The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs by James P. Blaylock

them with periwinkle forks. I’m told that a well-turned sheep’s eyeball has the consistency of mayonnaise, but a distinctly muttony flavor, which doesn’t surprise one. I’ll take it now, nephew, before it cools down. We’ll want the full sizzle.”
    Tubby handed it over gingerly, more than slightly ill at ease. Uncle Gilbert seemed to have come unhinged—an unfortunate state of affairs for the keeper.
    “Clutch a handful of his hair, Tubby, and hold fast,” the old man said. “He’ll make a mighty by-God effort to fly when the poker slides in past the eyeball. It’ll take all your strength. If he pulls away, though, it’ll fry his brainpan, and he’ll be no good to us nor anyone else, the poor sod.”
    Tubby did as he was told. If Uncle Gilbert had gone off his chump and actually meant to burn the man’s eyes out, he would pull the keeper over backward in the chair….
    Squinting at the smoking end of the poker, the old man inched it toward the keeper’s face, regarding him with a wide-eyed, sideways stare as if concentrating utterly on his task. “Hold him still now!” he cried.
    Tubby held on tightly, bracing the toe of his boot against the chair leg.
    The keeper shut his eyes tight and cringed away as best he could. “It’s better to save the eyelid, Billy,” Uncle Gilbert shouted into his face. “But if you don’t care for it, it’s not my lookout. Latch on, now, Tubby! His time has come!”
    “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” the keeper shouted, and then began to gag, his head rotating on his neck as if he were augering a hole in the sky.
    “I believe he’s swallowed his tongue,” Uncle Gilbert said matter-of-factly. He handed the poker to Tubby with instructions to put it back into the fire. The keeper looked up now, one eye open, gasping for air. “Now, my man, what do you know of the death of Captain Sawney? Mark me well, you’ll by-God tell us or you’ll go out eyeless onto the Downs like a beggar man!”
    “Not a bloody damned thing, mate,” the keeper gasped out. “I swear to you. They told me that he’d gone off the top of Beachy Head. Trinity House give me a trial. Half a year at half keeper’s pay and a tight-knit little cottage—better than second man at Dover, says I, and down I come with my kit.”
    “And yet here you are tied into a chair, Billy, close as a toucher to losing your eyeballs and the good Lord knows what all else. You assaulted the two of us on the porch outside when we asked you a civil question, and you’ve got these wooden crates full of Lord Busby’s goods. It doesn’t stand to reason that you’re innocent, Billy.”
    “ Lord Busby! I don’t know him neither. And they ain’t mine, them crates. Them others brought that trash round, don’t you see? Them damned scientists. They set up shop up in the lighthouse. They give me a few quid, maybe, to watch out, but murder…? I swear to God it ain’t in me to kill a man.”
    “You gave it a try not long back when you laid us both out with that belaying pin,” Uncle Gilbert said.
    “You was a-beating of me!”
    “Who was in the cottage, then?” Tubby asked.
    “A bloke. Just a bloke. One of them as I told you.”
    “What sort of bloke? What’s his name? Quick-like!”
    “The Tipper they call him. He’s a man does odd jobs for the others.”
    “Which others would that be, Billy?” Uncle Gilbert asked.
    “There’s three that I knows of besides the Doctor, him what set up the device.”
    “The Doctor is it?” asked Tubby. “The Doctor came and went? Left you to mind the shop?”
    “Just so. Past few days.”
    “They must be bivouacked somewhere nearby then.”
    “Eastbourne, I’d think…” the keeper started to say, but Uncle Gilbert shook his head into the man’s face to stop him.
    “It won’t do, Billy. They didn’t flog up and down from Eastbourne. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t call it a damned lie that you’re telling us, but it’s some such.” He shook his head tiredly.