Brothers & Sisters - John & Anna Buchan Edition (Collection of Their Greatest Works). Buchan JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.
showed it by frequent artificial sneezes, but he was not proof against the respectful blandishments of the children. Consequently when he left the carriage at Rinks, he had two of their jujubes sticking in his damp fleece.
Jaikie, with the dog in his arms, sheltered behind a shed till the train had left the platform. He had a glimpse of Allins’s unconscious profile as he was borne past. Then he went out to the roadside clachan which was Rinks, and turned his steps over the salty pastures to the riverside.
The machars, yellowing with autumn, stretched for miles before him till in the south they ended in a blue line of sea. The Callowa, forgetting its high mountain cradle, had become a sinuous trench with steep mud banks, at the bottom of which—for the tide was out—lay an almost stagnant stream. Above the grasses could be seen here and there the mast of a small vessel, waiting in the trough for the tide. The place was alive with birds—curlew and plover and redshank and sandpiper—and as he jumped the little brackish ditches Jaikie put up skeins of wild duck. It was a world in which it was good to be alive, for in the air there was both the freedom of the hills and the sting of the sea.
Presently he reached a little colony of huts beside the water. Down in the ditch which was the Callowa lay three small luggers; there was an antiquated slip and a yard full of timber. One of the huts was a dwelling-house, and before its door, sitting on a log, was a man in sea-boots and jersey, busy mending a sail. He looked up as Jaikie appeared, dropped his task, took the pipe from his mouth, and grinned broadly. “Whae would hae thocht to see YOU here?” was his greeting. “Is Mr McCunn wi’ ye?”
“Not this time,” said Jaikie, finding a place on the log. “But he’s in this countryside. How’s the world treating you, Mr Maclellan?”
Jaikie had come here several times with Dickson, when the latter, growing weary of hill waters, desired to fill his lungs with sea air, and appease his appetite for slaughter by catching the easy salt-water fish. In Mr Maclellan’s boat they had fished the length of the Solway, and beyond it far down the English coast and round the Mull. Once even in a fine April they had crossed to the Isle of Man and made the return journey by night.
“No sae bad,” Maclellan answered Jaikie’s question. “Ye’ll see the Rosabelle’s new pentit. It’s been a fair season for us folk, and the weather has been mercifu’!… It’s ower lown the noo, but it’ll no be long or it changes. The auld folk was sayin’ that this month will gang oot in snaw. When are you and Mr McCunn comin’ to hae a shot at the jukes? The first nip o’ frost and there’ll be a walth o’ birds on the tideway.”
“Mr McCunn’s not much of a shot,” said Jaikie, “and just now he has other things to think about… What’s that?” he asked suddenly, pointing towards the sea. On the right of what seemed to be the Callowa mouth rose the top-gear of a small ship, a schooner with auxiliary steam.
“That?” said Maclellan, turning his deep-set, long-sighted eyes in the direction of Jaikie’s finger. “That’s a yatt—a bonny wee yatt. She’s lyin’ off Fallatown. What she’s doin’ there I canna tell, unless she belongs to some shooting-tenant”
“Has she been there long?”
“Since the day afore yesterday. I was thinkin’ o’ takin’ the dinghy and gaun down to hae a look at her.”
Jaikie pondered. A yacht at Fallatown at this season of the year was a portent. Now he understood the reason of Allins’s journey… He understood something more. The people at the Hydropathic would not stick at trifles. Kidnapping? No, there could be no reason for that. They did not want to put themselves in the wrong. But it might be that they would desire to leave quietly and speedily, when their business was done, and the little ship at Fallatown gave them the means… Jaikie smiled. It was a pleasure to deal with people who really meant business. He no longer felt that he had been too ingenious.
“Is the Rosabelle in good trim?” he said.
“Never better. As ye see, she’s new pentit.”
“Well, Mr McCunn wants you to do a job for him. He’s staying up the water at Starr, and he has a friend with him who wants to get over to Cumberland to-morrow night. It’s a quicker way than going round by Gledmouth and Carlisle. Could you put him over to Markhaven—that’s where he wants to go—some time before midnight to-morrow?”
Maclellan considered. “High tide’s about 9.15. I could slip down wi’ the ebb… There’s no muckle wind, but what there is is frae the north… Ay, I could set your freend over if he cam here round about eleven—maybe, a wee thing later.”
“That’s splendid. Mr McCunn will bring him down. He wants to see you again … There’s just one small thing. Keep the business entirely to yourself. You see, Mr McCunn’s friend has a reason for wanting to get away quietly… I’m not quite sure what it is, but there’s some tiresome engagement he wants to cut, and it wouldn’t do if the story got about that he had made a moonlight flitting to avoid it. He’s rather a big man in his way, I believe. A politician, I think.”
Maclellan nodded with profound comprehension. “There’s walth o’ poaliticians in the Canonry the noo,” he observed. “It’s a dowg’s trade. I don’t blame ane o’ the puir deevils for takin’ the jee. Tell Mr McCunn I’ll never breathe a word o’t… Peety there’s nae smugglin’ nowadays. I wad be a fine hand at it, bidin’ here wi’ nae wife and nae neebors.”
Jaikie spent a pleasant morning. He boarded the Rosabelle and renewed his memory of her tiny cabin; he enjoyed a rat hunt in Woolworth’s company; he helped Maclellan to paint the dinghy: he dined with him at noon on Irish stew. Then he borrowed his bicycle. There was a train to Portaway at 1.30, but it was possible that Allins might travel by it, and Jaikie was taking no needless risks. “Send back the thing when ye’re through wi’t,” Maclellan told him. “I’ve nae need o’t the noo. I thought o’ bicycling in to vote the morn, but I’m inclined to bide at hame. I’m seeck o’ poalitics.”
Going very slow, so that Woolworth might keep up with him, Jaikie managed to avoid Portaway altogether, and joined the Callowa valley three miles above the town. After that he went warily, reconnoitring every turn of the road, till he was inside the Mains avenue. He arrived a few minutes after the hour he had named to Dougal.
At the edge of the lawn Alison was waiting for him.
“Oh, Jaikie,” she cried, “isn’t this a stupendous lark! Such a party in the drawing-room! A real live Pretender to a Throne—and very nice-looking! Freddy as anxious as a hen, and Dougal as cross as thunder—I’ve discovered that that’s Dougal’s way of showing nervousness! And Mr Craw! What have you done with Mr Craw? He’s as bold as brass, and nobody can manage him except Aunt Hatty… Jaikie, you’re very disreputable. I don’t like your clothes a bit. Where did you get that horrible scarf?”
“I was worse yesterday,” was all that Jaikie would say. “What I want to know is—have you kept Prince John indoors? And what about the servants? They mustn’t talk.”
“He has never put his head outside since he arrived yesterday— except for an hour after dark last night when I took him for a walk on the hill. The servants have nothing to talk about. We call him John, and pretend he is another Australian cousin like Robin. Freddy sent a groom to Knockraw to pick up his kit.”
“How did that go off?”
“All right. The groom went to the back door. There was a good deal of luggage—enough to fill the dogcart. He said he met a lot of people—a man in the avenue and several on the road. I suppose these were the spies?”
“The groom went straight to Castle Gay?”
“Yes. Middlemas arranged for getting the things over here after dark.”
“That was lucky. The sight of the luggage going to the Castle will have helped my reputation for speaking the truth, when the story gets to the Hydropathic this morning. You realise that all this neighbourhood is being watched?”
“Of course I do. It’s a delicious feeling. There’s