§
About our tedious trek into Blackboys I’ll say little. There was no transport to be had in Uckfield, and so, the weather being moderately clear and the night starry, we optimistically set out along the road, hauling our bags in a borrowed handcart. An hour into our journey the sky clouded over and it began to rain in earnest, and despite our umbrellas we were soon soaked through, the mud up to our withers. I was in a bad way by then, leaning heavily against Tubby on the lee side.
News of the peculiar shipwreck had by now changed the general view of things, putting an edge on it, as the knacker would say of his knife. Something was afoot that apparently had little to do with a mere prank involving poisoned punch at the Explorers Club. Tubby, game as ever, was enlivened by the nearness of our goal, and was edgy with the desire push on into Heathfield immediately instead of bothering with Blackboys, and the Tipper be damned. Probably the man was off robbing houses at the moment anyway. It was common sense, Tubby said, that the raid had best be carried out in the early morning hours, when vigilance slept and darkness was an ally.
But I wasn’t up to the task. Tubby’s idea was that I could bivouac well enough in one of the huts near the coal pits, while he and St. Ives slipped into Heathfield and made their way to the niece’s cottage, situated, as it was, on a country lane. The relative isolation of the place would tip the whole business in our favor. They would fling Alice into the back of a hay wagon, and the niece in with her, and spirit both of them out of the village, by stealth, bribery, or main force. They would gather me up and run south, going to ground at Tubby’s uncle’s place in Dicker.
I was a wreck by then, and far too weary to object. A dark hut near the coal pits would be a welcome thing even if it were crawling with adders, so long as it was dry. I half thought that St. Ives would agree with Tubby, time being of the essence, but about that I was wrong. Instead of seizing the moment as Tubby advised, he reminded us of the asbestos caps, and it was those hats that carried the day, since there was no going into Heathfield without them. He honored us for our loyalty, he said, but it was the Tipper or nothing.
And so it was an hour before dawn when we fell in through the door at the Old Coach Inn on the High Street and roused the innkeeper, still in his nightcap, and moderately unhappy that he’d been deprived of his last hour of sleep. It was wonderful, though, to see what money can do to improve a man’s spirit, for he took ours happily enough in the end, and, being short of accommodations, stowed us in two closed up, empty rooms with pieces of dirty carpet on the floor to serve as beds. We’d slept rougher, though, in our time, and the rooms were at least dry. The Professor took one of them, and Tubby and I the other, ours having the added luxury of a solid shutter across the window to block out the day.
Once again I fell into the arms of Morpheus without so much as a heigh-ho. It was several hours later that Tubby arose to heed the call of nature, stumbling over me in the darkness and nearly crushing my hand. I cried out, as you can imagine, and that was the end of sleep. A morbid sun shone through the chinks in the shutter. We rapped on the door of the adjacent room, but apparently the Professor was already up and about. Tubby and I put ourselves together and hastened out into the inn parlor to find our friend, who had solicitously let us sleep—odd behavior under the circumstances, it seemed to me now. The clock began to toll the hour: nine o’clock.
St. Ives was nowhere to be seen, and in fact the inn parlor was generally empty of people. Somehow the journey down the hall from our room had reminded my head of that iron pipe. There was the smell of rashers and coffee leaking out of the kitchen, which on any other morning would suggest the smell of heaven itself, but which gave my stomach an unhappy lurch. I sat down heavily in a chair by the hearth. “I’m all right,” I said to Tubby. “It’ll pass.”
“Of course it will,” Tubby said, a little too cheerfully. “That piece of pipe would have knocked the sense out of any other man alive, but you haven’t any sense to begin with, Jack, and that’s what saved you.” He bobbed up and down with silent laughter and then headed toward the door, meaning to look for our companion. But the door swung open in that very moment, nearly banging into him. A boy of about ten crept in—the stable boy, as it turned out—and stood looking from one to the other of us, twisting an envelope in his hands as if he were wringing out a towel. He was a long-faced lad with a shock of hair that stood up on his head as if he had taken a fright. He touched it to his forehead by way of a greeting.
“Begging your honors’ pardon,” he said, “but is one of you Mr. Owlesby? Mr. Jack Owlesby?”
“One of us is,” I told him. “In fact, I am the very man. Who might you be?”
“John Gunther,” he said. And without another word he handed over the envelope, which bore my name across the seal: Jack Owlesby, Esq. I could see at once who had written it. St. Ives’s curious back-slanted script is unique. “The man told me to give it to you personal, sir,” John Gunther said, “when it was nine by the clock, and to show it to no one else. And I was to give you these.” From his pocket he took three guineas and handed them to me. “And now I’ve done my job and done it fairly, sir.”
“So you have, John,” I told him, and he stood there goggling at me until I said to Tubby, “Be a good fellow and give Mr. Gunther a token of our esteem, will you Mr. Frobisher? My purse was stolen by blackguards last night, as you might recall.”
“Of course,” Tubby said. “You can consider it a loan, Jack.” He handed over a coin and the boy turned happily toward the door, nearly stumbling into the innkeeper coming in, who cuffed him on the back of the head, cursed him for a slow-belly, and reminded him of his duty. My brain must have been creeping along in sluggish way, for it was only then that the certainty struck me: St. Ives had gone on without us into Heathfield. I bearded the innkeeper before he could take his leave.
Chapter 4
A Day at the Inn
St. Ives apparently hadn’t slept at all, but had sneaked out at dawn and roused the innkeeper again. He had asked about the Tipper, and although the innkeeper had warned him against the man, St. Ives set out down the road in the direction of the Tipper’s shack with a sleepy John Gunther to show him the way.
“That must have been three hours ago,” I said incredulously.
“Nearly to the minute,” the innkeeper said, and then he went on to tell us that John Gunther had returned shortly with the missive, but with instructions not to rouse us, but to wait until we’d come up for air. And so it was done. The innkeeper had seen to it. He went out again, promising breakfast and coffee, which sounded distinctly more palatable to me now than it had only a few minutes earlier.
“He’s left us in port,” Tubby said, slumping into a chair. “And by design. He could as easily have sent the boy back at once to rouse us. For God’s sake, man, read the letter, and we’ll know why.”
I tore it open straightaway, although there was no hurry, as it turned out. “Tubby and Jack,” the letter read. “I’m going on into Heathfield without you. I ask your pardon for my deceit, but I can tell you that there is nothing else to be done. I’ve made a ruin of things in every possible way, and it’s my business to sort things out if I can. With the idea of departing at first light, I paid a visit to the Tipper, where he lives below the miners’ houses at the bottom of the High Street. The man was unhappy to see me, but he was game enough when he had three of my guineas in his pocket and more promised. He resolutely refused to lead anyone but me into Heathfield. The entire company is out of the question, he maintains, with the roads and paths guarded as they are. He has been in and out twice in the past two days, and it was a close business—work for a cat, he said, and not an elephant.
“Of course I didn’t tell him what I was about, and he affected not to care, so long as he received six guineas in all. When we reach our goal, I’ll release him from his obligation. He’s agreed to return to the inn, find the two of you, make his report, and receive the second payment, which I’ve entrusted to John Gunther, the s
table boy, who is a good lad. By that time, God willing, I’ll have thwarted Narbondo’s plans and Alice and I will be making our way south to Dicker to look up Tubby’s uncle.”
I heard Tubby gasp at the mention of Dr. Narbondo’s name, but I read on without pause and with precious little surprise:
“When you’ve paid the Tipper his due, you’d do me a service by leaving straightaway for Dicker yourselves, for we’ve got further business to attend to in the south. If we’re not there by sunset this evening, then I’ll leave the two of you to your own devices.
“Many things have become clear to me, Jack, and it’s high time that you and Tubby know all. It was Ignacio Narbondo himself who sent the false missive from Dundee, luring us north. I did him the foolish service of dawdling for two weeks, scrutinizing the nonsense that he himself had planted for the very purpose of manipulating me. And it was Narbondo who murdered Busby and stole the gems and his apparatus, suspicion naturally falling to the Prussians. To put it simply, I fear that Narbondo has made use of Busby’s Second Ray—a madness ray. I cannot explain the effect of the ray, but I suspect that the gravitational distortion of the energy’s waveform provokes a complimentary distortion in the activity of the brain. You’ll recall that Busby’s portable laboratory was often set up on a prominence. The old Belle Tout Lighthouse at Beachy Head might answer. If it does not, then the device might well be set up within the cliff itself, perhaps in a cavern, where the chalk walls would facilitate the acceleration of the ray, which I fear is impervious to the horizon. That would explain the curious matter of the Explorers Club. Narbondo’s submarine vessel has been sighted often enough near Eastbourne….”
“Narbondo!” Tubby said, unable to contain his loathing any longer. “I’ll give that bloody reptile a taste of my blackthorn stick this time. See if I don’t!”
“Pray that we have the opportunity,” I said, waving him silent.
“You recall the experiment with Busby’s sapphire propulsion lamp,” the letter went on, “the way the crystal structure of the sapphire was destroyed in a single use. This is much the same, except that the lamp that transmits the madness ray makes use of an emerald. Even Narbondo’s coffers cannot support the continual destruction of emeralds, and I suspect that the three trials have cost him dearly. Busby had discovered a way to dissolve the emerald in acid, and then reconstruct it under high heat, so that the crystalline lattice would be perfect, impervious to the degenerative effects of the device. In short, Narbondo will want this fortified emerald, which Busby gave to me for safekeeping, although I fear that there is no such thing as safekeeping.
“Busby was in great fear for his life there in Scarborough. I was to return the emerald to him in a fortnight if his fears were unfounded. Alas, they were not. Clearly it took Narbondo some time to discover that an unfortified emerald would deteriorate, but Busby’s notes must have mentioned the existence of the fortified emerald, and, I suspect, mentioned my name along with it. If not, then Narbondo would have no need to involve me at all. To the contrary, he would have a free hand with things, and the Crown, perhaps the planet, would be at his mercy. Hence my sending Hasbro to Chingford to retrieve the fortified emerald, which is the most valuable card in our hand. But in the end it must be destroyed, even if it means my own destruction. Narbondo can be tempted by it. It will draw him out. But he must not be allowed to possess it. If I’m taken, the ransom demand will shortly follow. I’ve tarried long enough. Sharp’s the word!”
This last was heavily underscored, with a blot of ink at the end where the tip of the nib had snapped off. The four of us who had set out from Victoria Station just a few hours ago were now two.
“Feedle-de-de,” Tubby said, immensely unhappy. “Clearly he shouldn’t have gone into Heathfield alone, not with this much at stake. Elephants!”
“Surely that wasn’t directed at you,” I told him. “It was meant to be a what? A metaphor, not an insult.”
“I know that, you oaf. What I mean to say is that the venture wanted an elephant. He should have seen that. It was damned reckless of him not to. What’s this business of the lure and the prey?”
“For my money,” I told him, “it means that Narbondo fabricated a letter from Thomas Bouch to draw St. Ives north to Scotland. Then, discovering that Alice had fortuitously gone on to Heathfield, he orchestrated this uncanny outbreak of madness, understanding full well that St. Ives would race straight into the heart of danger upon his return.”
“Orchestrated it? So this entire thing was a ploy? What about the business at the Explorers Club, and the ship run aground? What does that have to do with St. Ives?”
“Nothing and everything,” I told him. “I’d guess that they were merely trials. Narbondo effected them from out on Beachy Head. Do you know that our watch salesman bought a ticket last night on the Beachy Head Runner? I did a bit of sleuthing there at Victoria Station, after you’d gone home after your things.”
“Is that right?” Tubby said. “The blithering pie-faced devil. I should have beaten the man where he stood. But of course you’re neglecting the fact that scores of people bought that same ticket. We did, for instance, at least as far as Eridge.”
“As did the railway thief.” I said, everything coming clear to me now. “It fits, don’t you see? Narbondo wouldn’t want an army of us in Heathfield. Given another couple of minutes and your railway thief would have tumbled me from the car, hidden himself once again, and knocked you on the head as well, or Hasbro, when one of you came along. Robbery was convenient, but perhaps it wasn’t the motive.”
“And that’s why the blighter was setting in to finish you off when I dealt him that blow,” Tubby said. “He’d already taken your purse, after all. There was no point in murdering you for mere sport.”
“No point at all,” I said.
“One might say that he was attempting to hack the legs off the elephant before it lumbered into Heathfield.”
“There’s perhaps more truth than poetry in your phrasing, but it’s as you say. There’s a good chance I owe you my life.”
“As well as the half crown I gave the boy just now.”
“That was no half crown,” I said, calling his shameless bluff. “I clearly saw you give the boy a shilling.”
“God’s rabbit!” Tubby said. “I’ll need that breakfast directly. My big guts are eating my little guts, and without salt.” As if his command were a wish on a genie’s lamp, breakfast arrived, interrupting our parlay.
Maddeningly, there was nothing for it but to wait. St. Ives had declared it necessary. The absence of asbestos caps declared it necessary. The two of us would sit on our hands in Blackboys and be satisfied with our lot, hoping to God that the Tipper would appear, and quickly, although to my mind it was a long shot. Like as not the Tipper was just another rum mug in the employ of Ignacio Narbondo—another person for St. Ives to knock on the head if he were to prevail in Heathfield.
We idled away the balance of the morning browsing through the books in the inn parlor. I made inroads into Southey’s Life of Nelson. Tubby dipped into Andrew Marvel’s Bachelor, perpetually interrupting himself to look out of the windows with an expectant squint in his eye. Now and then he stood up, grasped his stick, and flailed away at an enemy that only he could perceive. Hours later, after endless rounds of two-handed Whist and flagons of tea, we ate a roasted duck stuffed with potatoes while watching ever more intently for the door to open and the Tipper to walk in and announce himself. But although the door did just that off and on, and any number of people walked in or walked out, there was no sign of the Tipper. We whiled away the last hour of daylight at a table near the fire over a beaker of port, the rain still falling, half a dozen people sitting around the parlor taking their ease.
The inn door slammed opened, and, as you can imagine, we both looked up sharply. Once again, it wasn’t the Tipper. It was Alice, looking like a wildly beautiful Ophelia, her dark hair windblown, her dress and coat splashed with mud, a haunted look in her eyes. In her
hand she clutched what could only be one of the asbestos caps. She gaped at the two of us, cried out, “Oh, Jack!” and fell to the floor in a dead faint.
Chapter 5
Treachery in
Heathfield
That same morning, while the sun was still low on the horizon and Tubby and I slept, St. Ives followed the Tipper into the woods. It was nearly dark beneath the oak trees and the Scots pine. Steam rose from the wet leaves and needles that covered the forest floor, creating a ground fog. St. Ives carried an asbestos hat, but the Tipper told him that until they were on the very outskirts of Heathfield itself, the cap was of no value to him. In Heathfield it would be priceless. He declined to respond to the questions St. Ives put to him. He had been paid his fee to take St. Ives into Heathfield, he said, not to palaver like a jackdaw.
Soon the ground itself grew black with coal dust, and the forest opened onto a heath as blighted as the Cities of the Plain after the hail of brimstone. There were mountains of coal dug out of the pits, which descended some 150 fathoms into the depths of the earth—deep enough, the Tipper pointed out, to bury a mort of corpses. Rusting coal tubs lay roundabout, and ruined iron machinery, and heaps of firebrick, fabricated by the hundreds of tons to be shipped off to smelters, and all of it covered with black dust where the dust wasn’t washed off by the elements.
The coal pits were quiet, it being the morning of the Sabbath, but there was a low hovel with smoke coming out of a chimney, with a stream that flowed alongside it, the water running black. The Tipper led St. Ives on a circuitous route, behind the pallets of firebrick and outbuildings, wary of the watchman in the hovel. They crossed the stream on a footbridge, the morning growing darker rather than lighter, and before long a spewy sort of rain started in. The Tipper vowed that if he had known that the weather would turn on them, he’d have asked for something more than six guineas for his trouble. Out of fairness, he said, the Professor should pay him the rest of his fee at once, and not compel him to wait for it, since the result was the same in either case, and if they were discovered and pursued, it was every man for himself. If he were captured, he would be three guineas to the bad.
The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs Page 3