The Disappearing Dwarf by James P. Blaylock Page A

now!’
    Jonathan could see that this was going to be a fairly typical linkman convention. ‘Here, Stick-a-bush,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the other end of the roast. You can have it. I’m not crazy about it anyway. Too much burned fat for my tastes.’ Jonathan gave Stick-a-bush his end cut and speared a rare slice off the platter. Peace was restored, and Bufo continued. ‘We don’t know anything about motives, but we do know one thing – Selznak stopped at Glimby Village at least an hour after the Squire disappeared. It’s fairly certain that he thought the Squire was up at the hall.’
    ‘This grows passing strange,’ said Miles in the manner of a wizard.
    ‘It does that,’ Bufo agreed. ‘Even more strange is that the Dwarf was seen two nights later by Alf the gardener. He was poking about in the nasturtiums and, says Alf, looking in at the window. “I’m looking for my eyeglasses,” he told Alf – a lie, as we know – and he said he was a friend of the Squire’s. So Alf said the Squire hadn’t been seen for two days, and the Dwarf said it was a lie. But Alf isn’t the type to lie, and Selznak could see that. Alf said Selznak set out across the lawn smoking his pipe like fury and never came back.’
    ‘So Selznak didn’t kidnap the Squire,’ Miles concluded. ‘He didn’t even know the Squire was gone.’
    ‘Or else,’ the Professor said shrewdly, ‘he wanted us to believe all that.’
    Twickenham shook his head. ‘He doesn’t care what we believe. He does what he likes. That’ll be the end of him someday too. That swelled head of his.’
    ‘Then where did the Squire go?’ Jonathan asked, getting back around to the subject.
    ‘He went right through the wall!’ shouted the footman, who had been eating feverishly. ‘Blast me if he didn’t. I’m no madman!’
    ‘Of course not,’ Jonathan insisted.
    ‘Through the wall?’ The Professor shoved his spectacles up onto his nose.
    ‘Through the bleedin’ wall!’ was the answer.
    ‘According to the scientific masters,’ the Professor said, ‘such behavior is unlikely.’
    ‘Blast me!’ cried the man, who was apparently anxious to be blasted. ‘There he was, was the Squire, a-sittin’ in that chair of his in the library. He had that big glass ball of his and was lookin’ at it toward the window. He hadn’t said nothing for an hour. Hadn’t ate no breakfast. I walks in to offer him a piece o’ Mrs Feeny’s peach tart. And I sees him – blast me if I don’t – I sees him get up and walk through a big door in the wall. Then he was gone, and he ain’t been back since.’
    ‘Door in the wall?’ Miles repeated. That doesn’t sound so mysterious.’
    ‘There isn’t any door in the wall of the library,’ Bufo went on. ‘That’s what makes it mysterious.’
    ‘Or a lie,’ said Gump.
    ‘Blast me!’ the footman shouted.
    ‘Let’s have a look at that library,’ the Professor suggested, pulling out a businesslike magnifying glass. ‘There’s been some hocus-pocus here or I’m not Artemis Wurzle.’
    But in the library, as Bufo had promised, there was no door in the wall. There were banks of single casements along two outside walls and stacks and stacks of books along the others. The casement windows were far too small for the Squire to have climbed through. And it was unlikely, all in all, that he would have undertaken such acrobatics anyway.
    ‘Where was this door?’ asked the Professor.
    ‘Yonder.’ The footman pointed toward the shelves of books.
    ‘A secret panel,’ Jonathan said, seeing in this mystery a certain relation to the novels of G. Smithers. The Professor set about removing books and tapping on the walls. Then he left the room and disappeared down the hall, tapping against the wall from the room beyond. He walked back in a moment later.
    ‘There’s no hidden panel,’ he stated emphatically. ‘At least not here. The wall isn’t wide enough for a passage either.’
    ‘There weren’t no panel,’