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

we’re here. Only the Princess will have a lamp. Yes”—this in answer to Dickson—”she knows that we’re coming—you too. We’ll hunt for quarters later upstairs. You scouts, you must picket every possible entrance. The windows are safe, I think, for they are locked from the inside. So is the main door. But there’s the verandah door, of which they have a key, and the back door beside the kitchen, and I’m not at all sure that there’s not a way in by the boiler-house. You understand. We’re holding his place against all comers. We must barricade the danger points. The headquarters of the garrison will be in the hall, where a scout must be always on duty. You’ve all got whistles? Well, if there’s an attempt on the verandah door the picket will whistle once, if at the back door twice, if anywhere else three times, and it’s everybody’s duty, except the picket who whistles, to get back to the hall for orders.”

      “That’s so,” assented Dougal.

      “If the enemy forces an entrance we must overpower him. Any means you like. Sticks or fists, and remember if it’s a scrap in the dark to make for the man’s throat. I expect you little devils have eyes like cats. The scoundrels must be kept away from the ladies at all costs. If the worst comes to the worst, the Princess has a revolver.”

      “So have I,” said Dickson. “I got it in Glasgow.”

      “The deuce you have! Can you use it?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Well, you can hand it over to me, if you like. But it oughtn’t to come to shooting, if it’s only the three of them. The eight of us should be able to manage three and one of them lame. If the others turn up—well, God help us all! But we’ve got to make sure of one thing, that no one lays hands on the Princess so long as there’s one of us left alive to hit out.”

      “Ye needn’t be feared for that,” said Dougal. There was no light in the room, but Dickson was certain that the morose face of the Chieftain was lit with unholy joy.

      “Then off with you. Mr. McCunn and I will explain matters to the ladies.”

      When they were alone, Heritage’s voice took a different key. “We’re in for it, Dogson, old man. There’s no doubt these three scoundrels expect reinforcements at any moment, and with them will be one who is the devil incarnate. He’s the only thing on earth that that brave girl fears. It seems he is in love with her and has pestered her for years. She hated the sight of him, but he wouldn’t take no, and being a powerful man—rich and well-born and all the rest of it—she had a desperate time. I gather he was pretty high in favour with the old Court. Then when the Bolsheviks started he went over to them, like plenty of other grandees, and now he’s one of their chief brains—none of your callow revolutionaries, but a man of the world, a kind of genius, she says, who can hold his own anywhere. She believes him to be in this country, and only waiting the right moment to turn up. Oh, it sounds ridiculous, I know, in Britain in the twentieth century, but I learned in the war that civilization anywhere is a very thin crust. There are a hundred ways by which that kind of fellow could bamboozle all our law and police and spirit her away. That’s the kind of crowd we have to face.”

      “Did she say what he was like in appearance?”

      “A face like an angel—a lost angel, she says.”

      Dickson suddenly had an inspiration.

      “D’you mind the man you said was an Australian—at Kirkmichael? I thought myself he was a foreigner. Well, he was asking for a place he called Darkwater, and there’s no sich place in the countryside. I believe he meant Dalquharter. I believe he’s the man she’s feared of.”

      A gasped “By Jove!” came from the darkness. “Dogson, you’ve hit it. That was five days ago, and he must have got on the right trail by this time. He’ll be here to-night. That’s why the three have been lying so quiet to-day. Well, we’ll go through with it, even if we haven’t a dog’s chance! Only I’m sorry that you should be mixed up in such a hopeless business.”

      “Why me more than you?”

      “Because it’s all pure pride and joy for me to be here. Good God, I wouldn’t be elsewhere for worlds. It’s the great hour of my life. I would gladly die for her.”

      “Tuts, that’s no’ the way to talk, man. Time enough to speak about dying when there’s no other way out. I’m looking at this thing in a business way. We’d better be seeing the ladies.”

      They groped into the pitchy hall, somewhere in which a Die-Hard was on picket, and down the passage to the smoking-room. Dickson blinked in the light of a very feeble lamp and Heritage saw that his hands were cumbered with packages. He deposited them on a sofa and made a ducking bow.

      “I’ve come back, Mem, and glad to be back. Your jools are in safe keeping, and not all the blagyirds in creation could get at them. I’ve come to tell you to cheer up—a stout heart to a stey brae, as the old folk say. I’m handling this affair as a business proposition, so don’t be feared, Mem. If there are enemies seeking you, there’s friends on the road too… Now, you’ll have had your dinner, but you’d maybe like a little dessert.”

      He spread before them a huge box of chocolates, the best that Mearns Street could produce, a box of candied fruits, and another of salted almonds. Then from his hideously overcrowded pockets he took another box, which he offered rather shyly. “That’s some powder for your complexion. They tell me that ladies find it useful whiles.”

      The girl’s strained face watched him at first in mystification, and then broke slowly into a smile. Youth came back into it, the smile changed to a laugh, a low rippling laugh like far-away bells. She took both his hands.

      “You are kind,’ she said, “you are kind and brave. You are a de-ar.”

      And then she kissed him.

      Now, as far as Dickson could remember, no one had ever kissed him except his wife. The light touch of her lips on his forehead was like the pressing of an electric button which explodes some powerful charge and alters the face of a countryside. He blushed scarlet; then he wanted to cry; then he wanted to sing. An immense exhilaration seized him, and I am certain that if at that moment the serried ranks of Bolshevy had appeared in the doorway, Dickson would have hurled himself upon them with a joyful shout.

      Cousin Eugenie was earnestly eating chocolates, but Saskia had other business.

      “You will hold the house?” she asked.

      “Please God, yes,” said Heritage. “I look at it this way. The time is very near when your three gaolers expect the others, their masters. They have not troubled you in the past two days as they threatened, because it was not worth while. But they won’t want to let you out of their sight in the final hours, so they will almost certainly come here to be on the spot. Our object is to keep them out and confuse their plans. Somewhere in this neighbourhood, probably very near, is the man you fear most. If we nonplus the three watchers, they’ll have to revise their policy, and that means a delay, and every hour’s delay is a gain. Mr. McCunn has found out that the factor Loudon is in the plot, and he has purchase enough, it seems, to blanket for a time any appeal to the law. But Mr. McCunn has taken steps to circumvent him, and in twenty-four hours we should have help here.”

      “I do not want the help of your law,” the girl interrupted. “It will entangle me.’

      “Not a bit of it,” said Dickson cheerfully. “You see, Mem, they’ve clean lost track of the jools, and nobody knows where they are but me. I’m a truthful man, but I’ll lie like a packman if I’m asked questions. For the rest, it’s a question of kidnapping, I understand, and that’s a thing that’s not to be allowed. My advice is to go to our beds and get a little sleep while there’s a chance of it. The Gorbals Die-Hards are grand watch-dogs.”

      This view sounded so reasonable that it was at once acted upon. The ladies’ chamber was next door to the smoking-room—what had been the old schoolroom. Heritage arranged with Saskia that the lamp was to be kept burning low, and that on no account were they to move unless summoned by him. Then he and Dickson