Books: Huntingtower
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John Buchan >> Huntingtower
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The boy was on his feet. "I must be off to the camp to give out the
orders for the morn. I'm going back to that Hoose, for it's a fight
atween the Gorbals Die-Hards and the scoondrels that are frightenin'
thae women. The question is, Are ye comin' with me? Mind, ye've sworn.
But if ye're no, I'm going mysel', though I'll no' deny I'd be
glad o' company. You anyway--" he added, nodding at Heritage.
"Maybe auld McCunn wouldn't get through the coal-hole."
"You're an impident laddie,' said the outraged Dickson. "It's no'
likely we're coming with you. Breaking into other folks' houses!
It's a job for the police!"
"Please yersel'," said the Chieftain, and looked at Heritage.
"I'm on," said that gentleman.
"Well, just you set out the morn as if ye were for a walk up
the Garple glen. I'll be on the road and I'll have orders for ye."
Without more ado Dougal left by way of the back kitchen. There was
a brief denunciation from Mrs. Morran, then the outer door banged
and he was gone.
The Poet sat still with his head in his hands, while Dickson,
acutely uneasy, prowled about the floor. He had forgotten even to
light his pipe. "You'll not be thinking of heeding that ragamuffin
boy," he ventured.
"I'm certainly going to get into the House tomorrow," Heritage
answered, "and if he can show me a way so much the better.
He's a spirited youth. Do you breed many like him in Glasgow?"
"Plenty," said Dickson sourly. "See here, Mr. Heritage. You can't
expect me to be going about burgling houses on the word of a
blagyird laddie. I'm a respectable man--aye been. Besides, I'm
here for a holiday, and I've no call to be mixing myself up in
strangers' affairs."
"You haven't. Only you see, I think there's a friend of mine in
that place, and anyhow there are women in trouble. If you like,
we'll say goodbye after breakfast, and you can continue as if you
had never turned aside to this damned peninsula. But I've got
to stay."
Dickson groaned. What had become of his dream of idylls, his gentle
bookish romance? Vanished before a reality which smacked horribly
of crude melodrama and possibly of sordid crime. His gorge rose at
the picture, but a thought troubled him. Perhaps all romance in its
hour of happening was rough and ugly like this, and only shone rosy
in retrospect. Was he being false to his deepest faith?
"Let's have Mrs. Morran in," he ventured. "She's a wise old body
and I'd like to hear her opinion of this business. We'll get common
sense from her."
"I don't object," said Heritage. "But no amount of common sense
will change my mind."
Their hostess forestalled them by returning at that moment
to the kitchen.
"We want your advice, mistress," Dickson told her, and accordingly,
like a barrister with a client, she seated herself carefully in the
big easy chair, found and adjusted her spectacles, and waited with
hands folded on her lap to hear the business. Dickson narrated
their pre-supper doings, and gave a sketch of Dougal's evidence.
His exposition was cautious and colourless, and without conviction.
He seemed to expect a robust incredulity in his hearer.
Mrs. Morran listened with the gravity of one in church. When Dickson
finished she seemed to meditate. "There's no blagyird trick that
would surprise me in thae new folk. What's that ye ca' them-
-Lean and Spittal? Eppie Home threepit to me they were furriners,
and these are no furrin names."
"What I want to hear from you, Mrs. Morran,' said Dickson impressively,
"is whether you think there's anything in that boy's story?"
"I think it's maist likely true. He's a terrible impident callant,
but he's no' a leear."
"Then you think that a gang of ruffians have got two lone women shut
up in that house for their own purposes?"
"I wadna wonder."
"But it's ridiculous! This is a Christian and law-abiding country.
What would the police say?"
"They never troubled Dalquharter muckle. There's no' a polisman
nearer than Knockraw--yin Johnnie Trummle, and he's as useless as a
frostit tattie."
"The wiselike thing, as I think," said Dickson, "would be to turn
the Procurator-Fiscal on to the job. It's his business, no' ours."
"Well, I wadna say but ye're richt,' said the lady.
"What would you do if you were us?" Dickson's tone was subtly
confidential. "My friend here wants to get into the House the
morn with that red-haired laddie to satisfy himself about the facts.
I say no. Let sleeping dogs lie, I say, and if you think the beasts
are mad, report to the authorities. What would you do yourself?"
"If I were you," came the emphatic reply, "I would tak' the first
train hame the morn, and when I got hame I wad bide there. Ye're a
dacent body, but ye're no' the kind to be traivellin' the roads."
"And if you were me?' Heritage asked with his queer crooked smile.
"If I was young and yauld like you I wad gang into the Hoose, and I
wadna rest till I had riddled oot the truith and jyled every
scoondrel about the place. If ye dinna gang, 'faith I'll kilt my
coats and gang mysel'. I havena served the Kennedys for forty year
no' to hae the honour o' the Hoose at my hert....Ye've speired my
advice, sirs, and ye've gotten it. Now I maun clear awa' your supper."
Dickson asked for a candle, and, as on the previous night, went
abruptly to bed. The oracle of prudence to which he had appealed
had betrayed him and counselled folly. But was it folly? For him,
assuredly, for Dickson McCunn, late of Mearns Street, Glasgow,
wholesale and retail provision merchant, elder in the Guthrie
Memorial Kirk, and fifty-five years of age. Ay, that was the rub.
He was getting old. The woman had seen it and had advised him to
go home. Yet the plea was curiously irksome, though it gave him
the excuse he needed. If you played at being young, you had to
take up the obligations of youth, and he thought derisively of his
boyish exhilaration of the past days. Derisively, but also sadly.
What had become of that innocent joviality he had dreamed of,
that happy morning pilgrimage of Spring enlivened by tags from
the poets? His goddess had played him false. Romance had put upon
him too hard a trial.
He lay long awake, torn between common sense and a desire to be
loyal to some vague whimsical standard. Heritage a yard distant
appeared also to be sleepless, for the bed creaked with his turning.
Dickson found himself envying one whose troubles, whatever they
might be, were not those of a divided mind.
CHAPTER V
OF THE PRINCESS IN THE TOWER
Very early the next morning, while Mrs. Morran was still cooking
breakfast, Dickson and Heritage might have been observed taking the
air in the village street. It was the Poet who had insisted upon
this walk, and he had his own purpose. They looked at the spires of
smoke piercing the windless air, and studied the daffodils in the
cottage gardens. Dickson was glum, but Heritage seemed in high spirits.
He varied his garrulity with spells of cheerful whistling.
They strode along the road by the park wall till they reached the inn.
There Heritage's music waxed peculiarly loud. Presently from the yard,
unshaven and looking as if he had slept in this clothes, came Dobson
the innkeeper.
"Good morning," said the poet. "I hope the sickness in your house
is on the mend?"
"Thank ye, it's no worse," was the reply, but in the man's heavy
face there was little civility. His small grey eyes searched
their faces.
"We're just waiting for breakfast to get on the road again.
I'm jolly glad we spent the night here. We found quarters
after all, you know."
"So I see. Whereabouts, may I ask?"
"Mrs. Morran's. We could always have got in there, but we didn't
want to fuss an old lady, so we thought we'd try the inn first.
She's my friend's aunt."
At this amazing falsehood Dickson started, and the man observed
his surprise. The eyes were turned on him like a searchlight.
They roused antagonism in his peaceful soul, and with that
antagonism came an impulse to back up the Poet. "Ay," he said,
"she's my auntie Phemie, my mother's half-sister."
The man turned on Heritage.
"Where are ye for the day?"
"Auchenlochan," said Dickson hastily. He was still determined to
shake the dust of Dalquharter from his feet.
The innkeeper sensibly brightened. "Well, ye'll have a fine walk.
I must go in and see about my own breakfast. Good day to ye, gentlemen."
"That," said Heritage as they entered the village street again,
"is the first step in camouflage, to put the enemy off his guard."
"It was an abominable lie," said Dickson crossly.
"Not at all. It was a necessary and proper ruse de guerre.
It explained why we spent the right here, and now Dobson and
his friends can get about their day's work with an easy mind.
Their suspicions are temporarily allayed, and that will make
our job easier."
"I'm not coming with you."
"I never said you were. By 'we' I refer to myself and the
red-headed boy."
"Mistress, you're my auntie," Dickson informed Mrs. Morran as she
set the porridge on the table. "This gentleman has just been
telling the man at the inn that you're my Auntie Phemie."
For a second their hostess looked bewildered. Then the corners of
her prim mouth moved upwards in a slow smile.
"I see," she said. "Weel, maybe it was weel done. But if ye're my
nevoy ye'll hae to keep up my credit, for we're a bauld and siccar lot."
Half an hour later there was a furious dissension when Dickson
attempted to pay for the night's entertainment. Mrs. Morran would
have none of it. "Ye're no' awa' yet," she said tartly, and
the matter was complicated by Heritage's refusal to take part
in the debate. He stood aside and grinned, till Dickson in despair
returned his notecase to his pocket, murmuring darkly the "he would
send it from Glasgow."
The road to Auchenlochan left the main village street at right
angles by the side of Mrs. Morran's cottage. It was a better road
than that by which they had come yesterday, for by it twice daily
the postcart travelled to the post-town. It ran on the edge of the
moor and on the lip of the Garple glen, till it crossed that stream
and, keeping near the coast, emerged after five miles into the
cultivated flats of the Lochan valley. The morning was fine,
the keen air invited to high spirits, plovers piped entrancingly
over the bent and linnets sang in the whins, there was a solid
breakfast behind him, and the promise of a cheerful road till luncheon.
The stage was set for good humour, but Dickson's heart, which should
have been ascending with the larks, stuck leadenly in his boots.
He was not even relieved at putting Dalquharter behind him.
The atmosphere of that unhallowed place lay still on his soul.
He hated it, but he hated himself more. Here was one, who had hugged
himself all his days as an adventurer waiting his chance, running away
at the first challenge of adventure; a lover of Romance who fled from
the earliest overture of his goddess. He was ashamed and angry, but
what else was there to do? Burglary in the company of a queer poet and
a queerer urchin? It was unthinkable.
Presently, as they tramped silently on, they came to the bridge
beneath which the peaty waters of the Garple ran in porter-coloured
pools and tawny cascades. From a clump of elders on the other side
Dougal emerged. A barefoot boy, dressed in much the same parody of
a Boy Scout's uniform, but with corduroy shorts instead of a kilt,
stood before him at rigid attention. Some command was issued, the
child saluted, and trotted back past the travellers with never a
look at them. Discipline was strong among the Gorbals Die-Hards;
no Chief of Staff ever conversed with his General under a
stricter etiquette.
Dougal received the travellers with the condescension of a regular
towards civilians.
"They're off their gawrd," he announced. Thomas Yownie has been
shadowin' them since skreigh o' day, and he reports that Dobson and
Lean followed ye till ye were out o' sight o' the houses, and syne
Lean got a spy-glass and watched ye till the road turned in among
the trees. That satisfied them, and they're both away back to their
jobs. Thomas Yownie's the fell yin. Ye'll no fickle Thomas Yownie."
Dougal extricated from his pouch the fag of a cigarette, lit it, and
puffed meditatively. "I did a reckonissince mysel' this morning.
I was up at the Hoose afore it was light, and tried the door o'
the coal-hole. I doot they've gotten on our tracks, for it was
lockit--aye, and wedged from the inside."
Dickson brightened. Was the insane venture off?
"For a wee bit I was fair beat. But I mindit that the lassie was
allowed to walk in a kind o' a glass hoose on the side farthest away
from the Garple. That was where she was singin' yest'reen. So I
reckonissinced in that direction, and I fund a queer place."
Sacred Songs and Solos was requisitioned, and on a page of it Dougal
proceeded to make marks with the stump of a carpenter's pencil.
"See here," he commanded. "There's the glass place wi' a door into
the Hoose. That door maun be open or the lassie maun hae the key,
for she comes there whenever she likes. Now' at each end o' the
place the doors are lockit, but the front that looks on the garden
is open, wi' muckle posts and flower-pots. The trouble is that
that side there' maybe twenty feet o' a wall between the pawrapet
and the ground. It's an auld wall wi' cracks and holes in it, and
it wouldn't be ill to sklim. That's why they let her gang there when
she wants, for a lassie couldn't get away without breakin' her neck."
"Could we climb it?" Heritage asked.
The boy wrinkled his brows. "I could manage it mysel'--I think--and
maybe you. I doubt if auld McCunn could get up. Ye'd have to be
mighty carefu' that nobody saw ye, for your hinder end, as ye were
sklimmin', wad be a grand mark for a gun."
"Lead on," said Heritage. "We'll try the verandah."
They both looked at Dickson, and Dickson, scarlet in the face,
looked back at them. He had suddenly found the thought of a
solitary march to Auchenlochan intolerable. Once again he was
at the parting of the ways, and once more caprice determined
his decision. That the coal-hole was out of the question had worked
a change in his views, Somehow it seemed to him less burglarious to
enter by a verandah. He felt very frightened but--for the moment-
quite resolute.
"I'm coming with you," he said.
"Sportsman," said Heritage, and held out his hand. "Well done, the
auld yin," said the Chieftain of the Gorbals Die-Hards. Dickson's
quaking heart experienced a momentary bound as he followed Heritage
down the track into the Garple Dean.
The track wound through a thick covert of hazels, now close to the
rushing water, now high upon the bank so that clear sky showed
through the fringes of the wood. When they had gone a little way
Dougal halted them.
"It's a ticklish job," he whispered. "There's the tinklers, mind,
that's campin' in the Dean. If they're still in their camp we can
get by easy enough, but they're maybe wanderin' about the wud after
rabbits....Then we maun ford the water, for ye'll no' cross it lower
down where it's deep....Our road is on the Hoose side o' the Dean,
and it's awfu' public if there's onybody on the other side, though
it's hid well enough from folk up in the policies....Ye maun do
exactly what I tell ye. When we get near danger I'll scout on
ahead, and I daur ye to move a hair o' your heid till I give the word."
Presently, when they were at the edge of the water, Dougal announced
his intention of crossing. Three boulders in the stream made a
bridge for an active man, and Heritage hopped lightly over. Not so
Dickson, who stuck fast on the second stone, and would certainly
have fallen in had not Dougal plunged into the current and steadied
him with a grimy hand. The leap was at last successfully taken, and
the three scrambled up a rough scaur, all reddened with iron
springs, till they struck a slender track running down the Dean on
its northern side. Here the undergrowth was very thick, and they
had gone the better part of half a mile before the covert thinned
sufficiently to show them the stream beneath. Then Dougal halted
them with a finger on his lips, and crept forward alone.
He returned in three minutes. "Coast's clear," he whispered. "The
tinklers are eatin' their breakfast. They're late at their meat
though they're up early seekin' it."
Progress was now very slow and secret, and mainly on all fours.
At one point Dougal nodded downward, and the other two saw on a
patch of turf, where the Garple began to widen into its estuary, a
group of figures round a small fire. There were four of them, all
men, and Dickson thought he had never seen such ruffianly-looking
customers. After that they moved high up the slope, in a shallow
glade of a tributary burn, till they came out of the trees and found
themselves looking seaward.
On one side was the House, a hundred yards or so back from the edge,
the roof showing above the precipitous scarp. Half-way down the
slope became easier, a jumble of boulders and boiler-plates, till it
reached the waters of the small haven, which lay calm as a mill-pond
in the windless forenoon. The haven broadened out at its foot and
revealed a segment of blue sea. The opposite shore was flatter,
and showed what looked like an old wharf and the ruins of buildings,
behind which rose a bank clad with scrub and surmounted by some
gnarled and wind-crooked firs.
"There's dashed little cover here," said Heritage.
"There's no muckle," Dougal assented. "But they canna see us from the
policies, and it's no' like there's anybody watchin' from the Hoose.
The danger is somebody on the other side, but we'll have to risk it.
Once among thae big stones we're safe. Are ye ready?"
Five minutes later Dickson found himself gasping in the lee of
a boulder, while Dougal was making a cast forward. The scout
returned with a hopeful report. "I think we're safe till we get
into the policies. There's a road that the auld folk made when
ships used to come here. Down there it's deeper than Clyde at the
Broomielaw. Has the auld yin got his wind yet? There's no
time to waste."
Up that broken hillside they crawled, well in the cover of the
tumbled stones, till they reached a low wall which was the boundary
of the garden. The House was now behind them on their right rear,
and as they topped the crest they had a glimpse of an ancient
dovecot and the ruins of the old Huntingtower on the short thymy
turf which ran seaward to the cliffs. Dougal led them along a sunk
fence which divided the downs from the lawns behind the house, and,
avoiding the stables, brought them by devious ways to a thicket of
rhododendrons and broom. On all fours they travelled the length of
the place, and came to the edge where some forgotten gardeners had
once tended a herbaceous border. The border was now rank and wild,
and, lying flat under the shade of an azalea, and peering through
the young spears of iris, Dickson and Heritage regarded the
north-western facade of the house.
The ground before them had been a sunken garden, from which a
steep wall, once covered with creepers and rock plants, rose to a
long verandah, which was pillared and open on that side ; but at
each end built up half-way and glazed for the rest. There was a
glass roof, and inside untended shrubs sprawled in broken
plaster vases.
"Ye maun bide here," said Dougal, "and no cheep above your breath.
Afore we dare to try that wall, I maun ken where Lean and Spittal
and Dobson are. I'm off to spy the policies.' He glided out of
sight behind a clump of pampas grass.
For hours, so it seemed, Dickson was left to his own unpleasant
reflections. His body, prone on the moist earth, was fairly
comfortable, but his mind was ill at ease. The scramble up the
hillside had convinced him that he was growing old, and there was no
rebound in his soul to counter the conviction. He felt listless,
spiritless--an apathy with fright trembling somewhere at the
back of it. He regarded the verandah wall with foreboding.
How on earth could he climb that? And if he did there would be his
exposed hinder-parts inviting a shot from some malevolent gentleman
among the trees. He reflected that he would give a large sum of
money to be out of this preposterous adventure.
Heritage's hand was stretched towards him, containing two of Mrs.
Morran's jellied scones, of which the Poet had been wise enough to
bring a supply in his pocket. The food cheered him, for he was
growing very hungry, and he began to take an interest in the scene
before him instead of his own thoughts. He observed every detail
of the verandah. There was a door at one end, he noted, giving on
a path which wound down to the sunk garden. As he looked he heard
a sound of steps and saw a man ascending this path.
It was the lame man whom Dougal had called Spittal, the dweller in
the South Lodge. Seen at closer quarters he was an odd-looking
being, lean as a heron, wry-necked, but amazingly quick on his feet.
Had not Mrs. Morran said that he hobbled as fast as other folk ran?
He kept his eyes on the ground and seemed to be talking to himself
as he went, but he was alert enough, for the dropping of a twig from
a dying magnolia transferred him in an instant into a figure of
active vigilance. No risks could be run with that watcher. He took
a key from his pocket, opened the garden door and entered the verandah.
For a moment his shuffle sounded on its tiled floor, and then he
entered the door admitting from the verandah to the House. It was
clearly unlocked, for there came no sound of a turning key.
Dickson had finished the last crumbs of his scones before the man
emerged again. He seemed to be in a greater hurry than ever as he
locked the garden door behind him and hobbled along the west front
of the House till he was lost to sight. After that the time
passed slowly. A pair of yellow wagtails arrived and played at
hide-and-seek among the stuccoed pillars. The little dry scratch of
their claws was heard clearly in the still air. Dickson had almost
fallen asleep when a smothered exclamation from Heritage woke him to
attention. A girl had appeared in the verandah.
Above the parapet he saw only her body from the waist up.
She seemed to be clad in bright colours, for something red was
round her shoulders and her hair was bound with an orange scarf.
She was tall--that he could tell, tall and slim and very young.
Her face was turned seaward, and she stood for a little scanning the
broad channel, shading her eyes as if to search for something on the
extreme horizon. The air was very quiet and he thought that he
could hear her sigh. Then she turned and re-entered the House,
while Heritage by his side began to curse under his breathe with a
shocking fervour.
One of Dickson's troubles had been that he did not believe Dougal's
story, and the sight of the girl removed one doubt. That bright
exotic thing did not belong to the Cruives or to Scotland at all,
and that she should be in the House removed the place from the
conventional dwelling to which the laws against burglary applied.
There was a rustle among the rhododendrons and the fiery face of
Dougal appeared. He lay between the other two, his chin on his
hands, and grunted out his report.
"After they had their dinner Dobson and Lean yokit a horse and went
off to Auchenlochan. I seen them pass the Garple brig, so that's
two accounted for. Has Spittal been round here?"
"Half an hour ago," said Heritage, consulting a wrist watch.
"It was him that keepit me waitin' so long. But he's safe enough
now, for five minutes syne he was splittin' firewood at the back
door o' his hoose....I've found a ladder, an auld yin in yon
lot o' bushes. It'll help wi' the wall. There! I've gotten my
breath again and we can start."
The ladder was fetched by Heritage and proved to be ancient and
wanting many rungs, but sufficient in length. The three stood
silent for a moment, listening like stags, and then ran across the
intervening lawn to the foot of the verandah wall. Dougal went up
first, then Heritage, and lastly Dickson, stiff and giddy from his
long lie under the bushes. Below the parapet the verandah floor was
heaped with old garden litter, rotten matting, dead or derelict
bulbs, fibre, withies, and strawberry nets. It was Dougal's
intention to pull up the ladder and hide it among the rubbish
against the hour of departure. But Dickson had barely put his foot
on the parapet when there was a sound of steps within the House
approaching the verandah door.
The ladder was left alone. Dougal's hand brought Dickson summarily
to the floor, where he was fairly well concealed by a mess of matting.
Unfortunately his head was in the vicinity of some upturned pot-plants,
so that a cactus ticked his brow and a spike of aloe supported
painfully the back of his neck. Heritage was prone behind two
old water-butts, and Dougal was in a hamper which had once contained
seed potatoes. The house door had panels of opaque glass, so the
new-comer could not see the doings of the three till it was opened,
and by that time all were in cover.
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