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

be thinking about delivering that letter, Jaikie.”

      “Wait a moment,” said the girl. “How are you going to deliver the letter? Freddy won’t let you near him, even though you say you come from Mr Craw. He’ll consider it a ruse de guerre, and small blame to him. I don’t know what journalists look like as a class, but I suppose you bear the mark of your profession.”

      “True. But maybe he wouldn’t suspect Jaikie.”

      “He’ll suspect anyone. He has journalists on the brain just now.”

      “But he’d recognise the handwriting.”

      “Perhaps, if the letter got to him. But it won’t… Besides, that man in the ha-ha—what do you call him—Tibbets?—will see you. And the other man who is crawling down there. All the approaches to the house on this side are as bare as a billiard table. At present you two are dark horses. The enemy doesn’t connect you with Mr Craw, and that’s very important, for you are the clue to Mr Craw’s whereabouts. We mustn’t give that card away. We don’t want Tibbets on your track, for it leads direct to the Back House of the Garroch.”

      “That’s common sense,” said Dougal with conviction. “What’s your plan, then?”

      The girl sat hunched in the fern, with her chin on one hand, and her eyes on the house and its terraces, where the gardeners were busy with the plots as if nothing could mar its modish tranquillity.

      “It’s all very exciting and very difficult. We three are the only people in the world who can do anything to help. Somehow we must get hold of Freddy Barbon and pool our knowledge. I’m beginning to think that he may not be really off his head—only legitimately rattled. What about getting him to come to the Mains? I could send a message by Middlemas—that’s our butler—he wouldn’t suspect him. Also we could get Aunt Harriet’s advice. She can be very wise when she wants to. And—”

      She broke off.

      “Mother of Moses!” she cried, invoking a saint not known to the Calendar. “I quite forgot. There’s an Australian cousin coming to stay. He’s arriving in time for luncheon. He should be a tower of strength. His name is Charvill—Robin Charvill. He’s at Oxford and a famous football player. He played in the international match two days ago.”

      “I saw him,” said Jaikie.

      “He’s marvellous, isn’t he?”

      “Marvellous.”

      “Well, we can count him in. That makes four of us—five if we include Aunt Harriet. A pretty useful support for the distraught Freddy! The next thing to do is to get you inconspicuously to the Mains. I’ll show you the best way.”

      Dougal, who had been knitting his brows, suddenly gave a shout.

      “What like was the man you stalked down there?” he demanded of Jaikie.

      “I didn’t see much of him. He was wearing queer clothes—tight breeches and a belt round his waist.”

      “Foreign looking?”

      “Perhaps.”

      He turned to the girl.

      “And the men you saw yesterday in the car? Were they foreigners?”

      She considered. “They didn’t look quite English. One had a short black beard. I remember that one had a long pale face.”

      “I’ve got it,” Dougal cried. “No wonder Barbon’s scared. It’s the Evallonian Republicans! They’re after Craw!”

      CHAPTER 6

       THE TROUBLES OF A PRIVATE SECRETARY

       Table of Contents

      The pleasant dwelling, known as the Mains of Starr, or more commonly the Mains, stands on a shelf of hillside above the highway, with a fine prospect over the park of Castle Gay to the rolling heathy uplands which form the grouse-moor of Knockraw. From it indeed had shone that light which Jaikie and Dougal had observed the previous night after they left the barricaded lodge. It is low and whitewashed; it has a rounded front like the poop of a three-decker; its gables are crow-stepped; its air is resolutely of the past.

      As such it was a fitting house for its present occupant. In every family there are members who act as guardians of its records and repositories of its traditions. Their sole distinction is their family connection, and they take good care that the world shall not forget it. In Scotland they are usually high-nosed maiden ladies, and such a spinsterhood might well have seemed to be the destiny of Harriet Westwater. But, on a visit to Egypt one winter, she had met and espoused a colonel of Sappers, called Brisbane-Brown, and for a happy decade had followed the drum in his company. He rose to be a major-general before he died of pneumonia (the result of a bitter day in an Irish snipe-bog), and left her a well-dowered widow.

      The marriage had been a success, but the change of name had been meaningless, for the lady did not cease to be a Westwater. It used to be the fashion in Scotland for a married woman to retain her maiden name even on her tombstone, and this custom she had always followed in spirit. The Brisbane-Browns gave her no genealogical satisfaction. They were Browns from nowhere, who for five generations had served in the military forces of the Crown and had spent most of their lives abroad. The “Brisbane” was not a link with the ancient Scottish house of that ilk; the General’s father had been born in the capital of Queensland, and the word had been retained in the family’s nomenclature to distinguish it from innumerable other Browns. As wife and widow she remained a Westwater, and the centre of her world was Castle Gay.

      Her brother, Lord Rhynns, did not share her creed, for increasing financial embarrassments had made him a harsh realist; but, though acutely aware of his imperfections, she felt for him, as head of the family, the reverence with which the devout regard a Prince of the Church. Her pretty invalidish sister-in-law—a type which she would normally have regarded with contempt—shared in the same glamour. But it was for their only child, Alison, that her family loyalty burned most fiercely. That summer, at immense discomfort to herself, she had chaperoned the girl in her first London season. Her house was Alison’s home, and she strove to bring her up in conformity with the fashions of her own childhood. She signally failed, but she did not repine, for behind her tartness lay a large, tolerant humour, which gave her an odd kinship with youth. The girl’s slanginess and tom-boyishness were proofs of spirit—a Westwater characteristic; her youthful intolerance was not unpleasing to a laudator of the past; her passionate love of Castle Gay was a variant of her own clannishness. After the experience of a modern season she thanked her Maker that her niece was not one of the lisping mannequins who flutter between London nightclubs and the sands of Deauville or the Lido.

      To the tenant of the Castle she was well disposed. She knew nothing of him except that he was a newspaper magnate and very rich, but he paid her brother a large rent, and did not, like too many tenants nowadays, fill the house with noisy underbred parties, or outrage the sense of decency of the estate servants. She respected Mr Craw for his rigid seclusion. On the occasion of her solitary visit to him she had been a little shocked by the luxury of his establishment, till she reflected that a millionaire must spend his money on something, and that three footmen and a horde of secretaries were on the whole innocent extravagances. But indeed Mr Craw and the world for which he stood scarcely came within the orbit of her thoughts. She was no more interested in him than in the family affairs of the Portaway grocer who supplied her with provisions.

      Politics she cared nothing for, except in so far as they affected the families which she had known all her life. When there was a chance of Cousin Georgie Whitehaven’s second boy being given a post in the Ministry, she was much excited, but she would have been puzzled to name two other members of that Ministry, and of its policy she knew nothing at all. She read and re-read the books which she had loved from of old, and very occasionally a new work, generally a biography, which was well spoken of by her friends. She had never heard of Marcel Proust, but she could have passed a stiff examination