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

letter,” he communed with himself. “In that case it’s quod for Charles.”

      The dining-room at Strathlarrig was a remnant of the old house which had been enveloped in the immense sheath of the new. It had eighteenth-century panelling unchanged since the days when Jacobite chiefs in lace and tartan had passed their claret glasses over the water, and the pictures were all of forbidding progenitors. But the ancient narrow windows had been widened, and Sir Archie, from where he sat, had a prospect of half a mile of the river, including Lady Maisie’s Pool, bathed in the clear amber of twilight. He was on his host’s left hand, opposite the Professor, with Agatha Raden next to him: then came Junius: while Janet was between Johnson Claybody and the guest of the occasion.

      Mr Claybody still brooded over John Macnab.

      “I call the whole thing infernal impertinence,” he said in his loud, assured voice. “I confess I have ceased to admire undergraduate ‘rags.’ He threatens to visit us, and my father intends to put the matter into the hands of the police.”

      “That would be very kind,” said Janet sweetly. “You see, John Macnab won’t have the slightest trouble in beating the police.”

      “It’s the principle of the thing, Miss Raden. Here is an impudent attack on private property, and if we treat it as a joke it will only encourage other scoundrels. If the man is a gentleman, as you say he is, it makes it more scandalous.”

      “Come, come, Mr Claybody, you’re taking it too seriously.” Colonel Raden could be emphatic enough on the rights of property, but no Highlander can ever grow excited about trespass. “The fellow has made a sporting offer and is willing to risk a pretty handsome stake. I rather admire what you call his impudence. I might have done the same thing as a young man, if I had had the wits to think of it.”

      Mr Claybody was quick to recognise an unsympathetic audience. “Oh, I don’t meant that we’re actually going to make a fuss. We’ll give him a warm reception if he comes—that’s all. But I don’t like the spirit. It’s too dangerous in these unsettled times. Once let the masses get into their heads that landed property is a thing to play tricks with, and you take the pin out of the whole system. You must agree with me, Roylance?”

      Sir Archie, remembering his part, answered with guile. “Rather! Rotten game for a gentleman, I think. All the same, the chap seems rather a sportsman, so I’m in favour of letting the law alone and dealing with him ourselves. I expect he won’t have much of a look in on Haripol.”

      “I can promise you he won’t,” said Mr Claybody shortly.

      Professor Babwater observed that it would be difficult for a descendant of Harald Blacktooth to be too hard on one who followed in Harald’s steps. “The Celt,” he said, “has always sought his adventures in a fairy world. The Northman was a realist, and looked to tangible things like land and cattle. Therefore he was a conqueror and a discoverer on the terrestrial globe, while the Celt explored the mysteries of the spirit. Those who, like you, sir”—he bowed to Colonel Raden—“have both strains in their ancestry, should have successes in both worlds.”

      “They don’t mix well,” said the Colonel sadly. “There was my grandfather, who believed in Macpherson’s Ossian and ruined the family fortunes in hunting for Gaelic manuscripts on the continent of Europe. And his father was in India with Clive, and thought about nothing except blackmailing native chiefs till he made the place too hot to hold him. Look at my daughters, too. Agatha is mad about pottery and such-like, and Janet is a bandit. She’d have made a dashed good soldier, though.”

      “Thank you, papa,” said the lady. She might have objected to the description had she not seen that Sir Archie accepted it with admiring assent.

      “I suppose,” said old Mr Bandicott reflectively, “that the war was bound to leave a good deal of unsettlement. Junius missed it through being too young—never got out of a training camp—but I have noticed that those who fought in France find it difficult to discover a groove. They are energetic enough, but they won’t ‘stay put’, as we say. Perhaps this Macnab is one of the unrooted. In your country, where everybody was soldiering, the case must be far more common.”

      Mr Claybody announced that he was sick of hearing the war blamed for the average man’s deficiencies. “Every waster,” he said, “makes an excuse of being shell-shocked. I’m very clear that the war twisted nothing in a man that wasn’t twisted before.”

      Sir Archie demurred. “I don’t know. I’ve seen some pretty bad cases of fellows who used to be as sane as a judge, and came home all shot to bits in their mind.”

      “There are exceptions, of course. I’m speaking of the general rule. I turn away unemployables every day—good soldiers, maybe, but unemployable—and I doubt if they were ever anything else.”

      Something in his tone annoyed Janet.

      “You saw a lot of service, didn’t you?” she asked meekly.

      “No, worse luck! They made me stick at home and slave fourteen hours a day controlling cotton. It would have been a holiday for me to get into the trenches. But what I say is, a sane man usually remained sane. Look at Sir Archibald. We all know what a hectic time he had, and he hasn’t turned a hair.”

      “I’d like you to give me that in writing,” Sir Archie grinned. “I’ve known people who thought I was rather cracked.”

      “Anyhow, it made no difference to your nerves,” said Colonel Raden.

      “I hope not. I expect that was because I enjoyed the beastly thing. Perhaps I’m naturally a bit of a bandit—like Miss Janet.”

      “Perhaps you’re John Macnab,” said that lady.

      “Well, you’ve seen him and can judge.”

      “No. I’ll be a witness for the defence if you’re ever accused. But you mustn’t be offended at the idea. I suppose poor John Macnab is now crawling round Strathlarrig trying to find a gap between the gillies to cast a fly.”

      “That’s about the size of it,” Junius laughed. “And there’s twenty special correspondents in the neighbourhood cursing his name. If they get hold of him, they’ll be savager than old Angus.”

      Mr Bandicott, after calling his guests’ attention to the merits of a hock which he had just acquired—it was a Johannisberg with the blue label—declared that in his belief the war would do good to English life, when the first ferment had died away.

      “As a profound admirer of British institutions,” he said, “I have sometimes thought that they needed a little shaking up and loosening. In America our classes are fluid. The rich man of to-day began life in a shack, and the next generation may return to it. It is the same with our professions. The man who starts in the law may pass to railway management, and end as the proprietor of a department store. Our belief is that it doesn’t matter how often you change your trade before you’re fifty. But an Englishman, once he settles in a profession, is fixed in it till the Day of Judgement, and in a few years he gets the mark of it so deep that he’d be a fish out of water in anything else. You can’t imagine one of your big barristers doing anything else. No fresh fields and pastures new for them. It would be a crime against Magna Carta to break loose and try company-promoting or cornering the meat trade for a little change.”

      Professor Babwater observed that in England they sometimes—in his view to the country’s detriment—became politicians.

      “That’s the narrowest groove of all.” said Mr Bandicott with conviction. “In this country, once you start in on politics you’re fixed in a class and members of a hierarchy, and you’ve got to go on, however unfitted you may be for the job, because it’s sort of high treason to weaken. In America a man tries politics as he tries other things, and if he finds the air of Washington uncongenial he quits, or tries newspapers, or Wall Street, or oil.”

      “Or the penitentiary,” said Junius.

      “And why not?” asked his father. “I deplore criminal tendencies in