The Leithen Stories (20 page)

‘Drive straight to the Castle and tell them to leave the beast before the door. You understand, Benjie? Before the door – not in the larder. I'm going to strike home through the woods, for I'm an awful sight.'

‘Ye look very bonny, lady,' said the gallant Benjie as he took up the reins.

Janet watched the strange outfit lumber from the hollow and nearly upset over a hidden boulder. It had the appearance of a moving peat-stack, with a solitary horn jutting heavenwards like a withered branch. Once again the girl subsided on the heather and laughed till she ached.

The highway by the Larrrig side slept in the golden afternoon. Not a conveyance had disturbed its peace save the baker's cart from Inverlarrig, which had passed about three o'clock. About half-past five a man crossed it – a man who had descended from the hill and used the stepping-stones where Sir Archibald Roylance had come to grief. He was a tall man with a rifle, hatless, untidy and very warm, and he seemed to desire to be unobserved, for he made certain that the road was clear before
he ventured on it. Once across, he found shelter in a clump of broom, whence he could command a long stretch of the highway, almost from Glenraden gates to the Bridge of Larrig.

Mr Palliser-Yeates, having reached sanctuary – for behind him lay the broken hillsides of Crask – mopped his brow and lit a pipe. He did not seem to be greatly distressed at the result of the afternoon. Indeed, he laughed – not wildly like Janet, but quietly and with philosophy. ‘A very neat hold-up,' he reflected. ‘Gad, she came on like a small destroying angel … That's the girl Archie's been talking about … a very good girl. She looked as if she'd have taken on an army corps … Jolly romantic ending – might have come out of a novel. Only it should have been Archie, and a prospect of wedding bells – what? … Anyway, we'd have won out all right but for the girl, and I don't mind being beaten by her …'

His meditations were interrupted by the sound of furious wheels on the lone highway, and he cautiously raised his head to see an old horse and an older cart being urged towards him at a canter. The charioteer was a small boy, and above the cart sides projected a stag's horn.

Forgetting all precautions, he stood up, and at the sight of him Benjie, not without difficulty, checked the ardour of his much-belaboured beast, and stopped before him.

‘I've gotten it,' he whispered hoarsely. ‘The stag's in the cairt. The lassie and me histed him in, and she tell't me to drive to the Castle. But when I was out o' sicht o' her, I took the auld road through the wud and here I am. We've gotten the stag off Glenraden ground and we can hide him up at Crask, and I'll slip doun i' the cairt afore mornin' and leave him ootbye the Castle wi' a letter from John Macnab. Fegs, it was a near thing!'

Benjie's voice rose into a shrill paean, his disreputable face shone with unholy joy. And then something in Palliser-Yeates's eyes cut short his triumph.

‘Benjie, you little fool, right about turn at once. I'm much obliged to you, but it can't be done. It isn't the game, you know. I chucked up the sponge when Miss Raden challenged me, and I can't go back on that. Back you go to Glenraden and hand over the stag. Quick, before you're missed … And look here – you're a first-class sportsman, and I'm enormously grateful to you. Here is something for your trouble.'

Benjie's face grew very red as he swung his equipage round.
‘I see,' he said. ‘If ye like to be beat by a lassie, dinna blame me. I'm no wantin' your money.'

The next moment the fish-cart was clattering in the other direction.

To a mystified and anxious girl, pacing the gravel in front of the Castle, entered the fish-cart. The old horse seemed in the last stages of exhaustion, and the boy who drove it was a dejected and sparrow-like figure.

‘Where in the world have you been?' Janet demanded.

‘I was run awa wi', lady,' Benjie whined. ‘The auld powny didna like the smell o' the stag. He bolted in the wud, and I didna get him stoppit till verra near the Larrig Bridge.'

‘Poor little Benjie! Now you're going to Mrs Fraser to have the best tea you ever had in your life, and you shall also have ten shillings.'

‘Thank you kindly, lady, but I canna stop for tea. I maun awa down to Inverlarrig for my fish.' But his hand closed readily on the note, for he had no compunction in taking money from one who had made him to bear the bitterness of incomprehensible defeat.

MISS JANET RADEN had a taste for the dramatic, which that night was nobly gratified. The space in front of the great door of the Castle became a stage of which the sole furniture was a deceased stag, but on which event succeeded event with a speed which recalled the cinema rather than the legitimate drama.

First, about six o'clock, entered Agatha and Junius Bandicott from their casual wardenship of Carnbeg. The effect upon the young man was surprising. Hitherto he had only half believed in John Macnab, and had regarded the defence of Glenraden as more or less of a joke. It seemed to him inconceivable that, even with the slender staffing of the forest, one man could enter and slay and recover a deer. But when he heard Janet's tale he became visibly excited, and his careful and precise English, the bequest of his New England birth, broke down into college slang.

‘The man's a crackerjack,' he murmured reverentially. ‘He has us all rocketing around the mountain tops, and then takes advantage of my dad's blasting operations and raids the front yard. He can pull the slick stuff all right, and we at Strathlarrig had better get cold towels round our heads and do some thinking. Our time's getting short, too, for he starts at midnight the day after to-morrow … What did you say the fellow was like, Miss Janet? Young, and big, and behaved like a gentleman? It's a tougher proposition than I thought, and I'm going home right now to put old Angus through his paces.'

With a deeply preoccupied face Junius, declining tea, fetched his car from the stableyard and took his leave.

At seven-fifteen Colonel Raden, bestriding a deer pony, emerged from the beech avenue, and waved a cheerful hand to his daughters.

‘It's all right, my dears. Not a sign of the blackguard. The men will remain on Carnmore till midnight to be perfectly
safe, but I'm inclined to think that the whole thing is a fiasco. He has been frightened away by our precautions. But it's been a jolly day on the high tops, and I have the thirst of all creation.'

Then his eyes fell on the stag. ‘God bless my soul,' he cried, ‘what is that?'

‘That,' said Janet, ‘is the stag which John Macnab killed this afternoon.'

The Colonel promptly fell off his pony.

‘Where – when?' he stammered.

‘On the Home beat,' said Janet calmly. The situation was going to be quite as dramatic as she had hoped. ‘I saw it fall, and ran hard and got up to it just when he was starting the gralloch. He was really quite nice about it.'

‘What did he do?' her parent demanded.

‘He held up his hands and laughed and cried ‘
Kamerad!
' Then he ran away.'

‘The scoundrel showed a proper sense of shame.'

‘I don't think he was ashamed. Why should he be, for we accepted his challenge. You know, he's a gentleman, papa, and quite young and good looking.'

Colonel Raden's mind was passing through swift stages from exasperation to unwilling respect. It was an infernal annoyance that John Macnab should have been suffered to intrude on the sacred soil of Glenraden, but the man had played the boldest kind of hand, and he had certainly not tailored his beast. Besides, he had been beaten – beaten by a girl, a daughter of the house. The honour of Glenraden might be considered sacrosanct after all.

A long drink restored the Colonel's equanimity, and the thought of their careful preparations expended in the void moved him to laughter.

‘ 'Pon my word, Nettie, I should like to ask the fellow to dinner. I wonder where on earth he is living. He can't be far off, for he is due at Strathlarrig very soon. What did young Bandicott say the day was?'

‘Midnight, the day after tomorrow. Mr Junius feels very solemn after today, and has hurried home to put his house in order.'

‘Nettie,' said the Colonel gravely, ‘I am prepared to make the modest bet that John Macnab gets his salmon. Hang it all, if he could outwit us – and he did it, confound him – he is bound to outwit the Bandicotts. I tell you what, John Macnab
is a very remarkable man – a man in a million, and I'm very much inclined to wish him success.'

‘So am I,' said Janet; but Agatha announced indignantly that she had never met a case of grosser selfishness. She announced, too, that she was prepared to join in the guarding of Strathlarrig.

‘If you and Junius are no more use than you were on Carnbeg today, John Macnab needn't worry,' said Janet sweetly.

Agatha was about to retort when there was a sudden diversion. The elder Bandicott appeared at a pace which was almost a run, breathing hard, and with all the appearance of strong excitement. Fifty yards behind him, could be seen the two Strathlarrig labourers, making the best speed they could under the burden of heavy sacks. Mr Bandicott had no breath left to speak, but he motioned to his audience to give him time and permit his henchmen to arrive. These henchmen he directed to the lawn, where they dropped their sacks on the grass. Then, with an air which was almost sacramental, he turned to Colonel Raden.

‘Sir,' he said, ‘you are privileged –
we
are privileged – to assist in the greatest triumph of modern archaeology. I have found the coffin of Harald Blacktooth with the dust of Harald Blacktooth inside it.'

‘The devil you have!' said the Colonel. ‘I suppose I ought to congratulate you, but I'm bound to say I'm rather sorry. I feel as if I had violated the tomb of my ancestors.'

‘You need have no fear, sir. The dust has been reverently restored to its casket, and tomorrow the Piper's Ring will show no trace of the work. But within the stone casket there were articles which, in the name of science, I have taken the liberty to bring with me, and which will awaken an interest among the learned not less, I am convinced, than Schlie-mann's discoveries at Mycenae. I have found, sir, incredible treasures.'

‘Treasures!' cried all three of his auditors, for the word has not lost its ancient magic.

Mr Bandicott, with the air of one addressing the Smithsonian Institution, signalled to his henchmen, who thereupon emptied the sacks on the lawn. A curious jumble of objects lay scattered under the evening sun – two massive torques, several bowls and flagons, spear-heads from which the hafts had long
since rotted, a sword-blade, and a quantity of brooches, armlets, and rings. A dingy enough collection they made to the eyes of the onlookers as Mr Bandicott arranged them in two heaps.

‘These,' he said, pointing to the torques, armlets, and flagons, ‘are, so far as I can judge, of solid gold.'

The Colonel called upon his Maker to sanctify his soul. ‘Gold! These are great things! They must be prodigiously valuable. Are they mine, or yours, or whose?'

‘I am not familiar with the law of Scotland on the matter of treasure trove, but I assume that the State can annex them, paying you a percentage of their value. For myself, I gladly waive all claims. I am a man of science, sir, not a treasure-hunter … But the merit of the discovery does not lie in those objects, which can be paralleled from many tombs in Scotland and Norway. No, sir, the tremendous, the epoch-making value is to be found in these.' And he indicated some bracelets and a necklace which looked as if they were made of queerly-marked and very dirty shells.

Mr Bandicott lifted one and fingered it lovingly.

‘I have found such objects in graves as far apart as the coast of Labrador and the coast of Rhode Island, and as far inland as the Ohio basin. These shells were the common funerary adjunct of the primitive inhabitants of my country, and they are peculiar to the North American continent. Do you see what follows, sir?'

The Colonel did not, and Mr Bandicott, his voice thrilling with emotion, continued:

‘It follows that Harald Blacktooth obtained them from the only place he could obtain them, the other side of the Atlantic. There is historical warrant for believing that he voyaged to Greenland; and now we know that he landed upon the main North American continent. The legends of Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky are verified by archaeology. In you, sir, I salute, most reverently salute, the representative of a family to whom belongs the credit hitherto given to Columbus.'

Colonel Raden plucked feebly at his moustache, and Janet, I regret to say, laughed. But her untimely merriment was checked by Mr Bandicott, who was pronouncing a sort of benediction.

‘I rejoice that it has been given to me, an American, to solve this secular riddle. When I think that the dust which an hour
ago I touched, and which has lain for centuries under that quiet mound, was once the man who, first of Europeans, trod our soil, my imagination staggers. Colonel Raden, I thank you for having given me the greatest moment of my not uneventful life.'

He took off his hat, and the Colonel rather shame-facedly removed his. The two men stood looking solemnly at each other till practical considerations occurred to the descendant of the Viking.

‘What are you going to do with the loot?' he asked.

‘With your permission, I will take it to Strathlarrig, where I can examine and catalogue it at my leisure. I propose to announce the find at once to the world. Tomorrow I will return with my men and remove the traces of our excavation.'

Mr Bandicott departed in his car, sitting erect at the wheel in a strangely priest-like attitude, while the two men guarded the treasure behind. He had no eyes for the twilight landscape, or he would have seen in the canal-like stretch of the Larrig belonging to Crask, which lay below the rapids and was universally condemned as hopeless for fish, a solitary angler, who, as the car passed, made a most bungling amateurish cast, but who, when the coast was once more clear, flung a line of surprising delicacy. He could not see the curious way in which that angler placed his fly, laying it with a curl a yard above a moving fish, and then sinking it with a dexterous twist: nor did he see, a quarter of an hour later, the same angler land a fair salmon from water in which in the memory of man no salmon had ever been taken before.

Colonel Raden and his daughters stood watching the departing archaeologist, and as his car vanished among the beeches Janet seized her sister and whirled her into a dance. ‘Such a day,' she cried, when the indignant Agatha had escaped and was patting her disordered hair. ‘Losses – one stag, which was better dead. Gains – defeat of John Macnab, fifty pounds sterling, a share of unknown value in Harald Blacktooth's treasure, and the annexation of America by the Raden family.'

‘You'd better say that America has annexed us,' said the still flustered Agatha. ‘They've dug up our barrow, and this afternoon Junius Bandicott asked me to marry him.'

Janet stopped in her tracks. ‘What did you say?'

‘I said “No” of course. I've only known him a week.' But her tone was such as to make her sister fear the worst.

Mr Bandicott was an archaeologist, but he was also a business man, and he was disposed to use the whole apparatus of civilisation to announce his discovery to the world. With a good deal of trouble he got the two chief Scottish newspapers on the telephone, and dictated to them a summary of his story. He asked them to pass the matter on to the London press, and he gave them ample references to establish his good faith. Also he prepared a sheaf of telegrams and cables – to learned societies in Britain and America, to the great New York daily of which he was the principal owner, to the British Museum, to the Secretary for Scotland, and to friends in the same line of scholarship. Having left instructions that these messages should be despatched from Inverlarrig at dawn, he went to bed in a state of profound jubilation and utter fatigue.

Next morning, while his father was absorbed in the remains of Harald Blacktooth, Junius summoned a council of war. To it there came Angus, the head-keeper, a morose old man near six-foot-four in height, clean-shaven, with eyebrows like a penthouse; Lennox, his second-in-command, whom Leithen had met on his reconnaissance; and two youthful watchers, late of Lovat's Scouts, known as Jimsie and Davie. There were others about the place who could be mobilised if necessary, including the two chauffeurs, an under-footman and a valet; but, as Junius looked at this formidable quartet, and reflected on the narrow limit of the area of danger, he concluded that he had all the man-power he needed.

‘Now, listen to me, Angus,' he began. ‘This poacher Macnab proposes to start in tomorrow night at twelve o'clock, and according to his challenge he has forty-eight hours to get a fish in – up till midnight on the 3rd of September. I want your advice about the best way of checkmating him. You've attended to my orders, and let nobody near the river during the past week?'

‘Aye, sir, and there's nobody socht to gang near it,' said Angus. ‘The country-side has been as quiet as a grave.'

‘Well, it won't be after tomorrow night. You've probably heard that this Macnab killed a stag on Glenraden yesterday – killed it within half a mile of the house, and would have got away with it but for the younger Miss Raden.'

They had heard of it, for the glen had talked of nothing else all night, but they thought it good manners to express amazement. ‘Heard ye ever the like?' said one. ‘Macnab maun be a fair deevil,' said another. ‘If I had just a grip of him,' sighed the blood-thirsty Angus.

‘It's clear we're up against something quite out of the common,' Junius went on, ‘and we daren't give him the faintest outside chance. Now, let's consider the river. You say you've seen nobody near it.'

‘There hasn't been a line cast in the watter forbye your own, sir,' said Angus.

‘I just seen the one man fishin' a' week,' volunteered Jimsie. ‘It was on the Crask water below the brig. I jaloused that he was one of the servants from Crask, and maybe no very right in the heid. He had no notion of it at all, at all.'

‘Well, that's so far good. Now what about the river outside the park? Our beat runs from the Larrig Bridge – what's it like between the bridge and the lodge? You've never taken me fishing there.'