The Disappearing Dwarf Read Online Free

I have this feeling that’s where we’re heading right now – into trouble. Into a castle full of trolls and dogs and hobgoblins.’
    The Professor nodded. ‘As men of science we have a duty to investigate that tower.’
    ‘In just two days,’ Jonathan said, ‘I’ve been a man of leisure and a man of science.’
    ‘This notation here,’ the Professor continued, ‘hasn’t anything to do with dogs. I’m sure of it. It refers to a door, I think.’
    ‘A door to where? To the center of the earth?’
    The Professor perked up at the idea. ‘Quite possibly so, Jonathan. There are theories about it being hollow, you know.’
    ‘Seems unlikely that a chap could wander into it through a door, though, doesn’t it?’ Jonathan asked.
    ‘It seems unlikely that toads fly in the Wonderful Isles, or that the elves cast nets in the clouds to gather rain fish.’
    Jonathan admitted that all that sounded unlikely too, just as the Professor said. ‘What do you expect to find in the tower, Professor, besides deviltry? Bufo and Gump smashed the Dwarf’s laboratories to bits, and Escargot warned them, away from the upper story. I think we should heed his warning. He knows more about Hightower Castle than either of us.’
    ‘That’s true,’ the Professor replied, idly tossing an almond across the fifty-odd feet of water that separated them from the shore. It
splupped
into the river just as some sort of great fish, moving too quickly to identify, leaped out of the water and snatched it up.
    ‘Yoicks!’ shouted Jonathan. ‘I’ve got to get word of this back to Talbot. It’s salted almonds he wants, not lumps of rubber.’
    ‘As I was saying,’ the Professor resumed, ‘Escargot likely had reasons of his own. He’s a fine fellow – don’t get me wrong – but his motives seem to be suspect as often as not. Maybe there’s something in the upper level he just didn’t want us to sec.’
    ‘Like what?’ Jonathan asked.
    ‘Who knows? Some magical device. A treasure maybe.’
    ‘Then it isn’t too likely that Escargot would have just warned us away from whatever it was and left for the coast. He would have taken it with him.’
    The Professor shrugged. About then Ahab woke up, his spot of shade beside the cabin having been chased off by the sun. The Professor tossed him an almond, and Ahab chomped it up with a show of great relish, working the thing back and forth between his teeth as if attempting to get just the right sort of hold on it. He seemed so pleased with the nut that the Professor gave him another one. Jonathan and the Professor could hardly sit and eat the things in front of him, so the three of them finished off the little bag between them.
    ‘What do you say, then?’ the Professor asked, folding up the wrinkled parchment that he held in his hand.
    ‘You’re the captain,’ Jonathan said. ‘If you say we put into Hightower Harbor, then I suppose we do. Do you really think there’s any treasure there?’
    The Professor shrugged. ‘There could be in a castle like that. There could be treasure anywhere. Sometimes there is.’
    Jonathan nodded in agreement. That seemed reasonable, at least in the philosophical sense.

3
The Shanty in the Swamp
     
    For two days they didn’t see a soul – no lumber rafts or trade barges passed them; they never caught up with the two slouched-hatted fishermen who had spun past in the canoe that first morning. Once late the first evening, just as the sun disappeared beyond the fringe of forest to the west, they saw what might have been either a bear or a troll in the shadow of a tangled oak; it was swatting at fish in the river. Jonathan wished he had Talbot’s tuba just for the sake of seeing whether the instrument would have the effect on the beast that it was rumored to have. He remembered his own run-in with two trolls months before in almost the same spot, and the general amazement of everyone involved – trolls as well as men – at the wild and unlikely behavior