SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan John

entrance, but it is blocked with boulders which it would take a gang of navvies to raise with crowbars. A discreet application of dynamite would do the work in half an hour. I cannot think that Colonel Raden would object to my using it when I encounter such obstacles. I assure you it will not spoil the look of the barrow.”

      “I’m sure papa will be delighted. You’re certain the noise won’t frighten the deer. You know the Piper’s Ring is in the forest.”

      “Not in the least, my dear young lady. The reports will be very slight, scarcely louder than a rifle-shot. I ought to tell you that I am an old hand at explosives, for in my young days I mined in Colorado, and recently I have employed them in my Alaska researches…”

      “If we go home now,” said Janet, rising, “we’ll just catch papa before he goes out. You’re very warm, Mr Bandicott, and I think you would be the better for a rest and a drink.”

      “I certainly should, my dear. I was so eager to begin that I bolted my breakfast, and started off before Junius was ready. He proposes to meet me here.”

      Benjie, left alone, wrought diligently at his heather roots, whistling softly to himself, and every now and then raising his head to scan the haugh and the lower glen. Presently a tall young man appeared, who was identified as the younger American, and who was duly directed to follow his father to the Castle. The two returned in a little while, accompanied by Agatha Raden, and, while the elder Mr Bandicott hastened to the Piper’s Ring, the young people sauntered to the Raden bridge and appeared to be deep in converse. “That twa’s weel agreed,” was Benjie’s comment. A little before one o’clock the party adjourned to the Castle, presumably for luncheon, and Benjie, whose noon-tide meal was always sparing, nibbled a crust of bread and a rind of cheese. In the afternoon Macpherson and one of the gillies strolled past, and the head-stalker proved wonderfully gracious, adjuring him, as Janet had done, to keep his eyes open and report the presence of any stranger. “There’ll be the three folk from Strathlarrig howkin’ awa there, but if ye see anybody else, away up to the house and tell the wife. They’ll no be here for any good.” Benjie promised fervently. “I’ve grand een, Mr Macpherson, sir, and though they was to be crawlin’ like a serpent I’d be on them.” The head-stalker observed that he was a “gleg one,” and went his ways.

      Despite his industry Benjie was remarkably observant that day, but he was not looking for poachers. He had suddenly developed an acute interest in the deer. His unaided eyes were as good as the ordinary man’s telescope, and he kept a keen watch on the fringes of the great birch woods. The excavation at the Piper’s Ring kept away any beasts from the east side of the haugh, but on the west bank of the stream he saw two lots of hinds grazing, with one or two young stags among them, and even on the east bank, close in to the edge of the river, he saw hinds with calves. He concluded that on the fringes of the Raden the feeding must be extra good, and, as a steady west wind was blowing, the deer there would not be alarmed by Mr Bandicott’s quest. Just after he had finished his bread and cheese he was rewarded with the spectacle of a hummel, a great fellow of fully twenty stone, who rolled in a peat hole and then stood blowing in the shallow water as unconcerned as if he had been on the top of Carnmore. Later in the afternoon he saw a good ten-pointer in the same place, and a little later an eight-pointer with a damaged horn. He concluded that that particular hag was a favourite mud-bath for stags, and that with the wind in the west it was no way interfered with by the activities at the Piper’s Ring.

      About four o’clock Benjie backed the old horse into the shafts, and jogged up the beech-avenue to Mrs Macpherson’s where he was stayed with tea and scones. There was a gathering outside the door of Macpherson himself and the two gillies, and a strange excitement seemed to have fallen on that stolid community. Benjie could not avoid—indeed, I am not sure that he tried to avoid—hearing scraps of their talk.

      “I’ve been a’ round Carnmore,” said Alan, “and I seen some fine beasts. They’re mostly in a howe atween the two tops, and a man at the Grey Beallach could keep an eye on all the good ground.”

      “Aye, but there’s the Carn Moss, and the burnheads—there will be beasts there too,” said James Fraser.

      “There will have to be a man there, for him at the Grey Beallach would not ken what was happening.”

      “And what about Corrie Gall?” asked Macpherson fiercely.

      “Ye canna post men on Carnmore—they will have to keep moving; it is that awful broken ground.”

      “Well, there’s you and me and James,” said Alan, “and there’s Himself.”

      “And that’s the lot of us, and every man wanted.” said Macpherson.

      “It’s what I was always saying—ye will need every man for Carnmore, and must let Carnbeg alone, or ye can watch Carnbeg and not go near Carnmore. We’re far ower few.”

      “I was thinking,” said James Fraser, “that the youngest leddy might be watching Carnbeg.”

      “Aye, James”—this satirically from Macpherson—“and how would the young leddy be keeping a wild man from killing a stag and getting him away?”

      “‘Deed, I don’t ken,” said the puzzled James, “without she took a gun with her and had a shot at him.”

      Benjie drove quietly to Inverlarrig for his supply of fish, and did not return to his head-quarters in the Wood of Larrigmore till nearly seven o’clock. At eight, having cooked and eaten his supper, he made a simple toilet, which consisted in washing the fish-scales and the stains of peat from his hands, holding his head in the river, parting his damp hair with a broken comb, and putting over his shoulders a waterproof cape, which had dropped from some passing conveyance and had been found by him on the road. Thus accoutred, he crossed the river and by devious paths ascended to Crask.

      He ensconced himself in the stable, where he was greeted sourly by the Bluidy Mackenzie, who was tied up in one of the stalls. There he occupied himself in whistling strathspeys and stuffing a foul clay pipe with the stump of a cigar which he had picked up in the yard. Benjie smoked not for pleasure, but from a sense of duty, and a few whiffs were all he could manage with comfort. The gloaming had fallen before he heard his name called, and Wattie Lithgow appeared. “Ye’re there, ye monkey? The gentlemen are asking for ye. Quick and follow me. They’re in a awfu’ ill key the nicht and maunna be keepit waitin’.”

      There certainly seemed trouble in the smoking-room when Benjie was ushered in. Lamancha was standing on the hearth-rug with a letter crumpled in his hand, and Sir Archie, waving a missive, was excitedly confronting him. The other two sat in arm-chairs with an air of protest and dejection.

      “I forgot all about the infernal thing till I got Montgomery’s letter. The 4th of September! Hang it, my assault on old Claybody is timed to start on the 5th. How on earth can I get to Muirtown and back and deliver a speech, and be ready for the 5th? Besides, it betrays my presence in this part of the world. It simply can’t be done…and yet I don’t know how on earth to get out of it? Apparently the thing was arranged months ago.”

      “You’re for it all right, my son,” cried Sir Archie, “and so am I. Here’s the beastly announcement. ‘A Great Conservative Meeting will be held in the Town Hall, Muirtown, on Thursday, September 4th, to be addressed by the Right Hon. the Earl of Lamancha, M.P., His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Dominions. The chair will be taken at 3 p.m. by His Grace the Duke of Angus, K.G. Among the speakers will be Colonel Wavertree, M.P., the Hon. W.J. Murdoch, Ex-Premier of New Caledonia, and Captain Sir Archibald Roylance, D.S.O., prospective Conservative candidate for Wester Ross.’ Oh, will he? Not by a long chalk! Catch me going to such a fiasco, with Charles hidin’ here and the show left to the tender mercies of two rotten bad speakers and a prosy chairman.”

      “Did you forget about it too?” Leithen asked.

      “‘Course I did,” said Archie wildly. “How could I think of anything with you fellows turnin’ my house into a den of thieves? I forgot about it just as completely as Charles, only it doesn’t matter about me, and it matters the devil of a lot about him. I don’t stand an