The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs (4 page)

“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.

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 stable 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.