Dickson McCunn - Complete 'Gorbals Die-hards' Series. Buchan John

“I’m no’ likely to forget my auntie’s scones.”

      He laughed pleasantly and then turned to the bagman. Thereafter the compartment hummed with the technicalities of the grocery trade. He exerted himself to draw out his companion, to have him refer to the great firm of D. McCunn, so that the innkeeper might be ashamed of his suspicions. What nonsense to imagine that a noted and wealthy Glasgow merchant—the bagman’s tone was almost reverential—would concern himself with the affairs of a forgotten village and a tumble-down house!

      Presently the train drew up at Kirkmichael station. The woman descended, and Dobson, after making sure that no one else meant to follow her example, also left the carriage. A porter was shouting: “Fast train to Glasgow— Glasgow next stop.” Dickson watched the innkeeper shoulder his way through the crowd in the direction of the booking office. “He’s off to send a telegram,” he decided. “There’ll be trouble waiting for me at the other end.”

      When the train moved on he found himself disinclined for further talk. He had suddenly become meditative, and curled up in a corner with his head hard against the window pane, watching the wet fields and glistening roads as they slipped past. He had his plans made for his conduct at Glasgow, but, Lord! how he loathed the whole business! Last night he had had a kind of gusto in his desire to circumvent villainy; at Dalquharter station he had enjoyed a momentary sense of triumph; now he felt very small, lonely, and forlorn. Only one thought far at the back of his mind cropped up now and then to give him comfort. He was entering on the last lap. Once get this detestable errand done and he would be a free man, free to go back to the kindly humdrum life from which he should never have strayed. Never again, he vowed, never again. Rather would he spend the rest of his days in hydropathics than come within the pale of such horrible adventures. Romance, forsooth! This was not the mild goddess he had sought, but an awful harpy who battened on the souls of men.

      He had some bad minutes as the train passed through the suburbs and along the grimy embankment by which the southern lines enter the city. But as it rumbled over the river bridge and slowed down before the terminus his vitality suddenly revived. He was a business man, and there was now something for him to do.

      After a rapid farewell to the bagman, he found a porter and hustled his box out of the van in the direction of the left-luggage office. Spies, summoned by Dobson’s telegram, were, he was convinced, watching his every movement, and he meant to see that they missed nothing. He received his ticket for the box, and slowly and ostentatiously stowed it away in his pack. Swinging the said pack on his arm, he sauntered through the entrance hall to the row of waiting taxi-cabs, and selected the oldest and most doddering driver. He deposited the pack inside on the seat, and then stood still as if struck with a sudden thought.

      “I breakfasted terrible early,” he told the driver. “I think I’ll have a bite to eat. Will you wait?”

      “Ay,” said the man, who was reading a grubby sheet of newspaper. “I’ll wait as long as ye like, for it’s you that pays.”

      Dickson left his pack in the cab and, oddly enough for a careful man, he did not shut the door. He re-entered the station, strolled to the bookstall, and bought a Glasgow Herald. His steps then tended to the refreshment-room, where he ordered a cup of coffee and two Bath buns, and seated himself at a small table. There he was soon immersed in the financial news, and though he sipped his coffee he left the buns untasted. He took out a penknife and cut various extracts from the Herald, bestowing them carefully in his pocket. An observer would have seen an elderly gentleman absorbed in market quotations.

      After a quarter of an hour had been spent in this performance he happened to glance at the clock and rose with an exclamation. He bustled out to his taxi and found the driver still intent upon his reading. “Here I am at last,” he said cheerily, and had a foot on the step, when he stopped suddenly with a cry. It was a cry of alarm, but also of satisfaction.

      “What’s become of my pack? I left it on the seat, and now it’s gone! There’s been a thief here.”

      The driver, roused from his lethargy, protested in the name of his gods that no one had been near it. “Ye took it into the station wi’ ye,” he urged.

      “I did nothing of the kind. Just you wait here till I see the inspector. A bonny watch you keep on a gentleman’s things.”

      But Dickson did not interview the railway authorities. Instead he hurried to the left-luggage office. “I deposited a small box here a short time ago. I mind the number. Is it here still?”

      The attendant glanced at the shelf. “A wee deal box with iron bands. It was took out ten minutes syne. A man brought the ticket and took it away on his shoulder.”

      “Thank you. There’s been a mistake, but the blame’s mine. My man mistook my orders.”

      Then he returned to the now nervous taxi-driver. “I’ve taken it up with the station-master and he’s putting the police on. You’ll likely be wanted, so I gave him your number. It’s a fair disgrace that there should be so many thieves about this station. It’s not the first time I’ve lost things. Drive me to West George Street and look sharp.” And he slammed the door with the violence of an angry man.

      But his reflections were not violent, for he smiled to himself. “That was pretty neat. They’ll take some time to get the kist open, for I dropped the key out of the train after we left Kirkmichael. That gives me a fair start. If I hadn’t thought of that, they’d have found some way to grip me and ripe me long before I got to the Bank.” He shuddered as he thought of the dangers he had escaped. “As it is, they’re off the track for half an hour at least, while they’re rummaging among Auntie Phemie’s scones.” At the thought he laughed heartily, and when he brought the taxi-cab to a standstill by rapping on the front window, he left it with a temper apparently restored. Obviously he had no grudge against the driver, who to his immense surprise was rewarded with ten shillings.

      Three minutes later Mr. McCunn might have been seen entering the head office of the Strathclyde Bank and inquiring for the manager. There was no hesitation about him now, for his foot was on his native heath. The chief cashier received him with deference in spite of his unorthodox garb, for he was not the least honoured of the bank’s customers. As it chanced he had been talking about him that very morning to a gentleman from London. “The strength of this city,” he had said, tapping his eyeglasses on his knuckles, “does not lie in its dozen very rich men, but in the hundred or two homely folk who make no parade of wealth. Men like Dickson McCunn, for example, who live all their life in a semi-detached villa and die worth half a million.” And the Londoner had cordially assented.

      So Dickson was ushered promptly into an inner room, and was warmly greeted by Mr. Mackintosh, the patron of the Gorbals Die-Hards.

      “I must thank you for your generous donation, McCunn. Those boys will get a little fresh air and quiet after the smoke and din of Glasgow. A little country peace to smooth out the creases in their poor little souls.”

      “Maybe,” said Dickson, with a vivid recollection of Dougal as he had last seen him. Somehow he did not think that peace was likely to be the portion of that devoted band. “But I’ve not come here to speak about that.”

      He took off his waterproof; then his coat and waistcoat; and showed himself a strange figure with sundry bulges about the middle. The manager’s eyes grew very round. Presently these excrescences were revealed as linen bags sewn on to his shirt, and fitting into the hollow between ribs and hip. With some difficulty he slit the bags and extracted three hide-bound packages.

      “See here, Mackintosh,” he said solemnly. “I hand you over these parcels, and you’re to put them in the innermost corner of your strong room. You needn’t open them. Just put them away as they are, and write me a receipt for them. Write it now.”

      Mr. Mackintosh obediently took pen in hand.

      “What’ll I call them?” he asked.

      “Just the three leather parcels handed to you by Dickson McCunn, Esq., naming the date.”

      Mr. Mackintosh wrote. He signed his name with his usual