She was just feeling the chill and wondering what she would do if no one arrived to meet her when she heard the rattle of an engine and the crunch of tyres on gravel. A pair of headlamps blazed, and then an ancient car – a Model T that looked like it was older than Alice – circled round the lot and pulled to a stop in front of the platform. The driver got out, leaving the engine idling, and came up the short steps to meet her.

He was a huge man, tall and muscular, dressed in a leather motoring jacket. His beard, sideburns, moustache and hair all merged into a wiry black mane that completely surrounded his head and hid his face, apart from a small patch around dark, sunken eyes and a protruding, scabby knob of a nose. If this was ‘Uncle Jerry’, Alice decided, he was certainly not any relation of her father’s.

‘You’ll be Miss Creighton,’ the man said. His voice rumbled deeper than the car’s engine, and Alice half expected the same coal-black smoke to leak from his mouth.

She drew herself up and nodded. He stared at her for a moment, and managed to give the strong impression that he didn’t like what he saw.

‘Right,’ he said eventually. ‘Get in.’

‘You—’ Alice began, then reconsidered and spoke more politely. ‘Have you been sent to bring me to my uncle?’

For some reason this made the huge man smile, flashing discoloured teeth through the bristling hedge of beard and moustache. ‘That’s right.’

If she’d hoped for more information than that, she was disappointed. Alice stepped down from the platform towards the car, and the big man followed closely behind. Halfway there, she stopped and looked back at her two trunks, which were now sitting unattended on the platform’s edge.

The man halted, followed her gaze, then looked down at her. Something in his hairy face twitched, but he turned round with exaggerated care and climbed back up to the platform. He gathered the handles to her trunks in one hand – a hand, Alice couldn’t help but notice, that was broad enough to wrap around a coconut – and lifted them without even a hint of effort. She stepped aside as he brushed past her and affixed her things to the car’s luggage rack.

‘Thank you,’ Alice said, and received only a grunt in return. ‘Can I ask your name?’

‘You can call me Mr Black,’ the big man said. ‘Now get in. Your uncle wants to see you.’

Chapter Three: Geryon

CHAPTER THREE

GERYON