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

dark face broke into a smile.

      “Don’t worry, old chap. I won’t let you down. But it looks as if I must let down John Macnab, and just when I was gettin’ keen about him…Hang it, no! There must be a way. I’m not going to be beaten either by Claybody or this damned Tory rally. Ned, you slacker, what’s your advice?”

      “Have a try at the double event,” Leithen drawled. “You’ll probably make a mess of both, but it’s a sporting proposition.”

      Archie’s face brightened. “You don’t realise how sportin’ a proposition it is. The Claybodys will be there, and they’ll be all over you—brother nobleman, you know, and you goin’ to poach their stags next day! Hang it, why shouldn’t you turn the affair into camouflage? ‘Out of my stony griefs Bethel I’ll raise,’ says the hymn…We’ll have to think the thing out ve-ry carefully.—Anyway, Charles, you’ve got to help me with my speech. I don’t mind so much lyin’ doggo here if I can put in a bit of good work on the 5th…Now, Benjie my lad, for your report.”

      Benjie, not without a certain shyness, cleared his throat and began. He narrated how, following his instructions, he had secured Macpherson’s permission to cut heather for besoms on the Raden haugh. He had duly taken up his post there, had remained till four o’clock, and had seen such and such people and heard this and that talk. He recounted what he could remember of the speeches of Macpherson and the gillies.

      “They’ve got accustomed to the sight of you, I suppose,” Palliser-Yeates said at length.

      “Aye, they’re accustomed right enough. Both the young lady and Macpherson was tellin’ me to keep a look-out for poachers.” Benjie chuckled.

      “Then to-morrow you begin to move up to the high ground by the Carnmore peat-road. Still keep busy at your besoms. You understand what I want you for, Benjie? If I kill a stag I have to get it off Glenraden land, and your old fish-cart won’t be suspected.’

      “Aye, I see that fine. But I’ve been thinkin’ that there’s maybe a better way.”

      “Go ahead, and let’s have it.”

      Benjie began his speech nervously, but he soon warmed to it, and borrowed a cigar-box and the fire-irons to explain his case. The interest of his hearers kindled, until all four men were hanging on his words. When he concluded and had answered sundry questions, Sir Archie drew a deep breath and laughed excitedly.

      “I suppose there’s nothing in that that isn’t quite cricket…I thought I knew something about bluff, but this—this absolutely vanquishes the band. Benjie, I’m goin’ to have you taught poker. You’ve the right kind of mind for it.”

      V.

       THE ASSAULT ON GLENRADEN

       Table of Contents

      Shortly after midnight of the 28th day of August three men foregathered at the door of Macpherson’s cottage, and after a few words took each a different road into the dark wastes of wood and heather. Macpherson contented himself with a patrol of the low ground in the glen, for his legs were not as nimble as they once had been and his back had a rheumaticky stiffness. Alan departed with great strides for the Carnbeg tops, and James Fraser, the youngest and the leanest, set out for Carnmore, with the speed of an Indian hunter… Darkness gave place to the translucence of early dawn: the badger trotted home from his wanderings: the hill-fox barked in the cairns to summon his household: sleepy pipits awoke: the peregrine who lived above the Grey Beallach drifted down into the glens to look for breakfast: hinds and calves moved up from the hazel shows to the high fresh pastures: the tiny rustling noises of night disappeared in that hush which precedes the awakening of life: and then came the flood of morning gold from behind the dim eastern mountains, and in an instant the earth had wheeled into a new day. A thin spire of smoke rose from Mrs Macpherson’s chimney, and presently the three wardens of the marches arrived for breakfast. They reported that the forest was still unviolated, that no alien foot had yet entered its sacred confines. Herd-boys, the offspring of Alan and James Fraser, had taken up their post at key-points, so that if a human being was seen on the glacis of the fort the fact would at once be reported to the garrison.

      “I’m thinkin’ he’ll no come to-day,” said Macpherson after this third cup of tea. “It will be the morn. The day he will be tryin’ to confuse our minds, and that will no be a difficult job wi’ you, Alan, my son.”

      “He’ll come in the da-ark,” said Alan crossly.

      “And how would he be gettin’ a beast in the dark? The Laird was sayin’ that this man John Macnab was a gra-and sportsman. He will not be shootin’ at any little staggie, but takin’ a sizeable beast, and it’s not a howlet could be tellin’ a calf from a stag in these da-ark nights. Na, he will not shoot in the night, but he might be travellin’ in the night and gettin’ his shot in the early mornin’.”

      “What for,” Alan asked, “should he not be havin’ his shot in the gloamin’ and gettin’ the beast off the ground in the da-ark?”

      “Because we will be watchin’ all hours of the day. Ye heard what the Laird said, Alan Macdonald, and you, James Fraser. This John Macnab is not to shoot a Glenraden beast at all, at all, but if he shoots one he is not to move it one foot. If it comes to fightin’, you are young lads and must break the head of him. But the Laird said for God’s sake you was to have no guns, but to fight like honest folks with your fists, and maybe a wee bit stick. The Laird was sayin’ the law was on our side, except for shootin’…Now, James Fraser, you will take the outer marches the day, and keep an eye on the peat-roads from Inverlarrig, and you, Alan, will watch Carnbeg, and I will be takin’ the woods myself. The Laird was sayin’ that it would be Carnmore the man Macnab would be tryin’, most likely at skreigh of day the morn, and he would be hidin’ the beast, if he got one, in some hag, and waitin’ till the da-ark to shift him. So the morn we will all be on Carnmore, and I can tell you the Laird has the ground planned out so that a snipe would not be movin’ without us seein’ him.”

      The early morning broadened into day, and the glen slept in the windless heat of late August. Janet Raden, sauntering down from the Castle towards the river about eleven o’clock, thought that she had never seen the place so sabbatically peaceful. To her unquiet soul the calm seemed unnatural, like a thick cloak covering some feverish activity. All the household were abroad since breakfast—her father on a preliminary reconnaissance of Carnmore, Agatha and Mr Junius Bandicott on a circuit of Carnbeg, while the gillies and their youthful allies sat perched with telescopes on eyries surveying every approach to the forest. The plans seemed perfect, but the dread of John Macnab, that dark conspirator, would not be exorcised. It was she who had devised the campaign, based on her reading of the enemy’s mind; but had she fathomed it, she asked herself? Might he not even now be preparing some master-stroke which would crumble their crude defences? Horrible stories which she had read of impersonation and the shifts of desperate characters recurred to her mind. Was John Macnab perhaps old Mr Bandicott disguised as an archaeologist? Or was he one of the Strathlarrig workmen?

      She walked over the moor to the Piper’s Ring and was greeted by a mild detonation and a shower of earth. Old Mr Bandicott, very warm and stripped to his shirt, was desperately busy and most voluble about his task. There was no impersonation here, nor in the two fiery-faced labourers who were burrowing their way towards the resting-place of Harald Blacktooth. Nevertheless, her suspicion was not allayed, she felt herself in the antechamber of plotters, and looked any moment to see on the fringes of the wood or on the white ribbon of road a mysterious furtive figure which she would know for a minion of the enemy.

      But the minion did not appear. As Janet stood on the rise before the bridge of Raden with her hat removed to let the faint south-west wind cool her forehead, she looked upon a scene of utter loneliness and peace. The party at the Piper’s Ring were hidden, and in all the green amphitheatre nothing stirred but the stream. Even Fish Benjie and his horse had been stricken into carven immobility. He had moved away from