The architecture was noble and the layout oozed common sense: rather than wait outside in the cold and damp under a gigantic open shed roof as in London’s great and small stations, here one went down a ramp inside the sprawling structure, and the train came in to you on a warm and well-ventilated lower level. When they’d arrived, James had said, “I’ll have to go claim my bags for transfer,” but Holmes had taken the handful of baggage check tickets and said, “I’ll find some expert help in getting that done for us” and had disappeared for only a moment into the Grand Lobby crowd before returning. “Are you sure . . .” began James. His continuing nightmare was having his steamer trunk or other pieces of his baggage, including the portmanteau filled with beginnings of his stories and the long, thrice-bescribbled scripts for his current and future plays, disappear during one of these American railway adventures. How much happier he would have been, he realized, if both he and his luggage were safely aboard the good ship Spree and safely out of sight of land by now.
