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

the park, had crossed a piece of meadowland from which an aftermath of hay had lately been taken, and could already see beyond a ha-ha the terraces of a formal garden. But while they guarded against sound, their eyes were too much on their destination to be wary about the foreground.

      So it befell that they crossed the ha-ha at the very point where a gentleman was taking his ease. Dougal fell over him, and the two travellers found themselves looking at the startled face of a small man in knickerbockers.

      His pipe had dropped from his mouth. Jaikie picked it up and presented it to him. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “I hope you’re not hurt.” In the depths of the ha-ha there was shadow, and Jaikie took the victim of Dougal’s haste for someone on the Castle staff.

      “What are you doing here?” The man’s air was at once apologetic and defiant. There was that in his tone which implied that he might in turn be asked his business, that he had no prescriptive right to be sitting smoking in that ha-ha at midnight.

      So Jaikie answered: “Just the same as you. Taking the air and admiring the view.”

      The little man was recovering himself.

      “You gave me quite a start when you jumped on the top of me. I thought it was one of the gamekeepers after a poacher.” He began to fill his pipe. “More by token, who are you?”

      “Oh, we’re a couple of undergraduates seeing the world. We wanted a look at the Castle, and there’s not much you can see from the highroad, so we got in at the bridge and came up the stream… We’re strangers here. There’s an inn at Starr, isn’t there? What sort of a place is it?”

      “Nothing to write home about,” was the answer. “You’d better go on to Portaway… So you’re undergraduates? I thought that maybe you were of my own profession, and I was going to be a bit jealous. I’m on the staff of the Live Wire.”

      Dougal’s hand surreptitiously found Jaikie’s wrist and held it tight.

      “I suppose you’re up here to cover the by-election,” he observed, in a voice which he strove to keep flat and uninterested.

      “By-election be hanged! That was my original job, but I’m on to far bigger business. Do you know who lives in that house?”

      Two heads were mendaciously shaken.

      “The great Craw! Thomas Carlyle Craw! The man that owns all the uplift papers. If you’ve never heard of Craw, Oxford’s more of a mausoleum than I thought.”

      “We’re Cambridge,” said Jaikie, “and of course we’ve heard of Craw. What about him?”

      “Simply that he’s the mystery man of journalism. You hear of him but you never see him. He’s a kind of Delphic oracle that never shows his face. The Wire doesn’t care a hoot for by-elections, but it cares a whole lot about Craw. He’s our big rival, and we love him as much as a cat loves water. He’s a go-getter, is Craw. There’s a deep commercial purpose behind all his sanctimonious bilge, and he knows how to rake in the shekels. His circulation figures are steadily beating ours by at least ten per cent. He has made himself the idol of his public, and, till we pull off the prophet’s mantle and knock out some of the sawdust, he has us licked all the time. But it’s the deuce and all to get at him, for the blighter is as shy as a wood nymph. So, when this election started, my chief says to me: ‘Here’s our chance at last,’ he says. ‘Off you go, Tibbets, and draw the badger. Get him into the limelight somehow. Show him up for the almighty fool he is. Publicity about Craw,’ he says, ‘any kind of publicity that will take the gilt off the image. It’s the chance of your life!’”

      “Any luck?” Dougal asked casually.

      Mr Tibbets’s voice became solemn. “I believe,” he said, “that I am on the edge of the world’s biggest scoop. I discovered in half a day that we could never get Craw to mix himself up in an election. He knows too much. He isn’t going to have the Wire and a dozen other papers printing his halting utterances verbatim in leaded type, and making nice, friendly comments… No, that cock won’t fight. But I’ve found a better. D’you know what will be the main headline in to-morrow’s Wire? It will be ‘Mysterious Disappearance of Mr Craw—Household Distracted.’—And by God, it will be true—every word of it. The man’s lost.”

      “How do you mean?”

      “Just lost. He never came back last night.”

      “Why should he? He has probably offed it abroad—to give the election a miss.”

      “Not a bit of it. He meant to go abroad to-morrow, and all the arrangements were made—I found out that from standing a drink to his second chauffeur. But he was expected back last night, and his car was meeting him at Kirkmichael. He never appeared. He has a staff like Buckingham Palace, and they were on the telephone all evening to Glasgow. It seems he left Glasgow right enough… I got that from the chauffeur fellow, who’s new and not so damned secretive as the rest. So I went to Kirkmichael this morning on a motorbike, and the ticket collector remembered Craw coming off the Glasgow train. He disappeared into the void somewhere between here and Kirkmichael at some time after 7.15 last night. Take my word for it, a judgment has fallen upon Craw.”

      “Aren’t you presuming too much?” Jaikie asked. “He may have changed his mind and be coming back to-morrow—or be back now—or he’s wiring his servants to meet him somewhere. Then you and the Wire will look rather foolish.”

      “It’s a risk, no doubt, but it’s worth taking. And if you had seen his secretary’s face you wouldn’t think it much of a risk. I never saw a chap so scared as that secretary man. He started off this afternoon in a sports-model at eighty miles an hour and was back an hour later as if he had seen his father’s ghost… What’s more, this place is in a state of siege. They wouldn’t let me in at the lodge gates. I made a long detour and got in by the back premises, and blessed if I hadn’t to run for my life!… Don’t tell me. The people in that house are terrified of something, and Craw isn’t there, and they don’t know why Craw isn’t there… That’s the mystery I’m out to solve, and I’ll get to the bottom of it or my name isn’t Albert Tibbets.”

      “I don’t quite see the point,” said Jaikie. “If you got him on a platform you might make capital out of his foolishness. But if some accident has happened to him, you can’t make capital out of a man’s misfortunes.”

      “We can out of Craw’s. Don’t you see we can crack the shell of mystery? We can make him NEWS—like any shop-girl who runs away from home or city gent that loses his memory. We can upset his blasted dignity.”

      Dougal got up. “We’ll leave you to your midnight reveries, Mr Tibbets. We’re for bed. Where are your headquarters?”

      “Portaway is my base. But my post at present is in and around this park. I’m accustomed to roughing it.”

      “Well, good night and good luck to you.”

      The two retraced their steps down the stream.

      “This letter will have to wait till the morn’s morn,” said Dougal. “Craw was right. It hasn’t taken long for the opposition Press to get after him. It’s our business, Jaikie my man, to make the Wire the laughing-stock of British journalism… Not that Tibbets isn’t a dangerous fellow. Pray Heaven he doesn’t get on the track of the students’ rag, for that’s just the kind of yarn he wants… They say that dog doesn’t eat dog, but I swear before I’ve done with him to chew yon tyke’s ear… I’m beginning to think very kindly of Craw.”

      CHAPTER 5

       INTRODUCES A LADY

       Table of Contents

      Jaikie was roused next morning in his little room in the Westwater Arms by Dougal sitting down heavily on his toes. He was a sound sleeper, and was apt to return but