Wiggins.”
A lad of about sixteen stepped into the room and peered at my flatmate. “How’d ya’ know it was me?”
“Quite obvious, really.” Holmes chewed a bite of fish. “No one had knocked on the front door, and your steps were too light for a man and too quick for a lady. Therefore, Mrs. Hudson had let in a boy through the back entry. I suppose it could’ve been another of the Irregulars, but given you are their leader, logically, it would be you.”
Wiggins’ mouth formed an o. “Laws. That’s a ‘nificent piece of thinkin’.”
“What I am unable to ‘think’ out, however, is the purpose of your visit.”
The young man sobered immediately at this pronouncement, his lower lip trembling. “It’s me mates. They’re gone.”
Sherlock’s next forkful froze halfway to his mouth. A piece of kipper swung from the tines. “Gone? How?”
“I dunno, ‘xactly. The six of us went to sleep, and when I woke up, they was gone.”
“This morning?”
He shook his head. “Yesterday mornin’. I spent all day searchin’ for them. Walked all over town, whistlin’ our call to come together. Nuthin’.” His eyes glistened. “Somethin’ bad’s happened to ‘em. It’s like the earth swallowed ‘em.”
A stone formed in the pit of my stomach at the news of the Irregulars’ disappearance. London in 1895 had a variety of ways of “swallowing” people, and it was quite possible that was what happened to the boys. Even Holmes might have trouble locating them. Sherlock, however, expressed no such doubts.
“Unless the laws of physics somehow shifted yesterday, they are somewhere,” Holmes said. He dropped his fork and kipper onto his plate and raised his gaze to the boy. “As you can see, gravity has not been altered. Since physical laws are operating as they should, the same most definitely applies to the Irregulars.”
He turned to me as he pushed himself away from the table. “Watson, shall we begin the investigation?”
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