The Screaming Gull

by Angus MacVicar

  Lawson, his face waxen white and his dark eyes wistful, put a hand up to his moustache.

  “Isn’t it a queer place?” he said. “If the message from Merriman was a true one, then out there lives a woman holding the peace of Britain in the hollow of her hand.”

  “Tomorrow night,” I returned, full of my new optimism, “we ought to know for certain.”

  “Ye’ll need pistols,” remarked Peter, breaking the tension which had possessed us all on the sight of the islands. “Ha’e ye got them?”

  “I’ve got a couple,” replied Lawson, smiling.

  Maureen pressed my arm close to her side and I could feel her heart beating strongly.

  *

  We had our tea at the hotel on our return from our motor-run from Blaan; for dinner, apparently, was not a Sabbath meal in Campbeltown, Afterwards, for some strange reason which none of us could rightly explain, it seemed to be tacitly understood that we should attend an evening service at one of the churches.

  “I saw a bill up outside the big kirk near the police station,” said Peter, that perfect mine of information. “Musical service at 6.30. The Castlebrae Church, I think it is called.”

  “We should go there,” suggested Maureen slowly. “I love music… And tonight I think I shall love it especially.”

  I caught my breath when she looked across at me; for I had not yet become used to being loved. Perhaps I should never become used to the amazing experience.

  Inside the big, galleried church, softly illumined by gas-light, it was very still and peaceful, while we sat near the back waiting for the service to commence. The area was filled with people, their faces calm and bereft of worried lines. I wondered if we had been noticed particularly by other members of the congregation; but as far as I could see no one had taken the slightest interest in our presence.

  When the organ began to play, Peter, who sat between Maureen and me, started violently; for the great pipes screamed to the vaulted roof in a sudden blare of sound. It was as if a great wind had shattered the silence of a moor.

  Peter gripped my arm.

  “Father,” he whispered, “that first note was exactly like the sound we heard on Princes Street.”

  I patted his hand to reassure him. But later in the service I began urgently to wonder about the note which the young, pleasant-faced organist had struck. It had been exactly like the wild scream of a gigantic gull.

  Chapter 9

  For the most part the musical service in Castlebrae Church was very much according to the general plan of such events in small country towns in Scotland. There was an anthem or two by Mendelssohn, a delicate little hymn by Purcell, an organ piece by Handel. At intervals the tall, clean-shaven, cadaverous minister, whose plentiful hair was of a rusty grey colour, would read a short Scriptural passage or intone a prayer.

  The choir, I thought, was an excellent one in its way, and when it came to soft singing, such as in the Purcell hymn, the blending of the voices was quite lovely. The young organist, too, was clearly well trained in his instrument; and I was stirred more than I cared to admit by his rendering of the ‘March from Scipio’.

  Maureen, I think, liked best the Mendelssohn music; and once or twice, while the choir sang the haunting melodies, I looked across to see her eyes glazed in distant vision. But it made me unaccountably glad to notice that no sooner had I half-turned than her eyes would light up again, and she would smile over at me very slowly and in so intimate a fashion that my heart would jump to my throat.

  Towards the end of the service, while the lean minister was reading a passage from the Old Testament, I noticed that Lawson had become unaccountably restless. Several times his dark eyes flashed in my direction as if he were trying to send a message. I must have been extraordinarily dense, for I could make neither head nor tail of his behaviour. And neither Maureen nor Peter, I saw, seemed to have observed anything amiss. The minister, I remember, was reciting part of the hundred-and-fourth psalm in a kind of dreary monotone; and I could perceive nothing remarkable about the fact, save that the particular portion of Scripture was an unusual one for pulpit reading.

  And then, as the closing item of praise was announced, I realized that something rather curious was afoot. For we stood up to sing metrical psalm number one hundred and four, to the tune of Colchester — the very psalm which the minister had just finished reading in its prose version. We sang four stanzas, beginning at the seventeenth verse.

  ‘Birds of the air upon their boughs do chuse their nests to make;

  As for the stork the fir-tree she doth for her dwelling take.’

  I continued to sing, not without some difficulty; for my heart was going in my breast like the spring of a stop-watch. I saw now the reason for Lawson’s excitement. I saw now — or so I thought — the reason for the young organist’s first queer note. It had suddenly struck me that when the lean minister had been reading from the Old Testament he had used the word ‘gulls’ instead of ‘birds’ at the beginning of verse seventeen. Lawson, with his Bible open before him and his wits as sharp as a needle, must immediately have noticed the apparent error.

  ‘The lofty mountains for wild goats a place of refuge be;

  The conies also to the rocks do for their safety flee.

  He sets the moon in heaven, thereby the seasons to discern;

  From him the sun his certain time of going down doth learn.

  Thou darkness mak’st, ’tis night, the beasts of forests creep abroad;

  The lions young roar for their prey, and seek their meat from God.’

  I looked across in Lawson’s direction as we sang and nodded almost imperceptibly to show that I also had become aware of the curious and significant incident. Peter and Maureen were both carolling valiantly, for the tune was evidently known to both of them; but during the last stanza I forgot to sing, while I racked my brain to discover some hidden meaning in the words of the psalm.

  After the minister had pronounced the benediction Maureen, Peter and I left the church slowly, but Lawson, asking us to wait for him in the vestibule, strode forward down the aisle to have a word with the organist. He joined us in perhaps a couple of minutes, but at the moment he did not vouchsafe us an account of his interview.

  Maureen was delighted with the service and discussed music with animation during our short walk to the hotel. But I knew that her learned discourse was but a blind for excitement; for the hand with which she held my arm jerked nervously once or twice. I wondered if she, too, had noticed the minister’s moment of apparent aberration and the first queer scream of the organ.

  Luckily the lounge of the White Stag was empty when we returned; for there were few guests besides ourselves staying over the weekend. And almost at once Lawson came to the point. As he spoke I saw Peter’s eyes goggling with amazement.

  “I think that minister is a member of ‘The Screaming Gull’,” he said quietly. “He changed the last praise item ten minutes before the service began and told the organist to play a voluntary, the first note of which made that eldritch sound. The youngster himself seems to be quite innocent.”

  “I noticed the old man’s queer mistake in the prose psalm,” returned Maureen softly. “Do you think the passage can contain a message of some sort to members in the congregation?”

  “Quite likely.” Lawson’s face was as pale as death. “And if he had to employ such extraordinary means of distributing a message it must be for the reason that he had little time to send word separately to individuals.”

  “He may be calling a meeting of local members of the society tonight,” I suggested.

  “Possibly,” returned Lawson. “But when — and where?”

  “By Jove!” I exclaimed. “If we could discover that we might — ”

  “Wait, wait, Bill!” smiled Maureen. “Let’s work it out calmly. We don’t even know that the minister’s slip was intentional. He may be quite an innocent old soul, for all we know to the contrary.”

  “The clue — if there is a c
lue — must be in the psalm itself,” said Lawson. “Members of ‘The Screaming Gull’ will know exactly what to look for, because the practice may be a common one for calling hurried meetings, and clues will be indicated beforehand. We must get a psalter… Peter, run downstairs and ask Miss Cunningham, the hostess, for a Bible.”

  Peter, his little, old face worried and anxious, dashed off, returning promptly with a beautifully bound copy of the Testaments printed on rice paper.

  “Miss Cunningham says you’re to be careful with it, for it’s her old father’s.”

  “Queer volume,” remarked Lawson as he opened it. “One page in English, the opposite one in Gaelic. Old Cunningham must be the real Highland gentleman.”

  He turned the pages swiftly, but with no irreverence, until he found the place he wanted. Then, carefully and distinctly, he read out the four verses which, a few minutes ago, had been sung so heartily by the congregation of the Castlebrae Church. When he had finished we looked rather blankly at one another.

  “That verse about the going down of the sun might conceivably suggest a time of meeting at sunset,” I said. “But then, sunset today was about four hours ago. And if sunset tomorrow is meant, surely the minister could have sent the message by simpler means: by letter, for example.”

  Suddenly I saw Peter’s face work spasmodically. None of us had been taking particular notice of him: and I imagined that he felt the slightest twinge of self-consciousness in putting forward his theory. But his iron nerve was equal to the occasion.

  “I say,” he whispered hoarsely. “Don’t you see all those bits about night time and darkness and the moon? The sun just comes into the picture kind of by accident. I wonder if the old preacher meant that a meeting was to take place at the same hour as sunset — only in the early morning?”

  Lawson, his face expressionless, turned and looked at Peter. Then he glanced over at Maureen and me.

  “Damn it!” he exclaimed, and I knew that he was impressed, for never before had I heard him swear. “Damn it, Peter, I believe you’re right!”

  Peter beamed, sitting down again on the chair which, in his excitement, he had vacated. He screwed up his freckled face and rolled his eyes, to show us that his great brain was active on the second problem which faced us.

  “A possible answer to our ‘When?’” said Maureen at last, her right eye half-closed. “But what about ‘Where?’”

  That was the trouble. For almost an hour we sat fretting, reading and re-reading the psalm. But no inspiration came to any of us. Even the wells of Peter’s imagination had run dry.

  “If only we had an idea of what to look for!” groaned Lawson. “With no knowledge of local conditions things are pretty difficult for us.”

  “Look here!” I exclaimed. “Why can’t we get a map of the district? We might discover some place-name which fitted in with certain words in the psalm.”

  “I’ll get one!” snapped Peter on the instant, and again he disappeared from the room.

  “Peter’s like a hen on a hot girdle!” smiled Lawson.

  *

  Our messenger remained away for a considerable time, and, during his absence, to prevent ourselves from further impatient fuming, we discussed his queer origins. I told Lawson in detail of our first meeting.

  “He says the most outrageous things!” agreed the Secret Service man. “And yet — who could resist him?”

  “Seems to me,” said Maureen, “he’s rather a shrewd little chap. He sums up everyone he meets so perfectly. And he’s as brave as a lion. Did you see him turn on the alleged parson on board the Kilkerran?”

  “I know he has courage,” I said. “And loyalty. But it was his manliness and his frank way of speaking his mind that first attracted me. Both traits are so typically Scottish. And I’ve a notion that he pretty often hides rather a forlorn and frightened little heart beneath all his pugnacious, outspoken airs. That is another Scottish characteristic. When Wotherspoon, dressed as a policeman, accosted us in Princes Street, Peter was utterly terrified. I knew it by the look in his eyes and the desperate grip which he took of my thumb. And yet he said not one word of fear, and never afterwards referred to the matter.”

  Maureen was looking seriously in my direction, and I was surprised to see the interest in her eyes.

  “What are you going to do with him, Bill,” she asked, “after this affair is over?”

  “I’m not quite sure. I had an idea I would give him a job in our shop and send him to the night school. He wouldn’t appreciate being sent to school during the day, and neither would he appreciate being idle.”

  “You seem to understand Peter rather well,” remarked Maureen.

  *

  My ‘son’ returned at last, triumphantly bearing a large Ordnance Survey map of South Kintyre.

  “Miss Cunningham thinks I’m daft,” he grinned, “asking for Bibles and maps! She asked me if I was thinking of going in for the ministry.”

  “And what did you tell her?” I asked.

  “I told her I was not, for the only two ministers I had ever met were rogues and vagabonds.”

  “Third time’s lucky,” said Maureen soothingly.

  “There’ll be one,” observed Peter, with impeccable accent, “at your wedding.”

  We spread out the map and pored over its numerous markings. Every little township, every little glen, river and hillock seemed to have a name. Almost every residence and farm in the country-side must have been indicated.

  “But all the places seem to have a Gaelic derivation!” sighed Maureen. Then, stopping abruptly, she caught my arm. “Gaelic!” she exclaimed. “Gaelic! Who knows Gaelic?”

  “I do,” said Lawson. “Why?”

  “That place-name that Bill is looking for may be found in the Gaelic version of the psalm.”

  Lawson, his dark eyes sparkling, read through old Mr. Cunningham’s well-thumbed page of Gaelic, then referred quickly to the map. I saw his glance travel carefully back and forth across the broad sheet, and I wondered almost painfully if his search would be rewarded. Were he to fail, then it seemed to me as if our last hope had gone of solving the problem presented to us by the Castlebrae minister’s substitution of the word ‘gulls’ for ‘birds’.

  Suddenly he jabbed one white, lean finger on the map in front of him.

  “Innish-na-gobhar,” he murmured. “‘The place of the goats’. And the psalm says: ‘A lofty mountain for wild goats a place of refuge be’. I wonder…”

  “Where is the place?” asked Maureen.

  I leaned over Lawson’s shoulder, while Peter scrambled on to the back of the couch on which the Secret Service man was seated, in order to see better. The little dark man measured the distances with a practised eye.

  “Innish-na-gobhar,” he said at last, “seems to be a farm situated in Blaan, about six miles south of Campbeltown, and over a mile off the main road.”

  I crossed the room to where an advertising calendar hung on the wall.

  “And sunset today,” I said, “was at 3.48.”

  “Well — ” Peter was beginning.

  “At twelve minutes to four in the morning,” Lawson said quickly, “Bill and I will be at Innish-na-gobhar Farm. We may be entirely wrong in our calculations. On the other hand, we may have stumbled on the finest piece of evidence for which we could have hoped.”

  I was vastly relieved that Lawson had not suggested bringing in the police; though, of course, I had a fair idea that the Secret Service would not seek assistance until they had abundant evidence against the leaders of ‘The Screaming Gull’ or until the revolt in Scotland had become inevitable. To precipitate action at the present juncture might cause ‘The Screaming Gull’ to attempt their projected coup earlier than on the first of February, as it had been discovered was their original intention. The policy of Lawson and his colleagues was obviously to endeavour to break the Blind One’s power and thereby render the society ineffective, without disclosing to the public its dangerous existence.

 
*

  We had coffee and biscuits in the lounge about midnight. Peter I had packed off to bed an hour earlier, much against his will; but Maureen had insisted upon remaining with us until we should set out on our adventure. It was our intention to leave Campbeltown at one o’clock and walk the distance to Innish-na-gobhar. A car, of course, was out of the question, for we wanted to keep our movements as secret as possible. And we could easily tramp the distance, we thought, in a little over two hours.

  It was almost half past twelve when Lawson, who, in his character as a Jew, was wearing a suit of fine black cloth, went to his room to change into more serviceable tweeds. And as the door closed behind him Maureen, with a little sigh, came over and knelt down beside my chair.

  “Bill,” she said softly, “why can’t I come with you?”

  “Oh, darling, can’t you see? We’ve got to keep in touch with your father in Edinburgh. Anything may happen… and Friday is the first of February.”

  “I’m scared, Bill. Scared to death. Don’t… don’t risk too much. Promise me!”

  “Can you imagine me risking too much, Maureen! I’m far more scared than you are!”

  She put up her arms and pulled my head down and kissed me. And though I tried hard to be gentle, though I tried to remember that in the circumstances I should not take too much advantage of her love, I caught her to me with a yearning that I could not hide.

  She leaned away from me at last, and with a little catch in her voice she said:

  “For one who is supposed to be delicate, Bill, you’re rather a mighty person.”

  “I love you,” I answered. “I love you terribly.”

  “And does loving me help, Bill, in this queer business?”

  “If I hadn’t loved you, darling, from the first moment I saw you I should have run away from it all days ago… But knowing that you love me helps even more. You know, ever since… ever since this afternoon on Dunaverty I’ve felt differently. I’ve lost all the depression that was haunting me yesterday. I’m still frightened, of course, but you seem to have given me a new angle on things… I think we’re going to carry off this job.”