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

Archie Roylance.

      “Got up early to go over my speech for to-morrow,” the young man explained. “I’m gettin’ the dashed thing by heart—only way to avoid regrettable incidents. I started off down the hill repeatin’ my eloquence, and before I knew I was at Glenraden gates, so I thought I’d come in and pass the time of day…Jolly interestin’ dinner last night, Bandicott. I liked your old Professor…Any news of John Macnab?”

      “There certainly is. He has us beat to a frazzle. This morning there was a salmon on the doorstep presented with his compliments.”

      The effect of this announcement was instant and stupendous. The Colonel called upon his gods. “Not killed fair? It’s a stark impossibility, sir. You had the water guarded like the Bank of England.” Archie expressed like suspicions; Agatha was sad and sympathetic, Janet amused and covertly joyful.

      “I reckon it was fair enough fishing,” Junius went on. “I’ve been trying to puzzle the thing out, and this is what I made of it. Macnab was in league with one of those pressmen, who started out to trespass inside the park and draw off all the watchers in pursuit, including the man at the Lang Whang. He had them hunting for about half an hour, and in that time Macnab killed his fish…He must be a dandy at the game, too, to get a salmon in that dead water…Jimsie—that’s the man who was supposed to watch the Lang Whang—returned before he could get away with the beast, so what does the fellow do but dig a bit out of the fish and leave it on the bank, while he lures Jimsie to chase him. Jimsie saw the fish and put it down to an otter, and by and by caught the man up the road. There must have been an accomplice in hiding, for when Jimsie went back to pick up the salmon it had disappeared. The fellow, who looked like a hobo, was shut up in a garage, and after dinner we let him go, for we had nothing against him, and now he is rejoicing somewhere at our simplicity…It was a mighty clever bit of work, and I’m not ashamed to be beaten by that class of artist. I hoped to get hold of the pressman and find out something, but the pressman seems to have leaked out of the landscape.”

      “Was that tramp John Macnab?” Agatha asked in an agitated voice.

      “None other. You let him out, Miss Agatha. What was he like? I can’t get proper hold of Jimsie’s talk.”

      “Oh, I should have guessed,” the girl lamented. “For, of course, I saw he was a gentleman. He was in horrible old clothes, but he had an Eton shield on his watch-chain. He seemed to be ashamed to remember it. He said he had come down in the world—through drink!”

      Archie struggled hard with the emotions evoked by this description of an abstemious personage currently believed to be making an income of forty thousand pounds.

      “Then we’ve both seen him,” Janet cried. “Describe him, Agatha. Was he youngish and big, and fair-haired, and sunburnt? Had he blue eyes?”

      “No-o. He wasn’t like that. He was about papa’s height, and rather slim, I think. He was very dirty and hadn’t shaved, but I should say he was sallow, and his eyes—well, they were certainly not blue.”

      “Are you certain? You only saw him in the dark.”

      “Yes, quite certain. I had a big torch which lit up his whole figure. Now I come to think of it, he had a striking face—he looked like somebody very clever—a judge perhaps. That should have made me suspicious, but I was so shocked to see such a downfall that I didn’t think about it”

      Janet looked wildly around her. “Then there are two John Macnabs.”

      “Angus thinks he is the Devil,” said Junius.

      “It looks as if he were a syndicate,” said Archie, who felt that some remark was expected of him.

      “Well, I’m not complaining,” said Junius. “And now we’re off the stage, and can watch the play from the boxes. I hope you won’t be shocked, sir, but I wouldn’t break my heart if John Macnab got the goods from Haripol.”

      “By Gad, no!” cried the Colonel. “‘Pon my soul, if I could get in touch with the fellow I’d offer to help him—though he’d probably be too much of a sportsman to let me. That young Claybody wants taking down a peg or two. He’s the most insufferably assured young prig I ever met in my life.”

      “He looked the kind of chap who might turn nasty,” Sir Archie observed.

      “How do you mean?” Junius asked. “Get busy with a gun—that sort of thing?”

      “Lord, no. The Claybodys are not likely to start shootin’. But they’re as rich as Jews, and they’re capable of hirin’ prize-fighters or puttin’ a live wire round the forest. Or I’ll tell you what they might do—they might drive every beast on Haripol over the marches and keep ‘em out for three days. It would wreck the ground for the season, but they wouldn’t mind that—the old man can’t get up the hills and the young ‘un don’t want to.”

      “Agatha, my dear,” said her father, “we ought to return the Claybody’s call. Perhaps Mr Junius would drive us over there in his car this afternoon. For, of course, you’ll stay to luncheon, Bandicott—and you, too, Roylance.”

      Sir Archie stayed to luncheon; he also stayed to tea; and between these meals he went through a surprising experience. For, after the others had started for Haripol, Janet and he drifted aimlessly towards the Raden bridge and then upward through the pinewoods on the road to Carnmore. The strong sun was tempered by the flickering shade of the trees, and, as the road wound itself out of the crannies of the woods to the bare ridges, light wandering winds cooled the cheek, and, mingled with the fragrance of heather and the rooty smell of bogs, came a salty freshness from the sea. The wide landscape was as luminous as April—a bad presage for the weather, since the Haripol peaks, which in September should have been dim in a mulberry haze, stood out sharp like cameos. The two did not talk much, for they were getting beyond the stage where formal conversation is felt to be necessary. Sir Archie limped along at a round pace, which was easily matched by the girl at his side. Both would instinctively halt now and then, and survey the prospect without speaking, and both felt that these pregnant silences were bringing them very near to one another.

      At last the track ran out in screes, and from a bald summit they were looking down on the first of the Carnmore corries. Janet seated herself on a mossy ledge of rock and looked back into the Raden glen, which from that altitude had the appearance of on enclosed garden. The meadows of the lower haugh lay green in the sun, the setting of pines by some freak of light was a dark and cloudy blue, and the little castle rose in the midst of the trees with a startling brightness like carven marble. The picture was as exquisite and strange as an illumination in a missal.

      “Gad, what a place to live in!” Sir Archie exclaimed.

      The girl, who had been gazing at the scene with her chin in her hands, turned on him eyes which were suddenly wistful and rather sad. As contrasted with her sister’s, Janet’s face had a fine hard finish which gave it a brilliance like an eager boy’s. But now a cloud-wrack had been drawn over the sun.

      “We’ve lived there,” she said, “since Harald Blacktooth—at least papa says so. But the end is very near now. We are the last of the Radens. And that is as it should be, you know.”

      “I’m hanged if I see that,” Sir Archie began, but the girl interrupted.

      “Yes, it is as it should be. The old life of the Highlands is going, and people like ourselves must go with it. There’s no reason why we should continue to exist. We’ve long ago lost our justification.”

      “D’you mean to say that fellows like Claybody have more right to be here?”

      “Yes. I think they have, because they’re fighters and we’re only survivals. They will disappear, too, unless they learn their lesson…You see, for a thousand years we have been going on here, and other people like us, but we only endured because we were alive. We have the usual conventional motto on our coat of arms—Pro Deo et Rege—a Herald’s College invention. But our Gaelic motto was very different—it was ‘Sons of Dogs, come and I will give you flesh.’ As long as we