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

and had dressed in a hurry. He carried his helmet in his hand, and his face wore an air of judicial solemnity.

      “Johnny and me,” said Mr McCunn, “heard you using language which constitutes an assault in law. Worse than that, you’ve been guilty of the crime of hamesucken. You’re foreigners, and maybe no very well acquaint with the law of Scotland, but I can tell you that hamesucken is just about the worst offence you can commit, short of taking life. It has been defined as the crime of assaulting a person within his own house. That’s what you’re busy at now, and many a man has got two years hard for less. Amn’t I right, Johnny?”

      “Ye’re right, sir,” said the policeman. “I’ve made notes o’ the langwidge I heard, and I hae got you gentlemen as witnesses. It’s hamesucken beyond a doubt.” The strange syllables boomed ominously, and their echoes hung in the air like a thunderstorm. “Gie me the word, sir”—this to Mr Craw—”and I’ll chairge them.” Then to the five. “Ye’d better hand ower thae pistols, or it’ll be the waur for ye.”

      For the fraction of a second there was that in Mastrovin’s face which augured resistance. Dickson saw it, and grinned.

      “Listen to reason, man,” he cried genially, and there was a humorous contempt in his voice which was perhaps its strongest argument. “I know fine who you are. You’re politicians, and you’ve made a bad mistake. You’re looking for folk that never were here. You needn’t make things worse. If you try violence, what will happen? You’ll be defying the law of Scotland and deforcing the police, and even if you got away from this countryside— which is not likely—there’s not a corner of the globe that could hide you. You’d be brought to justice, and where would your politics be then? I’m speaking as a business man to folk that I assume to be in possession of their wits. You’re in Mr Craw’s hands, and there’s just the one thing you can do—to throw yourselves on his mercy. If he takes my advice he’ll let you go, provided you leave your pistols behind you. They’re no the things for folk like you to be trusted with in this quiet countryside.”

      Jaikie in the gallery gave a happy sigh. The danger was past. Over the Den had descended the thick, comfortable blanket of convention and law. Melodrama had gone out of the air. Mastrovin and his friends were no longer dangerous, for they had become comic. He prodded Tibbets. “Down you get. It’s time for you to be on the floor of the house.” Things could now proceed according to plan.

      Then Mr Craw rose to the height of a great argument. He rescued his spectacles, rested his elbows on the table, and joined his still tremulous fingertips. Wisdom and authority radiated from him.

      “I am inclined,” he said, “to follow Mr McCunn’s advice and let you go. I do not propose to charge you. But, as Mr McCunn has said, in common decency you must be disarmed. Mr Barbon, will you kindly collect these gentlemen’s weapons.”

      The five were no longer wolves from the wilds: they were embarrassed political intriguers. Sullenly they dropped their pistols into the waste-paper basket which Barbon presented to them.

      Mr Craw continued:

      “I would repeat that what I have told you is the literal truth. Your countrymen were at Knockraw and dined here with Mr Barbon, but I did not meet them, for I only returned yesterday. As for Prince John, I do not know what you are talking about. Nobody like him has ever been in Castle Gay. You say that he was seen here this very morning. I suggest that your spies may have seen my friend Mr Charvill, who is spending a few days with me… But I am really not concerned to explain the cause of your blunders. The principal is that you have allowed yourself to be misled by an ex-servant of mine. I hope you have made his rascality worth his while, for it looks as if he might be out of employment for some little time.”

      Mr Craw was enjoying himself. His voice grew round and soothing. He almost purred his sentences, for every word he spoke made him feel that he had captured at last an authority of which hitherto he had never been quite certain.

      “I am perfectly well informed as to who you are,” he went on. “You, sir,” addressing Mastrovin, “I have already named, and I congratulate you on your colleagues, Messieurs Dedekind, Rosenbaum, Calaman, and Ricci. They are names not unknown in the political—and criminal—annals of contemporary Europe… You have put yourself in a most compromising position. You come here, at a time when you believe that my staff is depleted, with a following of your own, selected from the riffraff of Portaway. You were mistaken, of course. My staff was not depleted, but increased. At this moment there are ten of my servants, all of whom served in the War, waiting outside this door, and they are armed. Any attempt at violence by you would have been summarily avenged. As for your ragamuffin following, you may be interested to learn that during the last hour or two they have been collected by my keepers and ducked in the Callowa. By now they will have returned to Portaway wiser and wetter men…

      “As for yourselves, you have committed a grave technical offence. I could charge you, and you would be put at once under arrest. Would it be convenient for the Republican Party of Evallonia to have some of its most active members in a British dock and presently in a British gaol?… You are even more completely in my power than you imagine. You have attempted to coerce an important section of the British Press. That, if published, would seal the doom of your party with British public opinion. I have not only my own people here to report the incident in the various newspapers I control, but Mr Tibbets of the Wire is present on behalf of my chief competitors, and at my request has put himself in a position also to furnish a full account.”

      “But,” said Mr Craw, moving his chair back from the table and folding his arms, “I do not propose to exact any such revenge. You are free to go as you came. I will neither charge you, nor publish one word of this incident. But a complete record will be prepared of this evening’s doings, and I warn you that, if I am ever troubled again in any way by you or your emissaries, that record will be published throughout the world’s Press, and you will be made the laughing stock of Europe.”

      Mr Craw ceased, pressed his lips, and looked for approbation to Dougal, who nodded friendlily. Mastrovin seemed about to reply, but the nature of his reply will never be known. For Dickson broke in with: “You’d better hurry, gentlemen. You should be at Fallatown within the next three-quarters of an hour, if your yatt is to catch the tide.”

      This final revelation of knowledge shut Mastrovin’s lips. He bowed, and without a word led his friends from the room, after which, through the lines of Mackillop’s deeply disappointed minions, they descended to the front door and their cars. Dickson chose to accompany and speed the parting guests.

      With their departure Mrs Brisbane-Brown entered the library from the ante-room, where she had waited under Mr McCunn’s strict orders. Jaikie and Alison, whose heads were very close together in the little balcony, observed her arrival with interest.

      “Aunt Hatty has been really anxious,” said the girl. “I know that look on her face. I wonder if she’s in love with Mr Craw. I rather think so… Jaikie, that was a horrid strain. I feel all slack and run down. Any moment I expected to see those devils shoot. I wouldn’t go through that again for a million pounds.”

      “No more would Mr Craw. But it will have made a man of him. He has been under fire, so to speak, and now he’ll be as bold as brass.”

      “He owes it all to you.”

      “Not to me,” Jaikie smiled. “To me he very nearly owed a bullet in his head. To Dickson McCunn. Wasn’t he great?”

      The girl nodded. “Mr McCunn goes off in a fury of romance to see a rather dull princeling depart in a boat, because he reminds him of Prince Charlie. And he comes back to step from romance into the most effective kind of realism. He’ll never give another thought to what he has just done, though he has saved several lives, but he’ll cherish all his days the memory of the parting with Prince John. Was there ever such an extraordinary mixture?”

      “We’re all like that,” was the answer.

      “Not you. You’ve the realism, but not the sentiment.”

      “I wonder,” said Jaikie.

      Ten