Books: Huntingtower
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John Buchan >> Huntingtower
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"Are ye sure it's the richt man, Ecky?" said a voice which he did not hear.
"Sure. It's the Glesca body Dobson telled us to look for yesterday.
It's a pund note atween us for this job. We'll tie him up in the wud
till we've time to attend to him."
"Is he bad?"
"It doesna maitter," said the one called Ecky. "He'll be deid onyway
long afore the morn."
Mrs. Morran all forenoon was in a state of un-Sabbatical disquiet.
After she had seen Saskia and Dickson start she finished her
housewifely duties, took Cousin Eugenie her breakfast, and made
preparation for the midday dinner. The invalid in the bed in the
parlour was not a repaying subject. Cousin Eugenie belonged
to that type of elderly women who, having been spoiled in youth,
find the rest of life fall far short of their expectations.
Her voice had acquired a perpetual wail, and the corners of what
had once been a pretty mouth drooped in an eternal peevishness.
She found herself in a morass of misery and shabby discomfort,
but had her days continued in an even tenor she would still
have lamented. "A dingy body," was Mrs. Morran's comment,
but she laboured in kindness. Unhappily they had no common
language, and it was only by signs that the hostess could discover
her wants and show her goodwill. She fed her and bathed her face,
saw to the fire and left her to sleep. "I'm boilin' a hen to mak'
broth for your denner, Mem. Try and get a bit sleep now."
The purport of the advice was clear, and Cousin Eugenie turned
obediently on her pillow.
It was Mrs. Morran's custom of a Sunday to spend the morning in
devout meditation. Some years before she had given up tramping the
five miles to kirk, on the ground that having been a regular attendant
for fifty years she had got all the good out of it that was probable.
Instead she read slowly aloud to herself the sermon printed in a
certain religious weekly which reached her every Saturday, and
concluded with a chapter or two of the Bible. But to-day something
had gone wrong with her mind. She could not follow the thread of the
Reverend Doctor MacMichael's discourse. She could not fix her
attention on the wanderings and misdeeds of Israel as recorded in
the Book of Exodus. She must always be getting up to look at the
pot on the fire, or to open the back door and study the weather.
For a little she fought against her unrest, and then she gave up
the attempt at concentration. She took the big pot off the fire and
allowed it to simmer, and presently she fetched her boots and umbrella,
and kilted her petticoats. "I'll be none the waur o' a breath o'
caller air," she decided.
The wind was blowing great guns but there was only the thinnest
sprinkle of rain. Sitting on the hen-house roof and munching a raw
turnip was a figure which she recognized as the smallest of the Die-
Hards. Between bites he was singing dolefully to the tune of "Annie
Laurie" one of the ditties of his quondam Sunday School:
"The Boorjoys' brays are bonnie,
Too-roo-ra-roo-raloo,
But the Workers of the World
Wull gar them a' look blue,
And droon them in the sea,
And--for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'll lay me down and dee."
"Losh, laddie," she cried, "that's cauld food for the stomach.
Come indoors about midday and I'll gie ye a plate o' broth!"
The Die-Hard saluted and continued on the turnip.
She took the Auchenlochan road across the Garple bridge, for that
was the best road to the Mains, and by it Dickson and the others
might be returning. Her equanimity at all seasons was like a Turk's,
and she would not have admitted that anything mortal had power to
upset or excite her: nevertheless it was a fast-beating heart
that she now bore beneath her Sunday jacket. Great events,
she felt, were on the eve of happening, and of them she was a part.
Dickson's anxiety was hers, to bring things to a business-like conclusion.
The honour of Huntingtower was at stake and of the old Kennedys.
She was carrying out Mr. Quentin's commands, the dead boy who used
to clamour for her treacle scones. And there was more than duty in it,
for youth was not dead in her old heart, and adventure had still
power to quicken it.
Mrs. Morran walked well, with the steady long paces of the
Scots countrywoman. She left the Auchenlochan road and took
the side path along the tableland to the Mains. But for the
surge of the gale and the far-borne boom of the furious sea there
was little noise; not a bird cried in the uneasy air. With the wind
behind her Mrs. Morran breasted the ascent till she had on her
right the moorland running south to the Lochan valley and on
her left Garple chafing in its deep forested gorges. Her eyes
were quick and she noted with interest a weasel creeping from a
fern-clad cairn. A little way on she passed an old ewe in
difficulties and assisted it to rise. "But for me, my wumman,
ye'd hae been braxy ere nicht," she told it as it departed bleating.
Then she realized that she had come a certain distance. "Losh, I maun
be gettin' back or the hen will be spiled," she cried, and was on
the verge of turning.
But something caught her eye a hundred yards farther on the road.
It was something which moved with the wind like a wounded bird,
fluttering from the roadside to a puddle and then back to the rushes.
She advanced to it, missed it, and caught it.
It was an old dingy green felt hat, and she recognized it as Dickson's.
Mrs. Morran's brain, after a second of confusion, worked fast and clearly.
She examined the road and saw that a little way on the gravel had
been violently agitated. She detected several prints of hobnailed boots.
There were prints, too, on a patch of peat on the south side behind
a tall bank of sods. "That's where they were hidin'," she concluded.
Then she explored on the other side in a thicket of hazels and wild
raspberries, and presently her perseverance was rewarded. The scrub was
all crushed and pressed as if several persons had been forcing a passage.
In a hollow was a gleam of something white. She moved towards it
with a quaking heart, and was relieved to find that it was only a
new and expensive bicycle with the front wheel badly buckled.
Mrs. Morran delayed no longer. If she had walked well on her out journey,
she beat all records on the return. Sometimes she would run till her
breath failed; then she would slow down till anxiety once more quickened
her pace. To her joy, on the Dalquharter side of the Garple bridge she
observed the figure of a Die-Hard. Breathless, flushed, with her bonnet
awry and her umbrella held like a scimitar, she seized on the boy.
"Awfu' doin's! They've grippit Maister McCunn up the Mains road just
afore the second milestone and forenent the auld bucht. I fund his hat,
and a bicycle's lyin' broken in the wud. Haste ye, man, and get the
rest and awa' and seek him. It'll be the tinklers frae the Dean.
I'd gang misel' but my legs are ower auld. Ah, laddie, dinna stop
to speir questions. They'll hae him murdered or awa' to sea. And maybe
the leddy was wi' him and they've got them baith. Wae's me! Wae's me!"
The Die-Hard, who was Wee Jaikie, did not delay. His eyes had
filled with tears at her news, which we know to have been his habit.
When Mrs. Morran, after indulging in a moment of barbaric keening,
looked back the road she had come, she saw a small figure trotting up
the hill like a terrier who has been left behind. As he trotted he
wept bitterly. Jaikie was getting dangerous.
CHAPTER XII
HOW MR. McCUNN COMMITTED AN ASSAULT UPON AN ALLY
Dickson always maintained that his senses did not leave him for more
than a second or two, but he admitted that he did not remember very
clearly the events of the next few hours. He was conscious of a bad
pain above his eyes, and something wet trickling down his cheek.
There was a perpetual sound of water in his ears and of men's voices.
He found himself dropped roughly on the ground and forced to walk,
and was aware that his legs were inclined to wobble. Somebody had a
grip on each arm, so that he could not defend his face from the
brambles, and that worried him, for his whole head seemed one aching
bruise and he dreaded anything touching it. But all the time he
did not open his mouth, for silence was the one duty that his
muddled wits enforced. He felt that he was not the master of his
mind, and he dreaded what he might disclose if he began to babble.
Presently there came a blank space of which he had no recollection at all.
The movement had stopped, and he was allowed to sprawl on the ground.
He thought that his head had got another whack from a bough,
and that the pain put him into a stupor. When he awoke he was alone.
He discovered that he was strapped very tightly to a young Scotch fir.
His arms were bent behind him and his wrists tied together with cords
knotted at the back of the tree; his legs were shackled, and further
cords fastened them to the bole. Also there was a halter round the
trunk and just under his chin, so that while he breathed freely enough,
he could not move his head. Before him was a tangle of bracken and
scrub, and beyond that the gloom of dense pines; but as he could see
only directly in front his prospect was strictly circumscribed.
Very slowly he began to take his bearings. The pain in his head was
now dulled and quite bearable, and the flow of blood had stopped,
for he felt the encrustation of it beginning on his cheeks.
There was a tremendous noise all around him, and he traced
this to the swaying of tree-tops in the gale. But there was
an undercurrent of deeper sound--water surely, water churning
among rocks. It was a stream--the Garple of course--and then he
remembered where he was and what had happened.
I do not wish to portray Dickson as a hero, for nothing would
annoy him more; but I am bound to say that his first clear thought
was not of his own danger. It was intense exasperation at the
miscarriage of his plans. Long ago he should have been with Dougal
arranging operations, giving him news of Sir Archie, finding out how
Heritage was faring, deciding how to use the coming reinforcements.
Instead he was trussed up in a wood, a prisoner of the enemy, and
utterly useless to his side. He tugged at his bonds, and nearly
throttled himself. But they were of good tarry cord and did not give
a fraction of an inch. Tears of bitter rage filled his eyes and made
furrows on his encrusted cheek. Idiot that he had been, he had
wrecked everything! What would Saskia and Dougal and Sir Archie do
without a business man by their side? There would be a muddle, and
the little party would walk into a trap. He saw it all very clearly.
The men from the sea would overpower them, there would be murder done,
and an easy capture of the Princess; and the police would turn up at
long last to find an empty headland.
He had also most comprehensively wrecked himself, and at the thought
genuine panic seized him. There was no earthly chance of escape,
for he was tucked away in this infernal jungle till such time as his
enemies had time to deal with him. As to what that dealing would be like
he had no doubts, for they knew that he had been their chief opponent.
Those desperate ruffians would not scruple to put an end to him.
His mind dwelt with horrible fascination upon throat-cutting,
no doubt because of the presence of the cord below his chin.
He had heard it was not a painful death; at any rate he remembered
a clerk he had once had, a feeble, timid creature, who had twice
attempted suicide that way. Surely it could not be very bad,
and it would soon be over.
But another thought came to him. They would carry him off in the ship
and settle with him at their leisure. No swift merciful death for him.
He had read dreadful tales of the Bolsheviks' skill in torture,
and now they all came back to him--stories of Chinese mercenaries,
and men buried alive, and death by agonizing inches. He felt suddenly
very cold and sick, and hung in his bonds, for he had no strength
in his limbs. Then the pressure on this throat braced him, and also
quickened his numb mind. The liveliest terror ran like quicksilver
through his veins.
He endured some moments of this anguish, till after many despairing
clutches at his wits he managed to attain a measure of self-control.
He certainly wasn't going to allow himself to become mad. Death was
death whatever form it took, and he had to face death as many better
men had done before him. He had often thought about it and wondered
how he should behave if the thing came to him. Respectably, he had hoped;
heroically, he had sworn in his moments of confidence. But he had
never for an instant dreamed of this cold, lonely, dreadful business.
Last Sunday, he remembered, he had basking in the afternoon sun in
his little garden and reading about the end of Fergus MacIvor in
WAVERLEY and thrilling to the romance of it; and Tibby had come out
and summoned him in to tea. Then he had rather wanted to be a
Jacobite in the '45 and in peril of his neck, and now Providence
had taken him most terribly at his word.
A week ago---! He groaned at the remembrance of that sunny garden.
In seven days he had found a new world and tried a new life,
and had come now to the end of it. He did not want to die,
less now than ever with such wide horizons opening before him.
But that was the worst of it, he reflected, for to have a great
life great hazards must be taken, and there was always the risk of
this sudden extinguisher....Had he to choose again, far better the
smooth sheltered bypath than this accursed romantic highway on to
which he had blundered....No, by Heaven, no! Confound it, if
he had to choose he would do it all again. Something stiff and
indomitable in his soul was bracing him to a manlier humour.
There was no one to see the figure strapped to the fir, but had there
been a witness he would have noted that at this stage Dickson shut
his teeth and that his troubled eyes looked very steadily before him.
His business, he felt, was to keep from thinking, for if he thought
at all there would be a flow of memories--of his wife, his home,
his books, his friends--to unman him. So he steeled himself to blankness,
like a sleepless man imagining white sheep in a gate....He noted a robin
below the hazels, strutting impudently. And there was a tit on a bracken
frond, which made the thing sway like one of the see-saws he used to
play with as a boy. There was no wind in that undergrowth, and any
movement must be due to bird or beast. The tit flew off, and the
oscillations of the bracken slowly died away. Then they began again,
but more violently, and Dickson could not see the bird that caused them.
It must be something down at the roots of the covert, a rabbit, perhaps,
or a fox, or a weasel.
He watched for the first sign of the beast, and thought he caught
a glimpse of tawny fur. Yes, there it was--pale dirty yellow,
a weasel clearly. Then suddenly the patch grow larger, and to his
amazement he looked at a human face--the face of a pallid small boy.
A head disentangled itself, followed by thin shoulders, and then
by a pair of very dirty bare legs. The figure raised itself and
looked sharply round to make certain that the coast was clear.
Then it stood up and saluted, revealing the well-known lineaments
of Wee Jaikie.
At the sight Dickson knew that he was safe by that certainty of
instinct which is independent of proof, like the man who prays for
a sign and has his prayer answered. He observed that the boy was
quietly sobbing. Jaikie surveyed the position for an instant with
red-rimmed eyes and then unclasped a knife, feeling the edge of the
blade on his thumb. He darted behind the fir, and a second later
Dickson's wrists were free. Then he sawed at the legs, and cut the
shackles which tied them together, and then--most circumspectly--
assaulted the cord which bound Dickson's neck to the trunk.
There now remained only the two bonds which fastened the legs
and the body to the tree.
There was a sound in the wood different from the wind and stream.
Jaikie listened like a startled hind.
"They're comin' back," he gasped. "Just you bide where ye are and
let on ye're still tied up."
He disappeared in the scrub as inconspicuously as a rat, while
two of the tinklers came up the slope from the waterside.
Dickson in a fever of impatience cursed Wee Jaikie for not cutting his
remaining bonds so that he could at least have made a dash for freedom.
And then he realized that the boy had been right. Feeble and cramped
as he was, he would have stood no chance in a race.
One of the tinklers was the man called Ecky. He had been running
hard, and was mopping his brow.
"Hob's seen the brig," he said. "It's droppin' anchor ayont
the Dookits whaur there's a bield frae the wund and deep water.
They'll be landit in half an 'oor. Awa' you up to the Hoose and tell
Dobson, and me and Sim and Hob will meet the boats at the Garplefit."
The other cast a glance towards Dickson.
"What about him?" he asked.
The two scrutinized their prisoner from a distance of a few paces.
Dickson, well aware of his peril, held himself as stiff as if
every bond had been in place. The thought flashed on him that
if he were too immobile they might think he was dying or dead,
and come close to examine him. If they only kept their distance, the
dusk of the wood would prevent them detecting Jaikie's handiwork.
"What'll you take to let me go?" he asked plaintively.
"Naething that you could offer, my mannie," said Ecky.
"I'll give you a five-pound note apiece."
"Produce the siller," said the other.
"It's in my pocket."
"It's no' that. We riped your pooches lang syne."
"I'll take you to Glasgow with me and pay you there. Honour bright."
Ecky spat. "D'ye think we're gowks? Man, there's no siller ye
could pay wad mak' it worth our while to lowse ye. Bide quiet
there and ye'll see some queer things ere nicht. C'way, Davie."
The two set off at a good pace down the stream, while Dickson's
pulsing heart returned to its normal rhythm. As the sound of
their feet died away Wee Jaikie crawled out from cover, dry-eyed now
and very business-like. He slit the last thongs, and Dickson fell
limply on his face.
"Losh, laddie, I'm awful stiff," he groaned. "Now, listen.
Away all your pith to Dougal, and tell him that the brig's in and
the men will be landing inside the hour. Tell him I'm coming as
fast as my legs will let me. The Princess will likely be there
already and Sir Archibald and his men, but if they're no', tell
Dougal they're coming. Haste you, Jaikie. And see here, I'll never
forget what you've done for me the day. You're a fine wee laddie!"
The obedient Die-Hard disappeared, and Dickson painfully and
laboriously set himself to climb the slope. He decided that his
quickest and safest route lay by the highroad, and he had also some
hopes of recovering his bicycle. On examining his body he seemed to
have sustained no very great damage, except a painful cramping of
legs and arms and a certain dizziness in the head. His pockets had
been thoroughly rifled, and he reflected with amusement that he, the
well-to-do Mr. McCunn, did not possess at the moment a single copper.
But his spirits were soaring, for somehow his escape had given him
an assurance of ultimate success. Providence had directly interfered
on his behalf by the hand of Wee Jaikie, and that surely meant
that it would see him through. But his chief emotion was an
ardour of impatience to get to the scene of action. He must be at
Dalquharter before the men from the sea; he must find Dougal and
discover his dispositions. Heritage would be on guard in the Tower,
and in a very little the enemy would be round it. It would be just
like the Princess to try and enter there, but at all costs that
must be hindered. She and Sir Archie must not be cornered in
stone walls, but must keep their communications open and fall
on the enemy's flank. Oh, if the police would only come it time,
what a rounding up of miscreants that day would see!
As the trees thinned on the brow of the slope and he saw the sky,
he realized that the afternoon was far advanced. It must be well on
for five o'clock. The wind still blew furiously, and the oaks on the
fringes of the wood were whipped like saplings. Ruefully he admitted
that the gale would not defeat the enemy. If the brig found a
sheltered anchorage on the south side of the headland beyond the
Garple, it would be easy enough for boats to make the Garple mouth,
though it might be a difficult job to get out again. The thought
quickened his steps, and he came out of cover on to the public
road without a prior reconnaissance. Just in front of him stood
a motor-bicycle. Something had gone wrong with it for its owner
was tinkering at it, on the side farthest from Dickson. A wild hope
seized him that this might be the vanguard of the police, and he went
boldly towards it. The owner, who was kneeling, raised his face at
the sound of footsteps and Dickson looked into his eyes.
He recognized them only too well. They belonged to the man he had
seen in the inn at Kirkmichael, the man whom Heritage had decided to
be an Australian, but whom they now know to be their arch-enemy--the
man called Paul who had persecuted the Princess for years and whom
alone of all beings on earth she feared. He had been expected before,
but had arrived now in the nick of time while the brig was casting anchor.
Saskia had said that he had a devil's brain, and Dickson, as he stared
at him, saw a fiendish cleverness in his straight brows and a
remorseless cruelty in his stiff jaw and his pale eyes.
He achieved the bravest act of his life. Shaky and dizzy as he was,
with freedom newly opened to him and the mental torments of his
captivity still an awful recollection, he did not hesitate.
He saw before him the villain of the drama, the one man that
stood between the Princess and peace of mind. He regarded
no consequences, gave no heed to his own fate, and thought
only how to put his enemy out of action. There was a by spanner
lying on the ground. He seized it and with all his strength
smote at the man's face.
The motor-cyclist, kneeling and working hard at his machine,
had raised his head at Dickson's approach and beheld a wild apparition-
-a short man in ragged tweeds, with a bloody brow and long smears of
blood on his cheeks. The next second he observed the threat of attack,
and ducked his head so that the spanner only grazed his scalp.
The motor-bicycle toppled over, its owner sprang to his feet, and found
the short man, very pale and gasping, about to renew the assault.
In such a crisis there was no time for inquiry, and the cyclist was
well trained in self-defence. He leaped the prostrate bicycle,
and before his assailant could get in a blow brought his left fist
into violent contact with his chin. Dickson tottered a step or two
and then subsided among the bracken.
He did not lose his senses, but he had no more strength in him.
He felt horribly ill, and struggled in vain to get up. The cyclist,
a gigantic figure, towered above him. "Who the devil are you?"
he was asking. "What do you mean by it?"
Dickson had no breath for words, and knew that if he tried to
speak he would be very sick. He could only stare up like a dog
at the angry eyes. Angry beyond question they were, but surely
not malevolent. Indeed, as they looked at the shameful figure on
the ground, amusement filled them. The face relaxed into a smile.
"Who on earth are you?" the voice repeated. And then into it
came recognition. "I've seen you before. I believe you're the
little man I saw last week at the Black Bull. Be so good as to
explain why you want to murder me."
Explanation was beyond Dickson, but his conviction was being
woefully shaken. Saskia had said her enemy was a beautiful as
a devil--he remembered the phrase, for he had thought it ridiculous.
This man was magnificent, but there was nothing devilish in his
lean grave face.
"What's your name?" the voice was asking.
"Tell me yours first," Dickson essayed to stutter between spasms of nausea.
"My name is Alexander Nicholson," was the answer.
"Then you're no' the man." It was a cry of wrath and despair.
"You're a very desperate little chap. For whom had I the honour
to be mistaken?"
Dickson had now wriggled into a sitting position and had clasped
his hands above his aching head.
"I thought you were a Russian, name of Paul," he groaned.
"Paul! Paul who?"
"Just Paul. A Bolshevik and an awful bad lot."
Dickson could not see the change which his words wrought in
the other's face. He found himself picked up in strong arms and
carried to a bog-pool where his battered face was carefully washed,
his throbbing brows laved, and a wet handkerchief bound over them.
Then he was given brandy in the socket of a flask, which eased
his nausea. The cyclist ran his bicycle to the roadside, and
found a seat for Dickson behind the turf-dyke of the old bucht.
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