The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs Read Online Free PDF Page A

Coach Inn on the High Street and roused the innkeeper, still in his nightcap, and moderately unhappy that he’d been deprived of his last hour of sleep. It was wonderful, though, to see what money can do to improve a man’s spirit, for he took ours happily enough in the end, and, being short of accommodations, stowed us in two closed up, empty rooms with pieces of dirty carpet on the floor to serve as beds. We’d slept rougher, though, in our time, and the rooms were at least dry. The Professor took one of them, and Tubby and I the other, ours having the added luxury of a solid shutter across the window to block out the day.
    Once again I fell into the arms of Morpheus without so much as a heigh-ho. It was several hours later that Tubby arose to heed the call of nature, stumbling over me in the darkness and nearly crushing my hand. I cried out, as you can imagine, and that was the end of sleep. A morbid sun shone through the chinks in the shutter. We rapped on the door of the adjacent room, but apparently the Professor was already up and about. Tubby and I put ourselves together and hastened out into the inn parlor to find our friend, who had solicitously let us sleep—odd behavior under the circumstances, it seemed to me now. The clock began to toll the hour: nine o’clock.
    St. Ives was nowhere to be seen, and in fact the inn parlor was generally empty of people. Somehow the journey down the hall from our room had reminded my head of that iron pipe. There was the smell of rashers and coffee leaking out of the kitchen, which on any other morning would suggest the smell of heaven itself, but which gave my stomach an unhappy lurch. I sat down heavily in a chair by the hearth. “I’m all right,” I said to Tubby. “It’ll pass.”
    “Of course it will,” Tubby said, a little too cheerfully. “That piece of pipe would have knocked the sense out of any other man alive, but you haven’t any sense to begin with, Jack, and that’s what saved you.” He bobbed up and down with silent laughter and then headed toward the door, meaning to look for our companion. But the door swung open in that very moment, nearly banging into him. A boy of about ten crept in—the stable boy, as it turned out—and stood looking from one to the other of us, twisting an envelope in his hands as if he were wringing out a towel. He was a long-faced lad with a shock of hair that stood up on his head as if he had taken a fright. He touched it to his forehead by way of a greeting.
    “Begging your honors’ pardon,” he said, “but is one of you Mr. Owlesby? Mr. Jack Owlesby?”
    “One of us is,” I told him. “In fact, I am the very man. Who might you be?”
    “John Gunther,” he said. And without another word he handed over the envelope, which bore my name across the seal: Jack Owlesby, Esq. I could see at once who had written it. St. Ives’s curious back-slanted script is unique. “The man told me to give it to you personal, sir,” John Gunther said, “when it was nine by the clock, and to show it to no one else. And I was to give you these.” From his pocket he took three guineas and handed them to me. “And now I’ve done my job and done it fairly, sir.”
    “So you have, John,” I told him, and he stood there goggling at me until I said to Tubby, “Be a good fellow and give Mr. Gunther a token of our esteem, will you Mr. Frobisher? My purse was stolen by blackguards last night, as you might recall.”
    “Of course,” Tubby said. “You can consider it a loan, Jack.” He handed over a coin and the boy turned happily toward the door, nearly stumbling into the innkeeper coming in, who cuffed him on the back of the head, cursed him for a slow-belly, and reminded him of his duty. My brain must have been creeping along in sluggish way, for it was only then that the certainty struck me: St. Ives had gone on without us into Heathfield. I bearded the innkeeper before he could take his leave.



Chapter 4
     
    A Day at the