The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs Read Online Free Page B

surely follow, but it didn’t come. It would in the fullness of time, of course, but it was damned strange being left out of things. I was leery of playing the Grand Inquisitor, though, and anyway was too tired to speak. We had been traveling for days it seemed, with only that brief respite at the Half Toad, and the hours had heaped up into a heavy weariness. Tubby was snoring again directly we got underway, and despite the pain in my head I sank toward sleep myself, caught up in a recollection of the shocking condition of Lord Busby’s two-days-old corpse when we’d found it.
    Busby had been engaged in experiments involving the production of various rays, both visible and invisible, created by the use of large, precious stones. The stones, to the value at tens of thousands of pounds, had been stolen along with his papers and apparatus at the time of his murder. Scotland Yard suspected that he was in league with certain Prussian interests, who were financing his experiments, and St. Ives was of a like mind. The Prussians, perhaps, had simply taken what they wanted when Busby’s work had born fruit, and for his efforts had paid poor Busby in lead, as they say.
    I tell you this now because my mind is fresh, and because it has a bearing on our story, but there in the train car, at the edge of sleep, I didn’t care a brass farthing about Busby one way or the other, given that the man was a traitor, or had been setting up to become one. Take a long spoon when you sup with the devil, I say. In short, I faded from consciousness and slept the sleep of the dead until the train stopped in Uckfield well past midnight.
    §
    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