The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs (11 page)

The flight of stairs ended on a natural outcropping of the chalk, chiseled flat to make a sort of landing some twenty feet in length and width. A second flight of stairs descended from the landing to the bottom of the sea cave, another fifty feet below. Immediately beside us stood wooden door, barred with a length of oak. On the door, hanging on pegs, were four of the Tipper’s asbestos caps, looking incongruous in that vast, subterranean place.

“I’ll ask you to step away from the door, Mr. Owlesby,” Narbondo said, speaking in a polite tone that increased my desire to strangle him. “You have the look of a desperate man about you. If you’d like to hobnob with your friend the professor, you’d best don one of these admirable headpieces. If, on the other hand, you take it into your mind to bolt down the stairs, I might or might not shoot you in the back, but I can assure you that you’ll next see your friend singing in the heavenly choir. And for goodness sake, keep that infernal device in mind. It’s very much on the mind of that poor trussed up fellow topside. If all goes well, perhaps you’ll have an opportunity to do the man the favor of saving his no doubt invaluable life. In short, the fate of your friends very much rests in your capable hands, so pray do not be foolhardy.”

I stepped away, just as he asked, taking him entirely at his word. He removed one of the caps from its peg and tossed it to me. I put it on and watched as he tugged one tightly down over his ears, holding onto the pistol and gazing at me steadily, and all the time half smiling, as if he found the business slightly amusing. “I’ll thank you to open the door and to step inside now,” he said.

I dutifully lifted the bar out of its holdfasts, set it aside, and swung the door outward. Within lay a largish room. Again there was a window in the chalk, a stiff breeze from off the channel blowing through it, stirring the dust on the floor. On a wooden platform stood Busby’s lamp, the lens shining mistily with a dim green glow. Behind it lay an array of jars and wires—the Bunsen battery that I had last seen in Busby’s loft in Scarborough. Atop a small table were vials and bottles of various chemicals. To the left of the door a long sort of bench had been cut into the wall, and on it sat the open wooden coffin that I had seen in the photograph at the inn. St. Ives lay within it, his eyes closed, the lower half of the coffin lid fastened down. I could see movement behind his eyelids, as if he was dreaming, and his face was enlivened almost theatrically with rapidly altering emotions. His eyes jerked open and he uttered a quick gasp, and then they closed again, and his entire body seemed to twitch.

“Stand closer to your friend, if you will, Mr. Owlesby,” Narbondo said. “It takes only one hand, you see, to manipulate the lever that increases the power of Busby’s cleverly contrived ray, which leaves my other hand free to hold the pistol. You’re perhaps aware that the emerald, which lends this lamp its pleasant green color, is very nearly played out, as they say. It’s effective in close quarters, but now quite useless over distances. Its power is ebbing even as we speak. Still, it should provide us with some entertaining and edifying sport. I’m quite aware, by the way, that the stone recently delivered to our friend the Peddler might be a fraud. Professor St. Ives wouldn’t be so easily persuaded to hand over the genuine article. That’s why we esteem the man so highly, is it not? No, sir, I anticipated complications, betrayals, perhaps even opportunities. Now, purely in the interests of science, note the effect of the ray as I increase the power of the lamp.”

The Professor’s face contorted and twitched more rapidly now. He cried out, gasped heavily, and tried to sit up, although the coffin lid pressed downward on him, and he could do nothing to help himself. His eyes flew open, revealing a look of absolute, unutterable, maniacal terror, and he cried out in a tormented voice, his mad eyes sweeping blankly over my face.

Narbondo’s expression, to the contrary, was alive with evident delight, as if he were witnessing a droll scene at the theatre. He licked his lips and narrowed his eyes, nodding his head slightly as if very well satisfied. And yet he was not entirely distracted, for he held the pistol steadily, aimed straight at me.

St. Ives shrieked now, and I could hear his feet hammering against the coffin lid and his teeth clacking together. He looked at me again, and I saw in his eyes, God help me, a flicker of recognition and a silent plea. Without a thought I turned and lunged toward Narbondo, thinking to put an end to his depredations once and for all. There was the shattering sound of the pistol firing, magnified in that small space, and I felt rather than heard myself scream in fear and pure animal loathing.

It took Tubby and Uncle Gilbert ten minutes of careful searching to find the cut in the hill where the keeper had alleged that the mouth of the cave was hidden. A dense stand of shrubbery disguised it, but someone had hacked a passage behind it, leading around a corner of rock to the low opening in the hillside. If they hadn’t been told where to look, they wouldn’t have found it, so completely was it hidden by shrubbery. They stood in the shadows now, taking stock, bushes crowded up against their backs, when they heard a voice coming their way from within the cave—someone apparently singing. They turned hastily and hurried back around the way they’d come, going to ground behind a heap of boulders. The singing—a fine tenor voice—grew louder, and the Peddler himself strode into view, walking jauntily downhill in the direction of the lighthouse like a happy man on holiday.

“Shall we follow him?” Uncle Gilbert whispered. “We can lay him out with the blackthorn, pitch his body off the cliff, and be done with another one of these villains.”

“I suspect that he’s off to the ransom, Uncle. If we knock him on the head, the greater plan goes awry.”

“That’s damned unfortunate. His head badly wants crushing.”

They watched the Peddler make his way to the cottage, open the door, and step inside. He wouldn’t find the keeper at home, for the man had already been hurried off in the direction of Eastbourne with his spare trousers and shirt tied up in a bindle. The keeper’s absence might be a suspicious thing, but it couldn’t be helped.

They returned to the cave mouth, listened for a moment, and then stepped into the near-darkness across a litter of leaves and sticks.

“No quarter for them,” Uncle Gilbert said in a low voice. “That was my old dad’s way. He fought at the Battle of the Nile, you know, and don’t I wish I could have been there. I’d have knocked a Frenchman or two on the head. Perhaps one of these villains is a damned Frenchman.”

“Certainly there’d be more glory in it,” Tubby said, not feeling quite so brash as his uncle. He set out, endeavoring to see through the gloom, Uncle Gilbert coming along behind, the two of them walking ever downward into the nether regions of the earth, sometimes in the light of oil lamps, sometimes in darkness.

In due time they saw a brighter light ahead, coming from within what was apparently a room off the passage. There was the scuffling and banging of what sounded like someone laboring over heavy crates, and then two distinct voices, one of which said, “Blast your blasted arm,” which was followed by “Bugger off,” from the other one. A moment later the bottom corner of a large trunk appeared in the doorway, followed by the wheels of the upright, two-wheeled trolley that it rested upon.

Tubby and Uncle Gilbert stepped back into the shadows, watching as the Tipper himself appeared, pushing the first cart, which held a Saratoga trunk that towered over his head. A second trunk followed, this one pushed by the railway thief, whom Tubby recognized on the instant. He was turned nearly sideways so that the trunk and cart rested against his good arm, like a man shoving open a door with his shoulder. Soon they were out of sight around a bend in the tunnel.

“I say we come upon them from behind while they’re discommoded by those trunks,” Uncle Gilbert said.

Tubby nodded, but his uncle was already setting out, his statement being more in the line of an order than a suggestion. The two of them crept along like sneak thieves in a dark house. The passage straightened, and there ahead, quite close, stood their prey, the railway thief struggling with his burden, and the Tipper berating him. Tubby glided forward, the blackthorn stick at the ready, which was a good thing, for the Tipper looked back just then, saw him, and gave a shout, which was his undoing. Tubby swung the stick at his head, and the Tipper ducked forward, trying to get out of the way, but he caught the full weight of the club between the shoulder blades. He was driven forward, his forehead rebounding audibly off the corner of the heavy trunk. Uncle Gilbert had waded past Tubby now, his sword cane raised, calling on the railway thief to stand down. The man elected to flee. He hadn’t taken three steps, however, before Uncle Gilbert drew back his arm and cast the sword cane like a whirligig at his knees, the weapon whistling as it flew. The man somersaulted forward in a tangle of arms and legs and lay for a surprised instant on his face before trying to rise again. Tubby was too quick for him, and the man found himself looking at the upraised blackthorn. He held up his good arm to fend off the blow.

“It was me that did for your other arm,” Tubby said to him, “you crawling piece of filth. Do you deny it?”

“No sir,” the man said unhappily, withdrawing his raised arm and tucking it sensibly away under his side. He made no further move to rise.

The Tipper was just then coming round. He stood up, staggered two paces toward the wall of the tunnel, and then collapsed again.

“Come my good fellow,” Uncle Gilbert said to the railway thief. “Lend us your one good arm, and we’ll let you keep it. Let’s have a look inside that Saratoga trunk that our tiny friend was trundling. Jump to it, now.”

Puzzled, the man crept to his feet and threw open the lid of the Tipper’s trunk, which was filled with carefully stowed bottles of wine, waxed cheeses and cured meats. “Our good luck,” Uncle Gilbert said, his eyes greedy. “To the victor go the spoils, eh nephew?” He gestured with his cane. “Stow the lot of it against the wall there, my man. Break so much as a bottle and it’ll go rough for you.”

He set about unloading the freight, piling it carefully against the wall, until the trunk was empty. The Tipper had come round again. He stood up unsteadily, holding onto the edge of the empty trunk with the look in his eyes of a man about to bolt. Before he had a chance, Uncle Gilbert bent forward and pushed him, and the Tipper toppled over into the trunk with a shout, the lid slamming down over him. Uncle Gilbert sat on it in order to do up the latches and fasten the two heavy leather belts that girt it, and just like that the Tipper found himself lying in the darkness of a locked Saratoga trunk. He continued to shout and to pummel the sides until Tubby whacked on the lid half a dozen times with the blackthorn.

“Now you, mate,” Uncle Gilbert said to the railway thief. “That one’s yours. I’ve taken a liking to you, and I give you my warrant that we’ll return in due time to set you free—such freedom as you deserve, that is. As for the Tipper here, I have a notion to cold storage him in that room back yonder. It’s tolerably dry down here, and he’ll stay fresh as a pharaoh for the next century or two.”

“You want me to get into the bleeding trunk?” the man said.

“As you value your neck,” Uncle Gilbert told him. He unsheathed his sword and took a vicious swing in the man’s general direction, and in a trice he was unloading the second trunk, which was filled with much the same sort of delicacies as the first—no doubt intended for Narbondo’s larder aboard the submarine. 

“In you go, then,” Tubby said. “Easy does it.” They stood on either side of him, crowding him into it, throwing the lid down and fastening it.

“They’ll be tight as bugs here until we return,” Uncle Gilbert said loudly, for the sake of the two prisoners. “And if we don’t return they’ll be dead men.” He laughed out loud, claimed happily that he hadn’t in his life had such sport as this, and shook Tubby’s hand on a job well done.

§

Hasbro awakened to find himself bound into a chair—the very same chair that the keeper had been bound into a scant hour earlier, and with the same lengths of curtain line. He quickly found his wits and deduced that his wounds were perhaps more bloody than dangerous, and that the problem lay not in the bullet or possible concussion, but in the infernal device that sat like a toad on the floor some three feet from the chair in which he was tightly secured. It was a simple thing of wires, a clockwork mechanism, and a large bundle of explosives, and it ticked loudly in the quiet room. The face of the heavy clock was imprinted with a grinning moon. Inserted into one of the eyes was a copper peg, which must surely complete an electronic circuit when touched by the minute hand of the clock, which, it seemed to Hasbro, was moving in its revolution surprisingly quickly.

His first wild instinct was to raise the front legs of the chair in an endeavor to hop bodily backward, wanting to distance himself from the device. But although he succeeded, he quickly gave up on the effort, for the device was evidently large enough to blow the cottage and the lighthouse to pieces, and distance would avail him nothing without freedom and an open door.

He struggled now with the bonds, but they were cleverly tied, and his actions simply drew the knots tighter. There was a clasp knife in his pocket—he could feel its weight—but unless he could free either of his hands, it was useless to him. He bucked in the chair, coming down hard on one of the rear legs, which snapped off, tilting him slowly over sideways so that he slammed down onto his side on the floor. If it had been a front leg, it would have freed one of his feet, and he might yet win free, but as it was he could no longer bring any leverage to bear, and his struggles simply propelled the chair in a feeble circle, so that he ended up staring once again at the bomb.

He was weakened, too, by loss of blood or concussion, and it came into his mind that if he lost consciousness he was a dead man. He calmed himself by force of will, moderating his breathing, clearing his mind, and then very carefully he went about the process of testing each of his bonds in turn, distracted all the while by the maddening ticking of the clock, the seconds and minutes slipping away. Freeing a foot would avail him little, and so he attended to his wrists and arms, certain that force would work against him, and that subtlety and patience might prevail.

Time passed, although how much time he couldn’t say. He found it necessary to stop more and more often simply to rest, and finally the desire to sleep came over him, subtlety and patience having invited it. His determination had leaked away with his vital fluids, and it was only with the very last vestiges of his consciousness that he heard the door behind him creak open and a gruff voice asking, “What the bloody hell is this now?”