Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  “No,” he said, “I can’t do that. It is not possible. . . . You do not understand. . . . I am not an ordinary man. My position is unique. I have won an influence, which I hold in trust for great public causes. I dare not impair it by being mixed up in farce or brawling.”

  Jaikie recognised the decision as final. He also inferred from the characteristic stateliness of the words and the recovered refinement of the accent, that Mr Craw was beginning to be himself again.

  “Very well,” he said briskly. “The second way is that you go abroad as if nothing had happened. We can get a car to take you to Gledmouth, and Mr Barbon will bring on your baggage. Go anywhere you like abroad, and leave the Evallonians to beat at the door of an empty house. If their mission becomes known, it won’t do you any harm, for you’ll be able to prove an alibi.”

  Mr Craw’s consideration of this project was brief, and his rejection was passionate. Mr Barbon had been right in his forecast.

  “No, no,” he cried, “that is utterly and eternally impossible. On the Continent of Europe I should be at their mercy. They are organised in every capital. Their intelligence service would discover me — you admit yourself that they know a good deal about my affairs even in this country. I should have no protection, for I do not believe in the Continental police.”

  “What are you afraid of?” Jaikie asked with a touch of irritation. “Kidnapping?”

  Mr Craw assented darkly. “Some kind of violence,” he said.

  “But,” Jaikie argued in a voice which he tried to keep pleasant, “how would that serve their purpose? They don’t need you as a hostage. They certainly don’t want you as leader of an armed revolution. They want the support of your papers, and the influence which they think you possess with the British Government. You’re no use to them except functioning in London.”

  It was a second mistake in tactics, for Jaikie’s words implied some disparagement of Craw the man as contrasted with Craw the newspaper proprietor. There was indignation as well as fear in the reply.

  “No. I will not go abroad at such a time. It would be insanity. It would be suicide. You must permit me to judge what is politic in such circumstances. I assure you I do not speak without reflection.”

  “Very well,” said Jaikie, whose spirits had descended to his boots. “You can’t go back to Castle Gay. You won’t go abroad. You must stay in this country and lie low till the Evallonians clear out.”

  Mr Craw said nothing, but by his silence he signified an unwilling assent to this alternative.

  “But when?” he asked drearily after a pause. “When will the Evallonians give up their mission? Have we any security for their going within a reasonable time? You say that they have taken Knockraw for the season. They may stay till Christmas.”

  “We’ve left a pretty effective gang behind us to speed their departure.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, there’s Mrs Brisbane-Brown. I wouldn’t like to be opposed to yon woman.”

  “The tenant of the Mains. I scarcely know her.”

  “No, she said that when she met you you looked at her as if she were Lady Godiva. Then there’s her niece, Miss Westwater.”

  “The child I have seen riding in the park? What can she do?”

  Jaikie smiled. “She might do a lot. And there’s your staff at the Castle, Mr Barbon and the rest. And most important of all, there’s Dougal.”

  Mr Craw brightened perceptibly at the last name. Dougal was his own henchman, an active member of the great Craw brotherhood. From him he could look for loyal and presumably competent service. Jaikie saw the change in expression, and improved the occasion.

  “You don’t know Dougal as I know him. He’s the most determined fellow on earth. He’ll stick at nothing. I’ll wager he’ll shift the Evallonians, if he has to take to smoke bombs and poison gas. . . . Isn’t it about time that we had supper? I’m famished with hunger.”

  The bacon and eggs had to be sent back to be heated up, and Mrs Catterick had to make a fresh brew of tea. Under the cheering influence of the thought of Dougal Mr Craw made quite a respectable meal. A cigar would have assisted his comfort, but he had long ago emptied his case, and he was compelled to accept one of Jaikie’s cheap Virginian cigarettes. His face remained a little clouded, and he frequently corrugated his brows in thought, but the black despair of half an hour ago had left him.

  When the remains of supper had been cleared away he asked to see Jaikie’s map, which for some time he studied intently.

  “I must reach the railway as soon as possible,” he said. “On the other side from Castle Gay, of course. I must try to walk to some place where I can hire a conveyance.”

  “Where did you think of going?” Jaikie asked.

  “London,” was the reply. “I can find privacy in the suite in my office.”

  “Have you considered that that will be watched? These Evallonians, as we know, are careful people who mean business, and they seem to have a pretty useful intelligence system. You will be besieged in your office just as badly as if you were at Castle Gay. And with far more publicity.”

  Mr Craw pondered ruefully. “You think so? Perhaps you are right. What about a quiet hotel?”

  Jaikie shook his head. “No good. They will find you out. And if you go to Glasgow or Edinburgh or Manchester or Bournemouth it will be the same. It doesn’t do to underrate the cleverness of the enemy. If Mr Craw goes anywhere in these islands as Mr Craw some hint of it will get out, and they’ll be on to it like a knife.”

  Despair was creeping back into the other’s face. “Have you any other course to suggest?” he faltered.

  “I propose that you and I go where you’re not expected, and that’s just in the Canonry. The Evallonians will look for you in Castle Gay and everywhere else except in its immediate neighbourhood. It’s darkest under the light, you see. Nobody knows you by sight, and you and I can take a quiet saunter through the Canonry without anybody being the wiser, while Dougal finishes the job at the Castle.”

  Mr Craw’s face was a blank, and Jaikie hastened to complete his sketch.

  “We’ll be on a walking tour, the same as Dougal and I proposed, but we’ll get out of the hills. An empty countryside like this is too conspicuous. . . . I know the place, and I’ll guarantee to keep you well hidden. I’ve brought Dougal’s pack for you. In it there’s a suit of pyjamas and a razor and some shirts and things which I got from Mr Barbon . . .”

  Mr Craw cried out like one in pain.

  “. . . And a pair of strong boots,” Jaikie concluded soothingly. “I’m glad I remembered that. The boots you have on would be in ribbons the first day on these stony roads.”

  It was Jaikie’s third error in tactics. Mr Craw had experienced various emotions, including terror, that evening, and now he was filled with a horrified disgust. He had created for himself a padded and cosseted life; he had scaled an eminence of high importance; he had made his daily existence a ritual every item of which satisfied his self-esteem. And now this outrageous young man proposed that he should scrap it all and descend to the pit out of which thirty years ago he had climbed. Even for safety the price was far too high. Better the perils of high politics, where at least he would remain a figure of consequence. He actually shivered with repulsion, and his anger gave him a momentary air of dignity and power.

  “I never,” he said slowly, “never in my life listened to anything so preposterous. You suggest that I — I — should join you in wandering like a tramp through muddy Scottish parishes and sleeping in mean inns! . . . To-morrow I shall go to London. And meantime I am going to bed.”

  CHAPTER VIII. CASIMIR

  Miss Alison Westwater rose early on the following morning, and made her way on foot through the now unbarricaded lodge-gates to the Castle. The fateful meeting with the Evallonians, to which she had not been bidden, was at eleven, and before that hour she had much to do.

  She was admitted by Bannister. “I don’t want to see Mr Barbon,” she said. “I want to talk to
you.” Bannister, in his morning undress, bowed gravely, and led her into the little room on the left side of the hall where her father used to keep his boots and fishing-rods.

  Bannister was not the conventional butler. He was not portly, or sleek, or pompous, or soft-voiced, though he was certainly soft-footed. He was tall and lean, with a stoop which, so far from being servile, was almost condescending. He spoke the most correct English, and was wont to spend his holidays at a good hotel in this or that watering place, where his well-cut clothes, his quiet air, his wide knowledge of the world, and his somewhat elaborate manners caused him to be taken in the smoking-room for a member of the Diplomatic Service. He had begun life in a famous training-stable at Newmarket, but had been compelled to relinquish the career of a jockey at the age of eighteen owing to the rate at which he grew. Thereafter he had passed through various domestic posts, always in the best houses, till the age of forty-seven found him butler to that respected but ineffective statesman, the Marquis of Oronsay. At the lamented death of his patron he had passed to Mr Craw, who believed that a man who had managed four different houses for an irascible master with signal success would suit his own more modest requirements. He was right in his judgment. Bannister was a born organiser, and would have made an excellent Quartermaster-General. The household at Castle Gay moved on oiled castors, and Mr Craw’s comfort and dignity and his jealous retirement suffered no jar in Bannister’s hands. Mr Barbon might direct the strategy, but it was the butler who saw to the tactics.

  The part suited him exactly, for Bannister was accustomed to generous establishments — ubi multa supersunt — and he loved mystery. It was meat and drink to him to be the guardian of a secret, and a master who had to be zealously shielded from the public eye was the master he loved to serve. He had acquired the taste originally from much reading of sensational fiction, and it had been fostered by the circumstances of his life. He had been an entranced repository of many secrets. He knew why the Duke of Mull had not received the Garter; why the engagement between Sir John Rampole and the Chicago heiress was broken off — a tale for which many an American paper would have gladly paid ten thousand dollars; almost alone he could have given a full account of the scandals of the Braddisdale marriage; he could have explained the true reason for the retirement from the service of the State of one distinguished Ambassador, and the inexplicable breakdown in Parliament of a rising Under-Secretary. His recollections, if divulged, might have made him the humble Greville of his age. But they were never divulged — and never would be. Bannister was confidential, because he enjoyed keeping a secret more than other men enjoy telling one. It gave him a sense of mystery and power.

  There was only one thing wanting to his satisfaction. He had a profound — and, as he would have readily admitted, an illogical — liking for the aristocracy. He wished that his master had accepted a peerage, like other Press magnates; in his eyes a new title was better than none at all. For ancient families with chequered pasts he had a romantic reverence. He had studied in the county histories the story of the house of Rhynns, and it fulfilled his most exacting demands. It pleased him to dwell in a mansion consecrated by so many misdeeds. He wished that he could meet Lord Rhynns in the flesh. He respected the household at the Mains as the one link between himself and the older nobility. Mrs Brisbane-Brown was his notion of what a middle-aged gentlewoman should be; and he had admired from afar Alison galloping in the park. She was like the Ladies Ermyntrude and Gwendolen of whom he had read long ago, and whom he still cherished as an ideal, in spite of a lifetime of disillusionment. There was a fount of poetry welling somewhere in Bannister’s breast.

  “I’ve come to talk to you, Bannister,” the girl began, “about the mess we’re in. It concerns us all, for as long as Mr Craw lives in Castle Gay we’re bound to help him. As you are aware, he has disappeared. But, as you may have heard, we have a rough notion of where he is. Well, we’ve got to straighten out things here while he is absent. Hold the fort, you know.”

  The butler bowed gravely.

  “First, there’s the foreigners, who are coming here at eleven.”

  “If I might hazard a suggestion,” Bannister interrupted. “Are you certain, Miss, that these foreigners are what they claim to be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is it not possible that they are a gang of international crooks who call themselves Evallonians, knowing Mr Craw’s interest in that country, and wish to effect an entry into the castle for sinister purposes?”

  “But they have taken Knockraw shooting.”

  “It might be a blind.”

  The girl considered. “No,” she said emphatically. “That is impossible. You’ve been reading too many detective stories, Bannister. It would be imbecility for a gang of crooks to take the line they have. It would be giving themselves away hopelessly. . . . These people are all right. They represent the Evallonian Monarchist party, which may be silly but is quite respectable. Mr Barbon knows all about them. One is Count Casimir Muresco. Another is Prince Odalisque, or some name like that. And there’s a Professor Something or other, who Mr Crombie says has a European reputation for something. No doubt about it. They’re tremendous swells, and we’ve got to treat them as such. That’s one of the things I came to speak to you about. We’re not going to produce Mr Craw, which is what they want, but, till we see our way clear, we must snow them under with hospitality. If they are sportsmen, as they pretend to be, they must have the run of the Callowa, and if Knockraw is not enough for them we must put the Castle moors at their disposal. Oh, and the Blae Moss. They’re sure to want to shoot snipe. The grouse is only found in Britain, but there must be plenty of snipe in Evallonia. You know that they’re all coming to dine here to-night?”

  “So Mr Barbon informed me.”

  “Well, it must be a Belshazzar. That’s a family word of ours for a regular banquet. You must get the chef to put his best foot forward. Tell him he’s feeding Princes and Ministers and he’ll produce something surprising. I don’t suppose he knows any special Evallonian dishes, so the menu had better have a touch of Scotland. They’ll appreciate local colour. We ought to have a haggis as one of the entrées, and grouse of course, and Mackillop must dig a salmon out of the Callowa. I saw a great brute jumping in the Dirt Pot. . . . Plenty of flowers, too. I don’t know what your cellar is like?”

  “I can vouch for it, Miss. Shall the footmen wear their gala liveries? Mr Craw made a point of their possessing them.”

  “Certainly. . . . We have to make an impression, you see. We can’t produce Mr Craw, but we must impress them with our importance, so that they will take what we tell them as if it came from Mr Craw. Do you see what I mean? We want them to go away as soon as possible, but to go away satisfied and comfortable, so that they won’t come back again.”

  “What will be the party at dinner?”

  “The three Evallonians — the Count, and the Prince, and the Herr Professor. You can get the names right from Mr Barbon. Mr Barbon and Mr Crombie, of course, who are staying in the house. My aunt and Mr Charvill and myself. It’s overweighted with men, but we can’t help that.”

  “May I ask one question, Miss? Mr Crombie, now. He is not quite what I have been accustomed to. He is a very peremptory gentleman. He has taken it upon himself to give me orders.”

  “Obey them, Bannister, obey them on your life. Mr Crombie is one of Mr Craw’s trusted lieutenants. You may consider him the leader of our side. . . . That brings me to the second thing I wanted to say to you. What about the journalists?”

  “We have had a visit from three already this morning.” There was the flicker of a smile on the butler’s face. “I made a point of interviewing them myself.” He drew three cards from a waistcoat pocket, and exhibited them. They bore the names of three celebrated newspapers, but the Wire was not among them. “They asked to see Mr Craw, and according to my instructions I informed them that Mr Craw had gone abroad. They appeared to accept my statement, but showed a desire to engage me in
conversation. All three exhibited money, which I presume they intended as a bribe. That, of course, led to their summary dismissal.”

  “That’s all right,” the girl declared, “that’s plain sailing. But I don’t like Tibbets keeping away. Mr Crombie says that he’s by far the most dangerous. Look here, Bannister, this is your very particular job. You must see that none of these reporters get into the Castle, and that nobody from the Castle gossips with them. If they once get on the trail of the Evallonians we’re done. The lodge-keeper has orders not to admit anybody who looks like a journalist. I’ll get hold of Mackillop and tell him to clear out anybody found in the policies. He can pretend they’re poachers. I wonder what on earth Tibbets is up to at this moment?”

  Dougal could have provided part of the answer to that question. The night before, when it was settled that he should take up his quarters in the Castle, he had wired to his Glasgow lodgings to have his dress clothes sent to him by train. That morning he had been to Portaway station to collect them, in a car hired from the Westwater Arms, and in a Portaway street he had run across Tibbets. The journalist’s face did not show, as he had hoped, embarrassment and disappointment. On the contrary the light of victorious battle was in his eye.

  “I thought you were off for good,” was his greeting, to which Dougal replied with a story of the breakdown of his bicycle and his compulsory severance from his friend. “I doubt I’ll have to give up this expedition,” Dougal said. “How are you getting on yourself? I read your thing in the Wire last night.”

  “Did you see the Craw papers? They announce that Craw has gone abroad. It was Heaven’s own luck that they only got that out the same day as my story, and now it’s bloody war between us, for our credit is at stake. I wired to my chief, and I’ve just got his reply. What do you think it is? Craw never left the country. Places were booked for him in the boat train yesterday in the name of his man Barbon, but he never used them. Our information is certain. That means that Craw’s papers are lying. Lying to cover something, and what that something is I’m going to find out before I’m a day older. I’m waiting here for another telegram, and then I’ll go up the Callowa to comfort Barbon.”