Читать книгу The Key Above the Door - Maurice Walsh - Страница 6

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IT was a hot, still forenoon. I was seated on an old deck-chair outside the door of my cottage that nestles on the sunny side of Cairn Rua, below the wood of dark pine and above the shining water of Loch Ruighi. With elbow on one knee, writing-pad on the other, and pipe in mouth, I was mentally wrestling with words and ideas, and losing grip every other sentence. For I was feeling lazy that morning, and was ready to be distracted by little things. My Early Rose potato-shaws, lengthening and leaning in the sun, had already cast their blossoms, and I considered at needless length the luxury of new potatoes, salt, and goat’s milk for dinner. Also the bell-heather was out in purple splashes all over the lower hillside, and my bees filled the air with the ecstatic hum of the treasure-laden. I cast a contemplative eye on one big double-walled hive where the hum was uproarious, and where a little cluster of bees had commenced to gather below the shelter-porch.

‘You will be swarming to-day, little fellows,’ I addressed them, ‘and here am I waiting on you.’

What with the heat and the hum and my own innate laziness I was almost in a doze, chin on breast and pipe sagging, when I was roused rudely by the harsh blare of an electric horn. The pipe dropped between my knees, and I sat up with a jerk and stared to where the road curved with the shore of Loch Ruighi, a bare quarter of a mile below me. A motor—a gray touring-car not quite unfamiliar—was halted at the point where the path reached the road, and people—several people—were alighting from it.

‘Thunder and likewise blitzen!’ swore I. ‘Has my young woman in white already started her game? Likely she will have described my ruffianly conduct to her males.’

For amongst the browns and grays of holiday-clothed men I made out the white dress of a woman; and the squat, familiar figure of Davy Thomson, the head keeper, I could not mistake at that distance.

Head thrown forward and arms crossed, I contemplated them as they came up the path that wound in the heather amongst the outcroppings of lichened limestone. There were Leng the big man, Murray the lean one, Davy Thomson, sturdy and old, and my lady in white. The path was steep and they came slowly, and I had time to consider. Usually have I been lucky in having time given me to weigh things, and that luck has earned me a reputation for wisdom in rough places. Finally I spoke to myself, as my habit was.

‘What they come for I can only guess at, but it would be a good guess. Until I know what they know and what the woman has told them, I must play an evasive game in the dark. Let us be calm at all costs, and humorous if we can, and avoid quarrelling over trifles with one’s poor fellow, who is bound on his own wheel of pride and privilege. Better than that we cannot do.’

When they came to the green level before the house—the green level cropped short by Suzanne, where thyme grows and a little yellow-flowered trefoil—I rose to my feet and waited. Davy, always a courtly old man, led them forward and did the only introducing he thought necessary.

‘A fine warm day the day, Mr King,’ said he. ‘This is Mr Leng, oor new tenant at Reroppe yonder, an’ he wad like to be speirin’ a few questions.’

Leng nodded very shortly, and I bowed with some precision and a small gesture of the hand.

‘Who made the world, Davy, and when and why?—all these questions I can answer, and more as well,’ I said, and Murray laughed.

I looked them all over with an appraising eye and waited. Leng was a very tall, splendidly-built man, just the least degree gone to flesh: a splendid, handsome, duskily-flushed, infernally proud young giant, and a good man amongst men; what he was amongst women, one might surmise curiously, judging by his moulded lips and heavy round jowl. Murray was a tall man and desperately lean. Davy Thomson was sturdy, bearded, wrinkled, masked with the serving-man’s mask, and he supported his strong old legs on my good hazel staff.

My lady was very beautiful and very calm, and her face was masked too. It told me nothing that I wanted to know.

I swung the deck-chair forward to her side, and ‘Will the lady be seated?’ said I. She bowed her dark head slightly, placed a gloved hand on the top bar of the chair, but did not take the seat.

‘Is she my enemy, then, that she will not sit?’ I wondered to myself.

Leng, who had been eyeing me with some intentness, started bluntly enough.

‘We are looking for two young men,’ he said, ‘and suspect that they were in this vicinity yesterday. We thought you would be able to give us some information.’

He stopped there and looked to me for an answer, and I could not tell whether he expected an avowal of service or a show of embarrassment.

‘Well, Mr Leng,’ said I, ‘and what information could I be giving you?’

‘Did you see two young fellows about or on the loch yesterday?’

‘Well, now,’ said I judiciously, ‘I might, and, again, I might not. Were they friends of yours, Mr Leng?’

His black bar of brow came down a little and his well-inflected Southern voice coldened noticeably. He would, of course, hate to be questioned by a rough-looking devil who lived in a ‘black’ house on a hillside.

‘What has that to do with the plain question I asked you?’ he asked.

‘I would not be calling it a plain question, Mr Leng. Why would you be looking for two young men?’

‘Not for their good, I assure you,’ he said crisply.

‘Exactly,’ said I. ‘How would you expect me to answer your question?’

‘Directly and briefly, of course.’

‘And if I said I had not seen your two young men, would you suspect me of lying?’

I think he was about to blurt out a hot affirmative, but I stopped him.

‘Please don’t, Mr Leng. Let me put it another way. You seek two young men—not for their good. If I had not seen them yesterday I could say so, but if I had and they were friends of mine I might, if the occasion demanded it, give a similar answer to an angry man looking for them.’

‘What is your answer, then?’ he asked shrewdly. ‘I am an angry man looking for them.’

‘Humble though I be, Mr Leng, I dislike answering any question in the dark; want of confidence is most discouraging. Moreover, the young men may be thirled to the noble end of this apparent feud, and I would not like to bear witness against nobility. How am I to know unless I am told? Only a simple hermit, I have not yet succeeded in subduing pride. You will take me into your confidence, or else——’

‘Or else what, sir?’ he smiled, a little contemptuously.

‘Or else you can sit on the hot hob of hell for a thousand years,’ I said simply; ‘and God forgive me for using such language before a lady!’

I bowed to her, and nearly laughed at the astonishment on her face. Mr Leng was astonished too, but had no time to adopt an outraged air before his friend Murray saved the situation for the time. A bark of genuine laughter came from him, and he stepped forward to the big man’s side.

‘Mr King is more or less right, Leng,’ he said. ‘If you want any information you’ll have to be frank and explain why you are an angry man with just cause.’

Leng’s face was now hotly flushed, and the anger in his dark eyes was full of menace and a hearty desire for action. ‘What’s the use in bandying words?’ he said to his friend, and there stopped abruptly as if a fresh thought had come to him. He looked at me intently, calculatingly, almost cunningly. ‘Ah!’ he said, almost to himself, ‘perhaps I see your point, Mr King. We will forget your language and try you out to a finish.’ And then he went on very quickly. ‘Yesterday we caught two young poachers on the Leonach——’

Here a certain memory led me to interrupt him quickly. ‘Were you trying the fishing, by any chance, yourself?’

‘Of course.’

‘You caught no salmon yesterday surely?’ I said, an eyebrow lifted.

‘We did,’ said Murray quickly, ‘and a nice twelve-pounder too.’

‘Man alive!’ I cried, with enthusiasm, ‘that was grand fishing for a hopeless day. Was it on a minnow or an eel-tail?’

‘That can wait,’ said Leng hurriedly, but I had caught the lean one’s smile and the half-shamed grin of Davy Thomson.

Quickly and fairly Leng narrated the previous day’s doings, as he had seen them, up to the point where the car had been run away with. There he stopped, and I asked with some show of surprise: ‘Do you tell me that two bare-footed young wastrels were able to steal and manipulate your car?’

‘There is where we should like some elucidation, sir,’ he replied. ‘The chauffeur insists that the two were fully clothed when they assaulted him. And that points to an accomplice—and one who must be acquainted with Reroppe.’

‘And whom would you be suspecting?’ I asked interestedly.

‘By heavens, sir,’ he cried, coming to the crux bluntly, ‘we suspect you!’

‘I was beginning to suspect that,’ I said sadly. ‘And would you tell me now on what you base your suspicions?’

Here I looked steadily at the lady, expecting to read in her face that she had borne witness against me. But she looked at me with equal steadiness, and neither face nor eyes gave any sign. Her face was calm, nonchalant, sombre, almost austere, and her eyes were dark and still below the rim of the panama. I was about to turn my eyes back to Leng, when with a natural easiness she drew the deck-chair a little round and sank into it; she joined her white-gloved hands in her lap, and thrust forward a neat white shoe and focused her eyes thereon. Her action gave me heart of grace, for it was the act of no enemy, but a plain enough intimation that she was no traitor. Knowing that, I was careless of Leng’s suspicions. He was very decided about them though, and did not hesitate to voice them.

‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘your fencing alone would lead one to suspect you. I put you a plain question, and, instead of answering, you have been cross-questioning in your peculiar native fashion. But you are not dealing with fools, Mr King.’

‘I cannot tell you whether I am not,’ said I.

Here Murray, that imperturbable lean man, took a decisive part.

‘Let us have a little clarity,’ he said. ‘There is no use in going into abstract grounds for suspicion. The fact is, Mr King, that we do not know whether you were on the Leonach yesterday; we do not know if you were the third and wisest member of the redoubtable poaching party.’

I gave this man all my attention, for he was no fool, at any rate.

‘All the same we have some grounds for suspicion,’ he went on. ‘I’ll give you the facts, and you can give us your opinion if you like. It was too late last night to take any steps to recover the car, and this morning before calling in the police—a difficult business in these wilds—we decided to take a look round.’

‘And found your car?’ I queried, with a side-nod towards the road.

‘Yes. That’s it down there. We found it where your road joins the road from Reroppe to Bridge of Carr. This road of yours is very seldom used, we noticed, and it has a fine track-retaining dust. Besides the track of the car we also found the track of a motor-cycle with a side-car, and that track we followed back to its halting-place, where your path reaches the road. You will forgive us if we made a few deductions.’

‘I will, surely,’ I said, ‘and I am obliged by your frankness. Tell me, now, did you find anything else worth telling?’

‘Queer enough,’ he went on, ‘we found our two salmon—the one killed by us, and the one snared by the lads. They had been overlooked in the car at Reroppe, and the poachers seemed to have overlooked them too.’

‘ ’Tis just the thing that poachers would do,’ I said with sarcasm, and I felt proud of my two young friends. Also I felt a wave of anger against the man Leng, but did not care to show it.

‘Well, well!’ I said resignedly, ‘you are entitled to your deductions. I am suspect indeed, and, being suspect, what faith can you place in me?’

‘Do you admit you were the third party, then?’ questioned Leng quickly.

‘What use would that be to me?’ I said. ‘But if you will listen I would like to put a few considerations before you.’

‘Go on, sir,’ said Leng. ‘We would condemn no one unheard.’

‘You would not, indeed! As I see it, your case against the two young men is for poaching and illegal fishing. The subsequent events are in the nature of a nice little vendetta, and proceeded directly and naturally from, shall we say, your slightly over-vigorous expression of authority? You will be magnanimous enough, Mr Leng, to base your case on illegal fishing?’

‘Suppose I do, Mr King?’

‘I am sure, Mr Leng, you would never charge any one with what you too may be charged with.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said frowningly; but he was touched hardly.

‘I mean, sir, that not even a fishing proprietor is entitled to lift salmon from a pool by means of a long-handled gaff. I don’t see why he shouldn’t, occasionally—when the fishing is bad—but there it is.’

Well I knew that long-handled gaff and Davy Thomson’s expertness in wielding it, and it was clear that neither of the fish caught yesterday was caught fairly.

‘You are admitting, then,’ questioned Leng in his travail, ‘that you saw me, yesterday, killing salmon in that way?’

‘I will not admit anything, and will not ask you to admit anything either.’

‘You are magnanimous.’

‘And would like you to be.’

‘You have no right to make that request.’

‘Be reasonable, then. You must see how I am placed.’

‘I do; and, having learned what I wanted to know, will now bid you good-day.’

‘Consider this before you go, then. Your position is quite untenable.’

‘We shall see as to that.’

‘It is, you know. You cannot very well prosecute where you yourself are equally in the wrong. As regards the mere poaching, you acted like a man of spirit and hot blood, though rather high-handedly. You man-handled one of them, who resented it even to physical endeavour; then you illegally arrested them, took them down that rough river-bed bare-footed, and finally locked them up in your garage. Autocratic work that, Mr Leng! With or without an accomplice they got away in your car, and showed their contempt for your salmon. Strange poachers surely, Mr Leng?’

‘Anything else to add, Mr King?’

‘Only that you would be well advised to forget that anything happened yesterday. You have recovered your car and your salmon; you punished the lads rather severely, and acquired only that reasonable black-eye in return; and altogether the advantage is yours, whether you deserve it or not. I do not think you do, but that will not worry you. And another thing, Mr Leng—you pay me a compliment in thinking that these lads are friends of mine. You have my thanks for that, and I regret that, in return, I am unable to give you any information. That is final, and you will just have to do what you please about it.’

I looked him straight in the eye, and waited for what he might have to say. And somehow at that moment he had no words ready to his tongue.

And then, before he could summon up a fitting speech, my big double-walled hive swarmed in fury and delight.