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

dust pouring out of the shaft of the stairway.

      Someone switched on the light.

      The old man was looking at me with blazing eyes.

      ‘He is safe,’ he cried. ‘You cannot follow in time… He is gone… He has triumphed… Der schwarze Stein ist in der Siegeskrone.’

      There was more in those eyes than any common triumph. They had been hooded like a bird of prey, and now they flamed with a hawk’s pride. A white fanatic heat burned in them, and I realized for the first time the terrible thing I had been up against. This man was more than a spy; in his foul way he had been a patriot.

      As the handcuffs clinked on his wrists I said my last word to him.

      ‘I hope Franz will bear his triumph well. I ought to tell you that the Ariadne for the last hour has been in our hands.’

      Three weeks later, as all the world knows, we went to war. I joined the New Army the first week, and owing to my Matabele experience got a captain’s commission straight off. But I had done my best service, I think, before I put on khaki.

       THE END

The Three Hostages

       Table of Contents

       DEDICATION

       I. DOCTOR GREENSLADE THEORISES

       II. I HEAR OF THE THREE HOSTAGES

       III. RESEARCHES IN THE SUBCONSCIOUS

       IV. I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF A POPULAR MAN

       V. THE THURSDAY CLUB

       VI. THE HOUSE IN GOSPEL OAK

       VII. SOME EXPERIENCES OF A DISCIPLE

       VIII. THE BLIND SPINNER

       IX. I AM INTRODUCED TO STRONG MAGIC

       X. CONFIDENCES AT A WAYSIDE INN

       XI. HOW A GERMAN ENGINEER FOUND STRANGE FISHING

       XII. I RETURN TO SERVITUDE

       XIII. I VISIT THE FIELDS OF EDEN

       XIV. SIR ARCHIBALD ROYLANCE PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT

       XV. HOW A FRENCH NOBLEMAN DISCOVERED FEAR

       VI. OUR TIME IS NARROWED

       XVII. THE DISTRICT-VISITOR IN PALMYRA SQUARE

       XVIII. THE NIGHT OF THE FIRST OF JUNE

       XIX. THE NIGHT OF THE FIRST OF JUNE—LATER

       XX. MACHRAY

       XXI. HOW I STALKED WILDER GAME THAN DEER

      DEDICATION

       Table of Contents

       To a Young Gentleman of Eton College

      HONOURED SIR,

      On your last birthday a well-meaning godfather presented you with a volume of mine, since you had been heard on occasion to express approval of my works. The book dealt with a somewhat arid branch of historical research, and it did not please you. You wrote to me, I remember, complaining that I had "let you down," and summoning me, as I valued your respect, to "pull myself together." In particular you demanded to hear more of the doings of Richard Hannay, a gentleman for whom you professed a liking. I, too, have a liking for Sir Richard, and when I met him the other day (he is now a country neighbour) I observed that his left hand had been considerably mauled, an injury which I knew had not been due to the War. He was so good as to tell me the tale of an unpleasant business in which he had recently been engaged, and to give me permission to retell it for your benefit. Sir Richard took a modest pride in the affair, because from first to last it had been a pure contest of wits, without recourse to those more obvious methods of strife with which he is familiar. So I herewith present it to you, in the hope that in the eyes of you and your friends it may atone for certain other writings of mine with which you have been afflicted by those in authority.

      J.B.

      June, 1924.

      I.

       DOCTOR GREENSLADE THEORISES

       Table of Contents

      That evening, I remember, as I came up through the Mill Meadow, I was feeling peculiarly happy and contented. It was still mid-March, one of those spring days when noon is like May, and only the cold pearly haze at sunset warns a man that he is not done with winter. The season was absurdly early, for the blackthorn was in flower and the hedge roots were full of primroses. The partridges were paired, the rooks were well on with their nests, and the meadows were full of shimmering grey flocks of fieldfares on their way north. I put up half a dozen snipe on the boggy edge of the stream, and in the bracken in Sturn Wood I thought I saw a woodcock, and hoped that the birds might nest with us this year, as they used to do long ago. It was jolly to see the world coming to life again, and to remember that this patch of England was my own, and all these wild things, so to speak, members of my little household.

      As I say, I was in a very contented mood, for I had found something I had longed for all my days. I had bought Fosse Manor just after the War as a wedding present for Mary, and for two and a half years we had been settled there. My son, Peter John, was rising fifteen months, a thoughtful infant, as healthy as a young colt and as comic as a terrier puppy. Even Mary's anxious eye could scarcely detect in him any symptoms of decline. But the place wanted a lot of looking to, for it had run wild during the War, and the woods had to be thinned, gates and fences repaired, new drains laid, a ram put in to supplement the wells, a heap of thatching to be done, and the garden borders to be brought back to cultivation. I had got through the worst of it, and as I came out of the Home Wood on to the lower lawns and saw the old stone gables that the monks had built, I felt that I was anchored at last in the pleasantest kind of harbour.

      There was a