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

Palliser-Yeates, also the worse for wear, lay in an attitude of extreme fatigue on a sofa; Crossby, who had sought sanctuary at Crask, was busy with the newspapers which had just arrived, while Wattie Lithgow stood leaning on his crook staring into vacancy, like a clown from some stage Arcadia.

      “Where on earth have you been all day, Archie?” Lamancha asked sternly.

      “I walked over to Glenraden and stayed to luncheon. They’re all hot on your side there—Bandicott too. There’s a general feelin’ that young Claybody wants takin’ down a peg.”

      “Much good that will do us. John and Wattie and I have been crawling all day round the Haripol marches. It’s pretty clear what they’ll do—you think so, Wattie?”

      “Alan Macnicol is not altogether a fule. Aye, I ken fine what they’ll dae.”

      “Clear the beasts off the ground?” Archie suggested.

      “No,” said Lamancha. “Move them into the Sanctuary, and the Sanctuary is in the very heart of the forest—between Sgurr Mor and Sgurr Dearg at the head of the Reascuill. It won’t take many men to watch it. And the mischief is that Haripol is the one forest where it can be done quite simply. It’s so infernally rough that if the deer were all over it I would back myself to get a shot with a fair chance of removing the beast, but if every stag is inside an inner corral it will be the devil’s own business to get within a thousand yards of them—let alone shift the carcass.”

      “If the wind keeps in the west,” said Wattie, “It is a manifest impossibeelity. If it was in the north there would be a verra wee sma’ chance. All other airts are hopeless. We maun just possess our souls in patience, and see what the day brings forth…I’ll awa and mak arrangements for the morn.”

      Lamancha nodded after the retreating figure.

      “He is determined to go to Muirtown to-morrow. Says you promised that he should be present when you made your first bow in public, and that he has arranged with Shapp to drive him in the Ford…But about Haripol. This idea of Wattie’s—and I expect it’s right—makes the job look pretty desperate. I had worked out a very sound scheme to set my Lord Claybody guessing—similar to John’s Glenraden plan but more ingenious; but what’s the use of bluff if every beast is snug in an upper corrie with a cordon of Claybody’s men round it? Wattie says that Haripol is fairly crawling with gillies.”

      Crossby raised his head from his journalistic researches. “The papers have got my story all right, I see. The first one, I mean—the ‘Return of Harald Blacktooth.’ They’ve featured it well, too, and I expect the evening papers are now going large on it. But it’s nothing to what the second will be to-morrow morning. I’m prepared to bet that our Scottish Tutankhamen drops out of the running, and that the Press of this land thinks of nothing for a week except the salmon Sir Edward got last night. It’s the silly season, remember!”

      Lamancha’s jaw dropped. “Crossby, I don’t want to dash your natural satisfaction, but I’m afraid you’ve put me finally in the cart. If the public wakes up and takes an interest in Haripol, I may as well chuck in my hand.”

      “I wasn’t such an ass as to mention Haripol,” said the correspondent.

      “No, but of course it will get out. Some of your journalistic colleagues will hear of it at Strathlarrig, and, finding that the interest has departed from Harald Blacktooth, will make a bee-line for Haripol. Your success, which I don’t grudge you, will be my ruin. In any case the Claybodys will be put on their mettle, for, if they are beaten by John Macnab, they know they’ll be a public laughing-stock…What sort of fellow is young Claybody, Archie?”

      “Bit shaggy about the heels. Great admirer of yours. Ask Ned—he said he knew Ned very well.”

      Leithen raised his eyes from Redgauntlet. “Never heard of the fellow in my life.”

      “Oh, yes you have. He said he had briefed you in a big case.”

      “Well, you can’t expect me to know all my clients any more than John knows the customers of his little bank.” Leithen relapsed into Sir Walter.

      “I’m going to have a bath.” Lamancha rose and cautiously relaxed his weary limbs. “I seem to be in for the most imbecile escapade in history with about one chance in a billion. That’s Wattie’s estimate, and he knows what a billion is, which I don’t.”

      “What about dropping it?” Archie suggested; for, though he was sworn to the “John Macnab proposition,” he was growing very nervous about this particular manifestation. “Young Claybody is an ugly customer, and we don’t want the thing to end in bad blood. Besides, you’re cured already—you told me so yesterday.”

      “That’s true,” said Lamancha, who was engaged in tossing with Palliser-Yeates for the big bath. “I’m cured. I never felt keener in my life. I’m so keen that there’s nothing on earth you could offer me which would keep me away from Haripol…You win, John. Gentlemen of the Guard, fire first, and don’t be long about it. I can’t stretch myself in that drain-pipe that Archie calls his second bathroom.”

      Dinner was a cheerful meal, for Mr Crossby had much to say, Lamancha was in high spirits, and Leithen had the benignity of the successful warrior. But the host was silent and abstracted. He managed to banish Haripol from his mind, but he thought of Janet, he thought of Janet’s sermon, and in feverish intervals he tried to think of his speech for the morrow. A sense of a vast insecurity had come upon him, of a shining goal which grew brighter the more he reflected upon it, but of some awkward hurdles to get over first.

      Afterwards, when the talk was of Haripol, he turned to the newspapers to restore him to the world of stern realities. He did not read that masterpiece of journalism, Crossby’s story, but he found a sober comfort in The Times’ leading articles and in the political notes. He felt himself a worker among flaneurs.

      “Here’s something about you, Charles,” he said. This paper says that political circles are looking forward with great interest to your speech at Muirtown. Says it will be the first important utterance since Parliament rose, and that you are expected to deal with Poincare’s speech at Rheims and a letter by a Boche whose name I can’t pronounce.”

      “Political circles will be disappointed,” said Lamancha, “for I haven’t read them. Montgomery is taking all the boxes and I haven’t heard from the office for three weeks. I can’t be troubled with newspapers in the Highlands.”

      “Then what are you goin’ to say to-morrow?” Archie demanded anxiously.

      “I’ll think of some rot. Don’t worry, old fellow. Muirtown is a second-class show compared to Haripol.”

      Archie was really shocked. He was envious of a man who could treat thus cavalierly a task which affected him with horrid forebodings, and also scandalised at the levity of his leaders. It seemed to him that Lamancha needed some challenging. Finding no comfort in his company, he repaired to bed, where healthful sleep was slow in visiting him. He repeated his speech to himself, but it would persist in getting tangled up with Janet’s sermon and his own subsequent reflections, so that, when at last he dropped off, it was into a world of ridiculous dreams where a dreadful composite figure—Poincarini or Mussolinaré—sat heavily on his chest.

      IX.

       SIR ARCHIE INSTRUCTS HIS COUNTRYMEN

       Table of Contents

      Crossby was right in his forecast. The sudden interest in the Scottish Tutankhamen did not survive the revelation of Harald Blacktooth’s reincarnation as John Macnab. The twenty correspondents, after lunching heavily with Mr Bandicott, had been shown the relics of the Viking and had heard their significance expounded by their host and Professor Babwater; each had duly despatched his story, but before night-fall each was receiving urgent telegrams from his paper clamouring for news, not of Harald, but of Harald’s successor. Crossby’s tale of the