The Disappearing Dwarf (7 page)

Ahab seemed to sense the truth in Jonathan’s observation, for he promptly began to pick his way through the chaparral and around the boulders on the moonlit hillside, heading toward the lights of the village. Jonathan and Professor Wurzle followed along, the dark cave mouth disappearing in the shadows of the oaks behind them.

‘You know,’ the Professor said, ‘perhaps we shouldn’t be too hasty here.’

‘We’d better be,’ Jonathan replied, ‘if we want anything to eat. The tavern probably doesn’t keep late hours. Besides, I’ve had my fill of wandering through caves.’

The Professor nodded in agreement. ‘I’ve had enough of that myself, although it’s a pity we didn’t have a chance to explore the upper rooms of the tower. Tomorrow’s another day, though.’

‘That’s just what I said to myself when that squid had me by the leg,’ Jonathan answered. ‘And speaking of tomorrow, I’d like to spend a quiet day on the river, birdwatching perhaps, or hunting clams – something adventurous.’

The Professor stopped and sat on a great chunk of smooth granite, producing his notebook and pen from inside his shirt. ‘What I meant about being hasty,’ he said, sighting down toward the river over his thumb, ‘is that we’d be foolish to lose track of the location of the cave mouth. I have the feeling that we didn’t begin to really explore those tunnels. I’d like to come back some day with a trade barge and haul that elephant out of there.’

‘Haul it out how?’ Jonathan asked. ‘Do you plan to cut him up and carry him up the stairs?’

‘That’s just the point. There’s more to that cavern than meets the eye. If that elephant was hauled down there, then there’s some sort of grand entrance that we know nothing about. And how about those goblins chasing away down that side tunnel? Where were they going? And the door? We’ve got to figure out how to open it. There’s justification, I think, for a scientific expedition here, and I plan to propose it to the Exploration Society during the fall symposium.’

Jonathan nodded his head, relieved that the Professor hadn’t suggested that the two of them undertake the expedition by themselves. In a moment the Professor had roughed out a crude map complete with landmark sightings and distance approximations.

A half hour later, dirty and tired, they pushed in through the door of the tavern and slumped down at a table in the corner. A woman in an apron looked askance at the toothy alligator head that poked out through an opening in Jonathan’s bundle. The past year, however, had seen such strange times that she took whatever came her way pretty much in stride, or at least seemed to. Jonathan pulled the bundle out of the way and stuffed it under the table, loosing the ape’s head in the process. The thing rolled out, bumping against the woman’s shoe.

‘I see you carry an ape head,’ the waitress remarked.

‘After tonight,’ Jonathan explained, half truthfully, ‘I wouldn’t go anywhere without it. It’s wonderfully useful when a person runs into trouble.’

‘No doubt.’ The woman picked the thing up and handed it to Jonathan. ‘It looks like my late husband, only he wasn’t useful for much of anything. What do you want to eat?’

‘Roast beef,’ Jonathan answered promptly, ‘and a plum pudding.’

The waitress gave him a look of re-evaluation – a look that implied that Jonathan also had a great deal in common with her late husband. ‘We have a cold joint of beef in the larder and a loaf of black bread. And we have a bit of cheese and a tub of pickles. But we don’t have any plum pudding.’

‘We’ll have all of that then,’ the Professor said. ‘And a pitcher of ale and a plate of milk for the dog here, too.’ He pointed without looking toward the alligator snout poking out from beneath the table. Ahab had, unknown to the Professor, wandered away and fallen asleep in front of the door, taking advantage of the cool breeze that blew in off the river.

‘Anything you say,’ the waitress nodded slowly. She bent over and patted the peeling nose of the alligator. ‘Good pup,’ she said. Then she turned and disappeared into the kitchen.

‘She thinks we’re crazy,’ Jonathan said.

‘Evidently so. There might be unlooked-for consequences to carrying around these outfits. People don’t often enough take the long view.’

Jonathan nodded in agreement as through the door came Lonny Gosset, the milliner. ‘Mr Gosset!’ Jonathan shouted. ‘By golly!’

Surprised, Gosset sat down at their table and ordered a pint from the waitress. ‘Well well,’ Gosset said. ‘What ho, eh? Chasing devils again are you? Transporting cheeses?’

‘Neither. We’re on holiday,’ the Professor explained. ‘We’re on our way toward linkman territory, down beyond the Wood. We’re off to see the Squire.’

‘The Squire is it,’ said Gosset, who was one of the Squire’s most ardent admirers. ‘Fancy that. On holiday. I haven’t been on holiday since I was a lad. I have a shop to see to. Trade’s picking up. Everyone needs a straw hat in this heat. I can’t make them fast enough.’

The three of them sat about discussing the millinery trade, Jonathan and the Professor cutting off hunks of beef and cheese and bread. Ahab joined them almost as soon as the food arrived and drank the milk which the waitress had set down in front of the alligator. Jonathan was itching to have a look at the treasure map as was, probably, the Professor. But instinct told him that it was a dangerous business displaying such items in public. Finally, however, curiosity and anticipation overcame instinct; so, when late in the evening he and the Professor and Gosset were the last customers in the tavern, he suggested to the Professor that they unroll the ‘papers’ they had found in the trunk.

Wurzle untied the rolled parchment and flattened the map onto the cleared table top. Jonathan and Gosset bent over the thing as the Professor traced lines and read sections of faded lettering. The terrain on the map was very obviously along a major river – a river much larger than the Oriel, evidently near the sea. The place names were foreign to all of them – even to the Professor, who had traveled extensively in his time.

Gosset thought that the map was a wonderful thing, but being far-sighted he could make nothing of it. Neither Jonathan nor the Professor bothered to point out the fact that it was a treasure map. They had a high regard for their old friend Lonny Gosset, of course, but that, quite reasonably, was immaterial under the circumstances.

Most puzzling of all the notations on the map was the legend scrawled across the top – merely the word ‘Balumnia’, the name, possibly, of the city along the river or of the country where the river lay. The whole thing was a mystery. The name seemed vaguely familiar to both Jonathan and the Professor, although neither knew why. It seemed to Jonathan that he had seen a reference to Balumnia in a book by Glub Boomp, and the Professor recalled having heard once of a Balumnian toothed whale, although he couldn’t remember where or when. Gosset observed that the word meant nothing as far as the millinery trade went. In the end they were little better off than they had been as mapless adventurers and were, in truth, a bit deflated. The very age and appearance of the map, not to mention the wonderful fact of its having been written in octopus ink, seemed to promise chests of pearls and coin and jewels. The three of them sat silent over the sad remains of their dinner, Jonathan and Professor Wurzle feeling oddly cheated, and Lonny Gosset sound asleep and threatening to tumble from his chair. He lurched finally and jerked awake with a wild look in his eye and shouted ‘Gabardine and wool!’ very loudly and pointed at Jonathan, ‘Wha?’ he said, waking up altogether. ‘Have I been asleep? I suppose I have.’

‘Quite all right,’ Jonathan said.

‘I’ve been working all day,’ Gosset said by way of apology. ‘I’m making a wizard’s cap. If I’d known what was involved in it, I wouldn’t have taken the commission. Seems like a lot of foolery to me. And all the time I’m stitching the thing and soaking the materials, there he is, shaking toads at it and chanting this and that and whispering over the thing.’

‘Who?’ Jonathan asked excitedly. ‘What magician? Does he want a tall hat?’

‘Tall? I should say he does. I told him the thing would never stay on, but he said he’d put a spell on it and make it.’

‘Miles the Magician?’ the Professor asked.

‘Meelays?
,’ said Gosset pronouncing the name correctly. ‘He’s the one. Do you know him?’

‘Yes,’ Jonathan answered. ‘And unless I’m a truffled cod, he’s just the man to consult when it comes to unfathomable maps and distant lands.’

The Professor nodded and waved at the waitress who was reading a book near the bar.

‘Where is this magician?’ Jonathan asked Gosset. ‘Is he staying in town?’

‘He’s staying in this very inn.’ Gosset put some coins on the table. The Professor, however, insisted on buying Gosset’s ale.

‘You haven’t a magician upstairs, have you?’ the Professor asked the waitress when she brought their change.

The woman rolled her eyes. ‘You’d be friends of the wizard then,’ she said, a flat note of finality in her voice. ‘I should have thought as much. He’s up there now, burning herbs in Room Four.’

‘Perhaps I’ll just go up and have a word with him,’ Jonathan said, hauling out the ape suit. ‘Good old Miles. He should get a bigger thrill out of this than those goblins did.’

The Professor looked like a man who thought it was too late in the evening for larks. The waitress looked as if she knew all along that it would come to such a thing as ape suits. Gosset was asleep again.

Jonathan put on the suit, shook debris out of the mask and pulled it on. Then he took the mask off and turned to the Professor. ‘What if I burst in with the ape suit on but wearing the alligator head?’

‘He’d know something was wrong right away.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Jonathan said. ‘We wouldn’t want to ruin the effect.’

The waitress nodded. ‘You’re not going to kill him are you?’ she asked matter-of-factly.

‘Kill him!’ Jonathan cried, horrified. ‘We’re not crazy.’

The waitress nodded again. Jonathan set out up the stairs, laughing inside the ape mask at what Miles’ reaction was likely to be. Room Four was easy to find, there being only two numbered rooms on the second floor. Even through his mask Jonathan could hear the sound of chanting through the panel door. The smell of smoking herbs – especially sage, orange blossom, and lilac – came wafting out from underneath. Jonathan knocked twice, hoping he wasn’t interrupting anything beyond some harmless meditation.

The chanting stopped abruptly. ‘Hello,’ came Miles’ piping voice. ‘Who is it?’

‘The maid,’ Jonathan shouted in what he assumed was a feminine sort of falsetto, wondering what it sounded like filtered through the mask.

‘Come in,’ Miles said. Jonathan obliged him by flinging open the door and, for the profit of those downstairs, mouthing what he thought would be a fair imitation of an ape yell before capering into the room. He intended simply to race in and jig about for a moment, then snatch off the mask and have a good laugh. He hadn’t even gotten entirely through the doorway, however, when Miles, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaped with a shout to his feet. He had the look of a man whose worst fears had come to pass. Confronted by the tufted sight before him, he hunkered down into a spell casting position and waved his hand, shouting fearfully.

Jonathan left off his jigging, realizing that somehow, inexplicably, his ape head was on fire. Before him danced the spell-shouting magician and behind him lay the stairway. He turned and raced for the stairs, pulling at the ape head and shouting for the Professor to fill a pitcher with water. It was the waitress, finally, who doused the flames with a bucket of ale. Miles appeared on the stairway, flabbergasted.

‘Professor!’ he said. ‘Fancy meeting you here. Is this your ape?’

‘It’s me,’ Jonathan cried, finally able to remove the mask.

‘Jonathan Bing! What in the world?’ Miles turned to the waitress as if for an explanation.

‘They said they were friends of yours. It seemed likely to me.’

‘It’s absolutely the case. We go way back. Six months at least. Why are you dressed so, Jonathan? I didn’t recognize you.’

‘A little joke,’ Jonathan replied.

‘Of course, of course, of course,’ Miles was nodding enthusiastically.

Jonathan looked at the sad remains of his ape suit. ‘I caught fire somehow.’

‘It was my toasting spell that did it, I’m afraid. It was the first thing that came to mind.’

Lonny Gosset inspected the ape mask and concluded, to Jonathan’s relief, that he could repair it tolerably well. He took it with him when he left for home a few minutes later, promising to meet them all for lunch the following noon.

‘So,’ the Professor said when they’d settled down around the table over an apple pie that the waitress had discovered in the pantry. ‘What brings you south?’

‘Bad business,’ Miles said gravely, shoveling pie into his mouth.

‘Dwarf business?’ Jonathan asked fearfully.

‘Perhaps. Although I can’t for the life of me see how. I hope not, for the Squire’s sake.’

‘The Squire?’ Now the Professor was agitated. ‘What’s happened to the Squire? I knew we should have hung that bloody dwarf!’

‘It’s just as well you didn’t try,’ Miles said. ‘I was up in the City of the Five Monoliths nosing around most of the winter. I promised Twickenham in a way that I’d keep an eye on Selznak. Of course he was up to no good, but it was pretty common stuff – murder and the like – and it was clear he knew I was there. In April he disappeared. I had it on authority that he was off downriver, so I moseyed along down to the Wood, where I lost track of him. You can’t track evil through the Wood. There’s too much of it there already. So I took care of a bit of business in Willowood and started back up to Twombly Town to say hello to the two of you. I was camped along the river when who should come riding up on ponies but Bufo Morinus and Gump Ooze. They’d been advised by Twickenham to seek me out if there was news of the Dwarf. He’s a powerfully conceited villain, that Selznak, and capable of going to wild lengths for revenge. Now it might be coincidence and it might not, but Selznak had put in an appearance up in the territory. Two days later the Squire disappeared.’