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

did not perhaps carry conviction, but something in the two faces below persuaded her of their honesty. With a swift movement she wriggled out of the crutch, caught a bough with both hands, and dropped lightly to the ground. With two deft kicks she repelled the attentions of Tactful and Pensive, and stood before the travellers, smoothing down her short skirt. She was about Jaikie’s height, very slim and straight, and her interrogation was that of a general to his staff.

      “You come from Mr Craw?”

      “Yes.”

      “When did you leave him?”

      “Last night.”

      “Glory be! Let’s sit down. There’s no hurry, and we must move very carefully. For I may as well let you know that the Devil has got into this place. Yes. The Devil. I don’t quite know what form he has taken, but he’s rampant in Castle Gay. I came here this morning to prospect, for I feel in a way responsible. You see it belongs to my father, and Mr Craw’s our tenant. My name is Alison Westwater.”

      “Same name as the pub in Starr?” asked Dougal, who liked to connect his knowledge organically.

      She nodded. “The Westwater Arms. Yes, that’s my family. I live at the Mains with my aunt, while Papa and Mamma are on the Continent. I wouldn’t go. I said, ‘You can’t expect me after a filthy summer in London to go ramping about France wearing tidy clothes and meeting the same idiotic people.’ I had a year at school in Paris and that gave me all the France I want in this life. I said, ‘Castle Gay’s my home, though you’ve chosen to let it to a funny little man, and I’m not going to miss my whack of Scotland.’ So I hopped it here at the end of July, and I’ve been having a pretty peaceful time ever since. You see, all the outdoor people are OUR people, and Mr Craw has been very nice about it, and lets me fish in the Callowa and all the lochs and treat the place as if he wasn’t there.”

      “Do you know Mr Craw well?” Dougal asked.

      “I have seen him three times and talked to him once—when Aunt Harriet took me to tea with him. I thought him rather a dear, but quite helpless. Talks just like a book, and doesn’t appear to understand much of what you say to him. I suppose he is very clever, but he seems to want a lot of looking after. You never saw such a staff. There’s a solemn butler called Bannister. I believe Bannister washes Mr Craw’s face and tucks him into bed … There’s a typewriting woman by the name of Cazenove with a sharp nose and horn spectacles, who never takes her eyes off him, and is always presenting him with papers to read. It’s slavery of some kind, but whether she’s his slave or he’s her slave I don’t know. I had to break a plate at tea, just to remind myself that there was such a thing as liberty… Then there is Mr Allins, a very glossy young man. You’ve probably come across him, for he goes about a lot. Mr Allins fancies himself the perfect man of the world and a great charmer. I think if you met him you would say he wasn’t quite a gentleman.” She smiled confidentially at the two, as if she assumed that their standards must coincide with hers.

      “Mr Barbon?” Dougal asked.

      “And of course there’s Freddy. There’s nothing wrong with Freddy in that way. He’s some sort of cousin of ours. Freddy is the chief of the staff and has everything on his shoulders. He is very kind and very anxious, poor dear, and now the crash has come! Not to put too fine a point on it, for the last twenty-four hours Freddy has gone clean off his head… “

      She stopped at an exclamation from Jaikie. He had one of those small field-glasses which are adapted for a single eye, with which he had been examining the approaches to the castle.

      “Tibbets can’t have had much of a breakfast,” he announced. “I see him sitting in that trench place.”

      “Who is Tibbets?” she demanded.

      “He’s a journalist, on the Live Wire, one of Mr Craw’s rivals. We ran into him late last night, and that’s why we couldn’t deliver the letter.”

      “Little beast! That’s the first of Freddy’s anxieties. This place has been besieged by journalists for a week, all trying to get at Mr Craw… Then the night before last Mr Craw did not come home. YOU know where he is, but Freddy doesn’t, so that’s the second of his troubles. Somehow the fact of Mr Craw’s disappearance has leaked out, and the journalists have got hold of it, and yesterday it almost came to keeping them off with a gun… And out of the sky dropped the last straw.”

      She paused dramatically.

      “I don’t know the truth about it, for I haven’t seen Freddy since yesterday morning. I think he must have had a letter, for he rushed to the Mains and left a message for Aunt Harriet that she was on no account to let any stranger into the house or speak to anybody or give any information. He can’t have meant the journalists only, for we knew all about them… After that, just after luncheon, while I was out for a walk, I saw a big car arrive with three men in it. It tried to get in at the West Lodge, but Jameson—that’s the lodge-keeper—wouldn’t open the gate. I thought that odd, but when I went riding in the evening I couldn’t get in at the West Lodge either. They had jammed trunks of trees across. That means that Freddy is rattled out of his senses. He thinks he is besieged. Is there any word for that but lunacy? I can understand his being worried about the journalists and Mr Craw not coming home. But this! Isn’t it what they call persecution-mania? I’m sorry about it, for I like Freddy.”

      “The man’s black afraid of something,” said Dougal, “but maybe he has cause. Maybe it’s something new—something we know nothing about.”

      The girl nodded. “It looks like it. Meantime, where is Mr Craw? It’s your turn to take up the tale.”

      “He’s at the Back House of the Garroch, waiting for Barbon to send a car to fetch him.”

      Miss Westwater whistled. “Now how on earth did he get there? I know the place. It’s on our land. I remember the shepherd’s wife. A big, handsome, gipsy-looking woman, isn’t she?”

      Dougal briefly but dramatically told the story of the rape of Mr Craw. The girl listened with open eyes and an astonishment which left no room for laughter.

      “Marvellous!” was her comment. “Simply marvellous! That it should happen to Mr Craw of all people! I love those students… What by the way are you? You haven’t told me.”

      “Jaikie here is an undergraduate—Cambridge.”

      “Beastly place! I’m sorry, but my sympathies are all with Oxford.”

      “And I’m a journalist by trade. I’m on one of the Craw papers. I’ve no sort of admiration for Craw, but of course I’m on his side in this row. The question is—”

      Jaikie, who had been busy with his glass, suddenly clutched the speaker by the hair and forced him down. He had no need to perform the same office for Miss Westwater, for at his first movement she had flung herself on her face. The three were on a small eminence of turf with thick bracken before and behind them, and in this they lay crouched.

      “What is it?” Dougal whispered.

      “There’s a man in the hollow,” said Jaikie. “He’s up to no good, for he’s keeping well in cover. Wait here, and I’ll stalk him.”

      He wriggled into the fern, and it was a quarter of an hour before he returned to report. “It’s a man, and he’s wearing a queer kind of knicker-bocker suit. He hasn’t the look of a journalist. He has some notion of keeping cover, for I could get no more than a glimpse of him. He’s trying to get to the house, so we’ll hope he’ll tumble over Tibbets in the ditch, as Dougal and I did last night.”

      “The plot thickens!” The girl’s eyes were bright with excitement. “He’s probably one of the strangers who came in the car… The question is, what is to be done next? Mr Craw is at the Back House of the Garroch, twenty miles away, and no one knows it but us three. We have to get him home without the unfriendly journalists knowing about it.”

      “We have also to get him out of the country,” said Dougal. “There