“Right. Come with us and row. We can fish later,” said Ian. He gave his rod to the boy. “I may have to leave the boat. If I do, you’ll look after my wife and catch all the fish in the sea, Malcolm?”
“I will that,” said the young MacIver. “Which way for you?”
“Towards Snizort.”
“Very good.” There were two pair of oars, and Ian and MacIver sent the boat bucketing along whilst Catherine kept watch on their quarry. Whether Loudoun realized what the game was, or whether he had such difficulty with his crutches that he could not travel faster, Catherine was able to keep him in sight for nearly half a mile. Then she reported that he and his party must be heading inland. She had lost sight of them. Young MacIver, stimulated by Ian’s commands, put in to the shore and the party landed.
Whether Loudoun had done it on purpose, or whether his crutches had slipped as his companions urged him up the cliff path, they did not know, but the boat party, by running rapidly in the direction which Catherine indicated, were in time to see him rolling over and over down the slope.
Ian was up with him first, but young MacIver was not far behind. As Ian bent to help him to his feet, and Catherine collected the crutches which were some little distance from each other, Loudoun said hoarsely but distinctly:
“The house on the skyline. You’ll find it from the bay. The last house you see on the skyline.”
He had no time to say more before his two companions, who had come down the slope as fast as they could, were beside him and taking him from Ian.
“Many thanks, sir,” said the more villainous-looking of the pair. “Our unfortunate friend lost his footing, and, at the same time, his crutches.”
The second man, who had accepted the crutches from Catherine, now came up with them and offered them to Loudoun.
“Can’t he manage without them?” asked Ian.
“No, no! I can’t manage without them,” interpolated Loudoun himself. “I am quite helpless without them.” With the aid of his two companions he took to the crutches again, and, with a brief word of thanks to the others, he made his way slowly up the hill.
Ian led the way to the boat, and MacIver pushed off.
“Will you be fishing now?” MacIver enquired.
“Aye,” said Ian. “Right in the middle of the bay. Look here, Malcolm, you can keep a secret, I know. That fellow with the crutches is a bit of a mystery. He says he’s staying at the house on the skyline. Now I want to get out to sea a bit, to identify that house; then perhaps you’ll be able to tell me who lives there, and what kind of people they are. Mind you, there’s probably nothing whatever in all this, but I happen to know that the fellow has been seriously ill, and, the last I heard, was missing from his home. He lives near Duror, south of Ballachulish, and nobody knew where he had gone.”
“The house on top of the hill is belonging to old Mrs. MacShuffie,” volunteered Malcolm, “but she is dead since Christmas Day. The house is empty, that it is.”
“That’s queer. Look here, I’m not doubting what you say, but I’d like to be sure of the house. Bend to it, and let’s have a look. The very last house to be seen on the skyline, he said.”
“While you are seeing it, you’ll not catch fish,” said Malcolm. “Aye, that will be Mrs. MacShuffie’s house,” he added, as, a little later, with the boat bouncing gently on the bay, they identified the house without question. “And now, if you are wishing to catch fish . . .”
They rowed further along until the house was no longer to be seen, and, using the double hook which so much intrigued Ian, caught forty fish including both whiting and haddock. Malcolm, who was to keep the catch, was pleased.
“He is a lucky man, that man who was rolling down the hill, whatever,” he said, with his slow sad smile. Both Ian and Catherine thought this doubtful. They returned to Mrs. MacDonald’s, but had no opportunity of discussing Loudoun’s affairs until it was time to go to bed.
“The thing is,” said Ian, “to get speech of the fellow, and see what he thinks he’s up to. He may have some sort of persecution mania. It doesn’t make sense for a grown man to be afraid to speak to people he’s acquainted with. And why the crutches, I still wonder? Obviously he expects us to go to the house, and, obviously, since he insists on all this secrecy, at present we’ve got to respect his ideas and wishes. Old Morag’s complete disappearance was certainly odd, and his own running away from Craigullich doesn’t look too sensible, when, so far as we know, he was just going to begin treatment for his troubles. I’ve a good mind to go up there to-night. I wonder whether I can leave this house and get back here again without the MacDonalds’ knowing?”
“Easily,” said Catherine, “but, all the same, I should tell them. They’re probably used to visitors who want to do idiotic things. Tell them you’re off to see the Quiraing by moonlight. That’s quite a decent excuse for leaving the house, and, with it, you can get back when you like. It isn’t like having to knock people up to get in. The door is unlocked night and day.”
Ian kissed her, put on his trousers and jacket again, and went down into the kitchen. As Catherine had anticipated, the reason he gave for going out at night was received without question or incredulity by the MacDonalds, although Mrs. MacDonald warned him against getting too hot by walking too fast, in case he should take a chill from the night air, and old Grandfather MacDonald, who had his own sitting-room, in which the family dined, and kept it as his fathers before him had done because he detested modern contrivances in general, and Glasgow furniture in particular, warned him that the Quiraing was haunted, and also that the road to it, even by moonlight, would probably be shrouded in mist.
Ian set off, carrying a heavy stick which he had borrowed from the old man. It was ostensibly to help him on his long tramp northwards, but in actual fact he took it because he did not care for the look of Loudoun’s guardians and wanted to be on the winning side if there was going to be trouble.
It was barely dark when he set out. He travelled north for a little, in case anyone was interested in his movements, and then came round again from the most outlying houses of Uig in search of the house he had in mind. It was easy enough to find it. It was the usual two-roomed croft, and there were no lights showing. This did not surprise him; what did surprise him was that three men, all strangers in the place, could inhabit a house whose owner had recently died, and the fact not be known to the post-mistress.
He came up to the door and listened. Nothing was to be heard. Determined not to return without having found out something more about Loudoun, Ian knocked at the door. Nobody answered, and so he knocked again, louder. Again no one came, so he beat upon the door with the heavy knob of old MacDonald’s stick, and then opened the door and went in.
The interior of the croft was as black as any windowless room could be. Ian listened, but no one was asleep there. He struck a match after closing the door behind him, and found on the plain, heavy table a half-used candle. He lighted it, saw bread and a parcel (which proved, on investigation, to be cheese), and two bottles, one full, the other almost empty, of whisky. Three beds, or what passed for beds—they were inflated rubber mattresses laid on the floor and covered with travelling rugs—were in the other room of the croft. These beds formed a discovery well worth making, for it was unlikely that the ordinary inhabitants of the village would possess no other beds but rubber mattresses. On the other hand, these were just the things which could be transported very easily by car or even as hand-luggage, while the rugs would have caused no surprise to a casual observer if they had chanced to be seen in transport.
The mystery still lay in the fact that nobody—for Ian took it for granted that if the post-mistress did not know of the existence of the strangers, nobody knew of it—had seen the three men settle in.
He concluded that the men returned to the croft after nightfall, so ordering matters that, even so, they were not observed. This would present, he thought, no particular difficulty. The situation of the croft—there were no other hous
es within about seven hundred yards—would make it a comparatively simple matter to come to the place after dark without being seen, and, if necessary, to leave before morning, again without being detected.
Although he had seen no car, he deduced that the men must own one, for it was clear they did not buy food or other necessities at the village shop, yet there was evidence that food was brought into the house, for he had seen the loaf of bread, the piece of cheese, and the bottles of whisky on the shelf in the adjoining room. A car would also account for the fact that the postmistress had not seen a cripple.
He went back to the room with his candle. On the floor was the primitive peat-bucket which was still in use on the island. Its embers, however, were long since dead, he decided. The men and Loudoun were fortunate that it was summer, for, although the nights were chilly, they were not rigorous. The accepted—in fact, the only—method of warming a croft with neither window nor chimney was to get the peat glowing out in the open air and then to bring the bucket into the house. To kindle peat in the house was to end up as smoked as a haddock. If the men had wanted to keep their presence secret, as there seemed no doubt at all that they did, to kindle peat in the open was to advertise their tenancy of the croft. It seemed clear that they kindled no fire. Probably old Mrs. MacShuffie, the deceased crofter, had been the last person to kindle peat in that particular tin.
He began to be interested and excited. There was something more to know about Loudoun, and he was determined to know it. He pinched out the candle, went to the door and held it open, so that, if the candle had left any smell, the keen wind blowing inland from the sea could dissipate it before the men returned, and then he shut the door behind him and crouched inside the stone wall by which the small house was surrounded on the south-west, which faced the sea, and to left and right of it.
He hoped that the men would not keep him there too long. The wall sheltered him from the wind, but it was very uncomfortable to crouch out of sight behind it. The moon began to come up, and the darkness had deepened, so that anything silhouetted would have attracted instant notice, and he did not want, at that juncture, to advertise his presence either to Loudoun or his guards.
He had been in position for about a quarter of an hour, and was not, owing to his Highland blood, grown too impatient at the waiting, nor too uncomfortable to philosophize, when he heard the sound of a car.
It drove on, well past the house. This he had expected, and he reflected, too, that it might not be the right car. But patience and philosophy were rewarded when he heard the sounds of footsteps approaching the croft.
Where he was, the mist was not dense, but below the cliffs of the bay the sea was as white as the mist, and the moonshine could only pick out a swirl of phosphorescence here and there. Wreaths of the mist came swirling to the wall behind which he was crouched, and then retreated as though in a dance. Unheard, mysterious forces appeared to be directing its eddying sway. The sky above was clear, and the gentle moon, benign in her suffused and radiant light, swam in an aura of her own which was hallowed by the measureless space of the night.
This peace was rudely shattered. Ian, having conceived a plan of action, put it into immediate effect by rising from where he was hidden, and, just as his quarry approached, by staggering into the moonlight and singing (but not too loudly, since he did not intend, if he could help it, to attract the attention of anyone but Loudoun and his guards) a bawdy French song whose words were not only unprintable but, in the exact sense, untranslatable. He then broke into a monologue in broad Scots, insisting upon shaking hands with himself, and, when the three approached, with them also. He then offered to dance a Highland fling for them, or, if they preferred it, a reel.
He was interested to notice that Loudoun was no longer on crutches. He made no sign that he recognized Ian, but remarked to the others that it was some drunken lout of a tourist who had been taking too much whisky. One of the men gave Ian a push. Ian retaliated by giving him a tap on the head with Grandfather MacDonald’s stick, and by inviting the other man to hit him and see what he would get.
Then he went off, singing, and heard, above the syncopations of his own hiccupping voice, the sound of a door being closed. The plan, so far, had not miscarried. Loudoun knew that he was at hand. The next move was up to him, if he wanted help. Ian, having worked out what his own next move would have to be, returned quietly to the croft and crouched again in the heavy shadow of the wall. Sure enough, in about a quarter of an hour, out came Loudoun, alone. Ian could see him clearly in the moonlight.
There was but one purpose for which he would have been allowed out without his guards (if that was indeed what they were) and he carried out this purpose at a little distance from the wall, and at the same time began to sing softly his S.O.S. to the tune, this time, of “Annie Laurie.”
“Here!” said Ian softly. Loudoun gave up his Morse signals and sang, instead, the words, to the tune of “Loch Lomond”: “Which way did you come, and which way shall I come? Can I be in England before ye?”
“Bunk for the car,” muttered Ian.
Loudoun, who, in spite of his nerves, seemed a ready enough fellow-conspirator, made a leap for the wall and fell over it. Ian followed. From the doorway there were the sounds of confusion which indicated that Loudoun’s guards were already alert to the possibility that their charge might be attempting to escape. Ian, confident of being able to outdistance them, ran away from the direction of the car, and crouched low at first, to deceive them as to his height, for he was considerably taller than their captive. As they were not expecting to chase two men, but only Loudoun himself, they fell into the trap, and came lumbering and galloping after him. They were big, heavy fellows, good enough at guarding a prisoner already in their hands, thought Ian, grimly, but not the men to catch him when once he had slipped through their fingers.
Ian led them a dance until he heard the sound of the car starting up. The men heard it, too, and, realizing that they had been fooled, they turned and blundered off in the direction from which the sounds came. Ian went to ground, thankful to be free of the unpleasant suspicion that he was likely to get a bullet between his shoulders. He then scrambled down the cliff, and made at once for MacDonald’s house. He had given Loudoun his chance to get away, and, for some half hour after he had returned to the house, and, upstairs in his stockinged feet, was whispering the story to Catherine, he experienced the glow of achievement and self-congratulation which he felt to be his due. It was she who asked, when at last he got off the edge of the bed where he had been sitting and put on his pyjamas and slid beside her under the blankets, what he was going to do next.
“Oh, Lord!” he said. “I don’t know.”
“For one thing, they may know you again,” she pointed out with a shudder. “It won’t take them long to put two and two together, and decide that the drunken man, and the man who drew them off while Mr. Loudoun escaped, are one and the same person.”
“They may not know I drew them away on purpose,” Ian suggested.
“I don’t want to risk it,” said she. “I’ll be glad to get back to Snizort, and into the boat.”
“Will you?” His arms tightened suddenly. “All right, Kate. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll make for Snizort first thing to-morrow morning, and we’ll get back to Ballachulish as soon as we can, and tell all the tale to Laura’s boss.”
Chapter Eight
★
Life or Death!
Beatha no bas!
alternately with:
Another for Hector!
Fear eil’ airson Eachainn!
War cry of the Macleans of Duart
★
The police had done all that they could to discover the identity of the murdered man whom Laura, after her talk with the amateur bagman, had decided must be Stewart, or, as the first Loudoun had called him in his typescript, Ure.
It seemed, from the published evidence of which the Scottish papers were, in a dignified fashion, full,
that the newest police theory was that the dead man might have been on a walking tour from Tyndrum to Kinlochleven when he was set upon and murdered on Rannoch Moor.
Laura’s news of the bagman-artist had aroused Mrs. Bradley’s particular interest. She could not see, from the map of the route which the dead man was believed to have taken, that he had needed to stray on to Rannoch Moor at all. He would have been bound to arrive at Kingshouse, and could there have enquired the way. Had he really come from Tyndrum through Bridge of Orchy—a straightforward route—to Kingshouse, he then had only to choose the road through Glencoe towards Ballachulish and so along the southern shore of Loch Leven to Kinlochleven, or, if he wanted rougher walking and a more adventurous, if somewhat shorter trip, the larig called the Devil’s Staircase which led directly from the Glencoe Road up to the town which he had for his objective. In either case, he could not have avoided Kingshouse, where was the inn and any information a traveller, belated or otherwise, might require.
She thought a great deal about this particular aspect of the matter, and at last decided that, as her business in Inverness had been concluded by Laura, and as she had no pressing engagements for a week or two, it would be interesting to try to find out exactly what the murdered man had done. The police, before accepting this theory of his route, must have been provided with some facts which had led them to form it, but to what extent Mrs. Bradley could not determine. However, it would do no harm, she felt, to go over the ground again.
This she proceeded to do in the most literal fashion, taking Laura with her. Jonathan, Deborah, and the lad Brian had left Ballachulish for Blairgowrie, where they proposed to stay for the Scottish Games held there in July, and there had been no word of the movements of the Kerisaig and her crew for several days, so she and Laura were free to do as they pleased.
Laura, full of her encounter with Stewart’s mysterious friend, and convinced that Stewart and Ure were one and the same, was greatly in favour of the scheme, and picturesquely professed herself ready to walk, ride, drive or fly over hill and dale, mountain and pass, bealach, blair, brinach, clachan, craig, coille, clunie, corrie, druim, eilean, fail, haugh, kyle, larig, linn, machair, mull, rath, rhinns, sgeir, shieling, strath, struan, tullach, or uam, as her leader dictated.
My Father Sleeps (Mrs. Bradley) Page 10
