by John Buchan
Alison obeyed. She explained that she had indeed met a man in the high woods, though she had not specially remarked his clothes. She had passed him, and thought that he must have returned soon after, for she had not seen him on her way down. She described minutely the place of meeting — on the right-hand road at the main fork, near the brow of the hill, and not far from the rock called the Wolf Crag which looked down on Unnutz — precisely the opposite direction from the woodcutter’s hut.
Mastrovin thanked her with a flourish of his hat. “I must now to breakfast,” he said. “There is a gasthaus by the roadside where I will await my friend, if he is not already there.”
II
Usually the two miles to Unnutz were the one black spot in the morning’s walk, for they were flat and dusty and meant a return to the house of bondage. But to-day Alison was scarcely conscious of them, for she was thinking hard, with a flutter at her heart which was half-painful and half-pleasant. Prince John was here in retreat for some purpose, and Count Casimir was in touch with him; that must mean that things were coming to a head in Evallonia. Mastrovin, his bitterest enemy, was on the trail of Casimir, and must know that Prince John was in the neighbourhood. That meant trouble. Her false witness that morning might send Mastrovin on a wild-goose chase to the wrong part of the forest, but it was very certain that he must presently discover the Prince’s hermitage. The Prince and Casimir might suspect that their enemies were looking for them, but they did not know that Mastrovin was in Unnutz. She alone knew that, and she must make use of her knowledge. Casimir had gone off in the direction of Italy; therefore she must warn the Prince, and that must be done secretly when she could be certain that she was not followed. She had begun to plan a midnight journey, for happily she had a room giving on a balcony, from which it would be easy to reach the ground. To her surprise she found that she looked forward with no relish to the prospect; if she had had company it would have been immense fun, but, being alone, she felt only the weight of a heavy duty. She longed passionately for Jaikie.
Entering the hotel by a side door, she changed into something more like the regulation toilet of Unnutz, and sought her father on the verandah. For once Lord Rhynns was in a good humour.
“A little late, my dear,” he complained mildly. “Yes, I have had a better night. I am beginning to hope that I have got even with my accursed affliction.” Then, regarding his daughter with complacent eyes, he became complimentary. “You are really a very pretty girl, Alison, though your clothes are not such as gentlewomen wore in my young days.” With a surprising touch of sentiment he added, “You are becoming very like my mother.”
Taking advantage of her father’s urbanity, Alison broached the question of going home.
“Presently, my dear. Another week, I think, should set me right. Your mother is anxious to leave — a sudden craving for Scotland. We shall go for a little to Harriet at Castle Gay — she has been more than kind about it, and Craw has behaved admirably. I am told he has the place very comfortable, and I have always found him conduct himself like a gentleman. Money, my dear. Ample means are not only the passport to the name of gentility, but they create the thing itself. In these days it is not easy for a pauper to preserve his breeding.
“By the way,” he continued, “some friends of ours arrived here this morning. They are breakfasting more elaborately than we are in the salle-à-manger. The Roylances. Janet Roylance, you remember, was old Cousin Alastair Raden’s second girl.”
“What!” Alison almost shrieked. It was the best news she could have got, for now she could share her burden of responsibility. In the regrettable absence of Jaikie the Roylances were easily the next best.
“Yes,” her father went on. “They have been at Geneva, and have come on here for a holiday. Sir Archibald, they tell me, is making a considerable name for himself in politics. For a young man in these days he certainly has creditable manners.”
His lordship finished his coffee, and announced that he proposed to go to his sitting-room till luncheon to write letters. Alison dutifully accompanied him thither, paid her respects to her mother, who was also in a more cheerful mood, and then hastened downstairs. In the big dining-room she found the pair she sought at a table in one of the windows. Alison flung herself upon Janet Roylance’s neck.
“You’ve finished breakfast? Then come outdoors and smoke. I know a quiet corner beside the lake. I must talk to you at once. You blessed angels have been sent by Heaven just at the right moment.”
When they were seated where a little half-moon of shrubbery made an enclave above the blue waters of the Waldersee, Sir Archie offered Alison a cigarette.
“No, thank you. I don’t smoke. If I did it would be a pipe, I’m so sick of the cigarette-puffing hussy. First of all, what brought you two here?”
Sir Archie grinned. “The Conference has adjourned till Bolivia settles some nice point with Uruguay.”
“We came,” said Janet, “because we are free people with no plans and we knew that you were here. We thought we should find you moribund with boredom, Allie, but you are radiant. What has happened? Have the parents turned over a new leaf?”
“Papa is quite good and nearly well. Mamma has actually begun to crave for Scotland. There’s no trouble at present on the home front. But the foreign situation is ticklish. This place is going to be the scene of dark doings, and I can’t cope with them alone. That’s why I hugged you like a bear. Have you ever heard of Evallonia?”
“I have,” said Janet, “for I sometimes read the Craw Press.”
“We’ve expected a revolution there,” said Sir Archie, “any time these last two years. But something seems to have gone wrong with the timing.”
“Well, that has been seen to. The blow-up must be nearly ready, and it’s going to start in this very place. Listen to me very carefully. The story begins two years ago in Castle Gay.”
Briefly but vigorously Alison told the tale of the raid on the Canonry and the discomfiture by Jaikie and Dickson McCunn of Mastrovin and his gang. (“Jaikie?” said Sir Archie. “That’s the little chap we saw with you at Maurice’s? I was in a scrap alongside him years ago. Janet knows the story. Good stamp of lad.”) She sketched the personalities of the three Royalists and the six Republicans, and she touched lightly upon Prince John. She described the face seen the afternoon before in the old village, and her sight that morning of the Prince and Casimir at the woodcutter’s hut. The drama culminated in Mastrovin squatted like a partridge in the scrub above Casimir’s car.
“Mastrovin!” Sir Archie brooded. “He was at Geneva as an Evallonian delegate. Wonderful face of its kind, but it would make any English jury bring him in guilty of any crime without leaving the box. He was very civil to me. I thought him a miscreant but a sportsman, though I wouldn’t like to meet him alone on a dark night. He looked the kind of chap who wasn’t afraid of anything — except the other Evallonian female. You remember her, Janet?”
His wife laughed. “Shall I ever forget her? You never saw such a girl, Allie. A skin like clear amber, and eyes like topazes, and the most wonderful dark hair. She dressed always in bright scarlet and somehow carried it off. Archie, who as you know is a bit of a falconer, remembered that in the seventeenth century there was a hawk called the Blood-red Rook of Turkey, so we always called her that. She was a Countess Araminta Some-thing-or-other.”
Alison’s eyes opened. “I know her — at least, I have met her. She was in London the season before last. Her mother was English, I think, and hence her name. She rather scared me. She wasn’t a delegate, was she?”
“No,” said Archie. “She held a watching brief for something. I can tell you she scared old Mastrovin. He didn’t like to be in the same room with her, and he changed his hotel when she turned up at it.”
“Never mind the Blood-red Rook,” said Alison. “Mastrovin is our problem. I don’t care a hoot for Evallonian politics, but having once been on the Monarchist side I’m going to stick to it. Evallonia is apparently at boilin
g-point. The Monarchist cause depends upon Prince John. Mastrovin is for the Republic or something still shadier, and therefore he is against Prince John. That innocent doesn’t know his enemy is about, and Casimir has gone off in the direction of Italy. Therefore we have got to do something about it.”
“What puzzles me,” said Archie, “is what your Prince is doing in Unnutz, which isn’t exactly next door to Evallonia, and why he should want to get himself up as a peasant?”
“It puzzles me, too, but that isn’t the point. It all shows that things are getting warm in Evallonia. What we have got to do is to dig Prince John out of that hut before Mastrovin murders or kidnaps him, and stow him away in some safer place. I considered it rather a heavy job for me alone, but is should be child’s play for the three of us. Don’t tell me you decline to play.”
During the last few minutes of the conversation Archie’s face had been steadily brightening.
“Of course we’ll play,” he said. “You can count us in, Alison, but I’m getting very discreet in my old age, and I must think it over pretty carefully. It’s a chancy business purloining princes, however good your intentions may be. The thing’s easy enough, but it’s the follow-up that matters. . . . Wait a second. I’ve always believed that the best hiding-place was just under the light. What about bringing him to this hotel to join our party?”
“As Prince John or as a woodcutter?” Janet asked.
“As neither,” said Archie. “My servant got ‘flu in Geneva, and I had to leave him behind. How would the Prince fancy taking on the job? I can lend him some of my clothes. Is he the merry class of lad that likes a jape?”
The luncheon-gong boomed. “We can talk about that later,” said Alison. “Meanwhile, it’s agreed that we three slip out of this place after dark. We’ll take your car part of the way, and there’s a moon, and I can guide you the rest. We daren’t delay, for I’m positive that this very night Mastrovin will get busy.”
Sir Archie arose with mirth in his eye, patted his hair and squared his shoulders. A boy approached and handed him a telegram.
“It’s from Bobby Despenser,” he announced. “The Conference has resumed and he wants me back at once. Well, he can whistle for me.”
He tore the flimsy into small pieces.
“Take notice, you two,” he said, “that most unfortunately I have not received Bobby’s wire.”
III
On the following morning three people sat down to a late breakfast in a private sitting-room of the Hotel Kaiserin Augusta. All three were a little heavy about the eyes, as if their night’s rest had been broken, but in the air of each was a certain subdued excitement and satisfaction.
“My new fellow is settling down nicely,” said Sir Archie, helping himself to his third cup of coffee. “Answers smartly to the name of McTavish. Lucky I brought the real McTavish’s passport with me. Curious thing, but the passport photograph isn’t unlike him, and he has almost the same measurements. I’ve put some sticking-plaster above his left eye to correspond to the scar that McTavish got in Mespot, and I’ve had a go at his hair with scissors — he objected pretty strongly to that, by the way. I’ve put him into my striped blue flannel suit, which you could tell for English a mile away, and given him a pair of my old brown shoes. Thank God, he’s just about my size. I’m going to buy him a black Homburg — the shops here are full of them — and then he’ll look the very model of a gentleman’s gentleman, who has had to supplement his London wardrobe locally.”
“But, Archie, he has the kind of face that you can’t camouflage,” said Janet. “Anyone who knows him is bound to recognise him.”
Her husband waved his hand. “N’ayez pas peur, je m’en charge, as old Perriot used to say at Geneva. He won’t be recognised, because no one will expect him here. He’s in the wrong environment — under the light, so to speak, which is the best sort of hiding-place. He won’t go much out of doors, and I’ve got him a cubby-hole of a bedroom up in the attics. Not too comfortable, but Pretenders to thrones must expect to rough it a bit. He’ll mess with the servants, who are of every nationality on earth, and I’ve told him to keep his mouth shut. Like all royalties, he’s a dab at languages, and speaks English without an accent, but I’m teaching him to give his words a Scotch twist. He tumbled to it straight off, and says ‘Sirr’ just like my old batman. If anyone makes trouble I’ve advised him to dot him one on the jaw in the best British style. He looks as if he could swing a good punch.”
The small hours of the morning had been a stirring time for the party. They had left the hotel by Alison’s verandah a little before midnight, and in Archie’s car had reached the foot of the forest path, meeting no one on the road. Then their way had become difficult, for it was very dark among the pines, and Alison had once or twice been at fault in her guiding. The moon rose when they were near the crest of the hill, and after that it had been easy to find the road to the hut through the dew-drenched pastures. There things marched fast. There was pandemonium with two dogs, quieted with difficulty by Alison, who had a genius for animals. The old woman, who appeared with a stable-lantern, denied fiercely that there was any occupant of the hut except herself, her husband being dead these ten years and her only son gone over the mountains to a wedding. She was persuaded in the end by Alison’s mention of Count Casimir, and the three were admitted.
Then Prince John had appeared fully dressed, with what was obviously a revolver in his pocket. He recognised Alison and had heard of Sir Archie, and things went more smoothly. The news that Mastrovin was on his trail obviously alarmed him, but he took a long time to be convinced about the need for shifting his residence. Clearly he was a docile instrument in the hands of the Monarchists, and hesitated to disobey their orders for fear of spoiling their plan. Things, it appeared, were all in train for a revolution in Evallonia, at any moment he might be required to act, and Unnutz had been selected as the council-chamber of the conspirators. On this point it took the united forces of the party to persuade him, but in the end he saw reason. Alison clinched the matter. “If Mastrovin and his friends get you, it’s all up. If you come with us it may put a little grit in the wheels, but it won’t smash the machine. Remember, sir, that these men are desperate, and won’t stick at trifles. They were desperate two years ago at Castle Gay, but now it is pretty well your life or theirs, and it had better be theirs.”
When he allowed himself to be convinced his spirits rose. He was a young man of humour, and approved of Sir Archie’s proposal that he should go to their hotel. He liked the idea of taking the place of the absent McTavish, and thought that he could fill the part. There only remained to give instructions to the old woman. If anyone came inquiring, she was not to deny the existence of her late guest, though she was to profess ignorance of who or what he was. Her story was to be that he had left the preceding afternoon with his belongings on his back. She did not know where he had gone, but believed that it was over the mountains to the Vossthal, since he had taken the path for the Vossjoch.
The journey back had been simple, though Alison had thought it wise to make a considerable detour. It had been slightly complicated by the good manners of the Prince, since he persisted in offering assistance to Janet and Alison, who needed it as little as a chamois. They had reached the hotel just before daybreak, and had entered, they believed, without being observed. That morning Sir Archie had explained to the manager about the delayed arrival of his servant, and the name of Angus McTavish had been duly entered in the hotel books with the Roylances’ party.
“And now,” said Archie, “he’s busy attending to my dress-clothes. What says the Scriptures? ‘Kings shall be thy ministers and queens thy nursing mothers.’ We’re getting up in the world, Janet. I’m going to raise a chauffeur’s cap for him, and I want him to take your parents, Alison, out in the car this afternoon to accustom the neighbourhood to the sight of a new menial. As for me, I propose to pay another visit to the hut. There’s bound to have been developments up that way, and we ought to keep
in touch with them. I’ll be an innocent tourist out for a walk to observe birds.”
“What worries me,” said Janet, “is how we are going to keep the Monarchists quiet. We may have Count Casimir here any moment, and that will give the show away.”
“No, it won’t. I mean, he won’t. I left a letter for him which will give him plenty to think about.”
Janet set down her coffee-cup. “What did you say in the letter?” she demanded severely.
“McTavish wrote it — I only dictated the terms. He quite saw the sense of it. It was by way of being a piteous cry for help. It said he had been pinched by Mastrovin and his gang, and appealed to his friends to fly to his rescue. Quite affecting it was. You see the scheme? We’ve got to keep McTavish cool and quiet on the ice till things develop. If Casimir and his lot are looking for him in Mastrovin’s hands they won’t trouble us. If Mastrovin is being hunted by Casimir he won’t be able to hunt McTavish. What you might call a cancelling out of snags.”
His wife frowned. “I wonder if you’ve not been a little too clever.”
“Not a bit of it,” was the cheerful answer. “Ordinary horse sense. As old Perriot said, ‘N’ayez pas peur—’”
“Archie,” said Janet, “if you quote that stuff again I shall fling the coffee-pot at you.”
IV
Sir Archie did not return till nine o’clock that evening, for he had walked every step of the road and had several times lost his way. He refreshed himself in the sitting-room with sandwiches and beer, while Janet and Alison had their after-dinner coffee.
“How did McTavish behave?” he asked Alison.
“Admirably. He drives beautifully and both Papa and Mamma thought he was Scotch. The only mistake was that he treated us like grandees, and held the door open with his cap in his hand. How about you? You look as if you had been seeing life?”
“I’ve had a trying time,” said Sir Archie, passing a hand through his hair. “There has been a bit of a row up at the hut. No actual violence, but a good deal of unpleasantness.”
