The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs (8 page)

Morning found us on the Downs, or at least it found three of us there, Alice, Hasbro, and I, hidden in the shrubbery that covered the hilltop just west of the light, eating sandwiches out of a basket put up by Barlow and drinking tea out of an ingenious traveling teapot. There was the twitter of birds and the morning sun through the leaves, and away off shore a schooner ghosted along, appearing and disappearing through a rising sea mist.

I watched the lighthouse through a pair of Uncle Gilbert’s birding glasses. Five minutes ago a heavy, large man, most likely the keeper, had stepped out onto the encircling balcony carrying a telescope to take a look over the Downs as if he anticipated someone’s arrival. There was smoke rising from the chimney of the attached cottage, and a light beyond the window—someone else waiting inside, perhaps. Maybe several someones, unless the keeper kept lamps burning even while he was out. He had lamp oil to spare, certainly.

White mist drifted through on the breeze off the Channel, obscuring the lighthouse and the edge of the cliffs now. When it cleared, Tubby and Uncle Gilbert appeared, coming along the path from the direction of Eastbourne like Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Tubby used his blackthorn as a walking stick and Uncle Gilbert leaned on what I knew to be a sword cane, and not one of the cheap varieties made for show. This one had an edge on it and a certain amount of heft. Both men wore walking togs and carried birding glasses, the very image of well fed amateur naturalists taking advantage of the morning quiet. Uncle Gilbert stopped in his tracks, pointed skyward, clapped his glasses to his eyes, and watched a falcon turning in a great circle, drifting away northward. Tubby wrote what appeared to be an observation into a small notebook. A curtain of mist drifted between us again, and for a moment I saw nothing. When it cleared, they were halfway along the path to the lighthouse itself, Uncle Gilbert pointing up at the light, then at the schooner out in the Channel, apparently explaining nautical arcana to his nephew.

The plan proposed by Uncle Gilbert was simple: he and Tubby would chat up the lighthouse keeper on the off chance that he would let them take a look upstairs. Uncle Gilbert wasn’t a stranger to the Downs, after all—the keeper would suspect nothing. A jolly peek at the light wasn’t much to ask. The man’s allowing it wouldn’t demonstrate his innocence, but we would know something about the location of Busby’s lamp, at least in the negative. And if the keeper wasn’t amenable? They would persuade him, Uncle Gilbert had said, laughing at the word. But the whole thing must be done by eleven o’clock if Hasbro was to heed the ransom demand and give up the emerald at the lighthouse. If they failed to produce St. Ives, then he would give up nothing, but would look to his pistol.

Tubby knocked on the door of the cottage now, and they stood waiting. Then he knocked on it again, with his stick this time, and they stepped back in anticipation. But the door remained shut, the window curtains still, the smoke tumbling up out of the chimney. They went on around to the door of the lighthouse and treated it in a similar fashion, stepping back so as not to crowd the keeper if he opened it, which he did, directly.

He was a swarthy, heavy man in a Leibnitz cap. I could see through the glasses that he was scowling, as if he had perhaps been awakened by their racket. Uncle Gilbert gestured at the Downs, perhaps explaining what the two of them were up to, and then up at the light. The keeper shook his head, seemed to utter something final, and stepped back inside, shutting the door after him. Tubby turned as if to walk away, but Uncle Gilbert didn’t follow. He stood looking at the door, studying it, and then smote it hard several times, the handle of the sword cane held in his fist. The sound of the knocking reached us an instant later.

“Here’s trouble,” I said to Alice and Hasbro, who could see well enough what I meant. Uncle Gilbert held the cane before him now, his left hand on the scabbard, his right gripping the hilt. “We’ll have to act if we lose sight of them in the fog,” I said, “or if that cottage door opens.”

“Not the three of us,” Hasbro put in. “I have a revolver, after all. I’ll lend them a hand, but you two should remain hidden.”

“Yes,” Alice said.

Hasbro removed the velvet bag from his pocket, drew out the emerald, and sank it in the teapot, fastening down the lid afterward. “No use taking it into the fray,” he said.

Tubby turned now and said something to Uncle Gilbert, apparently trying to draw him away. Our battle, after all, wasn’t with the lighthouse keeper, although perhaps Uncle Gilbert’s was. Perhaps he meant to strike a blow on behalf of Captain Sawney.

The lighthouse door swung open again, and the keeper strode out onto the little paved porch, closing the door behind him. He held a belaying pin in his fist. Tubby walked back toward them, stepping behind his uncle, who was talking and gesturing, his voice rising. The keeper pointed with the pin, as if telling them to clear out. Then a wisp of fog blew through, and when it dissipated everything had changed. Uncle Gilbert was sprawled on the ground, on his back like an overturned tortoise, and Tubby had drawn the blackthorn stick back to strike a blow. There was incoherent shouting as the keeper rushed at Tubby, ducking under the blackthorn. The keeper clipped Tubby on the side of the head with the belaying pin, but Uncle Gilbert had crawled to his knees by then, blood running from a wound on his forehead, and he delivered the keeper a great blow on the back of the head with the sheathed sword. And thank God it was sheathed, because if it had not been the man’s head would have been split like a melon, and although dead men tell no tales, as they say, there’s no virtue in collecting specimens.

The keeper pitched forward, and Uncle Gilbert struck him again, hard, and snatched the cane back for the third blow, the sheath flying off the blade now, end over end. Tubby parried the sword blow with the blackthorn to save his uncle from the gallows, but the keeper scrambled to his feet more nimbly than I would have thought possible and attempted to hit Tubby another savage blow on the side of the head, although it caught him on the shoulder as Tubby twisted away. Hasbro was up and out of the blind now, running down the slope toward the lighthouse, vanishing in the rising fog, which sailed through heavier this time. Right before the curtain closed, however, I saw the door of the cottage fly open, and a man—a small man—come out at a dead run. It was the Tipper, wearing his slouch hat, turning up like a bad penny. I scanned the downs with the glasses, trying to sort things out but hampered by the wall of mist. Then I saw him briefly at the very edge of the precipice, where he disappeared like a goblin over the ledge as if he meant to scramble down the face of Beachy Head and swim across the Channel to France.

“I’m following him!” I said to Alice, which would be senseless blather if she hadn’t seen the Tipper emerge from the cottage. I crawled out the back of the copse to open ground and ran toward the cliff, slowing down when I neared the edge, wary of suffering the fate of Captain Sawney. I looked back toward the lighthouse but made out nothing, although I could dimly hear the sounds of the struggle. I could see perhaps thirty feet downward through the mist, and straightaway spotted the shadowy form of the Tipper as he made his way along what was apparently a narrow trail cut into the chalk. From far below came the muffled sound of the swell washing in over the rocky beach, but I couldn’t see it, which was just as well, because I meant to follow the Tipper downward, and I wasn’t keen on the view.

It was then that I saw a length of three-inch line below and to the right, the color of the chalk of the cliffs and nearly invisible. It was affixed to a heavy iron ring-and-bolt driven into the rock, a holdfast that allowed for a person to climb downward in comparative safety. It had been there for some time, for it was weather-frayed and there was rust on the bolt. I waited until the Tipper was safely out of sight, and then stepped onto the narrow trail, which was steep, but fortunately clear of loose debris. I didn’t tarry, but intended to remain just out of sight in the fog, which meant keeping one eye on what I was doing and another farther down the path in case the Tipper came into view.

I scuttled down sideways, hanging on to the rope carefully, all the time watching and listening for the Tipper. I had made my way perhaps fifty feet from the top of the precipice, when the wind gusted and the fog cleared utterly. I found myself looking down the edge of the cliff, which was unnervingly sheer, the sea moving over the shingle nearly five hundred feet below. My head spun with sudden vertigo when I saw that moving water, and I threw myself into a crouch against the cliff face, grasping the hand-line and closing my eyes. When I opened them again, the fit having passed, the Tipper was gone, although he might still be somewhere on the trail farther below, hidden by an outcropping.

I heard a scrabbling sound above me, and there was Alice, coming along downward with considerably more grace and agility than I had shown. She clutched her dress out of the way with one hand and held onto the line with the other, and within moments she stood beside me. “He’s vanished,” she said, apparently referring to the Tipper. “I assumed you meant to follow him, so I decided to do the same. He’ll lead us to Langdon.”

“What of the emerald?” I asked.

“The emerald doesn’t interest me, Jack. It only interests Doctor Narbondo. My husband is my sole interest, but he doesn’t interest Narbondo at all, except as a means to an end. When the end is achieved…” She shrugged, looking out over the sea as if St. Ives were somewhere beyond the horizon.

“We’ll find him,” I said, starting downward again while the weather was clear. The trail doubled back toward the east, although some distance ahead it was apparently blocked by a great slab of chalk that had slipped from above and which stood precariously among a litter of boulders. The handhold ended there, bolted to the slab. Perhaps it started up again beyond. If the Tipper had seen us above him when the fog lifted, he might easily be waiting for us, hiding behind the great rock. It would be a simple thing for him to reach out and give us a hearty push when we edged around it, and us with nothing to hold onto but sea air.

But Alice made it clear that it was go on or go back for the two of us, and she was clearly in no mood to go back. We approached the great slab warily. The trail was littered with a scree of chalk and flint now, which chattered away downward with each step. The Tipper would certainly hear us approaching if he were hidden up ahead. But now that we were closer, I couldn’t for the life of me see how he could have climbed past the slab, unless he were some variety of ape, for it thrust out over the ledge that it stood on, almost in defiance of gravity, the cliff face angling inward below it.

It wasn’t until we were two or three steps from it that we saw the dark crack of the cavern mouth, which would be completely hidden from above and below both. It lay behind the slab itself. From out to sea, it would appear to be merely a long shadow cast by the slab and the overhanging cliff. But it was a cave mouth right enough, and we stood looking into the dark interior in utter silence, listening hard but hearing nothing but the calling of gulls and the sighing of the ocean below.