Brothers & Sisters - John & Anna Buchan Edition (Collection of Their Greatest Works). Buchan JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.
words made all the difference to Jaikie’s comfort. He was called a “little rat”—he was being threatened; and threats had always one effect on him. They roused his slow temper, and they caused him to turn very pale, just as six years earlier they would have made him weep. Allins saw his whitening face, and thought it was the consequence of Mastrovin’s glower and the formidable silence of the company. He saw only a rag of a journalist, who had been drunk in the afternoon, and was now feeling the effects. He did not see the little shiver which ran across Jaikie’s face, leaving it grey and pinched, and, even if he had, he would not have known how to interpret it.
“I think you will tell me,” said Mastrovin with a menacing smoothness. “We will make it worth your while. If you don’t, we can make it unpleasant for you.”
Jaikie’s acting was admirable. He let a wild eye rove among the faces and apparently find no comfort. Then he seemed to surrender.
“All right. Keep your hair on… Well, first there’s a man they call the Count—that’s all I could get from the Knockraw beaters.”
He described in accurate detail the appearance and garb of Casimir, of the Professor, of Prince Odalchini. He in no way drew upon his imagination, for he was speaking to men to whom the three had for years been familiar.
“Is there not a fourth?” Mastrovin asked.
Jaikie appeared to consider. “Oh, yes. There’s a young one. He came the night before last, and was out shooting yesterday.” He described elaborately the appearance of Prince John. “He wears a white mackintosh,” he added.
Mastrovin nodded.
“Now, will you tell us why you think these people have some hold on Mr Craw?”
Jaikie appeared to hesitate. “Well—ye see—I don’t just quite like. Ye see, Craw’s my employer… If he heard I had been mooching round his house and spying—well, I’d be in the soup, wouldn’t I?”
The alcoholic bravado of the afternoon had evaporated. Jaikie was now the treacherous journalist, nervous about his job.
“You are afraid of offending Mr Craw,” said Mastrovin. “Mr Galt, I assure you that you have much more reason to be afraid of offending us… Also we will make it worth your while.”
Threats again. Jaikie’s face grew a shade paler, and his heart began to thump. He appeared to consider anew.
“Well, I’ll tell ye… Craw never entertains anybody. His servants tell me that he never has any guests from the neighbourhood inside the door. But the people at Knockraw dined at Castle Gay last Saturday night, and the Castle Gay party dined at Knockraw on Monday night. That looks queer to begin with.”
The others exchanged glances. They apparently had had news of these incidents, and Jaikie confirmed it. Their previous knowledge also established Jaikie’s accuracy.
“Anything more?”
“Plenty. The people at Knockraw have brought their own servants with them. Everybody inside the house is a foreigner. That looks as if they had something they wanted to keep quiet… It would have been far cheaper to get servants in the Canonry, like other tenants.”
Again Mastrovin nodded.
“Anything more?”
“This,” said Jaikie, allowing a smile to wrinkle his pallor. “These Knockraw foreign servants are never away from Castle Gay. They spend half their time crawling about the place. I’ve seen one of them right up at the edge of the terrace. I daresay they’re all poachers at home, for they’re grand hands at keeping cover. Now, what does that mean?” Jaikie seemed to be gaining confidence and warming to his task. “It means that they’re not friends of Craw. They’ve got something coming for him. They’re spying on him … I believe they’re up to no good.”
Mastrovin bent his brows again.
“That is very interesting and very odd. Can you tell us more, Mr Galt?”
“I can’t give ye more facts,” said Jaikie briskly, “but I can give ye my guesses… These Knockraw folk want something out of Craw. And they’re going to get it. And they’re going to get it soon. I’ll tell ye why I think that. The polling’s on Friday, and on that day there’s a holiday at Castle Gay. Craw’s very keen—so they tell me—on his people exercising what he calls their rights as citizens. All the outdoor servants and most of the indoor will be in Portaway, and, if I’m any judge, they’ll no be back till morning. Maybe you don’t know what a Scotch election is like, especially in the Canonry. There’ll be as many drunks in Portaway as on a Saturday night in the Cowcaddens. The Knockraw foreigners will have Craw to themselves, for yon man Barbon, the secretary, is no mortal use.”
Jaikie observed with delight that his views roused every member of the company to the keenest interest, and he could not but believe that he had somehow given his support to a plan which they had already matured. It was with an air of covering his satisfaction that Mastrovin asked, in a voice which he tried to make uninterested:
“Then you think that the Knockraw people will visit Castle Gay on Friday night?”
“They won’t need to visit it, for they’ll be there already,” said Jaikie.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that by this time they’ve all shifted their quarters, bag and baggage, to the Castle.”
“How the devil do you know that?” It was Allins who spoke, and his voice was as sharp as a dog’s bark.
“I found it out from one of the Castle maids. I can tell ye it’s all arranged. The servants have left, but the gentry are shifting over to the Castle… I was at Knockraw this morning, and I saw them packing the guns in their cases. They’re done with shooting for the year, unless,” he added with a grin, “there’s some shooting of a different kind at Castle Gay.”
This news produced an impression as great as the most sensitive narrator could have desired. The seven men talked excitedly among themselves— not, to Jaikie’s regret, in French.
“It looks as if ye didn’t believe me,” he said, with irritation in his tone. “Well, all I can say is, send out somebody to Knockraw the morn’s morning, and if the place is not all shuttered up and not a chimney smoking, ye can call me the worst kind of liar.”
“We accept what you say, Mr Galt,” said Mastrovin, “and we will test it … Now, on another matter. You say that you have explored the park of the Castle very thoroughly, and have seen the Knockraw servants engaged in the same work… We have here a map. As a proof of your good faith, perhaps you will show us the route by which these servants approached the gardens unobserved.”
He produced a sheet of the largest-scale Ordnance Survey.
“Fine I can do that,” said Jaikie. “In my young days I was a Boy Scout. But I’m awful dry with so much talking. I’ll thank you for some more beer.”
His glass was filled, and he drained it at a draught, for he was indeed very thirsty. A space was cleared on the table, and with a pencil he showed how the park could be entered at the Callowa bridge and elsewhere, and what sheltered hollows led right up to the edge of the terrace. He even expounded the plan of the house itself. “There’s the front door… A man could get in at any one of these lower windows. They’re never shuttered… No, the gardeners’ houses are all down by the kitchen garden on the east bank of the Callowa. The chauffeurs and mechanics live on the other side just under the Castle Hill… The keepers? Mackillop is miles away at the Blae Moss; one of the under-keepers lodges in Starr, and one lives at the South Lodge. Craw has a very poor notion of guarding his privacy, for all he’s so keen on it.”
Jaikie yawned heavily—partly in earnest, for he was very weary. He consulted the cheap watch at the end of his recently purchased chain. He was searching for the right note on which to leave, and presently he found it. It was no occasion for ceremony.
“I