Читать книгу The Leithen Stories - Buchan John - Страница 37

ROSY-FINGERED DAWN, when, attended by mild airs and a sky of Italian blue, she looked in at Crask next morning, found two members of the household already astir. Mr Palliser-Yeates, coerced by Wattie Lithgow, was starting with bitter self-condemnation to prospect what his guide called ‘the yont side o’ Glenraden.’ A quarter of an hour later Lamancha, armed with a map and a telescope, departed alone for the crest of hill behind which lay the Haripol forest. After that peace fell on the place, and it was not till the hour of ten that Sir Edward Leithen descended for breakfast.

The glory of the morning had against his convictions made him cheerful. The place smelt so good within and without, Mrs Lithgow’s scones were so succulent, the bacon so crisp, and Archie, healed of the toothache, was so preposterous and mirthful a figure that Leithen found a faint zest again in the contemplation of the future. When Archie advised him to get busy about the Larrig he did not complain, but accompanied his host to the gun-room, where he studied attentively on a large-scale map the three miles of the stream in the tenancy of Mr Bandicott.

It seemed to him that he had better equip himself for the part by some simple disguise, so, declining Archie’s suggestion of a kilt, he returned to his bedroom to refit. Obviously the best line was the tourist, so he donned a stiff white shirt and a stiff dress collar with a tartan bow-tie contributed from Sime’s wardrobe. Light brown boots in which he had travelled from London took the place of his nailed shoes, and his thick knickerbocker stockings bulged out above them. Sime’s watch-chain, from which depended a football club medal, a vulgar green Homburg hat of Archie’s, and a camera slung on his shoulders completed the equipment. His host surveyed him with approval.

‘The Blackpool season is beginning,’ he observed. ‘You’re the born tripper, my lad. Don’t forget the picture post cards.’ A bicycle was found, and the late Attorney-General zigzagged warily down the steep road to the Larrig bridge.

He entered the highway without seeing a human soul, and according to plan turned down the glen towards Inverlarrig. There at the tiny post-office he bought the regulation picture post cards, and conversed in what he imagined to be the speech of Cockaigne with the aged post-mistress. He was eloquent on the beauties of the weather and the landscape and not reticent as to his personal affairs. He was, he said, a seeker for beauty-spots, and had heard that the best were to be found in the demesne of Strathlarrig. ‘It’s private grund,’ he was told, ‘but there’s Americans bidin’ there and they’re kind folk and awfu’ free with their siller. If ye ask at the lodge, they’ll maybe let ye in to photograph.’ The sight of an array of ginger-beer bottles inspired him to further camouflage, so he purchased two which he stuck in his side-pockets.

East of the Bridge of Larrig he came to the chasm in the river above which he knew began the Strathlarrig water. The first part was a canal-like stretch among bogs, which promised ill for fishing, but beyond a spit of rock the Larrig curled in towards the road edge, and ran in noble pools and swift streams under the shadow of great pines. This, Leithen knew from the map, was the Wood of Larrigmore, a remnant of the ancient Caledonian Forest. By the water’s edge the covert was dark, but towards the roadside the trees thinned out, and the ground was delicately carpeted with heather and thymy turf. There grazed an aged white pony, and a few yards off, on the shaft of a dilapidated fish-cart, sat a small boy.

Leithen, leaning his bicycle against a tree, prospected the murky pools with the air rather of an angler than a photographer, and in the process found his stiff shirt and collar a vexation. Also the ginger-beer bottles bobbed unpleasantly at his side. So, catching sight of the boy, he beckoned him near. ‘Do you like ginger-beer?’ he asked, and in reply to a vigorous nod bestowed the pair on him. The child returned like a dog to the shelter of the cart, whence might have been presently heard the sound of gluttonous enjoyment. Leithen, having satisfied himself that no mortal could take a fish in that thicket, continued up-stream till he struck the wall of the Strathlarrig domain and a vast castellated lodge.

The lodge-keeper made no objection when he sought admittance, and he turned from the gravel drive towards the river, which now flowed through a rough natural park. For a fisherman it was the water of his dreams. The pools were long and shelving, with a strong stream at the head and, below, precisely the right kind of boulders and outjutting banks to shelter fish. There were three of these pools – the ‘Duke’s,’ the ‘Black Scour,’ and ‘Davie’s Pot,’ were the names Archie had told him – and beyond, almost under the windows of the house, ‘Lady Maisie’s,’ conspicuous for its dwarf birches and the considerable waterfall above it. Here he made believe to take a photograph, though he had no idea how a camera worked, and reflected dismally upon the magnitude of his task. The whole place was as bright and open as the Horse Guards Parade. The house commanded all four pools, which he knew to be the best, and even at midnight, with the owner unsuspecting, poaching would be nearly impossible. What would it be when the owner was warned, and legitimate methods of fishing were part of the contract?

After a glance at the house, which seemed to be deep in noontide slumber, he made his inconspicuous way past the end of a formal garden to a reach where the Larrig flowed wide and shallow over pebbles. Then came a belt of firs, and then a long tract of broken water which was obviously not a place to hold salmon. He realised, from his memory of the map, that he must be near the end of the Strathlarrig beat, for the topmost mile was a series of unfishable linns. But presently he came to a noble pool. It lay in a meadow where the hay had just been cut and was liker a bit of Tweed or Eden than a Highland stream. Its shores were low and on the near side edged with fine gravel, the far bank was a green rise unspoiled by scrub, the current entered it with a proud swirl, washed the high bank, and spread itself out in a beautifully broken tail, so that every yard of it spelled fish. Leithen stared at it with appreciative eyes. The back of a moving monster showed in mid-stream, and automatically he raised his arm in an imaginary cast.

The next second he observed a man walking across the meadow towards him, and remembered his character. Directing his camera hastily at the butt-end of a black-faced sheep on the opposite shore, he appeared to be taking a careful photograph, after which he restored the apparatus to its case and turned to reconnoitre the stranger. This proved to be a middle-aged man in ancient tweed knickerbockers of an outrageous pattern known locally as the ‘Strathlarrig tartan.’ He was obviously a river-keeper, and was advancing with a resolute and minatory air.

Leithen took off his hat with a flourish.

‘Have I the honour, sir, to address the owner of this lovely spot?’ he asked in what he hoped was the true accent of a tripper.

The keeper stopped short and regarded him sternly.

‘What are ye daein’ here?’ he demanded.

‘Picking up a few pictures, sir. I inquired at your lodge, and was told that I might presume upon your indulgence. Pardon me, if I ’ave presumed too far. If I ’ad known that the proprietor was at ’and I would have sought ’im out and addressed my ’umble request to ’imself.’

‘Ye’re makin’ a mistake. I’m no the laird. The laird’s awa’ about India. But Mr Bandicott – that’s him that’s the tenant – has given strict orders that naebody’s to gang near the watter. I wonder Mactavish at the lodge hadna mair sense.’

‘I fear the blame is mine,’ said the agreeable tourist. ‘I only asked leave to enter the grounds, but the beauty of the scenery attracted me to the river. Never ’ave I seen a more exquisite spot.’ He waved his arm towards the pool.

‘It’s no that bad. But ye maun awa’ out o’ this. Ye’d better gang by the back road, for fear they see ye frae the hoose.’

Leithen followed him obediently, after presenting him with a cigarette, which he managed to extract without taking his case from his pocket. It should have been a fag, he reflected, and not one of Archie’s special Egyptians. As they walked he conversed volubly.

‘What’s the name of the river?’ he asked. ‘Is it the Strathlarrig?’

‘No, it’s the Larrig, and that bit you like sae weel is the Minister’s Pool. There’s no a pool like it in Scotland.’

‘I believe you. There is not,’ was the enthusiastic reply.

‘I mean for fish. Ye’ll no ken muckle aboot fishin’.’

‘I’ve done a bit of anglin’ at ’ome. What do you catch here? Jack and perch?’

‘Jack and perch!’ cried the keeper scornfully. ‘Saumon, man. Saumon up to thirty pounds’ wecht.’

‘Oh, of course, salmon. That must be a glorious sport. But a friend of mine, who has seen it done, told me it wasn’t ’ard. He said that even I could catch a salmon.’

‘Mair like a saumon wad catch you. Now, you haud down the back road, and ye’ll come out aside the lodge gate. And dinna you come here again. The orders is strict, and if auld Angus was to get a grip o’ ye, I wadna say what wad happen. Guid day to ye, and dinna stop till ye’re out o’ the gates.’

Leithen did as he was bid, circumnavigated the house, struck a farm track, and in time reached the high road. It was a very doleful tourist who trod the wayside heather past the Wood of Larrigmore. Never had he seen a finer stretch of water or one so impregnably defended. No bluff or ingenuity would avail an illicit angler on that open greensward, with every keeper mobilised and on guard. He thought less now of the idiocy of the whole proceeding than of the folly of plunging in the dark upon just that piece of river. There were many streams where Jim Tarras’s feat might be achieved, but he had chosen the one stretch in all Scotland where it was starkly impossible.

The recipient of the ginger-beer was still sitting by the shafts of his cart. He seemed to be lunching, for he was carving attentively a hunk of cheese and a loaf-end with a gully-knife. As he looked up from his task Leithen saw a child of perhaps twelve summers, with a singularly alert and impudent eye, a much-freckled face, and a thatch of tow-coloured hair bleached almost white by the sun. His feet were bare, his trousers were those of a grown man, tucked up at the knees and hitched up almost under his armpits, and for a shirt he appeared to have a much-torn jersey. Weather had tanned his whole appearance into the blend of greys and browns which one sees on a hill-side boulder. The boy nodded gravely to Leithen, and continued to munch.

Below the wood lay the half-mile where the Larrig wound sluggishly through a bog before precipitating itself into the chasm above the Bridge of Larrig. Leithen left his bicycle by the roadside and crossed the waste of hags and tussocks to the water’s edge. It looked a thankless place for the angler. The clear streams of the Larrig seemed to have taken on the colour of their banks, and to drowse dark and deep and sullen in one gigantic peat-hole. In spite of the rain of yesterday there was little current. The place looked oily, stagnant, and unfishable – a tract through which salmon after mounting the fall would hurry to the bright pools above.

Leithen sat down in a clump of heather and lit his pipe. Something might be done with a worm after a spate, he considered, but any other lure was out of the question. The place had its merits for every purpose but taking salmon. It was a part of the Strathlarrig water outside the park pale, and it was so hopeless that it was not likely to be carefully patrolled. The high road, it was true, ran near, but it was little frequented. If only … He suddenly sat up, and gazed intently at a ripple on the dead surface. Surely that was a fish on the move … He kept his eyes on the river, until he saw something else which made him rub them, and fall into deep reflection …

He was roused by a voice at his shoulder.

‘What for will they no let me come up to Crask ony mair?’ the voice demanded in a sort of tinker’s whine.

Leithen turned and found the boy of the ginger-beer.

‘Hullo! You oughtn’t to do that, my son. You’ll give people heart disease. What was it you asked?’

‘What … for … will … they … no … let … me come … up to Crask … ony mair?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know. What’s Crask?’

‘Ye ken it fine. It’s the big hoose up the hill. I seen you come doon frae it yoursel’ this mornin’.’

Leithen was tempted to deny this allegation and assert his title of tourist, but something in the extreme intelligence of the boy’s face suggested that such a course might be dangerous. Instead he said, ‘Tell me your name, and what’s your business at Crask?’

‘My name’s Benjamin Bogle, but I get Fish Benjie frae most folks. I’ve sell’t haddies and flukes to Crask these twa months. But this mornin’ I was tell’t no to come back, and when I speired what way, the auld wife shut the door on me.’

A recollection of Sir Archie’s order the night before returned to Leithen’s mind, and with it a great sense of insecurity. The argus-eyed child, hot with a grievance, had seen him descend from Crask, and was therefore in a position to give away the whole show. What chance was there for secrecy with this malevolent scout hanging around?

‘Where do you live, Benjie?’

‘I bide in my cairt. My father’s in jyle, and my mither’s lyin’ badly in Muirtown. I sell fish to a’ the gentry.’

‘And you want to know why you can’t sell them at Crask?’

‘Aye, I wad like to ken that. The auld wife used to be a kind body and gie me jeely pieces. What’s turned her into a draygon?’

Leithen was accustomed, in the duties of his profession, to quick decisions on tactics, and now he took one which was destined to be momentous.

‘Benjie,’ he said solemnly, ‘there’s a lot of things in the world that I don’t understand, and it stands to reason that there must be more that you don’t. I’m in a position in which I badly want somebody to help me. I like the look of you. You look a trusty fellow and a keen one. Is all your time taken up selling haddies?’

‘ ’Deed no. Just twa hours in the mornin’, and twa hours at nicht when I gang doun to the cobles at Inverlarrig. I’ve a heap o’ time on my hands.’

‘Good. I think I can promise that you may resume your trade at Crask. But first I want you to do a job for me. There’s a bicycle lying by the roadside. Bring it up to Crask this evening between six and seven. Have you a watch?’

‘No, but I can tell the time braw and fine.’

‘Go to the stables and wait for me there. I want to have a talk with you.’ Leithen produced half a crown, on which the grubby paw of Fish Benjie instantly closed.

‘And look here, Benjie. You haven’t seen me here, or anybody like me. Above all, you didn’t see me come down from Crask this morning. If anybody asks you questions, you only saw a man on a bicycle on the road to Inverlarrig.’

The boy nodded, and his solemn face flickered for a second with a subtle smile.

‘Well, that’s a bargain.’ Leithen got up from his couch and turned down the river, making for the Bridge of Larrig, where the highway crossed. He looked back once, and saw Fish Benjie wheeling his bicycle into the undergrowth of the wood. He was in two minds as to whether he had done wisely in placing himself in the hands of a small ragamuffin, who for all he knew might be hand-in-glove with the Strathlarrig keepers. But the recollection of Benjie’s face reassured him. He did not look like a boy who would be the pet of any constituted authority; he had the air rather of the nomad against whom the orderly world waged war. There had been an impish honesty in his face, and Leithen, who had a weakness for disreputable urchins, felt that he had taken the right course. Besides, the young sleuth-hound had got on his trail, and there had been nothing for it but to make him an ally.

He crossed the bridge, avoided the Crask road, and struck up hill by a track which followed the ravine of a burn. As he walked his mind went back to a stretch on a Canadian river, a stretch of still unruffled water warmed all day by a July sun. It had been as full as it could hold of salmon, but no artifice of his could stir them. There in the later afternoon had come an aged man from Boston, who fished with a light trout rod and cast a deft line, and placed a curious little dry fly several feet above a fish’s snout. Then, by certain strange manoeuvres, he had drawn the fly under water. Leithen had looked on and marvelled, while before sunset that ancient man hooked and landed seven good fish … Somehow that bit of shining sunflecked Canadian river reminded him of the unpromising stretch of the Larrig he had just been reconnoitring.

At a turn of the road he came upon his host, tramping homeward in the company of a most unprepossessing hound. I paused for an instant to introduce Mackenzie. He was a mongrel collie of the old Highland stock, known as ‘beardies,’ and his touzled head, not unlike an extra-shaggy Dandie Dinmont’s, was set upon a body of immense length, girth and muscle. His manners were atrocious to all except his master, and local report accused him of every canine vice except worrying sheep. He had been christened ‘The Bluidy Mackenzie’ after a noted persecutor of the godly, by someone whose knowledge of history was greater than Sir Archie’s, for the latter never understood the allusion. The name, however, remained his official one; commonly he was addressed as Mackenzie, but in moments of expansion he was referred to by his master as Old Bloody.

The said master seemed to be in a strange mood. He was dripping wet, having apparently fallen into the river, but his spirits soared, and he kept on smiling in a light-hearted way. He scarcely listened to Leithen, when he told him of his compact with Fish Benjie. ‘I daresay it will be all right,’ he observed idiotically. ‘Is your idea to pass off one of his haddies as a young salmon on the guileless Bandicott?’ For an explanation of Sir Archie’s conduct the chronicler must retrace his steps.

After Leithen’s departure it had seemed good to him to take the air, so, summoning Mackenzie from a dark lair in the yard, he made his way to the river – the beat below the bridge and beyond the high road, which was on Crask ground. There it was a broad brawling water, boulder-strewn and shallow, which an active man could cross dry-shod by natural stepping-stones. Sir Archie sat for a time on the near shore, listening to the sandpipers – birds which were his special favourites – and watching the whinchats on the hill-side and the flashing white breasts of the water-ousels. Mackenzie lay beside him, an uneasy sphinx, tormented by a distant subtle odour of badger.

Presently Sir Archie arose and stepped out on the half-submerged boulder. He was getting very proud of the way he had learned to manage his game leg, and it occurred to him that here was a chance of testing his balance. If he could hop across on the stones to the other side he might regard himself as an able-bodied man. Balancing himself with his stick as a rope-dancer uses his pole, he in duecourse reached the middle of the current. After that it was more difficult, for the stones were smaller and the stream more rapid, but with an occasional splash and flounder he landed safely, to be saluted with a shower of spray from Mackenzie, who had taken the deep-water route.

‘Not so bad that, for a crock,’ he told himself, as he lay full length in the sun watching the faint line of the Haripol hills overtopping the ridge of Crask.

Half an hour was spent in idleness till the dawning of hunger warned him to return. The crossing as seen from this side looked more formidable, for the first stones could only be reached by jumping a fairly broad stretch of current. Yet the jump was achieved, and with renewed confidence Sir Archie essayed the more solid boulders. All would have gone well had not he taken his eyes from the stones and observed on the bank beyond a girl’s figure. She had been walking by the stream and had stopped to stare at the portent of his performance. Now Sir Archie was aware that his style of jumping was not graceful and he was discomposed by his sudden gallery. Nevertheless, the thing was so easy that he could scarcely have failed had it not been for the faithful Mackenzie. That animal had resolved to follow his master’s footsteps, and was jumping steadily behind him. But three boulders from the shore they jumped simultaneously, and there was not standing-room for both. Sir Archie, already nervous, slipped, recovered himself, slipped again, and then, accompanied by Mackenzie, subsided noisily into three feet of water.

He waded ashore to find himself faced by a girl in whose face concern struggled with amusement. He lifted a dripping hand and grinned.

‘Silly exhibition, wasn’t it? All the fault of Mackenzie! Idiotic brute of a dog, not to remember my game leg!’

‘You’re horribly wet,’ the girl said, ‘but it was sporting of you to try that crossing. What about dry clothes?’

‘Oh, no trouble about that. I’ve only to get up to Crask.’

‘You’re Sir Archibald Roylance, aren’t you? I’m Janet Raden. I’ve been with papa to call on you, but you’re never at home.’

Sir Archie, having now got the water out of his eyes and hair, was able to regard his interlocutor. He saw a slight girl with what seemed to him astonishingly bright hair and very blue and candid eyes. She appeared to be anxious about his dry clothes, for she led the way up the bank at a great pace, while he limped behind her. Suddenly she noticed the limp.

‘Oh, please forgive me, I forgot about your leg. You had another smash, hadn’t you, besides the one in the war – steeplechasing, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it didn’t signify. I’m all right again and get about anywhere, but I’m a bit slower on the wing, you know.’

‘You’re keen about horses?’

‘Love ’em.’

‘So do I. Agatha – that’s my sister – doesn’t care a bit about them. She would like to live all the year at Glenraden, but – I’m ashamed to say it – I would rather have a foggy November in Warwickshire than August in Scotland. I simply dream of hunting.’

The ardent eyes and the young grace of the girl seemed marvellous things to Sir Archie. ‘I expect you go uncommon well,’ he murmured.

‘No, only moderate. I only get scratch mounts. You see I stay with my Aunt Barbara, and she’s too old to hunt, and has nothing in her stables but camels. But this year …’ She broke off as she caught sight of the pools forming round Sir Archie’s boots. ‘I mustn’t keep you here talking. You be off home at once.’

‘Don’t worry about me. I’m wet for days on end when I’m watchin’ birds in the spring. You were sayin’ about this year?’

Her answer was a surprising question. ‘Do you know anybody called John Macnab?’

Sir Archibald Roylance was a resourceful mountebank and did not hesitate.

‘Yes. The distiller, you mean? Dhuniewassel Whisky? I’ve seen his advertisements – “They drink Dhuniewassel, In cottage and castle—” That chap?’

‘No, no, somebody quite different. Listen, please, if you’re not too wet, for I want you to help me. Papa has had the most extraordinary letter from somebody called John Macnab, saying he means to kill a stag in our forest between certain dates, and daring us to prevent him. He is going to hand over the beast to us if he gets it and pay fifty pounds, but if he fails he is to pay a hundred pounds. Did you ever hear of such a thing?’

‘Some infernal swindler,’ said Archie darkly.

‘No. He can’t be. You see the fifty pounds arrived this morning.’

‘God bless my soul!’

‘Yes. In Bank of England notes, posted from London. Papa at first wanted to tell him to go to – well, where Papa tells people he doesn’t like to go. But I thought the offer so sporting that I persuaded him to take up the challenge. Indeed, I wrote the reply myself. Mr Macnab said that the money was to go to a charity, so Agatha is having the fifty pounds for her native weaving and dyeing – she’s frightfully keen about that. But if we win the other fifty pounds papa says the best charity he can think of is to prevent me breaking my neck on hirelings, and I’m to have it to buy a hunter. So I’m very anxious to find out about Mr John Macnab.’

‘Probably some rich Colonial who hasn’t learned manners.’

‘I don’t think so. His manners are very good, to judge by his letter. I think he is a gentleman, but perhaps a little mad. We simply must beat him, for I’ve got to have that fifty pounds. And – and I want you to help me.’

‘Oh, well, you know – I mean to say – I’m not much of a fellow …’

‘You’re very clever, and you’ve done all kinds of things. I feel that if you advised us we should win easily, for I’m sure you had far harder jobs in the war.’

To have a pretty young woman lauding his abilities and appealing with melting eyes for his aid was a new experience in Sir Archie’s life. It was so delectable an experience that he almost forgot its awful complications. When he remembered them he flushed and stammered.

‘Really, I’d love to, but I wouldn’t be any earthly good. I’m an old crock, you see. But you needn’t worry – your Glenraden gillies will make short work of this bandit … By Jove, I hope you get your hunter, Miss Raden. You’ve got to have it somehow. Tell you what, if I’ve any bright idea I’ll let you know.’

‘Thank you so much. And may I consult you if I’m in difficulties?’

‘Yes, of course. I mean to say, No. Hang it, I don’t know, for I don’t like interferin’ with your father’s challenge.’

‘That means you will. Now, you mustn’t wait another moment. Good-bye. Will you come over to lunch at Glenraden?’

Then she broke off and stared at him. ‘I forgot. Haven’t you smallpox?’

‘What! Smallpox? Oh, I see! Has old Mother Claybody been putting that about?’

‘She came to tea yesterday twittering with terror, and warned us all not to go within a mile of Crask.’

Sir Archie laughed somewhat hollowly. ‘I had a bad toothache and my head tied up, and I daresay I said something silly, but I never thought she would take it for gospel. You see for yourself that I’ve nothing the matter with me.’

‘You’ll have pneumonia the matter with you, unless you hurry home. Good-bye. We’ll expect you to lunch the day after to-morrow.’ And with a wave of her hand she was gone.

The extraordinary fact was that Sir Archie was not depressed by the new tangle which encumbered him. On the contrary, he was in the best of spirits. He hobbled gaily up the by-road to Crask, listened to Leithen, when he met him, with less than half an ear, and was happy with his own thoughts. I am at a loss to know how to describe the first shattering impact of youth and beauty on a susceptible mind. The old plan was to borrow the language of the world’s poetry, the new seems to be to have recourse to the difficult jargon of psychologists and physicians; but neither, I fear, would suit Sir Archie’s case. He did not think of nymphs and goddesses or of linnets in spring; still less did he plunge into the depths of a subconscious self which he was not aware of possessing. The unromantic epithet which rose to his lips was ‘jolly.’ This was for certain the jolliest girl he had ever met – regular young sportswoman and amazingly good-lookin’, and he was dashed if she wouldn’t get her hunter. For a delirious ten minutes, which carried him to the edge of the Crask lawn, he pictured his resourcefulness placed at her service, her triumphant success, and her bright-eyed gratitude.

Then he suddenly remembered that alliance with Miss Janet Raden was treachery to his three guests. The aid she had asked for could only be given at the expense of John Macnab. He was in the miserable position of having a leg in both camps, of having unhappily received the confidences of both sides, and whatever he did he must make a mess of it. He could not desert his friends, so he must fail the lady; wherefore there could be no luncheon for him, the day after to-morrow, since another five minutes’ talk with her would entangle him beyond hope. There was nothing for it but to have a return of smallpox. He groaned aloud.

‘A twinge of that beastly toothache,’ he explained in reply to his companion’s inquiry.

When the party met in the smoking-room that night after dinner two very weary men occupied the deepest arm-chairs. Lamancha was struggling with sleep; Palliser-Yeates was limp with fatigue, far too weary to be sleepy. ‘I’ve had the devil of a day,’ said the latter. ‘Wattie took me at a racing gallop about thirty miles over bogs and crags. Lord! I’m stiff and footsore. I believe I crawled more than ten miles, and I’ve no skin left on my knees. But we spied the deuce of a lot of ground, and I see my way to the rudiments of a plan. You start off, Charles, while I collect my thoughts.’

But Lamancha was supine.

‘I’m too drunk with sleep to talk,’ he said. ‘I prospected all the south side of Haripol – all this side of the Reascuill, you know. I got a good spy from Sgurr Mor, and I tried to get up Sgurr Dearg, but stuck on the rocks. That’s a fearsome mountain, if you like. Didn’t see a blessed soul all day – no rifles out – but I heard a shot from the Machray ground. I got my glasses on to several fine beasts. It struck me that the best chance would be in the corrie between Sgurr Mor and Sgurr Dearg – there’s a nice low pass at the head to get a stag through and the place is rather tucked away from the rest of the forest. That’s as far as I’ve got at present. I want to sleep.’

Palliser-Yeates was in a very different mood. With an ordnance map spread out on his knees he expounded the result of his researches, waving his pipe excitedly.

‘It’s a stiff problem, but there’s just the ghost of a hope. Wattie admitted that on the way home. Look here, you fellows – Glenraden is divided, like Gaul, into three parts. There’s the Home beat – all the low ground of the Raden glen and the little hills behind the house. Then there’s the Carnbeg beat to the east, which is the best I fancy – very easy going, not very high and with peat roads and tracks where you could shift a beast. Last there’s Carnmore, miles from anywhere, with all the highest tops and as steep as Torridon. It would be the devil of a business, if I got a stag there, to move it. Wattie and I went round the whole marches, mostly on our bellies. No, we weren’t seen – Wattie took care of that. What a noble shikari the old chap is!’

‘Well, what’s your conclusion?’ Leithen asked.

Palliser-Yeates shook his head. ‘That’s just where I’m stumped. Try to put yourself in old Raden’s place. He has only one stalker and two gillies for the whole forest, for he’s very short-handed, and as a matter of fact he stalks his beasts himself. He’ll consider where John Macnab is likeliest to have his try, and he’ll naturally decide on the Carnmore beat, for that’s by far the most secluded. You may take it from me that he has only enough men to watch one beat properly. But he’ll reflect that John Macnab has got to get his stag away, and he’ll wonder how he’ll manage it on Carnmore, for there’s only one bad track up from Inverlarrig. Therefore he’ll conclude that John Macnab may be more likely to try Carnbeg, though it’s a bit more public. You see, his decision isn’t any easier than mine. On the whole, I’m inclined to think he’ll plump for Carnmore, for he must think John Macnab a fairly desperate fellow who will aim first at killing his stag in peace, and will trust to Providence for the rest. So at the moment I favour Carnbeg.’

Leithen wrinkled his brow. ‘There are three of us,’ he said. ‘That gives us a chance of a little finesse. What about letting Charles or me make a demonstration against Carnmore, while you wait at Carnbeg?’

‘Good idea! I thought of that too.’

‘You’d better assume Colonel Raden to be in very full possession of his wits,’ Leithen continued. ‘The simple bluff won’t do – he’ll see through it. He’ll think that John Macnab is the same wary kind of old bird as himself. I found out in the war that it didn’t do to underrate your opponent’s brains. He’s pretty certain to expect a feint and not to be taken in. I’m for something a little subtler.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that you feint in one place, so that your opponent believes it to be a feint and pays no attention – and then you sail in and get to work in that very place.’

Palliser-Yeates whistled. ‘That wants thinking over … How about yourself?’

‘I’ve studied the river, and you never in your life saw such a hopeless proposition. All the good pools are as open as the Serpentine. Wattie stated the odds correctly.’

‘Nothing doing there?’

‘Nothing doing, unless I take steps to shorten the odds. So I’ve taken in a partner.’

The others stared, and even Lamancha woke up.

‘Yes. I interviewed him in the stable before dinner. It’s the little ragamuffin who sells fish – Fish Benjie is the name he goes by. Archie, I hope you don’t mind, but I told him to resume his morning visits. They’re my best chance for consultations.’

‘You’re taking a pretty big risk, Ned,’ said his host. ‘D’you mean to say you’ve let that boy into the whole secret?’

‘I’ve told him everything. It was the only way, for he had begun to suspect. I admit it’s a gamble, but I believe I can trust the child. I think I know a sportsman when I see him.’

Archie still shook his head. ‘There’s something else I may as well tell you. I met one of the Raden girls to-day – the younger – she was on the bank when I fell into the Larrig. She asked me point-blank if I knew anybody called John Macnab?’

Lamancha was wide awake. ‘What did you say?’ he asked sharply.

‘Oh, lied of course. Said I supposed she meant the distiller. Then she told me the whole story – said she had written the letter her father signed. She’s mad keen to win the extra fifty quid, for it means a hunter for her this winter down in Warwickshire. Yes, and she asked me to help. I talked a lot of rot about my game leg and that sort of thing, but I sort of promised to go and lunch at Glenraden the day after tomorrow.’

‘That’s impossible,’ said Lamancha.

‘I know it is, but there’s only one way out of it. I’ve got to have smallpox again.’

‘You’ve got to go to bed and stay there for a month,’ said Palliser-Yeates severely. ‘Now, look here, Archie. We simply can’t have you getting mixed up with the enemy, especially the enemy women. You’re much too susceptible and far too great an ass.’

‘Of course not,’ said Archie, with a touch of protest in his voice. ‘I see that well enough, but it’s a black look-out for me. I wish to Heaven you fellows had chosen to take your cure somewhere else. I’m simply wreckin’ all my political career. I had a letter from my agent tonight, and I should be touring the constituency instead of playin’ the goat here. All I’ve got to say is that you’ve a dashed lot more than old Raden against you. You’ve got that girl, crazy about her hunter, and anyone can see that she’s as clever as a monkey.’

But the laird of Crask was not thinking of Miss Janet Raden’s wits as he went meditatively to bed. He was wondering why her eyes were so blue, and as he ascended the stairs he thought he had discovered the reason. Her hair was spun-gold, but she had dark eye-lashes.