by John Buchan
“Good morning, boys,” he said. “Sir Archibald Roylance asked me to see ye on his behalf. My name’s Kello — I’m Medical Officer of Health for this part of the world. I’m very sorry, but ye can’t see Sir Archibald this morning. In fact, I want ye to go away and not come near the place at all.”
He was promptly asked for his reason.
“The fact is that a suspected case of smallpox has been reported from Crask. That’s why I’m here. I say ‘suspected,’ for, in my opinion, it’s nothing of the sort. But I’m bound to take every precaution, and, for your own sakes, I can’t let a man-jack of ye a step nearer.”
The news was received in silence, and added to the depression of the dripping weather. A question was asked.
“No, it’s not Sir Archibald. He’s as disappointed as you are at not being able to welcome ye. He says if ye come back in forty-eight hours — that’s the time when I hope to give the place a clean bill of health — he would like to stand ye drinks and have a crack with ye.”
Five minutes later the doctor returned to the smoking-room. “They’re off like good laddies, and I don’t think they’ll trouble ye for the next two days. Gosh! They’re as feared of infectious diseases as a Highlander. I’ll give them a wee while to go down the hill, and then I’ll start off home on my motor-bike. I’m very much obliged to you gentlemen for your good entertainment... Ye may be sure I’ll hold my tongue about the confidence ye’ve honoured me with. Not a cheep from me! But I can tell ye, I’ll be keeping my ears open for word of John Macnab. Good luck to ye, gentlemen!”
The departure of Doctor Kello was followed by the appearance of Wattie Lithgow, accompanied by Benjie, whose waterproof cape of ceremony had now its uses.
“I’ve got bad news from this laddie,” said the former, lugging Benjie forward by the ear. “He was at Haripol early this morning and a’ the folk there was speakin, about it. Macnicol tell’t him—”
“No, he didna,” put in Benjie. “Macnicol’s ower prood to speak to me. I heard it frae the men in the bothy and frae ane o’ the lassies up at the big hoose.”
“Weel, what a’body kens is maistly true. Ye’ll no guess what yon auld Claybody is daein’. Ye ken he’s a contractor, forbye ither things, and he’s got the contrack for makin’ the big dam at Kinlochbuie. There’s maybe a thousand navvies workin’ there, and he’s bringin’ ower a squad o’ them — Benjie says mair nor a hundred — to guaird the forest.”
“Ass!” exclaimed Palliser-Yeates. “He’ll drive every beast into Caithness.”
“Na, na. Macnicol is not entirely wantin’ in sense. The navvies will no be allowed inside the forest. They’ll be a guaird outside — what’s that they ca’ it? — an outer barrage. Macnicol will see that a’ the deer are in the Sanctuary, and in this kind o’ weather it will no be that deeficult. But it will be verra deeficult for his Lordship to get inside the forest, and it will be verra near an impossibeelity to get a beast out.”
Archie looked round the room. “Dashed unsportin’ I call it. I bet it’s the young ‘un’s idea.”
“Look here, Charles,” said Leithen. “Isn’t it about time to consider whether you shouldn’t cry off this Haripol affair? It was different at the start. John and I had a fair sporting chance. Our jobs were steep enough, but yours is absolutely perpendicular... The Claybodys are not taking any chances, and a hundred able-bodied navvies is a different-sized proposition to a few gillies. The confounded Press has blazoned the thing so wide that if you’re caught you’ll be a laughing-stock to the whole civilised world. Don’t you see that you simply can’t afford to lose, any more than the Claybodys? Then, to put the lid on it, our base is under a perpetual threat from those newspaper follows. I’d rather have all Scotland Yard after me than the Press — you agree, Crossby? I’m inclined to think that John Macnab has done enough ‘pour chauffer la gloire’. It’s insanity to go on.”
Lamancha shook his head. “It’s all very well for you — you won. I tell you frankly that nothing on earth will prevent me having a try at Haripol. All you say is perfectly true, but I don’t choose to listen to it. This news of Wattie’s only makes me more determined.”
Leithen subsided into his book, observing—”I suppose that is because you’re a great man. You’re a sober enough fellow at most times, but you’re able now and then to fling your hat over the moon. You can damn the consequences, which I suppose is one of the tests of greatness. John and I can’t, but we admire you, and we’ll bail you out.”
It was Sir Archie, strangely enough, who now abetted Lamancha’s obstinacy. “I grant you the odds are stiff,” he declared, “but that only means that we must find some way to shorten them. Nothing’s impossible after yesterday. There was I gibbering with terror and not a notion in my head, and yet I got on fairly well, didn’t I, Wattie?”
“Ye made a grand speech, sir. There was some said it was the best speech they ever heard in a’ their days. There was one man said ye was haverin’, but” — fiercely—”he didna say it twice.”
“We’ve the whole day to make a plan,” Archie went on. “Hang it all, there must be some way to diddle the Claybodys. We’ve got a pretty good notion of the lie of the land, and Wattie’s a perfect Red Indian at getting up to deer. We muster four and a half able-bodied men, counting me as half. And there’s Benjie. Benjie, you’re a demon at strategy. Have you anything to say?”
“Aye,” said Benjie, “I’ve a plan. But ye’re ower particular here, and maybe ye wadna like it.” This with a dark glance at Palliser-Yeates, who was leaving the room to get more tobacco.
“We’ll have it, all the same. Let’s sit down to business. Stick the ordnance map on that table, Charles, and you, Ned, shut that book and give us the benefit of your powerful mind.”
Leithen rose, yawning. “I’ve left my pipe in the dining-room. Wait a moment till I fetch it.”
Now Dr Kello, on his departure, had left the front-door of the house open, and the steady downpour of rain blanketed all other sounds from outside. So it came to pass that when Archie’s quick ear caught the noise of footsteps on the gravel and he bounded into the hall, he was confronted with the spectacle of Colonel Raden and his daughters already across the doorstep. Moreover, as luck would have it, at that moment Leithen from the dining-room and Palliser-Yeates from his bedroom converged on the same point.
“Hullo, Roylance,” the Colonel cried. “This is a heathenish hour for a visit, but we had to have some exercise, and my daughters wanted to come up and congratulate you on your performance yesterday. A magnificent speech, sir! Uncommon good sense! What I—”
But the Colonel stopped short in mystification at the behaviour of his daughters, who were staring with wide eyes at two unknown figures who stood shamefacedly behind Sir Archie. This last, having no alternative, was trying to carry off things with a high hand.
“Let me introduce,” he was proclaiming, “Sir Edward Leithen — Mr Palliser-Yeates — Miss Raden, Miss Janet Raden, Colonel—”
But he was unheeded. Agatha was looking at Leithen and Janet at Palliser- Yeates, and simultaneously the two ejaculated, “John Macnab!”
Archie saw that it was all up. Shouting for Mrs Lithgow, he helped his visitors to get out of their mackintoshes, and ordered his housekeeper to have these garments dried. Then he ushered them into the smoking-room where were Lamancha and Crossby and Benjie and a good peat-fire. Wattie, at the first sound of voices, had discreetly retired.
“Come along, Colonel, I’ll explain. Very glad to see you — have that chair... what about dry stockings?... “
But his hospitable bustle was unheeded. The Colonel, hopelessly at sea, was bowing to a tall man who in profound embarrassment was clearing books and papers out of chairs.
“Yes, that’s Lord Lamancha. You heard him yesterday. Charles, this is Colonel Raden, and Miss Agatha and Miss Janet. That is Mr Crossby, the eminent journalist. That little scallywag is Fish Benjie, whom I believe you know... Sit down, please, all of you. We’re caught out a
nd are going to confess. Behold the lair of John Macnab.”
Colonel Raden was recovering himself.
“I read in the papers,” he said, “that John Macnab is the reincarnation of Harald Blacktooth. In that case we are related. With which of these gentlemen have I the honour to claim kin?”
The words, the tone, convinced Sir Archie that the danger was past, and his nervousness fled.
“Properly speakin’, you’ve found three new relatives. There they are. Not bad follows, though they’ve been givin’ me a hectic time. Now I retire — shoes off, feet fired, and turned out to grass. Ned, you’ve a professional gift of exposition. Fire away, and tell the whole story.”
Sir Edward Leithen obeyed, and it may be said that the tale lost nothing in his telling. He described the case of three gentlemen, not wholly useless to their country, who had suddenly fallen into ennui. He told of a cure, now perfected, but of a challenge not yet complete. “I’ve been trying to persuade Lord Lamancha to drop the thing,” he said, “but the Claybodys have put his back up, and I’m not sure that I blame him. It didn’t matter about you or Bandicott, for you took it like sportsmen, and we should have felt no disgrace in being beaten by you. But Claybody is different.”
“By Gad, sir, you are right,” the Colonel shouted, rising to his feet and striding about the room. “He and his damned navvies are an insult to every gentleman in the Highlands. They’re enough to make Harald Blacktooth rise from the dead. I should never think anything of Lord Lamancha again — and I’ve thought a devilish lot of him up to now — if he took this lying down. Do you know, sir” — turning to Lamancha—”that I served in the Scots Guards with your father — we called them the Scots Fusilier Guards in those days — and I am not going to fail his son.”
Sir Edward Leithen was a philosopher, with an acute sense of the ironies of life, and as he reflected that here was a laird, a Tory, and a strict preserver of game working himself into a passion over the moral rights of the poacher, he suddenly relapsed into helpless mirth. Colonel Raden regarded him sternly and uncomprehendingly, but Janet smiled, for she too had an eye for comedy.
“I’m tremendously grateful to you,” Lamancha said. “You know more about stalking than all of us put together, and we want your advice.”
“Janet,” commanded her parent, “you have the best brain in the family. I’ll be obliged if you’ll apply it to this problem.”
For an hour the anxious conclave surrounded the spread-out ordnance map. Wattie was summoned, and with a horny finger expounded the probable tactics of Macnicol and the presumable disposition of the navvy guard. At the end of the consultation Lamancha straightened his back.
“The odds are terribly steep. I can see myself dodging the navvies, and with Wattie’s help getting up to a stag. But if Macnicol and the gillies are perched round the Sanctuary they are morally certain to spot us, and, if we have to bolt, there’s no chance of getting the beast over the march. That’s a hole I see no way out of.”
“Janet,” said the Colonel, “do you?”
Janet was looking abstractedly out of the window. “I think it is going to clear up,” she observed, disregarding her father’s question. “It will be a fine afternoon, and then, if I am any judge of the weather, it will rain cats and dogs in the evening.”
“We had better scatter after luncheon,” said Lamancha, “and each of us go for a long stride. We want to be in training for to-morrow.”
After the Colonel had suggested half a dozen schemes, the boldness of which was only matched by their futility, the Radens rose to go. Janet signalled to Benjie, who slipped out after her, and the two spoke in whispers in the hall, while Archie was collecting the mackintoshes from the kitchen.
“I want you to be at Haripol this afternoon. Wait for me a little on this side of the lodge about half-past three.”
Benjie grinned and nodded. “Aye, lady, I’ll be there.” He, too, had a plan for shortening the odds, and he had so great a respect for Janet’s sagacity that he thought it probable that she might have reached his own conclusion.
As Janet had foretold, it was a hot afternoon. The land steamed in the sun, but every hill-top was ominously clouded. While the inhabitants of Crask were engaged in taking stealthy but violent exercise among the sinuosities of Sir Archie’s estate, Janet Raden mounted her yellow pony and rode thoughtfully towards Haripol by way of Inverlarrig and the high road. There were various short-cuts, suitable for a wild-cat like Benjie, but after the morning’s torrential rains she had no fancy for swollen bogs and streams. She found Benjie lurking behind a boulder near the lodge, and in the shelter of a clump of birches engaged him in earnest conversation. Then she rode decorously through the gates and presented herself at the castle door.
Haripol was immense, new, and, since it had been built by a good architect out of good stone, not without its raw dignity. Janet found Lady Claybody in a Tudor hall which had as much connection with a Scots castle as with a Kaffir kraal. There was a wonderful jumble of possessions — tapestries which included priceless sixteenth-century Flemish pieces, and French fakes of last year; Ming treasures and Munich atrocities; armour of which about a third was genuine; furniture indiscriminately Queen Anne, Sheraton, Jacobean, and Tottenham Court Road; and pictures which ranged from a Sir Joshua (an indifferent specimen) to a recent Royal Academy portrait of Lord Claybody. A feature was the number of electric lamps to illumine the hours of darkness, the supports of which varied from Spanish altar-candlesticks to two stuffed polar bears and a turbaned Ethiopian in coloured porcelain.
Lady Claybody was a heavily handsome woman still in her early fifties. The purchase of Haripol had been her doing, for romance lurked in her ample breast, and she dreamed of a new life in which she should be an unquestioned great lady far from the compromising environment where the Claybody millions had been won. Her manner corresponded to her ambition, for it was stately and aloof, her speech was careful English seasoned with a few laboriously acquired Scots words, and in her household her wish was law. A merciful tyrant, she rarely resorted to ultimata, but when she issued a decree it was obeyed.
She was unaffectedly glad to see Janet, for the Radens were the sort of people she desired as friends. Two days before she had been at her most urbane to Agatha and the Colonel, and now she welcomed the younger daughter as an ambassador from that older world which she sought to make her own. A small terrier drowned her greetings with epileptic yelps.
“Silence, Roguie,” she enjoined. “You must not bark at a fellow- countrywoman. Roguie, you know, is so high-strung that he reacts to any new face. You find me quite alone, my dear. Our daughters do not join us till next week, when we shall have a houseful for the stalking. Now I am having a very quiet, delicious time drinking in the peace of this enchanted glen.”
She said no word of John Macnab, who was doubtless the primary cause of this solitude. Lord Claybody and Johnson, it appeared, were out on the hill. Janet chattered on the kind of topics which she felt suitable — hunting in the Midlands, the coming Muirtown Gathering, the political meeting of yesterday. “Claybody thought Sir Archie Roylance rather extravagant,” said the lady, “but he was greatly impressed with Lord Lamancha’s speech. Surely it is absurd that this part of the Highlands, which your sister says was so loyal to Prince Charlie, should be a hot-bed of radicalism. Claybody thinks that that can all be changed, but not with a candidate who truckles to socialist nonsense.”
Janet was demure and acquiescent, sighing when her hostess sighed, condemning when she condemned. Presently the hot sun shining through the windows suggested the open air to Lady Claybody, who was dressed for walking.
“Shall we stroll a little before tea?” she asked. “Wee Roguie has been cooped indoors all morning, and he loves a run, for he comes of a very sporting breed.”
They set forth accordingly, into gardens bathed in sunshine, and thence to the coolness of beechwoods. The Reascuill, after leaving its precipitous glen, flows, like the Raden, for a mile or two in ha
ughlands, which are split by the entry of a tributary, the Doran, which in its upper course is the boundary between Haripol and Crask. Between the two streams stands a wooded knoll which is a chief pleasaunce of the estate. It is a tangle of dwarf birches, bracken and blaeberry, with ancient Scots firs on the summit, and from its winding walks there is a prospect of the high peaks of the forest rising black and jagged above the purple ridges.
At its foot they crossed the road which followed the river into the forest, and Janet caught sight of a group of men lounging by the bridge.
“Have you workmen on the place just now?” she asked.
“Only wood-cutters, I think,” said Lady Claybody.
Wee Roguie plunged madly into the undergrowth, and presently could be heard giving tongue, as if in pursuit of a rabbit. “Dear little fellow!” said his mistress. “Hear how he loves freedom!”
The ladies walked slowly to the crest of the knoll, where they halted to admire the view. Janet named the different summits, which looked ominously near, and then turned to gaze on the demesne of Haripol lying green and secure in its cincture of wood and water. “I think you have the most beautiful place in the Highlands,” she told her hostess. “It beats Glenraden, for you have the sea.”
“It is very lovely,” was the answer. “I always think of it as a fortress, where we are defended against the troubles of the world. At Ronham one might as well be living in London, but here there are miles of battlements between us and dull everyday things... Listen to Roguie! How happy he is!”
Roguie’s yelps sounded now close at hand, and now far off, as the scent led him. Presently, as the ladies moved back to the house, the sound grew fainter. “He will probably come out on the main avenue,” his mistress said. “I like him to feel really free, but he always returns in good time for his little supper.”
They had tea in the tapestried hall, and then Janet took her leave. “I want to escape the storm,” she explained, “for it is certain to rain hard again before night.” As it chanced she did not escape it, but after a wayside colloquy with a small boy, arrived at Glenraden as wet as if she had swum the Larrig. She had sent by Benjie a message to Crask, concerning her share in the plans of the morrow.
