SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.
Fire away, and tell the whole story.”
Sir Edward Leithen obeyed, and it may be said that the tale lost nothing in his telling. He described the case of three gentlemen, not wholly useless to their country, who had suddenly fallen into ennui. He told of a cure, now perfected, but of a challenge not yet complete. “I’ve been trying to persuade Lord Lamancha to drop the thing,” he said, “but the Claybodys have put his back up, and I’m not sure that I blame him. It didn’t matter about you or Bandicott, for you took it like sportsmen, and we should have felt no disgrace in being beaten by you. But Claybody is different.”
“By Gad, sir, you are right,” the Colonel shouted, rising to his feet and striding about the room. “He and his damned navvies are an insult to every gentleman in the Highlands. They’re enough to make Harald Blacktooth rise from the dead. I should never think anything of Lord Lamancha again— and I’ve thought a devilish lot of him up to now—if he took this lying down. Do you know, sir”—turning to Lamancha—“that I served in the Scots Guards with your father—we called them the Scots Fusilier Guards in those days—and I am not going to fail his son.”
Sir Edward Leithen was a philosopher, with an acute sense of the ironies of life, and as he reflected that here was a laird, a Tory, and a strict preserver of game working himself into a passion over the moral rights of the poacher, he suddenly relapsed into helpless mirth. Colonel Raden regarded him sternly and uncomprehendingly, but Janet smiled, for she too had an eye for comedy.
“I’m tremendously grateful to you,” Lamancha said. “You know more about stalking than all of us put together, and we want your advice.”
“Janet,” commanded her parent, “you have the best brain in the family. I’ll be obliged if you’ll apply it to this problem.”
For an hour the anxious conclave surrounded the spread-out ordnance map. Wattie was summoned, and with a horny finger expounded the probable tactics of Macnicol and the presumable disposition of the navvy guard. At the end of the consultation Lamancha straightened his back.
“The odds are terribly steep. I can see myself dodging the navvies, and with Wattie’s help getting up to a stag. But if Macnicol and the gillies are perched round the Sanctuary they are morally certain to spot us, and, if we have to bolt, there’s no chance of getting the beast over the march. That’s a hole I see no way out of.”
“Janet,” said the Colonel, “do you?”
Janet was looking abstractedly out of the window. “I think it is going to clear up,” she observed, disregarding her father’s question. “It will be a fine afternoon, and then, if I am any judge of the weather, it will rain cats and dogs in the evening.”
“We had better scatter after luncheon,” said Lamancha, “and each of us go for a long stride. We want to be in training for to-morrow.”
After the Colonel had suggested half a dozen schemes, the boldness of which was only matched by their futility, the Radens rose to go. Janet signalled to Benjie, who slipped out after her, and the two spoke in whispers in the hall, while Archie was collecting the mackintoshes from the kitchen.
“I want you to be at Haripol this afternoon. Wait for me a little on this side of the lodge about half-past three.”
Benjie grinned and nodded. “Aye, lady, I’ll be there.” He, too, had a plan for shortening the odds, and he had so great a respect for Janet’s sagacity that he thought it probable that she might have reached his own conclusion.
As Janet had foretold, it was a hot afternoon. The land steamed in the sun, but every hill-top was ominously clouded. While the inhabitants of Crask were engaged in taking stealthy but violent exercise among the sinuosities of Sir Archie’s estate, Janet Raden mounted her yellow pony and rode thoughtfully towards Haripol by way of Inverlarrig and the high road. There were various short-cuts, suitable for a wild-cat like Benjie, but after the morning’s torrential rains she had no fancy for swollen bogs and streams. She found Benjie lurking behind a boulder near the lodge, and in the shelter of a clump of birches engaged him in earnest conversation. Then she rode decorously through the gates and presented herself at the castle door.
Haripol was immense, new, and, since it had been built by a good architect out of good stone, not without its raw dignity. Janet found Lady Claybody in a Tudor hall which had as much connection with a Scots castle as with a Kaffir kraal. There was a wonderful jumble of possessions—tapestries which included priceless sixteenth-century Flemish pieces, and French fakes of last year; Ming treasures and Munich atrocities; armour of which about a third was genuine; furniture indiscriminately Queen Anne, Sheraton, Jacobean, and Tottenham Court Road; and pictures which ranged from a Sir Joshua (an indifferent specimen) to a recent Royal Academy portrait of Lord Claybody. A feature was the number of electric lamps to illumine the hours of darkness, the supports of which varied from Spanish altar-candlesticks to two stuffed polar bears and a turbaned Ethiopian in coloured porcelain.
Lady Claybody was a heavily handsome woman still in her early fifties. The purchase of Haripol had been her doing, for romance lurked in her ample breast, and she dreamed of a new life in which she should be an unquestioned great lady far from the compromising environment where the Claybody millions had been won. Her manner corresponded to her ambition, for it was stately and aloof, her speech was careful English seasoned with a few laboriously acquired Scots words, and in her household her wish was law. A merciful tyrant, she rarely resorted to ultimata, but when she issued a decree it was obeyed.
She was unaffectedly glad to see Janet, for the Radens were the sort of people she desired as friends. Two days before she had been at her most urbane to Agatha and the Colonel, and now she welcomed the younger daughter as an ambassador from that older world which she sought to make her own. A small terrier drowned her greetings with epileptic yelps.
“Silence, Roguie,” she enjoined. “You must not bark at a fellow- countrywoman. Roguie, you know, is so high-strung that he reacts to any new face. You find me quite alone, my dear. Our daughters do not join us till next week, when we shall have a houseful for the stalking. Now I am having a very quiet, delicious time drinking in the peace of this enchanted glen.”
She said no word of John Macnab, who was doubtless the primary cause of this solitude. Lord Claybody and Johnson, it appeared, were out on the hill. Janet chattered on the kind of topics which she felt suitable—hunting in the Midlands, the coming Muirtown Gathering, the political meeting of yesterday. “Claybody thought Sir Archie Roylance rather extravagant,” said the lady, “but he was greatly impressed with Lord Lamancha’s speech. Surely it is absurd that this part of the Highlands, which your sister says was so loyal to Prince Charlie, should be a hot-bed of radicalism. Claybody thinks that that can all be changed, but not with a candidate who truckles to socialist nonsense.”
Janet was demure and acquiescent, sighing when her hostess sighed, condemning when she condemned. Presently the hot sun shining through the windows suggested the open air to Lady Claybody, who was dressed for walking.
“Shall we stroll a little before tea?” she asked. “Wee Roguie has been cooped indoors all morning, and he loves a run, for he comes of a very sporting breed.”
They set forth accordingly, into gardens bathed in sunshine, and thence to the coolness of beechwoods. The Reascuill, after leaving its precipitous glen, flows, like the Raden, for a mile or two in haughlands, which are split by the entry of a tributary, the Doran, which in its upper course is the boundary between Haripol and Crask. Between the two streams stands a wooded knoll which is a chief pleasaunce of the estate. It is a tangle of dwarf birches, bracken and blaeberry, with ancient Scots firs on the summit, and from its winding walks there is a prospect of the high peaks of the forest rising black and jagged above the purple ridges.
At its foot they crossed the road which followed the river into the forest, and Janet caught sight of a group of men lounging by the bridge.
“Have you workmen on the place just now?” she asked.
“Only wood-cutters, I think,” said Lady Claybody.
Wee Roguie plunged madly into the undergrowth, and presently