The Disappearing Dwarf (26 page)

The Professor grinned. ‘Absolutely. It’s of no value to us here.’

‘I knew it,’ Bufo said. ‘Leave it to Gump to bring up worthless theories.’

Jonathan suspected that Bufo was in a bad mood because the treasure map hadn’t panned out. Sitting around over tired oatmeal wasn’t helping to lighten things up. ‘Am I wrong, or does this oatmeal taste like library paste?’

The consensus was that it did.

‘Let’s go downtown then and look around for a good cafe. Something on the water where we can watch the boats go by. Maybe we’ll run into Miles.’

‘Maybe we’ll find another curiosity shop,’ Gump said enthusiastically, ‘and I can find another hippo head.’

Jonathan tried to sound excited about the idea. ‘That could be. Certainly Dr Chan doesn’t have the only such head in town.’

‘That would be unlikely,’ the Professor agreed in an attempt to cheer Gump up a bit. ‘Let’s go.’

So off they went, the Professor hauling the treasure map along in order to study it out over lunch. As it happened, there was no evidence of further hippo heads in town. They found any number of interesting shops, but the only heads for sale had to do with moose and deer and, in one shop, with an enormous fish. None of these was far enough out of the ordinary to suit Gump. They did, however, find a nice cafe with a wide awning, which covered a balcony stretching out over the water. They settled into a corner table, prepared to spend the afternoon there.

It had been hot on the street, but in the shade above the water with an ocean breeze drifting across the delta toward them, it was nicely cool. Boats sailed past below, hung with nets and traps. There was just enough wind to push them along and to kick up the surface of the water in little sparkling wavelets. Jonathan felt as if he could sit and stare out over the water forever. It seemed impossible that the broad and placid river that met the sea was the same dark river that had spawned the weed thing that had attacked him on the deck of the steamship.

He watched a particularly large fishing smack, a wonder of strung nets and winches, make its way out toward the ocean. The several fishermen on board were lined up along the starboard bulwark, pointing and gesturing at something off in the water. At first Jonathan couldn’t see what it was; the water appeared to be unbroken. But then a glint of sunlight shot off the silver surface of some sort of tube that was cutting along upright through the water toward the docks. He called everyone’s attention to the mysterious thing, and the Professor put on his glasses in order to have a better look at it.

‘Why, I’m an oyster,’ he said under his breath, taking his pipe out of his mouth. ‘A periscope.’

‘A what?’ asked Bufo, who, apparently, hadn’t seen anything at all yet. ‘Is it some sort of shellfish? Like a periwinkle?’

But no one answered his question. Jonathan was on his feet too, understanding why the Professor had reacted so. For coming toward them, a darkening shadow beneath the green waters of the river mouth, was a ship – an undersea device, a submarine – intent, it seemed, upon docking at one of the wharves below the cafe.

Jonathan knew the possibility existed that there were any number of submarines in the world. Then again, who could say? Maybe submarines were like the other elfin marvels – the Lumbog globe or Escargot’s invisible cloak, or a bottomless bag of marbles owned by Squire Myrkle – maybe there was only one. Six months back, the Professor had said that if Escargot’s submarine wasn’t elfin, then it had been made by the marvel men in the Wonderful Isles. But as far as Jonathan knew, there were no Wonderful Isles in Balumnia. So he had every reason to hope, contrary to the Professor’s philosophy of wishing for the worst, that the ship nosing up out of the depths of the Tweet was piloted by none other than Theophile Escargot, noted thief and adventurer. And it certainly was beginning to
look
as if it was his craft.

The tips of a line of what appeared to be arced shark fins sliced up out of the water as if what was surfacing were some sort of finny deep-sea monster. A row of porthole windows, lit from within and shining like eyes, glowed beneath. Behind them, protruding from the sides of the craft, two great splayed fins made the whole thing look like some close cousin to a frogfish or tidepool sculpin.

Long strands of kelp and weed clung to the pointed nose and fins of the strange ship, and as it humped up out of the depths and settled on the surface, streams of water shot out of ports along the stern, and the lights within the nose of the ship blinked out.

The craft seemed to be made almost entirely out of copper and brass that had become encrusted over the course of time with verdigris. Here and there patches of clean metal glowed in the sunshine. Around the ports and edging the fins atop and along the sides was bright silver, not in the least dulled or tarnished from voyages in the sea. Jonathan suspected that it was probably elf silver or something very much like it.

Almost everyone in the cafe was standing along the edge of the balcony watching the approach of this wonderful ship. On the docks below, people had given up work and were gawking away, pointing and shouting and speculating.

‘It looks as if Dr Chan is about to renew his supply of squid clocks,’ the Professor remarked to Jonathan.

Just then one of the shark fins began to turn as if it were being unscrewed from inside. It twisted and twisted then suddenly popped free, falling back on a hinge to reveal an aperture in the ship. A head shoved out and looked around. It belonged to Dooly, grandson of Theophile Escargot. Half of the rest of Dooly followed; he was dressed in, of all things, Jonathan’s man-of-leisure suit. He waved at everyone on the dock. Then he waved at everyone on the balcony at the cafe, Then he shouted a greeting at a man in a dory who pulled past some twenty or thirty feet to starboard. Then, jerking back around as if he’d been poked in the shoulder with a stick, he squinted up again toward the cafe. He shaded his eyes with his palm, hunched forward and shouted, ‘Mr Bing Cheese!’ He waved both hands in the air, jigging about so enthusiastically that he nearly tumbled out of the shark fin hatch and into the water. Ahab, his head shoved through the slats in the little picket fence that ran around the veranda, seemed to recognize Dooly at about the same time, for
he
began to bark and dance and jig around, and came tolerably close to upsetting a table full of coffee cups.

Dooly sank back into the ship. A moment passed and then another head appeared – the grizzled piratical head of Theophile Escargot. His hair and beard hadn’t been cut since last winter; that much was certain. His eyes, peering out of an almost hidden face, seemed very fierce indeed. Jonathan had long ago observed that Escargot had the uncanny ability to change the appearance of his eyes. In his current incarnation as a pirate, they seemed to almost burn, giving him the look of a man who should not be trifled with. Years before, when he’d come through Twom-bly Town selling cookbooks door to door, just the opposite was the case. He had had a sort of obsequious look about him, a humble look, the look of a man who believed above anything else in his cookbooks. Now he looked as if he
ate
cookbooks – all of which probably explained why he was such a success; he was inscrutable.

Escargot pulled off his cocked hat, scratched his curly black hair, and waved up at the lot of them on the balcony. It looked like a tired wave to Jonathan, the wave of a man who’d come into town looking for a spot of fun only to discover unforeseen trouble. If the hatch had slammed shut and the submarine had turned about and sailed back out of the harbor, it wouldn’t have surprised Jonathan much – and it would have surprised the Professor even less.

But no such thing happened. Escargot disappeared below, and the submarine idled up to the dock. The
splooshing
of water in the rear ports fell off, and the ship seemed to shudder just a bit as if it had gotten a chill. Both Dooly and Escargot climbed out and tied the ship to the dock with a heavy line. Then they clumped along up toward the cafe, leaving a little knot of people behind them chattering over the ship.

‘Mr Bing Cheese!’ Dooly shouted again as he and Escargot pushed out through the swinging doors onto the veranda. A great deal of helloing and handshaking and chair-scraping followed. It was like old home week.

‘You lads ain’t here on holiday, I suppose,’ Escargot remarked, who, of course, was well aware that it was only with the help of the elves that Jonathan and his company were in Balumnia at all.

‘You’ve got it right,’ Jonathan said. ‘We were off on holiday originally, but it got cut short. Foul play popped up.’

‘Oh?’ Escargot motioned at a waiter who scuttled past with a tray of plates. ‘You lads sure have a nose for it. Now me, I try to avoid it. When I pass it on the road, I pretend to be a blind man, and I tap right along past. You boys stop to talk, and that’s a bad idea. Very bad.’

Professor Wurzle laughed a bit. ‘Then later on you run into us, and you have a chat. And first thing you know, we’re all in the soup together.’

‘Ye-es,’ Escargot drew the word out as if admitting to something he’d rather not admit to. ‘But the lad and I are here on business. I do a bit of trade with some of the local merchants. Squid clocks and whale-eye charms and the like. There’s a big market for dried dialulas and sea lemons here. They wear them as ornaments – brooches and such. It’s all the rage. I know where there’s heaps of them. Two more runs out through the gate and I’m set for a year. Lately there’s been some call for singing nautili too, ever since I brought one up about a year ago. But they’re rare as anything, and quick too.

‘That’s the ticket!’ Escargot said when the waiter showed up once again with a steak and fries on a plate. The steak was as broad as a hat brim and looked as if it had been cooked for thirty or forty seconds over a lit match. ‘A man gets sick offish,’ Escargot said, carving out a big forkful of the steak and shoving it past his beard and into his mouth. Dooly had ordered half an apple pie.

The Professor tossed one of the Squire advertisements onto the table in front of Escargot, who paused in his chewing and pointed at the drawing with his fork. ‘Miles du Bois drew that. I can tell by the little dots in the shaded areas and by the look on the Squire’s face. Miles always puts that same half smirk on his subjects’ faces. Like they were in on some kind of joke. What’re you lads doing hanging around with the magician? You’re probably in more trouble than you think.’ He shoved another bite of steak into his mouth and smacked away at it in a self-satisfied way, like a man who was tolerably sure that
he
wasn’t in any such trouble. ‘What’s become of the Squire?’

‘Selznak is after him,’Jonathan said.

‘Here?’ Escargot asked. ‘What in the devil is the Squire doing here? Did he come with you?’

‘No,’ the Professor said. ‘We came after him. He’s here because of the blasted Lumbog globe. Why you ever saw fit to give such a thing away to Squire Myrkle, I don’t know.’

‘He found it first.’ Escargot shrugged. ‘If it had been me who found it, it would have been another story. But none of that makes a lick of sense anyway.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ the Professor asked, squinting at him.

‘Not that I can see. How did the Squire get to Balumnia if he didn’t come with you?’

‘Like the Professor said,’ Gump put in, ‘he had the Lumbog globe, the one he found when we were up rescuing you at the tower last winter.’

Escargot gave Gump a pained look. ‘I know which bloody globe. There ain’t but one. I’m the one that let him have it, aren’t I? Like the Professor said.’

‘Let
him have it?’ Bufo said. ‘He just shoved it in his pocket and took off with it as far as I could see. There wasn’t anybody going to take it from him. Not from the Squire there wasn’t.’

Escargot, of course, purpled at the thought of his not being able to steal a glass ball from someone, especially from the Squire. Jonathan could see that. He suspected that, contrary to the Professor’s supposition, Escargot actually hadn’t any idea about the true nature of the globe. He decided that it was time to cut through ail the sideline talk. ‘Did you know when you gave it to him that it was a Balumnian door?’

Escargot, flying in the face of manners, plucked a chunk of steak out of his mouth that he’d just that moment shoved in. ‘It was a what?’

‘A Balumnian door.’

Escargot sat for a moment thinking about it. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘but that makes some sense now that you mention it. It explains why that filthy Selznak stole it from me fifteen years ago after I got it in trade from a bunjo man. A Balumnian door,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Damn!’ He threw his fork down onto his plate in such a way that Jonathan was fairly sure he was telling the truth. ‘Where did you say the globe is now?’

Jonathan told him about the Squire’s disappearance and of the doings of Selznak the Dwarf and of some of their adventures since arriving in Balumnia.

Escargot seemed awfully interested in the whole affair. His attitude had changed to that of a man who was sympathetic – a man, perhaps, who was willing to make their troubles his own. ‘And you’re bound to find him, then?’

‘That’s right.’ Bufo had a look of determination on his face. ‘We’re going to find the Squire and then make Selznak a sorry case, that’s what.’

‘We’ll take him down a peg,’ Gump said.

Escargot shook his head. ‘Don’t be too impatient. There’s them that tried to take him somewhere before, and it landed them in a nation of trouble. Where do you figure the Squire is now? You say you got a lead on him here at Landsend?’