Free The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs by James P. Blaylock

the odds without any real hope. Resistance was useless. Better to bide his time. When the Peddler told him to open his mouth, he did it. The Peddler was middling accurate with the funnel, sliding it neatly into the Professor’s throat and pouring the contents of the cup into it, and even though the liquor bypassed his tongue, St. Ives nearly gagged on the fumy bitterness of the chloral.
    The gate came back up, the canvas was drawn back across, and he found himself once again lying in darkness, his head throbbing with pain, listening as if from a great distance to the sounds roundabout, of night birds and teacups and the racket of the table being stowed. He moved his jaw, relieved that it wasn’t broken despite the pain, but almost anxious now for the chloral to take effect. The wagon set out once again, and very soon the St. Ives was slipping into a drugged darkness, thinking with the last remnants of his waking mind that his companions were somewhere very nearby, that Alice was with them, safe.



Chapter 9
     
    Dry Bones 
    and Clinkers

     
    We caught sight of Tubby’s Uncle Gilbert’s house when we were halfway up the yew alley—a vast sort of Georgian pile with three tiers of windows. The ground floor looked large enough to house a company of marines, and smoke billowed from the chimney, which was a happy sight. There was a pond, too, with the moon shining on it, and a boathouse and dock with a collection of rowing boats serried alongside. “Uncle Gilbert is a boatman of the first water,” Tubby told us, laughing out loud at his own pitiful wordplay.
    Barlow, Uncle Gilbert’s butler, let us in with great haste, as if, impossibly, he had been expecting our arrival. Uncle Gilbert himself met us in the vestibule, leading us into a stately, oak-paneled room with coffered ceilings and stained glass windows depicting knights and dragons. Hasbro himself sat in a chair, drinking whiskey out of a cut glass tumbler, and when he saw us his face fell. He couldn’t help himself. He had been full of the same hope and unease that Tubby and I had felt waiting for the Tipper at the Inn at Blackboys: he had banked on the thin chance that St. Ives would be with us. But now hope was dashed, and you could see what was left of it in his eyes. That changed, however, when he saw Alice. Something good had come of the day after all. Hasbro looked done up, as if he had traveled night and day to rendezvous with us, which in fact he had, having come back down by rail on an express to Eastbourne and then back up again to Dicker, arriving only a half hour ago.
    There arose a gleam of optimism in my own mind, for the company was gathered together at last, the elephant reassembled, the waiting mostly over. I’m told that it’s common among soldiers and sailors to feel both a sensible fear and a fortifying elation before going into battle, and my own emotions confirmed it that night. There was a great fire of logs burning in the hearth, which was sizable enough so that a person might step into it without stooping, if one wanted to be roasted alive. There were oil lamps lit, and the room shone with a golden glow, our shadows leaping in the firelight. The walls were hung with paintings of birds and sailing ships. It struck me that I couldn’t remember having been in a more pleasant room with better companions—if only St. Ives were there. Already I was fond of Uncle Gilbert, who might have been Tubby’s older twin, if that were possible, but with his hair disappeared except upon the sides, where it stuck out in tufts. The old man was in a high state of pleasure and surprise at Tubby’s arrival, for he had himself been made uneasy by Hasbro’s revelations. His pleasure was heightened considerably when he got a good look at Alice.
    “Ravished, my dear,” he said, bowing like a courtier and kissing her hand. “Simply ravished. You’re a very diamond alongside these two lumps of coal.” He gestured at Tubby and I. Then he shook my hand