Chapter 5: Nolan and the Mysterious Stranger

Jimmy and Emma raced along Baker Street as fast as their legs could carry them. They had to get to Nolan, to find out what he knew of the airship and the Mad Bomber.

“Slow down a little, Jimmy,” Emma called after her brother. She was having a hard time keeping up with him, as they zig-zagged along the sidewalk.

“I can’t!” he called back. “I don’t want Mom making me do school work until midnight! Anyway, we’re here.”

The youth stopped at a bustling intersection full of traffic. It was the entrance to the London Underground Railway. Horse drawn carriages lined the road, waiting to pick up passengers. Business men in suits and ties walked about in a hurry. Some of them headed down, underground, to catch a train, and others came up from a train that had arrived. Standing at the entrance to the Baker Street Underground Station was Nolan - a young, grimy looking boy, standing on a wooden crate and yelling “Extra! Extra! Read all about it! King and Queen of Spain to visit London!”

The twins approached Nolan the newsboy; his greasy blond hair stuck out at odd angles, and his shirt and pants had multiple patches to hold them together. A gentleman approached the boy, gave him a few pence, and took a copy of the paper.

“Thank you, sir,” Nolan said, and then he turned and saw Jimmy and Emma. “Hey, it’s the MacDougall twins. Boy, have I got news for you.”

“You have news about the airship?” Emma asked.

“Sure, sure,” Nolan continued. “I got to make this fast though. These papers don’t sell themselves,” Nolan added, pointing to a stack of fifty newspapers at his feet.

Jimmy reached into his pocket and handed Nolan over a few pence. “Thank you, muchly,” Nolan said, pocketing the coins and handing Jimmy a copy of the Times.

“Anyway, so I was meeting some of the boys yesterday, in front of the office of the Daily Times Gazette, because Henry, one of us newsboys, had come down with a bad cold. He was so sick, he couldn’t sell his papers. We, the boys and I, were meeting to divide up his papers and add them to our piles. If someone’s out sick, we sell their papers for them, so they don’t lose their money for the day. You can’t eat if you don’t have food, I always say.”

“What does this have to do with the mad bomber?” Jimmy asked. He was getting nervous. They only had six hours left to solve the case before the mad bomber would strike again.

“I’m getting to that. Let me tell the story,” Nolan said. “Anyway, as we are standing out front, this strange man kicks open the door of the newspaper office and storms out. He yells back, ‘I’ll show you a real story! You’ll see just how real my story is tonight!’ And, he starts to march away. Then, he sees me and the boys, and comes straight at us. I thought he was gonna yell at us, too. Instead, he comes right up to me and says, ‘You there! Give me one of those papers!’

“He snatches one out of my hand, looks at the headline, and says ‘Bah! You think this is news. Just wait till tomorrow, then all of London will know real news!’ Then, he wandered off into a cab and took off down the street.”

“Did you get a good look at him?” Emma asked. She thought this sounded just like the mad bomber.

“Course I did,” Nolan said proudly. “But the guy was real funny looking, like he didn’t want anyone to know who he was. He wore a long, black overcoat, pince-nez glasses[2], but with the lens darkened, so I couldn’t make out his eye color…Oh yes! And a deerstalker hat, with the flaps down, to cover his ears.”

“That doesn’t tell us too much,” Jimmy said.

“Let me finish,” Nolan went on. “He had a sharp nose, well-trimmed dark beard and mustache, and the coach he went off in, it had initials on the side. In big writing were the letters S.H.

“S.H.!” the twins shouted together.

“That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant,” Nolan concluded, and he leaped back on top of his crate. “Anyway, I got to get back to work. Hope that helps you and all.”

“One last thing, Nolan,” Jimmy added. “Who was the stranger yelling at, in the newspaper office? We need to ask that man some questions.”

“Good luck with that,” Jimmy stated. “That was Old Man Withers, the news editor. He doesn’t speak to anyone who doesn’t have a story, and even if you did, he doesn’t ever talk to children. In fact, he hates kids!”

“That’s okay, Nolan. Thank you for the information,” Emma said.

As she and Jimmy walked away, they heard Nolan begin calling out, “Extra! Extra!” again, and selling his papers.

“What do you think?” Jimmy asked his sister.

“It’s not much,” Emma conceded, “but it is a start. I think we need to split up. Jimmy, you need to talk with Old Man Withers and find out what the mad bomber said to him. Also, we need to know why he didn’t print a story about the airship. Why was the story left out of all the papers?”

“Got it,” Jimmy agreed.

“And I’ll go see if I can find our friend Steven the cab driver. We need to find that cab with the initials S.H. on its side. That might be the clue to solving this case.”

“I agree, but I’m a little worried about those letters and the deerstalker hat.”

Emma frowned and nodded. They were both worried..but it couldn’t be true, could it? With the deerstalker hat and the initials S.H..Could the mad bomber be..Sherlock Holmes!

2 Fun Fact: Pince-nez glasses are small, foldable glasses that were popular in the 19th century. Unlike modern glasses, pince-nez glasses had no stems to rest on ears. They were held in place by a spring that grips or “pinches” the nose.