Brothers & Sisters - John & Anna Buchan Edition (Collection of Their Greatest Works). Buchan JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.
are not to be trifled with. They have got lines down everywhere, and for all I know they may have discovered the flight of Casimir and his friends and followed them. But Casimir doesn’t greatly matter as long as the Prince is not with him. There’s nothing wrong in three Evallonian gentlemen visiting Scotland; the trouble begins when they get into Mr Craw’s neighbourhood, and when they have the Prince in their company. I thought it safer to break up the covey.”
“But how is the Prince to get away?”
“I have arranged all that. There’s a man, Maclellan, down at Rinks— he’s a friend of Mr McCunn. He has a boat, and he’ll put the Prince across to Markhaven and never breathe a word about it. My suggestion is that Mr McCunn and the Prince drive to Rinks to-morrow night, getting there about eleven. There’s a train leaves Markhaven at 8.15 next morning which gets to London at 4.30. Once in London he is for all practical purposes safe… The difficulty will lie in getting him away from here. There’s a man in Portaway will bring a car—a friend of mine; but I may as well tell you that every corner of this place will be pretty well watched. I told the Evallonians that the Prince was now at Castle Gay. We must do something to keep up that pretence.”
“To-morrow night is the Callowa Club Ball,” said Mrs Brisbane-Brown, but no one was listening.
“I think Mr Charvill should transfer himself to the Castle as soon as possible,” said Jaikie. “He’s about the Prince’s height.”
“I have three tickets for the Ball,” went on the hostess. “I usually take tickets, but I have not been for years. This year I proposed to take Alison and Robin.”
“Mr Charvill must wear the Prince’s white waterproof—whatever the weather—and show himself on the terrace. There will be people to see him, and it will divert attention from the Mains.”
Mrs Brisbane-Brown obtained an audience at last, for she raised her voice to a high pitch of authority.
“I have a plan,” she said. “His Royal Highness will come with me to the Ball. It is fancy dress, and he can go as Prince Charles Edward—I have the clothes, wig and all. They belonged to my husband, who was something of the Prince’s height and figure… There will be no need for special precautions. A car from Portaway will take my niece, my cousin, and myself to the Station Hotel. At a certain hour in the evening the Prince will leave us and motor to Rinks, where Mr McCunn will see him safely on board. It is all perfectly simple.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Jaikie fervently. He saw the one snag in his plan neatly removed. “I’ll arrange about the car. His Royal Highness must lie very close here till to-morrow evening. It might be a good thing if he went to bed. And Mr Charvill had better get to the Castle and inside that waterproof.”
Mr Craw made one last protest.
“You have cast me for a very unpleasant part.” He looked with disfavour at Jaikie, whom he had come to fear, and with an air of appeal at Dougal, whom he regarded more particularly as his henchman. It was the henchman who replied:
“You’ll have nothing to do, Mr Craw. Simply to sit in your own chair in your own library and watch those foreigners making idiots of themselves. Then you can say what is in your mind, and I hope the Almighty will put some winged words into your mouth.”
An hour later Jaikie stood with Dougal on the terrace of the Mains in the fast-gathering twilight. To them appeared Alison, bearing in her arms a reluctant Woolworth.
“Such a thing has never happened before,” she declared. “This evil dog of yours has seduced Tactful and Pensive into raiding the chicken run. They have killed three cockerels… Jaikie, you’ve introduced a touch of crime into this quiet countryside.”
“And that’s true, Miss Westwater,” said Dougal. “I don’t know if you realise it, but we’re up against something rather bigger than we pretended indoors.”
“I want Jaikie to tell me one thing,” said the girl. “Why didn’t he let Prince John go with the others? I wondered at the time. Oh, I know the reason he gave, but it wasn’t very convincing.”
Jaikie grinned. “Haven’t you guessed? I wanted to please Dickson McCunn. Dougal and I owe everything to him, and it’s not much we can do in return. He’s a great romantic character, and you can see how he’s taken up with Prince John. He was telling me that he has been looking up books at the Castle and finds that the Prince is partly descended from Elizabeth of Bohemia and from the Sobieskis. Prince Charlie’s mother was a Sobieski. It will be meat and drink to him to be helping the Prince to escape in the middle of the night in a boat on the Solway shore.”
The girl laughed softly. “There couldn’t be a better reason,” she said… “Then about tomorrow night? Why have you taken such pains to arrange a visit to Castle Gay—telling the enemy that everybody would be there— encouraging them, you might say?”
“It was the common-sense plan. I had other reasons, too, and I’ll tell you them. I want to see those blighters made to look foolish. I want to see it with my own eyes. You know, they called me a rat, and tried to threaten me … Also, I was thinking of Mr Craw. This last week has made him a new man.”
“That is certainly true. He is losing all his shyness. And Aunt Hatty is so good for him. I believe that, if this crisis goes on much longer, he’ll propose to her.”
“To-morrow night,” said Jaikie, “will put the finishing touch to Mr Craw. If he confronts the Evallonians in his own house and packs them off with a cursing, he’ll have henceforth the heart of an African lion.”
“He’ll need it,” said Dougal solemnly. “I tell you we’re up against something pretty big… I have the advantage of knowing a little about the gentry down at Portaway. My politics have taken me into some queer places, and I’ve picked up news that never gets into the Press… First of all, Craw is right to some extent about the Evallonian Republic. It’s not what the newspapers make out. There’s a queer gang behind the scenes—a good deal of graft, a fair amount of crime, and a lump of Communism of rather a dirty colour… And these people at the Hydropathic are some of the worst of them. They gave you false names last night, but Casimir, so Miss Westwater tells me, recognised them from your description, and he gave them their right names. I know something about Rosenbaum and Dedekind and Ricci, and I know a whole lot about Mastrovin. They’re desperate folk, and they know that their power is on a razor edge, so they won’t stick at trifles… You may be right. They may only want to find the Monarchists in a thoroughly compromising position and publish it to the world… On the other hand, they may have a darker purpose. Or perhaps they have two purposes, and if one fails they will try the other. It would suit their book to make Casimir and Craw the laughing-stock of Europe, but it would suit their book even better to have done with Casimir and Co. altogether—and especially with Prince John… To remove them quietly somewhere where they would be out of action … For I haven’t a doubt that Casimir is right, and that any moment Evallonia may kick the Republicans over the border.”
“I thought of that,” said Jaikie. “They have a yacht waiting at Fallatown.”
Dougal listened with wide eyes to this fresh piece of news.
“To-morrow night,” he said solemnly, “there’s going to be some sort of a battle. And we must prepare every detail as carefully as if it were a real battle. Man, Jaikie!” and he beat his companion’s back, “isn’t this like old times?”
“How marvellous!” Alison cried, and the dusk did not conceal the glow in her eyes. “I’m going to be in it. Do you think I am going to that silly ball? Not I!”
“You will certainly be in it,” Jaikie told her. “You and I are going to have the busiest evening of our lives.”
CHAPTER 18
SOLWAY SANDS
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