Brothers & Sisters - John & Anna Buchan Edition (Collection of Their Greatest Works). Buchan John

clockwork, were approaching their consummation. For a second he thought of leaving the Tower and hiding somewhere in the cliffs. He dismissed the notion unwillingly, for he remembered the task that had been set him. He was there to hold the fort to the last—to gain time, though he could not for the life of him see what use time was to be when all the strategy of his own side seemed to have miscarried. Anyhow, the blackguards would be sold, for they would not find the Princess. But he felt a horrid void in the pit of his stomach, and a looseness about his knees.

      The moments passed more quickly as he wrestled with his fears. The next he knew the empty space below his window was filling with figures. There was a great crowd of them, rough fellows with seamen’s coats, still dripping as if they had had a wet landing. Dobson was with them, but for the rest they were strange figures.

      Now that the expected had come at last Heritage’s nerves grew calmer. He made out that the newcomers were trying the door, and he waited to hear it fall, for such a mob could soon force it. But instead a voice called from beneath.

      “Will you please open to us?” it called.

      He stuck his head out and saw a little group with one man at the head of it, a young man clad in oilskins whose face was dim in the murky evening. The voice was that of a gentleman.

      “I have orders to open to no one,” Heritage replied.

      “Then I fear we must force an entrance,” said the voice.

      “You can go to the devil,” said Heritage.

      That defiance was the screw which his nerves needed. His temper had risen, he had forgotten all about the Princess, he did not even remember his isolation. His job was to make a fight for it. He ran up the staircase which led to the attics of the Tower, for he recollected that there was a window there which looked over the space before the door. The place was ruinous, the floor filled with holes, and a part of the roof sagged down in a corner. The stones around the window were loose and crumbling, and he managed to pull several out so that the slit was enlarged. He found himself looking down on a crowd of men, who had lifted the fallen tree on which Leon had perched, and were about to use it as a battering ram.

      “The first fellow who comes within six yards of the door I shoot,” he shouted.

      There was a white wave below as every face was turned to him. He ducked back his head in time as a bullet chipped the side of the window.

      But his position was a good one, for he had a hole in the broken wall through which he could see, and could shoot with his hand at the edge of the window while keeping his body in cover. The battering party resumed their task, and as the tree swung nearer, he fired at the foremost of them. He missed, but the shot for a moment suspended operations.

      Again they came on, and again he fired. This time he damaged somebody, for the trunk was dropped.

      A voice gave orders, a sharp authoritative voice. The battering squad dissolved, and there was a general withdrawal out of the line of fire from the window. Was it possible that he had intimidated them? He could hear the sound of voices, and then a single figure came into sight again, holding something in its hand.

      He did not fire for he recognized the futility of his efforts. The baseball swing of the figure below could not be mistaken. There was a roar beneath, and a flash of fire, as the bomb exploded on the door. Then came a rush of men, and the Tower had fallen. Heritage clambered through a hole in the roof and gained the topmost parapet. He had still a pocketful of cartridges, and there in a coign of the old battlements he would prove an ugly customer to the pursuit. Only one at a time could reach that siege perilous… They would not take long to search the lower rooms, and then would be hot on the trail of the man who had fooled them. He had not a scrap of fear left or even of anger—only triumph at the thought of how properly those ruffians had been sold. “Like schoolboys they who unaware”—instead of two women they had found a man with a gun. And the Princess was miles off and forever beyond their reach. When they had settled with him they would no doubt burn the House down, but that would serve them little. From his airy pinnacle he could see the whole sea-front of Huntingtower, a blur in the dusk but for the ghostly eyes of its white-shuttered windows.

      Something was coming from it, running lightly over the lawns, lost for an instant in the trees, and then appearing clear on the crest of the ridge where some hours earlier Dougal had lain. With horror he saw that it was a girl. She stood with the wind plucking at her skirts and hair, and she cried in a high, clear voice which pierced even the confusion of the gale. What she cried he could not tell, for it was in a strange tongue…

      But it reached the besiegers. There was a sudden silence in the din below him and then a confusion of shouting. The men seemed to be pouring out of the gap which had been the doorway, and as he peered over the parapet first one and then another entered his area of vision. The girl on the ridge, as soon as she saw that she had attracted attention, turned and ran back, and after her up the slopes went the pursuit bunched like hounds on a good scent.

      Mr. John Heritage, swearing terribly, started to retrace his steps.

      CHAPTER 14

       THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE CRUIVES

       Table of Contents

      The military historian must often make shift to write of battles with slender data, but he can pad out his deficiencies by learned parallels. If his were the talented pen describing this, the latest action fought on British soil against a foreign foe, he would no doubt be crippled by the absence of written orders and war diaries. But how eloquently he would descant on the resemblance between Dougal and Gouraud—how the plan of leaving the enemy to waste his strength upon a deserted position was that which on the 15th of July 1918 the French general had used with decisive effect in Champagne! But Dougal had never heard of Gouraud, and I cannot claim that, like the Happy Warrior, he

      “through the heat of conflict kept the law In calmness made, and saw what he foresaw.”

      I have had the benefit of discussing the affair with him and his colleagues, but I should offend against historic truth if I represented the main action as anything but a scrimmage—a “soldiers’ battle,” the historian would say, a Malplaquet, an Albuera.

      Just after half-past three that afternoon the Commander-in-Chief was revealed in a very bad temper. He had intercepted Sir Archie’s car, and, since Leon was known to be fully occupied, had brought it in by the West Lodge, and hidden it behind a clump of laurels. There he had held a hoarse council of war. He had cast an appraising eye over Sime the butler, Carfrae the chauffeur, and McGuffog the gamekeeper, and his brows had lightened when he beheld Sir Archie with an armful of guns and two big cartridge-magazines. But they had darkened again at the first words of the leader of the reinforcements.

      “Now for the Tower,’ Sir Archie had observed cheerfully. “We should be a match for the three watchers, my lad, and it’s time that poor devil What’s-his-name was relieved.”

      “A bonny-like plan that would be,” said Dougal. “Man, ye would be walkin’ into the very trap they want. In an hour, or maybe two, the rest will turn up from the sea and they’d have ye tight by the neck. Na, na! It’s time we’re wantin’, and the longer they think we’re a’ in the auld Tower the better for us. What news o’ the polis?”

      He listened to Sir Archie’s report with a gloomy face.

      “Not afore the darkenin’? They’ll be ower late—the polis are aye ower late. It looks as if we had the job to do oursels. What’s your notion?”

      “God knows,” said the baronet, whose eyes were on Saskia. “What’s yours?”

      The deference conciliated Dougal. “There’s just the one plan that’s worth a docken. There’s five o’ us here, and there’s plenty weapons. Besides there’s five Die-Hards somewhere about, and though they’ve never tried it afore they can be trusted to loose off a gun. My advice is to hide at the Garplefoot and stop the boats landin’.