SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.
and lifeless as an Elgin marble. The two seemed to have become one with nature, and to be as much part of the sleeping landscape as the clump of birches whose leaves did not even shimmer in that bright silent noontide.
The quiet did something to soothe Janet’s restlessness, but after luncheon, which she partook of in solitary state, she found it returning. A kind of folie de doute assailed her, not unknown to generals in the bad hours which intervene between the inception and execution of a plan. She had a strong desire to ride up to Crask and have a talk with Sir Archie, and was only restrained by the memory of that young man’s last letter, and the hint it contained of grave bodily maladies. She did not know whether to believe in these maladies or not, but clearly she could not thrust her company upon one who had shown a marked distaste for it…Yet she had her pony saddled and rode slowly in the direction of Strathlarrig, half hoping to see a limping figure on the highway. But not a soul was in sight on the long blinding stretch or at the bridge where the Crask road started up the hill. Janet turned homeward with a feeling that the world had suddenly become dispeopled. She did not turn her head once, and so failed to notice first one figure and then another, which darted across the high road, and disappeared in the thick coverts of the Crask hill-side.
At the Castle she found Agatha and Junius Bandicott having tea, and presently her father arrived in a state of heat and exhaustion. Stayed with a whisky-and-soda, Colonel Raden became communicative. He had been over the high tops of Carnmore, had visited the Carn Moss, and Corrie Gall, had penetrated the Grey Beallach, had heard the tales of the gillies and of the herd-boys in their eyries, and his report was “all clear.” The deer were undisturbed, according to James Fraser, since the morning. Moreover, the peat-road from Inverlarrig had relapsed owing to recent rains into primeval bog which no wheeled vehicle and few ponies could traverse. The main fortress seemed not only unassailed but unassailable, and Colonel Raden viewed the morrow with equanimity.
The Carnbeg party had a different story to tell, or rather the main members of it had no story at all. Agatha and Junius Bandicott appeared to have sauntered idly into the pleasant wilderness of juniper and heather which lay between the mossy summits, to have lunched at leisure by the famous Cailleach’s Well, and to have sauntered home again. They reported that it had been divine weather, for a hill breeze had tempered the heat, and that they had observed the Claybody’s yacht far out at the entrance of Loch Larrig. Also Junius had seen his first blue hare, which he called a “jack rabbit.” Of anything suspicious there had been neither sign nor sound.
But at this moment a maid appeared with the announcement that “Macpherson was wanting to see the Colonel,” and presently the head stalker arrived in what John Bunyan calls a “pelting heat.” Generally of a pale complexion which never tanned, he was now as red as a peony, and his grey beard made a startling contrast with his flamboyant face. Usually he was an embarrassed figure inside the Castle, having difficulties in disposing of his arms and legs, but now excitement made him bold.
“I’ve seen him, Cornel,” he panted. “Seen him crawlin’ like an adder and runnin’ like a sta-ag!”
“Seen who? Get your breath, Macpherson!”
“Him—the man—Macnab. I beg your pardon for my pechin’, sir, but I came down the hill like I was a rollin’ stone…It was up on the backside of Craig Dhu near the old sheep-fauld. I seen a man hunkerin’ among the muckle stones, and I got my glass on him, and he was a sma’ man that I’ve never seen afore. I was wild to get a grip of him, and I started runnin’ to drive him to the Cailleach’s Well, where Miss Agatha and the gentleman was havin’ their lunch. He seen me, and he took the road I ettled, and I thought I had him, for, thinks I, the young gentleman is soople and lang in the leg. But he seen the danger and turned off down the burn, and I couldna come near him. It would have been all right if I could have made the young gentleman hear, but though I was roarin’ like a stot he was deafer than a tree. Och, it is the great peety.”
“Agatha, what on earth were you doing?” Janet asked severely.
Junius Bandicott blushed hotly. “I never heard a sound,” he said. “There must be something funny about the acoustics of that place.”
Colonel Raden, who knew the power of his stalker’s lungs, looked in a mystified way from one to the other.
“Didn’t you see Macpherson, Agatha?” he asked. “He must have been in view coming over the shoulder of Craig Dhu.”
It was Agatha’s turn to blush, which she did with vigour, and, to Mr Bandicott’s eyes, with remarkable grace.
“Ach’ I was in view well enough,” went on the tactless Macpherson, “and I was routin’ like a wild beast. But the twa of them was that busy talking they never lifted their eyes, and the man, as I tell you, slippit off down the burn. It is a gre-at peety, whatever.”
“What did you do then?” the Colonel demanded.
“I followed him till I lost him in that awful rough corrie…But I seen him again—aye, I seen him again, away over on the Maam above the big wud. Standin’, as impident as ye please, on the sky-line.”
“How long after you lost him in the corrie?” Janet asked.
“Maybe half an hour.”
“Impossible,” she said sharply. “No living man could cover three miles of that ground in half an hour.”
“I was thinkin’ the body was the Deevil.”
“You saw a second man. John Macnab has an accomplice.”
Macpherson scratched his shaggy head. “I wouldn’t say but ye’re right, Miss Janet. Now I think of it, it was a bigger man. He didn’t bide a moment after I caught sight of him, but I got my glass on him, and he was a bigger man. Aye, a bigger man, and, maybe, a younger man.”
“This is very disturbing,” said Colonel Raden, walking to the window and twisting his moustache. “What do you make of it, Nettie?”
“I think the affair is proceeding, as generals say about their battles, ‘according to plan.’ We didn’t know before that John Macnab had a confederate, but of course he was bound to have one. There was nothing against it in the terms of the wager.”
“Of course not, of course not. But what the devil was he doing on Carnbeg? There was no shot, Macpherson?”
“There was no shot, and there will be no shot. There wass no beasts the side they were on, and Alan is up there now with one of James’s laddies.”
“It’s exactly what we expected,” said Janet. “It proves that we were right in guessing that John Macnab would take Carnmore. He came here to-day to frighten us about Carnbeg—make us think that he was going to try there, and get us to mass our forces. To-morrow he’ll be on Carnmore, and then he’ll mean business. I hoped this would happen, and I was getting nervous when Agatha and Mr Bandicott came home looking as blank as the Babes in the Wood. But I wish I knew which was really John Macnab—the little one or the tall one.”
“What does it matter?” her parent asked.
“Because I should be happier if he were tall. Little men are far more cunning.”
Junius Bandicott, having recovered his composure, chose to be amused. “I take that as a personal compliment, Miss Janet. I’m pretty big, and I can’t say I want to be thought cunning.”
“Then John Macnab will get his salmon,” said Janet with decision.
Junius laughed. “You bet he won’t. I’ve gotten the place watched like the Rum Fleet at home. A bird can’t hardly cough without its being reported to me. My fellows are on to the game, and John Macnab will have to be a mighty clever citizen to come within a mile of the Strathlarrig water. Nobody is allowed to fish it but myself till the 3rd of September is past. I reckon angling just now is the forbidden fruit in this neighbourhood. I’ve seen but the one fellow fishing in the last three days—on the bit of slack water five hundred yards below the bridge. It belongs to Crask, I think.”
Janet nodded. “No good