by Neil M. Gunn
“You’ll feel the better of that. And—don’t take it amiss, Alick, if I say you were on my mind last night. It is difficult to talk about. When I couldn’t find you to-day, I went along to the inn. I never mentioned your name, but I could see the landlord thought I was doing the detective. Gave me rather an unpleasant feeling for a minute.”
“I heard you,” said Alick.
“How—do you mean?”
“I was there.”
“Oh!”
“I went there last night. Then——”
As he hesitated, Harry said, “You need not tell me anything, you know, unless you like.” He finished his drink. “It’s entirely as you like. I myself didn’t want to——” He put his glass away.
Alick’s manner eased. “Early this morning, I found myself on the hill. It was the first grey of the dawn, and, when my eyes opened, ten yards away from me was King Brude, looking at me. I believed it after a moment or two, for when I sat up he trotted back to our forest. It brought me to my senses and I found my way back to Corr Inn.” The faint smile faded and he said in an almost natural voice: “Don’t know what he was doing so low down. Hope he’s not in the mind to leave us so soon.”
“That would be a pity,” said Harry. “Sit down.” And as he motioned Alick to a chair, he sat down himself.
“Oh, I’ll be going,” said Alick, taking the chair reluctantly.
“So you were on the hill this morning?”
“At that time, yes. But not later.”
Harry looked at him.
Alick’s smile became faintly confused and he swung half round as if for his glass.
“Just a tiny spot more,” said Harry, jumping up.
“No, please!”
“It won’t do us any harm.” And he also poured a small one for himself.
“I didn’t mean that,” said Alick.
“I know. Reflex action,” and Harry smiled companionably.
“Thanks very much,” said Alick. “I—I’m afraid I played a bit of a joke on Mr. Smith.”
“You what?” Harry sat up.
“A bit of a joke on him.”
“Really!… You did it pretty efficiently!”
“Oh well, it was easy.”
Harry laughed abruptly. “Excuse me, but—he is not the one who would think it easy.”
“I could see that. So I thought it wouldn’t matter.”
Harry laughed again. “Tell me. Go on.”
“Oh, I was just talking to Angus for a few minutes on the way in. Mr. Smith had said a word or two to Angus, after he missed. He did not mean them against Angus. He was just upset. Angus had remained behind the ridge, because there was no point in two of them crawling in full view. Angus said he would wait for him. And when Mr. Smith came back, right enough he found Angus where he had left him. So naturally enough Mr. Smith thinks that no one in the world could have seen what he actually did—except from Benuain opposite—and that of course was out of the question. Now what happened was that Angus decided to crawl a little bit forward to get his glass on the stag and see what the shot did, for sometimes a man will wound a beast without knowing it. Then as he felt Mr. Smith was taking a bit too long, he crawled a yard or two more—and saw him aiming at another beast over four hundred yards away.”
“Four hundred!” exclaimed Harry. “Impossible!”
“Angus was very astonished, too,” said Alick. “So when Mr. Smith fired, Angus doubled back at once to the place he had left, because he knew fine Mr. Smith would hate to think that anyone had seen him fire at a living beast over such a long range.”
“King Brude, was it?”
“I wasn’t there,” said Alick.
Harry, appreciating this reticence, nodded to himself in thoughtful astonishment. Then he looked at Alick again. “Explain this. You told us what passed in Mr. Smith’s own mind—about the distance. How could you know that?”
“I had a glance at his rifle. I noticed the sight was still at over three hundred. Angus, as I say, had let drop that the distance was over four hundred. Mr. Smith has a good eye. He would have been troubled.”
“I—see! So having sighted for three hundred, he was bound to be low.”
“It was very likely, I think, because he is a good shot.”
Harry’s eyes glimmered, for it was a humour too deep for laughter. Then he impulsively got up. “Have another drink.” He began to chuckle as he got hold of the decanter.
“Please, I don’t think so, honestly.”
But Harry was saying to himself, “Well, I’m blowed!”
Alick stopped the flow of whisky into his glass.
“You don’t want to start off again, eh? Had a heavy night at the inn.”
Alick gave a shake of his head. “It was pretty thick,” he confessed.
“Was it?” Harry laughed softly. “I caused some trouble here myself last night. I hadn’t meant, you know, to say a word—but, well, I did. Geoffrey—Mr. Smith does not believe in what he calls ‘superstition’. So it was a temptation. Just as you were tempted by him when you came in here. You can understand?”
Alick nodded, withdrew his eyes to his glass, and then drank.
Harry’s eyes narrowed on his face secretly, then he looked away. “To tell the truth,” he said, “I can’t quite forget it. I could wish—it had not been quite so real.”
His eyes on his empty glass, Alick said quietly, “You don’t wish it as much as I do. If you hadn’t been with me——”
“Yes?”
“No one would ever have known.”
Harry looked at him keenly again. Alick, lifting his eyes, met the look and gave a wry smile, then removed his eyes, wearily.
Harry stirred, uncomfortable. “Couldn’t we—can’t we—do something?”
“Against what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Fate, if you like.”
“You could try,” said Alick sardonically.
“I can’t help thinking about it. I wish you could help me. Really I do. Supposing one of us went away from here—so that the vision you saw could not be—could not take place. You know what I mean. Which one of us would you suggest?”
“I think I’ll be going,” said Alick, after a small gulp from the stomach. He got up.
“Not feeling sick, are you? Sit down.”
“Too much drink likely,” said Alick, with a tired humour. “I’ll be going.” He stopped near the door, but did not turn round. “Thank you for your kindness,” he said. “I cannot answer your question surely—but I don’t think it was you.”
“Was it Mr. Smith?” The words came from Harry before he could stop them.
Alick stood silent, until his body gave a short convulsive heave, and he went through the gun-room like a half-drunk man making for discreet refuge.
As the outside door slammed, Harry damned himself, and felt a trifle sick out of his own excitement. He was still staring into the unlit gun-room when the door behind him opened and Helen entered, saying, “Is he gone?”
“Yes.” Then he realised she had her coat on ready to go out. “Oh, I’m sorry. Have you been waiting for me?”
“I thought you had gone outside. So I went out, and met Mairi, and she told me you were in conference.”
“Forgive me, Helen. But I’m hanged if I know where I am or what to do. I somehow feel rotten about it. He’s a queer chap.”
“Anything more happened?”
“Bagfuls. You felt, didn’t you, that there was something supernatural in the way he shut up Geoffrey? It was a pure leg-pull.”
“No!”
“Yes. And when I think it out, he never even told a direct lie. Sheer detective work. And Geoffrey must have felt filthy. You see, Geoffrey tried a long impossible shot at, of all beasts, King Brude. He should never have done it, should never have fired over two hundred yards, because of the danger of wounding the beast. It’s simply not done. Over four hundred yards! He was just caught in temptation and—now he knows it. Hence all the eager talk about downhill, fo
r Geoffrey is a good shot and had to justify missing the stag they had been stalking, which wouldn’t have been more than a hundred and fifty yards away. And he had to keep on talking, keep the thought of it away from himself—and vaguely frightened, too, possibly as one is when one has done something wrong—and he found a diversion in the idea of baiting Alick! And he found it, by heaven!”
But Helen was smiling. “Dear old Geoff! Human of him, wasn’t it? And to think I got the ghostly shudder when Alick said, you know, that he hadn’t been there! Yet he didn’t rub it into Geoffrey. Rather delicate of him wasn’t it?”
“Particularly when you think how Geoffrey rubbed it into him! By the lord, Geoffrey must not know we know!”
But Helen was thinking again. Out of a pause, she said, looking at Harry, “Were most of our sympathies misplaced last night?”
Harry shook his head. “When he had told me how he had hoodwinked Geoffrey, I did have one minute’s profound doubt, and looked at him, and gave him an oblique opening, and he looked back and saw what was in my mind—and only smiled as if he were tired.”
“Where did he go last night?”
“To the inn, and, as Geoffrey forecasted, got blind drunk. Then he found himself somewhere on the hill, wakening in the cold dawn, with King Brude calmly inspecting his exhausted corpse. I doubt if the Devil knows what moves in the haunted abysses of that mind. And, by Jove, he could be dangerous!”
“I’ll tell you one thing that moves in his mind,” said Helen practically. “Mairi is in love with him. She doesn’t like him having this gift. Anyway, I think she hates that we found out.” Then she added simply, and profoundly, “And so I know—beyond any evidence of yours or his—that what he said he saw to you, he did see.”
Harry nodded slowly, trying to take it in. “That—I think—is important.”
“Think? You’re taking a risk.”
“Is Alick in love with her?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Ah-h.”
“Never did have much luck, did I?”
“And yet your hand is stacked with trumps—every one a trick. It is tough.”
“Perhaps if I really tried enchanting him—with the wild flowers and the birds and——”
“And yourself. Perhaps. Only—answer this one. Would you like to be married to a man with that gift?”
“I—wonder?” said Helen thoughtfully.
“If Alick could tell you your future now beyond any doubt—would you ask him?”
“People go to crystal-gazers and palmists.”
“So would you or I to see how we’d fare in love or war or fortune or how many children we’d have.”
“Why shouldn’t I ask?”
“Because of one thing—the one only thing—that is certain.”
“You mean?”
“Death.”
She looked at him steadily and in silence.
“I’m glad”, said Harry, “that you didn’t say the obvious thing: that that’s morbid. Though they say that when you’re young you can talk of death because it seems so far away; and when you’re old because it is so near. It’s the great middle-aged crowd, busy with success and——”
But Helen, hardly listening to him, interrupted directly: “Did he say who the dead person was?”
Her searching manner and the sound of the car scattered his wits for a moment. “Not really,” he said.
She went towards him. “Harry, tell me.”
“I can’t. I don’t know.”
“Harry!”
“And in any case, don’t you see I couldn’t tell——”
“Is it you?”
“No.”
“Father or Mother?”
“Good heavens, no.”
“Geoffrey?”
“Oh, come now, Helen, play fair.” He heard voices.
But she had him by the lapels of the coat. Clutching them tightly, she breathed—“Geoffrey!”
And to confound him fully, the memory of Alick’s silent pause came upon him.
“You can’t jump to conclusions like that. You mustn’t! Oh, hang it!” He did not know what to do and, in the madness of the moment, faced by Helen’s burning beauty, he caught her in his arms, crushed her, found her mouth and crushed his own upon it, with a roughness, a brutality he certainly had never shown before. Under this completely unexpected assault, Helen collapsed and lay passive in his arms.
They did not hear the opening of the door, and Geoffrey stood and stared, then turned his back to them, rattled the door handle and coughed loudly. When he faced the room again, they were standing apart, breathing heavily, stupidly flushed. He began to laugh.
Marjory came in and Joyce and Lady Marway, with motoring coats on.
“What’s the joke?” asked Marjory. “We’re dying for a good laugh.” The bright eyes of the women rested on Helen and Harry.
“I’ve got it!” cried Geoffrey and laughed again. “I have solved the whole mystery! And it was clever! By gad, it was clever!”
“I love detective stories,” said Joyce.
“Out with it, Geoffrey!” called Marjory.
Geoffrey had had so bitter a time with himself when dressing that he was prepared to be more than merciless. In a blinding sustained spasm of anger against Alick’s eyes and the watching faces of Helen and Harry, he had disrupted the bath-sponge—and when he saw what he had done, he had groaned: irrational behaviour that he utterly detested, that debased him.
“For a reason”, he began, with elaborate humour, “which—uh—I need not specify, Harry did not want to go to the hill to-day. So with his well-known genius for invention he worked out an ingenious excuse, complete with ghostly procession and consequent absence of stalker. A first-class frame-up. All for our entertainment and—and the aforesaid unspecified reason. Congratulations, old man!”
“You look a bit flushed, child,” said Marjory to Helen.
Joyce, with the frank if slow-witted innocence of her kind, said solemnly to Harry, who was easing his collar with two fingers, “You seem hot about the collar, Harry.”
“Not specially,” said Harry, continuing to ease it.
Geoffrey half-turned away in an excellent effort at suppressed laughter. Marjory began to chuckle softly. Lady Marway smiled. Suddenly Joyce emitted a few throaty notes, open-mouthed, “Ha! ha! haw!” feeling clever at having tumbled to so subtle a situation.
“Now, now, everyone,” said Lady Marway, “no cold dinner to-night! Come along!” And she shepherded Marjory and Joyce outside. But in a couple of seconds the door re-opened. Marjory put her head round it and in a high small voice, as if from a distance, cried :
“Hel—en!”
Helen faced her, her back to the men, and, after her lips had cursed Marjory in two soundless words, she stuck out her tongue to the root. It was wild anger, it was physical assault, but Marjory merely smiled and in an intimate way beckoned her with her head. Then she pushed her head further to one side until she commanded Harry’s face and in a low gruff voice said:
“Harry, you young dog!”
Helen advanced upon her. Marjory’s head popped back and the door closed. Helen stared at the door. Impulsively, without looking back, she opened it and went out.
“Satisfied?” His face white with wrath, Harry stood dead still, staring at Geoffrey.
“Uhm, yes,” said Geoffrey, taking a step or two in his humour.
“I think it was a bloody witless thing to do.”
“Well, of course.”
“You damned fool!”
Geoffrey paused and regarded him with a considering smile. Harry looked intense as any murderer. “You must learn, my dear fellow,” said Geoffrey, not dissatisfied, “to take the joke when it is turned on yourself.”
“You call that a joke?” Harry’s body was quivering.
“From our point of view, it had its amusing aspect.”
Harry’s mouth shut tight, and his breath came in a gust through his nostrils.
Geoffrey li
t a cigarette and strolled towards some papers on the writing table. “You cannot spoof us—and expect us not to retaliate.”
Harry had not moved. And now it came slowly: “You think I prepared all that—so that you could have a four-hundredyard shot at King Brude?”
Yesterday’s newspaper crackled in Geoffrey’s fist. He dropped it and came towards Harry.
“What’s that?”
Harry did not move. “Spoofing you, what?”
There was a tense moment before Geoffrey controlled himself. He succeeded and nodded slowly. “So that’s what the fellow was getting at?”
Harry kept his eyes on him.
Geoffrey turned away. “Yes,” he said. “I knew he was a sinister figure. But by God”—and he swung round swiftly—“I’ll let him—and you—know something before I’m done with you.”
Harry had never seen Geoffrey roused like this before and his own bitter state of mind eased a little.
“You must learn”, he said with satire, “to take the joke when it is turned on yourself.”
