The Disappearing Dwarf by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online Page B

great, hollow alligator’s head.
    ‘Wear it when we visit Lonny Gosset. It’ll knock him into the fourth dimension.’
    Jonathan smiled. ‘I was thinking that I could wear it about town. People might mistake me for a man of leisure.’
    The Professor nodded. ‘It’s possible. Dooly might anyway. Dooly and Beezle. The suit looks a bit like some of the finely tailored garments he sells.’
    ‘Does it look much like a real ape’s head?’ Jonathan asked, turning to have a look at the heads of the four white apes that stood beyond the elephant. But the apes were almost lost in shadow. In fact, the cavern was growing steadily darker as the sun outside dropped beyond the treeline.
    ‘Do we want to spend the night in here?’ the Professor asked.
    ‘No,’ Jonathan replied decisively, looking about him at the shifting shadows of the somber furniture strung with cobwebs and at the glass eyes of the wild array of stuffed animals. ‘Do you think we can get out through one of those cracks in the ceiling?’
    ‘A snake might if he were fired out of a cannon,’ the Professor said. ‘We’ve got one more tunnel to explore, though. Let’s light the torch and have a go at it. At worst we can make our way back up to the cellar.’
    Jonathan agreed to the plan. It made little difference if they explored the tunnels at noon or at midnight. He was fairly sure that he’d rather spend the night tramping through the caves in search of a way out rather than trying to sleep. Such an atmosphere as existed beneath the tower would be bound to have a bad effect on dreams.
    ‘Let’s bring these two suits,’ Jonathan suggested. ‘We’ll give them to the Squire.’
    ‘Capital idea,’ the Professor agreed. ‘They’re right up his alley.’
    Jonathan found a broad expanse of serviceable cloth and laid it out over the stones of the floor, then he piled the ape and alligator costumes onto the center of the cloth and discovered, finally, that the alligator suit lacked a hand. There seemed to be no point at all in carrying along an unusable suit, so the two of them tore into the costumes until they finally found the hand at the very bottom of a sadly deteriorating trunk. Beneath the rubber alligator hand lay a folded trunk lining – an old, yellowed square of parchment patterned with random lines and faded script. A series of elf runes were visible in one corner. The Professor pulled the parchment out of the trunk while Jonathan dug two candles out of his pack. The heap of ape and alligator parts was quickly forgotten.
    ‘This appears to be a map,’ the Professor observed, pointing out an arrow in the top right below the word ‘north’. The Professor leaned over the parchment and sniffed at it. Then he held a corner over a candle and eyeballed it closely. In the candlelight glowing through the parchment, the ink appeared to be a dark purplish color, and the Professor announced, to Jonathan’s surprise, that it was octopus ink.
    ‘This is a pirate map,’ he said decisively. ‘There’s no mistaking it. Who else uses octopus ink? No one. This is the real thing.’
    ‘It’s pretty old though,’ Jonathan said. ‘This stuff must have been down here for a hundred years.’
    This map couldn’t have been,’ the Professor declared. ‘It wouldn’t have lasted any hundred years. Someone hid it here, and I bet I know who it was.’
    ‘These candles aren’t worth much,’ observed Jonathan as he shook the melted wax of This hand. ‘They’re half gone already. Let’s roll this thing up and get out of here.’
    The Professor rolled the map tightly and tied it round with strips of cloth. Jonathan gathered the corners of the cloth on the ground and pulled the whole pile into a bundle, tieing of the top with another cloth strip. The Professor shouldered the pack, and Jonathan slung the bundle ponderously over his shoulder. In the last guttering light of the two candles, they left the strange cavern and once more made their way back to