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

last houses, the wide machars which stretched to the salt water and gave Portaway its famous golf course. Presently one of the causes of Mr Craw’s oppression became evident. He had caught a cold. He sneezed repeatedly, and admitted, in reply to Jaikie’s anxious inquiries, that he had a rawness in the back of his throat and a congested feeling in his head.

      “This won’t do,” said Jaikie. “I’m going to take you straight home and put you to bed. But first we’ll stop at a chemist’s and get you a dose of ammoniated quinine. That generally cures my colds, if I take it at the start.”

      They returned to the foot of the Eastgate, just where it joined the market square, and at the corner found a chemist’s shop. The owner was about to put up his shutters, but the place had still the dazzling brightness which is associated with the sale of drugs. Mr Craw was accommodated with a small beaker of the bitter compound prescribed by Jaikie, and, as he swallowed it with many grimaces, Jaikie saw a face at the street door looking in on him. It was the face of Allins.

      Mr Craw saw it, too, in the middle of his gasping, and, being taken unawares, it is probable that an involuntary recognition entered his eyes before Jaikie could distract his attention. At any rate Jaikie saw on Allins’s face, before it disappeared, an unpleasing smile.

      He paid for the mixture and hustled Mr Craw out of the shop. Allins did not appear to be in the immediate neighbourhood. “You saw that?” he whispered. “I believe he recognised you. We’ve got to give him the slip. Very likely he’s watching us.”

      Mr Craw, nervous and flustered, found himself hurried up the Eastgate, to the right, to the left, to the left again—it was like the erratic course of a bolted rabbit. Twice Jaikie stopped, darted into the middle of the street, and looked behind. The third time he did this he took his companion’s arm and dragged him into a run. “The man’s following us,” he said.

      At all costs the pursuit must be baffled, for till they had thrown it off it was impossible to return to their inn. Once again Jaikie stopped to reconnoitre, and once again his report was bad. “I see his grey hat. He’s not above twenty yards behind.”

      Suddenly they found that the people were thicker on the pavement. There was some kind of movement towards a close on their left, as if it led to a meeting. Jaikie resolved to take the chance. Allins would never think they would go indoors, he argued, for that would be to enter a trap. He would follow on past the close mouth, and lose their trail.

      He drove Mr Craw before him into a narrow passage, which was pretty well crowded. Then they entered a door, and started to climb a long stair. The meeting, whatever it was, was at the top of it. It took them some minutes to get up, and at the top, at the door of the hall, Jaikie looked back… To his disgust he saw the hat of Allins among the throng at the bottom.

      It was Jaikie’s rule, when cornered at football or anything else, to play the boldest game, on the theory that it was what his opponent would least expect. The hall was not large, and it was very full, but at the far end was a platform which still held some vacant seats. In the chair was Red Davie, now engaged in making introductory remarks. In an instant Jaikie had come to a decision. It was impossible to prevent Allins in that narrow hall seeing Mr Craw at close quarters. But he must not have speech with him, and he must see him under circumstances utterly foreign to his past life. This latter was the essence of true bluff. So he marched him boldly up the central passage and ascended the platform, where he saw two seats empty behind the chairman. He interrupted Red Davie to shake hands effusively, and to introduce Mr Craw. “My friend, Mr Carlyle,” he said. “He’s one of you. Red hot.”

      Red Davie, in his gentle earnest voice and his precise scholarly accents, was delivering a reasoned denunciation of civilised society. He was the chairman, but he was obviously not the principal speaker. Jaikie asked in a whisper of a man behind him who was expected, and was told Alec Stubber, a name to conjure with. “But his train’s late and he’ll no be here for twenty minutes. They’ll be gey sick o’ Antrobus or then.”

      Jaikie looked down on the upturned faces. He saw Allins standing at the back of the hall near the door, with his eyes fixed on the platform and a half-smile on his face. Was that smile one of recognition or bewilderment? Happily Mr Craw was well hidden by the chairman… He saw row upon row of faces, shaven and bearded, young and old, but mostly middle-aged. These were the Communists of the Canonry, and very respectable folk they looked. The Scottish Communist is a much misunderstood person. When he is a true Caledonian, and not a Pole or an Irishman, he is simply the lineal descendant of the old Radical. The Scottish Radical was a man who held a set of inviolable principles on which he was entirely unable to compromise. It did not matter what the principles were; the point was that they were like the laws of Sinai, which could not be added to or subtracted from. When the Liberal party began to compromise, he joined Labour; when Labour began to compromise, by a natural transition he became a Communist. Temperamentally he has not changed. He is simply the stuff which in the seventeenth century made the unyielding Covenanter, and in the eighteenth the inflexible Jacobite. He is honesty incarnate, but his mind lacks flexibility.

      It was an audience which respected Red Davie, but could not make much of him, and Red Davie felt it himself. The crowd had come to hear Alec Stubber, and was growing a little restless. The chairman looked repeatedly at his watch, and his remarks became more and more staccato… Allins had moved so that he now had a full view of Mr Craw, and his eyes never left him.

      Then Jaikie had an inspiration. He whispered fiercely to his neighbour: “Allins is watching you. There’s only one way to put him off the scent. You’ve got to speak… Denounce the Labour party, as you’ve often done in the papers. Point out that their principles lead logically to Communism… And, for God’s sake, speak as broad as you can. You must. It’s the only way.”

      Mr Craw would certainly have refused, but he was given no time. Jaikie plucked the chairman’s elbow. “My friend here,” he whispered, “could carry on for a little. He’d be glad of the chance. He’s from Aberdeen, and a great worker in the cause.”

      Red Davie caught at the straw. “Before Comrade Stubber arrives,” he said, “and that must be in a very few minutes, you will have the privilege of hearing a few words from Comrade Carroll, who brings to us the fraternal greetings of our Aberdeen comrades. No man in recent years has worked more assiduously for the triumph of the proletariat in that unpromising quarter of Scotland. I call on Comrade Carroll.”

      He turned round, beamed on Mr Craw, and sat down.

      It was perhaps the most difficult moment of that great man’s life. Crisis had come upon him red-handed. He knew himself for one of the worst speakers in the world, and he—he who had always had a bodyguard to shield him from rough things—who was the most famous living defender of the status quo—was called upon to urge its abolition, to address as an anarchist a convention of anarchs. His heart fluttered like a bird, he had a dreadful void in the pit of his stomach, his legs seemed to be made of cotton-wool.

      Yet Mr Craw got to his feet. Mr Craw opened his mouth and sounds came forth. The audience listened.

      More—Mr Craw said the right things. His first sentences were confused and stuttering, and then he picked up some kind of argument. He had often in the View proved with unassailable logic that the principles of Socialism were only halfhearted Communism. He proved it now, but with a difference. For by some strange inspiration he remembered in what company he was, and, whereas in the View he had made it his complaint against Labour that it was on the logical road to an abyss called Communism, his charge now was that Labour had not the courage of its principles to advance the further stage to the Communist paradise… It was not a good speech, for it was delivered in a strange abstracted voice, as if the speaker were drawing up thoughts from a very deep well. But it was not ill received. Indeed, some of its apophthegms were mildly applauded.

      Moreover, it was delivered in the right accent. Jaikie’s injunction to “speak broad” was unconsciously followed. For Mr Craw had not lifted up his voice in public for more than thirty years, not since those student days at Edinburgh, when he had been destined for the ministry and had striven to acquire the arts of oratory. Some chord of memory awoke. He spoke broadly, because in public he had