old house of fear
1
On this shrouded night, five men tossed in a boat off the island of
Carnglass, where the sea never is smooth. So thick about them hung the
fog that they could not see the great cliffs. Knowing, though, every
rock and reef, they sensed where the island lay.
Of a sudden, a tall flame shot up from Carnglass, fierce and unnatural.
Across the swell there came to the men in the boat the crash of some
explosion. Clinging to their oars, they stared silent toward the land;
the oldest man crossed himself. The flame, surging and waving for some
minutes, soon sank lower. In a little while they heard faint distant
sounds, several of them, like gunshots. The younger men looked to the
old helmsman, who pulled hesitantly at his white beard.
Then he signed to them to put the boat about. Glancing fearfully at the
distant flame as they heaved, two men hauled at the sail. In a minute
they had changed course, and the fire in the night glowed at their
backs as they pulled away from the uneasy neighborhood of silent and
invisible Carnglass.
* * * * *
Three thousand miles away, two men sat in a handsome office. “That’s
our island,” Duncan MacAskival said: “Carnglass.”
Across the Ordnance Survey map his thick forefinger moved to a ragged
and twisted little outline, away at the verge of the Hebrides, which
even upon the linen of the map seemed to recoil from the Atlantic
combers. “The tattered top of a drowned mountain. And that’s the
castle, by the bay to the West, Hugh: Old House of Fear. I like
the names. You’re to buy Carnglass for me, cliffs and clachans and
deer-forest and Old House and all; and price is no object.”
Hugh Logan smiled at the heavy old man in the swivel chair. “Why send
me to the Western Isles to haggle for a speck of rock I know nothing
about, Mr. MacAskival? Why do you need Carnglass? And why not have a
Glasgow solicitor do the business for you? I’d enjoy the trip, right
enough, but I don’t need to tell you that my time costs you bona-fide
money. Any junior clerk could buy an island for you.”
“Look out there, Hugh.” MacAskival swung round his chair to the big
window at the back of his teak-panelled office. Far below, stretching
eastward for a quarter of a mile along the river, the stacks and
coke-ovens and corrugated-iron roofs of MacAskival Iron Works sent up
to heaven their smoke and flame and thunder. “Look at it all. I made
it. And what has it given me? Two coronary fits. I’m told to rest.
But where could a man like me fade decently? I’m not made for quiet
desperation. There’s just one place, Hugh, where I might lie quiet; and
that’s Carnglass.”
MacAskival peered at his map. “I haven’t seen Carnglass,” he went on,
“except in pictures, and no more did my father, or his father. But the
MacAskivals came out of Carnglass to Nova Scotia in 1780, and they
didn’t forget the little croft below Cailleach--that’s the sharp hill
north of the Old House, Hugh. Their Nova Scotia farm was sand and
stumps, and yet not so barren as that Carnglass croft. Still, they’d
have traded ten farms in Nova Scotia for that wet little plot in
Carnglass. And after two strokes, I think I’d give the mills and all
for that croft--with the island thrown in.”
Logan had walked to the window, and now stood looking toward the glare
of the coke-ovens; the flames went hotly up into the Michigan twilight,
that April evening, and the incandescent masses of coal fell roaring.
“Why, I think we might make a better bargain than that, Mr. MacAskival.
Peat bogs and tumbledown castles go cheap nowadays. But why do you mean
to send a man like me to buy you a few square miles of dripping misery?”
“Cigar, Hugh?” MacAskival pushed a box toward him. “The doctor says I
can have just one of these a day. Well, I’m not so crazy as I seem,
and you know it. Under your veneer, you’re like me--sentimental as a
sick old ironmaster. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of having an
island all to yourself. So I’d like to see you hunt this dream of mine;
you work too hard for your age. ‘Getting and spending, we lay waste
our powers.’ I don’t plan to bare my bosom to the moon in Carnglass,
but it should do you good to play at being a pagan suckled in a creed
outworn--for a few days, anyhow.”
Old Duncan MacAskival was a trifle vain of his quotations and
allusions, Logan thought. But Logan liked MacAskival, a self-made
man, a good deal better than the average product of the big
business-administration schools. It came to Logan that he, Hugh Logan,
rapidly was growing into an old man’s young man. It had been more than
a dozen years since he had led a battalion in Okinawa. He knew much
of Scotland, born in Edinburgh as he had been, though his parents had
taken him to America when he was nine; and he had gone back to take
a degree at Edinburgh University. A slackening of pace, for a week
or two, might do no mischief. All his life he had hurried: schools,
the university, the war, and the firm: in too much of a hurry, either
side of the water, to laugh, to marry, or even to dream. “No, Mr.
MacAskival,” Logan said, “I’m not the man to laugh at you. But you’re
a canny Scot, though five generations removed. Do you need to pay my
price just to draw up a deed to an island?”
“You’re more of a Scot than I am, Hugh, though you look American enough
nowadays.” MacAskival leant back in his heavy chair. “Well, yes, you’ll
be worth your price in this business. You know something of Scots law
and tenures. And you can wheedle odd customers; Lady MacAskival is one
of that breed, they tell me. Here, look at yourself in that mirror.”
MacAskival nodded toward the baroque glass against the teak panelling.
Logan saw reflected a mild-seeming, amiable face--or so most people
would call it, probably--almost unlined; still a young man’s face.
Sometimes, when he had been a major of infantry, that face had tended
to mislead people, and then Logan had to rectify impressions. He had a
spare body. “Do I look like a fool?” he asked MacAskival.
“Not exactly a fool, boy, but close enough. You’re innocent: that’s the
word, Hugh. What a face to set before a jury--or a crazy old creature
like Lady MacAskival! Anyone signing a contract with you assumes
that he’s had the better of the bargain. Now I’ve tried before this
to buy Carnglass; I’ve been at it more than three years. I’ve tried
those Glasgow solicitors. They’re too sharp: what we need with Lady
MacAskival is babyish innocence.”
“All right: I’ll take my innocence to Carnglass.” Smiling, Logan turned
back to the map on the big desk. “There still are MacAskivals in the
island, then? And what sort of cousin of yours is this Lady MacAskival?”
“Call me Duncan, Hugh,” MacAskival said, “if you’ll really take
up the business for me. No, there’s not a real MacAskival left in
Carnglass, so for as I can learn. Lady MacAskival was born Miss Ann
Robertson; her family owned distilleries, money-makers. It was a
queer match when she married Colonel Sir Alastair MacAskival, Indian
Army, who was old enough to be her father, or more. Sir Alastair had
scars and medals, but nothing besides. Though he was chief of the
MacAskivals--and there’s precious few of that little clan left--he
was born in a but-and-ben in North Uist. I get all this from an
Edinburgh genealogist. Sir Alastair’s great-grandfather ran through his
property so as to keep up a fine show in London. The Great Clearance
of Carnglass was in 1780--that’s when my people were booted out, you
remember--and it was the work of that old reprobate Donald MacAskival,
our Sir Alastair’s great-grandfather: he turned the whole island into
two big farms and a sheepwalk, on the chance of squeezing more money
from the rents, and told all the crofting MacAskivals to go to Hell or
Glasgow. A few had the money for steerage passage to Nova Scotia, which
eventually made me president of MacAskival Iron Works. My father was a
pushing Scot, and so am I--and you, too, Hugh.”
“So Ann Robertson brought money back to the MacAskivals more than a
hundred years after the Clearance?”
“Not simply money, Hugh, but Carnglass itself. What little extra
Donald MacAskival contrived to wring out of the rents after the Great
Clearance did him no good. He died bankrupt; and the creditors took
Carnglass. His son sank down to being the factor for a small laird
in North Uist, and there the family lived on, hand to mouth, until
young Alastair went out to India and got some reputation for himself
along the Northwest Frontier. When he was past forty, he sailed home
to Edinburgh on leave. There he met Ann Robertson, and married her,
and they bought back Carnglass with Robertson money, and restored Old
House of Fear.”
Logan bent over the map to find the tiny square that marked the Old
House. “That’s an uneasy name, Duncan, for an ironmaster who wants
peace and quiet.”
“But it’s a brave old house, Hugh. And the name is Gaelic, not English:
‘fear’ is spelled ‘fir’ or ‘fhir,’ sometimes, and it means ‘man.’ Old
House of Fear is Old House of Man. Old! Why, the foundations of the
oldest tower go back to Viking times. The Norsemen took Carnglass in
799 or thereabouts. But there was some sort of chiefs house--Picts or
whatever they were--before then. There’s a tale in the island that
Carnglass was Eden: man started there, and woman too, I suppose. But
Carnglass hasn’t many living souls today. Old Donald MacAskival swept
off five hundred people--MacAskivals and MacLeods and MacDonalds--in
the Great Clearance, which left only thirty or forty souls, all named
MacAskival, in the whole island. There still were twenty or thirty of
their descendants living in Carnglass when Alastair and Ann bought it
back. But Ann, Lady MacAskival, isn’t much of a hand for company, it
seems; because when Sir Alastair died, in 1914, she got rid of what
MacAskival crofters were left. Off they went to a smaller island,
Daldour, three miles south across the Sound of Carnglass, one soaking
peat-bog: if Carnglass was Eden, Daldour was Hell. And there they are
still, for all I know, if they haven’t starved. Our Lady MacAskival,
who’s over eighty now, lives alone at the Old House with only a handful
of Lowland and English servants, according to what I could learn from
Edinburgh. She never leaves Carnglass. And she doesn’t often answer
letters.”
“Then she’s not even a cousin of sorts to you?”
“Not she. The chiefs of MacAskival were of Norse stock--the name’s
Norse, at least. And she’s from the Lowlands. Sir Alastair and she
never had children--I gather, besides, there wasn’t much love lost
between them--and she has no heirs, so far as I can find. And anyway,
Hugh, the odds are that I’m a Pict or a Scot, not a Viking. The island
people generally took the chief’s name for a surname, though they might
have no blood connection. I don’t mean to set up for chief of Clan
MacAskival: my people were fishermen or crofters who got themselves
killed, now and then, in MacAskival’s feuds. Old Donald MacAskival’s
father was out for the Pretender in ’45, which is one reason why Donald
went so deep in debt and made the Clearance. No, all I want is to live
in the Old House and look across the Sound of Carnglass, Hugh. That’s
the dream that I want you to buy for me.”
“The Old House is liveable, then, Duncan?”
“Sound enough, they say, though hardly anyone but Lady MacAskival and
her servants has seen the inside of it since 1914. That Edinburgh man
couldn’t find any photographs for me later than 1914.” MacAskival
pulled open a drawer. “There they are: not very good pictures, taken
the year Sir Alastair died. It seems to have been foggy that day.”
“I presume it usually is foggy in your tight little island, Duncan,”
Logan said as he took up the half-dozen old prints. “There’s no
inhabited island further out into the Atlantic.” Foggy, yes; and yet
the great bulk of Old House of Fear loomed distinctly enough in the
middle ground of the photograph. Carnglass meant “gray stone,” and
the whole stern mass of masonry was of a gray that blended into the
outcrop of living rock upon which the Old House was built. But the
castle was not of a single period. The first photograph showed, on the
left, an enormous square tower of rubble, capped by a high-pitched
roof apparently sheathed with stone slabs. At one corner of this
tower, a little turret stood up, perhaps covering the top of a stair
in the thickness of the wall; Logan knew something about Scottish
medieval architecture. To this great tower was joined a range of
domestic buildings, three stories high, with dormers and crowstepped
gables, also built of gray rubble: early seventeenth-century work,
Logan thought. A smaller square tower closed the range. And then,
abruptly tacked upon the right side of the smaller tower, commenced
a mansion-house of ashlar, with small barred windows on the ground
floor but very large windows of plate glass above; this was in the
Scottish “baronial” style of Victorian times, yet carried out with
some taste and not altogether disharmonious with the medieval and
seventeenth-century buildings. A large door in the middle of this
latter-day façade seemed wide enough for a carriage to pass through;
perhaps it led to an interior courtyard. “All this on the right is Sir
Alastair’s addition?” Logan asked.
“Yes,” said MacAskival, “and the place is bigger even than it looks:
there’s a courtyard behind, with buildings all round. The Robertson
distilleries paid for it. When Sir Alastair and his wife bought back
the island, the original castle hadn’t been lived in for seventy years
or more, and the roof was collapsing; but they put everything in shape
and made the place twice as big. I suppose old Lady MacAskival rattles
about in it now. Even though she’s one of the richest old women in
Britain, income tax and surtax won’t let her keep much more than five
thousand pounds’ income; and that probably only pays the servants she
has left, and for her food. She has trouble finding help, by the way, I
hear. It’s not everyone who wants to scrub floors in Old House of Fear.”
“And you want a white mastodon?”
“Only to die in,” MacAskival told him, cheerfully. “Every man to his
own humor, Hugh. I have the money to keep the place as long as I live;
and if I stay there only from time to time, I can keep clear of British
income tax. I may as well spend a few million, because the Treasury
and that foundation you set up for me will take all that’s left when I
die, anyway. I might leave you the Old House, though: it shouldn’t take
you long to acquire a taste for that style of living.”
Hugh was turning over the other photographs. “One of the clachans:
one of the two villages in Carnglass. These are what they call black
houses, because the peat smoke just goes out of a hole in the roof,
after circulating round the room--but I suppose you know all this,
Hugh. Snug, anyway. And I don’t suppose any one of these is lived in
now, except possibly by a gamekeeper or two. Now have a look at this
other picture. What do you make of it?”
In the foreground, Hugh saw a desolate graveyard, a low drystone wall
enclosing it; some tall white monuments showed above the wall, and in
the center stood, at a perilous angle, an immense Celtic cross. Beyond
the monuments was what seemed to be an ancient chapel with a modern
roof. And away in the background there hulked, dimly, a tall circular
building, rather like a vast beehive.
“It all looks like something from before the Flood,” Logan murmured.
“Well, much of it is nearly as old as anything in Iona,” MacAskival
observed. “That’s the chapel of St. Merin. She was stoned to death, I
think, in the days of St. Columba. Sir Alastair restored the chapel
as the family burial-vault. And that’s the famous Cross of Carnglass,
tenth-century; or it would be famous, if Lady MacAskival ever let
archeologists ashore. I don’t know what the thing beyond can be. Do you
feel more like becoming Laird of Carnglass?”
“It’s a strange island,” Logan said, unsmiling.
“Yet it can’t be so strange as the rumors make it.” MacAskival was
pleased, clearly, at having shaken Logan out of his commonsensical
ways. “Except for a few friends from London, the old lady’s let nobody
poke about since her own little clearance of 1914. They say that boats
trying to put into the harbor have been shot at. And they say there
are more bogles stalking through the heather than there are live folk.
And servants who’ve left the Old House have told people in Oban and
Glasgow that some of the London visitors are worse than the bogles.”
“Scotland has no law of trespass--only acts of interdict after damage
has been done to property.”
“You can tell that to our old lady, Hugh. If we do get Carnglass, I’ll
let the archeologists and the naturalists browse. I’m told there are
rare plants and birds, and a few fallow deer still. Nearly the whole
island has become deer-forest. One of the farms--the one closer to the
old house--seems to be kept in fair order; they have Highland cattle. I
learned that from Lagg, the factor, a Galloway man.”
“You’ve corresponded with him, Duncan?”
“In a unilateral way. First, three years ago, I wrote to Lady
MacAskival herself: no answer. Then I found out the names of her London
solicitors. I sent them an offer, and they wrote that they’d refer
it to Lady MacAskival. Then silence. I wrote again. The solicitors
answered that Lady MacAskival would give me a reply after reflection.
More silence. I wrote to the solicitors a third time, a year ago
yesterday, and got a letter back promptly: Lady MacAskival no longer
did business with them, they said, and I should write to her factor
in Carnglass, Thomas Lagg. I did. Ten months ago, Lagg replied that
Lady MacAskival was indisposed, but would communicate with me after
some interval. She never has said no--mind that, Hugh. Then still more
silence. I wrote to Lagg three times; no reply. But yesterday this
letter came.” From under his blotter MacAskival drew a sheet of cheap
notepaper, which curled up as he tried to lay it before Logan.
“I told you she was odd,” MacAskival said, as Logan smoothed the sheet.
“The envelope was curled, too, and only partly straightened by having
been in a mail-bag.” Also the paper seemed water-stained, and the
writing in one corner had run badly. Though it was in a clear feminine
hand, it appeared to have been written very hastily:
“3rd March
“Duncan MacAskival, Esq.
“Sir:
Lady MacAskival desires to discuss with you at once the proposal
which you have set forth. She requests that you come in person to
Carnglass without delay, or send confidential agents. Immediate
action is imperative.”
There was no signature. “Lady MacAskival’s own hand?” Logan inquired.
“Presumably,” MacAskival said. “The doctor tells me that I’m not
quite fit for ocean cruises just now. So Hugh Logan, Esquire, is my
confidential agent. Do you think you can act properly conspiratorial? I
saw you as Cassius in the Players’ Club performance of _Julius Caesar_
last month, you remember, Hugh; and you were the best man in the cast.
You’d have done as well as a professional actor as you have with the
law. Well, I’ve cabled both the old lady and Lagg. I’ve told them that
you’ll arrive this week.”
“This week, Duncan? Next month, at the soonest.”
MacAskival’s thick eyebrows lowered. “Hugh Logan, I’ve given you a
boost for your firm, now and then. I’m not a man who enjoys being
crossed--you know that. Now this business is something that matters to
me. Who knows how much longer the old lady will live? I don’t intend to
miss this chance, after three years of trying. If you think anything of
me, you’ll fly to Prestwick tomorrow; and it will do you good, Hugh:
an easy bit of work in a charming quiet place. We can’t delay. Notice
the date of that letter. It’s been stuck somewhere en route; and it
came by ordinary surface mail, which took a week or more. I don’t want
the old lady to change her mind. In my cables, I asked to have Lady
MacAskival’s yacht--I suppose she must own something of the sort--put
into Glasgow or Greenock for you. You’ve a room reserved at Todd’s
Hotel, Glasgow, and Lady MacAskival’s people should get in touch with
you there. Will you go, or do I have to send some fool? I want to use
your innocence-mask, Hugh.”
“Needs must when the devil drives,” Logan said in his easy way. “Give
me those plane tickets. I usually humor madmen. Besides, I mean to find
out what that beehive building is.”
“Then it’s my Carnglass.” Duncan MacAskival slapped his hand against
the desk. “Here”--he fetched out a manila envelope--“here’s my
correspondence with the old lady’s people. And here’s some estimate
of what the island ought to cost, kit and kaboodle, that I got from
solicitors in London and Glasgow. And this, too--this will interest
you, Hugh.”
It was a slim old pamphlet, the covers nearly ripped away. “It’s rare,
Hugh. Thin’s of Edinburgh found a copy for me. Take it along to read on
your plane.” MacAskival opened to the title page: “A Summary History of
the Islands of Carnglass and Daldour, in the Western Isles of Scotland;
with some Account of the Traditionary Tales of those Parts. By the
Reverend Samuel Balmullo, sometime minister of the Parish of Carnglass
and Daldour. 1818.” MacAskival was something of a book-collector. “I
know you’re wanting dinner, Hugh,” MacAskival said, “and I’ll take you
to the club in a minute or two, but let me read you a bit of this:
“‘Among the surviving peasantry of Dalcruach village, on the eastern
strand of Carnglass, superstition exerts an influence as powerful
as it is debasing. In this clachan are said to reside four or five
Sgeulaiche, or narrators of traditionary tales of an extravagant
character, many of which antedate the arrival of Christian evangels
from Ireland in the sixth century. These relations often reflect, and
endeavor to excuse, the lingering of heathen and impious practices
among this ignorant folk. They speak, for example, of a “Third Eye,”
said to appear afresh, from generation to generation, among the
inhabitants of Carnglass, whether native-born or newcomers; and such
a spot upon the forehead is said to confer amatory powers, and is
regarded by these children of the twilight with a respect not far
removed from veneration. To labor among parishioners possessed by such
delusions is weary work; it has been said that to preach the Gospels
among the Pequots or Narragansetts is a facile undertaking by the side
of any endeavor to redeem from heathen error these denizens of the
furthermost Hebrides.’”
MacAskival turned the page. “The Reverend Samuel Balmullo--he was
from the Lowlands, Hugh--tends to be long-winded, but rewarding.
Balmullo seems to have been a sour old fellow. He was interested in the
MacAskivals, though--give me a moment more.” Duncan MacAskival leafed
through the pamphlet.
“‘Indubitably,’” he read, “‘a family of the first antiquity in the
Isles, the chiefs of MacAskival, though at present reduced to mean
estate, are said to be a sept of the MacDonalds, Lords of the Isles,
early parted from their headship by internecine conflicts. These
MacAskival chiefs themselves maintain, however--and with some show of
reason--that they descend from a stock older still. As their ancestor
and the founder of their fortunes, they claim a certain Sigurd Askival,
a Viking adventurer, who espoused the Pictish heiress of Carnglass, one
Mary or Merin. This noble lady of Carnglass was a woman of remarkable
beauty, despite her flowing mane of red hair, which the refined taste
of modern days would disapprove. In passing, it is necessary to notice
a tale, germane to the genealogical claims of MacAskival, that one
Mary or Merin, saint and princess, at a remote period was redeemed
from captivity to a bestial creature, described as the Gabharfear,
Firgower, or man-goat; and that her rescuer was Sigurd Askival, a Norse
freebooter.
“‘One single substantial proof of the venerable lineage of MacAskival
is reputed to have survived well into the last century: a set of
chessmen carven from a blue stone, the “Table-Men of Askival,”
exhibiting the weird handiwork of a ferocious epoch, which objects
long continued the proudest possession of the chieftain of MacAskival.
These, however, no longer are to be found in the Old House of Fear,
their asserted repository; nor have they been transferred to the
elegant New House by the quay, although the present proprietor made
close search for the pieces. According to one fabrication of the aged
men of Carnglass, these “Table-Men” were immured in a tomb by the last
chieftain, to propitiate the Fiend. Once more the author apologizes
to his gentle readers for this trespass upon their hours of serious
reflection.’”
“Old Mr. Balmullo,” Logan broke in, “seems to have taken a fearful joy
in recording superstitions. He protests too much.”
“Yes, I think Carnglass bewitched Samuel Balmullo, Hugh. ‘Glamour’ is
an old Scots word, you know. Watch out, boy, that some Hebridean witch
doesn’t catch you: three days in Carnglass might turn the trick.”
“Never fear, Duncan,” Logan told him, with his slow smile. “The Harding
case comes up next month, and I’ll be back for it.”
“Fear? Why, there’s no danger of any sort in Carnglass, I suppose.”
MacAskival turned again to the window overlooking the plant. Now it was
dark, and the coke-ovens glowed against the night like the flaming City
of Dis. “Danger? Probably Carnglass is one of the few tolerably secure
places on earth. Sometimes I think we’ll turn the world into one final
hell of a coke-oven, Hugh. There may be some islands, though, left in
that fire. And Carnglass, where man began, ought to endure when man has
put an end to himself. I hope you can put this MacAskival back into his
island, Hugh.”
“You’re really going to give me dinner at your club, Duncan?”
Nodding, MacAskival reached for their coats. As they went out of the
office, he turned quizzically toward the younger man. “Speaking of
witches and bogles and man-goats, Hugh, why hasn’t any woman ever
captured you?”
“Probably because there’s no romance in me,” Logan murmured,
straightfaced.
“Why, there’s a good deal in you, Hugh. You’re canny, but have a
certain way with you.”
“Don’t forget this, though, Duncan--
“‘You can grave it on his tombstone, you can cut it on his card:
A young man married is a young man marred.’”
“Well! Hugh, you’re full of surprises. I thought only aged creatures
like me still read Kipling. I can match you--
“‘Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels fastest who travels alone.’
Which way are you travelling, Hugh, with that innocent face of yours?”
“Judging by what you tell me of the warlocks of Carnglass, down to
Gehenna, Duncan.” Then the elevator came, and the club, and the dinner,
and the brandy. That night Logan dreamed of a Carnglass Cutty Sark
capering round Carnglass Cross. And the next night he was aboard the
plane to Prestwick.
2
On a wet and windy morning, Logan descended from the plane at
Prestwick. Once past the immigration officers, he took a taxi across
the moors to Glasgow. Now and then they sped past rows of white-harled
Scots cottages, some empty and far gone in decay. The heather and
gorse by the roadside called to Hugh Logan. He had walked the Pentland
Hills, and the Lammermuirs, in his Edinburgh years--sleeping in the
open, sometimes, when he had been a university student. The law-office
and the courtroom seemed remote in time and space, as he sat in this
speeding Rolls; and he indulged the fancy that perhaps he ought never
to have taken the bar-examination.
In some ways, those savage months of pushing northward in Okinawa had
been the best of his life. The law was safe, and might make him famous;
yet there came hours, now and again, when Logan thought he ought to
have settled for a life of risk, a life lived as if every moment might
be the last.
The cab-driver was saying something. “A foul day, sir. There’ll be
a storm out tae sea, sir. Spring’s late to Scotland this year.” The
driver never had heard of Carnglass, Logan found. Now they were coming
into the ugly sprawl of outlying Glasgow council-houses. And then
the great grimy city closed upon them, and soon Logan was getting out
before Todd’s Hotel in India Street, a building of blackened white
granite.
At Todd’s Hotel, the taffy-haired little receptionist in the tight
black dress never had heard of Carnglass. Having left his suitcase in
his room, Logan came down again to inquire of the manager. That civil
gentleman, indeed, had heard of Carnglass; but he never had known
anyone to go there. And no messages from Lady MacAskival or Mr. Lagg
were awaiting Logan. He was not altogether surprised: eccentricity and
delay were to be expected in that quarter; he suspected that he might
have to make his way independently to the island.
He might telephone or telegraph, though, to learn whether the yacht
or launch had been sent for him, and whether he would be welcome at
the Old House. It was no use, he soon discovered: the information
operator on the telephone, after lengthy consultation with someone at
the Glasgow central exchange, informed Logan that there was no cable
laid to Carnglass, and that no way of sending messages to the island
was known, there being no wireless there recorded in the exchange’s
books, except by post. Logan called the central postoffice. Letters
and parcels for Carnglass, it appeared, and Daldour too, were sent
by MacBrayne’s steamer to Loch Boisdale, in South Uist, where they
were called for as anyone from those islands, or their agents, might
happen to put into Loch Boisdale. How long would an express letter
take? It was impossible to say: it might not reach Carnglass for some
days, depending upon whether any boat should happen to call at Loch
Boisdale. Also, however, letters for those islands sometimes were left
with an agent of the Carnglass factor, here in Glasgow, depending upon
instructions from Carnglass. Who was this agent of the factor? That
information the postal authorities were not authorized to give out.
But Logan was a patient man. After lunch, he returned to his room
and dressed in a heavy suit that had been made for him during his
university years: of indestructible Harris tweed, the suit still fitted
tolerably well. Rain was coming down heavily now, so this suit was
made for the climate. He had with him a thorn stick, a memento also
of Edinburgh days; it might be useful for hill-walking in Carnglass,
should there be time for that. The little receptionist, who smiled
fondly upon Logan, recommended a travel-agent in Argyle Street; so
Logan took a cab there.
Before entering the door of Moore Brothers, Travel Agents, Ltd.,
Founded 1887, he stopped at a shop adjacent and bought an oilskin cape,
which probably would be the thing to wear in Carnglass; he had it sent
to Todd’s Hotel. Then he went up to the counter in Moore’s, where an
eager youth--with a manner the British call “smarmy”--proceeded to set
his hand on a pile of tour-folders.
But the eager youth had no notion of how a gentleman might find his
way to Carnglass. He had special de luxe tours to Iona and Skye to
offer; these were much better-known islands than Carnglass, he told the
gentleman. No one ever went to Carnglass. Logan asked for the manager.
This old man with steel spectacles at the end of his nose could suggest
only that the gentleman take MacBrayne’s steamer to Loch Boisdale. From
South Uist, drifters and trawlers sometimes coasted off Daldour; there
was no harbour in Daldour, but he had heard that the islanders--“verra
queer folk, sir”--sometimes launched a boat and came alongside a
drifter. He did not know how anyone contrived to live in Daldour; it
was Ultima Thule. As for Carnglass, he had been told landing never was
permitted. Oh, the gentleman was invited? An American? Then no doubt it
would be possible. Perhaps the people in Daldour could take him across
the sound in their boat. The manager would be glad to sell the American
gentleman a first-class steamer ticket to Loch Boisdale, but he could
do no more. And a first-class railway ticket from Glasgow to Oban: that
was where one boarded MacBrayne’s steamers. This month, ordinarily,
there were plane flights three times a week to South Uist; but the
weather had been so wretched for the past week that flights had been
cancelled, and it might be two or three or four days before they could
resume.
Logan bought his railway and steamer tickets. As he turned to go, the
manager had an afterthought. “One moment, sir. Meg, d’ye mind the
card that man left? The man that spoke with me concerning Carnglass?”
Aye, Meg--a stocky red-faced lass in her teens--minded it; she put it
bashfully into the young American gentleman’s hand. “Aye, sir, I had
near forgot,” the manager said, “but this man came in a month gone and
said that should any gentleman inquire after Carnglass, he might put
him in the way of a passage.”
It was a soiled card with crumpled corners, cheaply printed, and it
read, “James Dowie, Commission Agent. 5 Mutto’s Wynd, Gallowgate.”
“How far is Gallowgate?” Logan asked.
The old manager drew in his lower lip and then protruded it
meditatively. “Why, sir, the Gallowgate’s far above the Tron. And it’s
late in the day. Would tomorrow do as well, sir?”
“No,” said Logan, “I’m usually in a hurry. Surely a taxi could take me
there in ten minutes?”
The manager fumbled with his spectacles. “Between ourselves, now, sir,
the Gallowgate’s not the place for an American gentleman by himself,
with the night coming on. Mind ye, sir, I’ve had no trouble of my
own in the Gallowgate. But this Mutto’s Wynd will be some wee vennel
or passage, and dark. Ye’ve heard tell of Teddy Boys and such? Aye.
Well, if ye must go, take a cab, sir; and make the driver wait for ye.
The man that left this card--he would be a bookie, I think. Nothing
against him, sir, nothing whatsoever. And the chief constable has done
fine work in the Gallowgate and the Gorbals, verra gude work. They
were worse when I was a lad. But were I yourself, sir, I wouldna stop
in a pub there. In the Gallowgate, the folk think all Americans are
millionaires. Would it were true, sir? Ha, ha. Aye, would it were true.”
Going into the washroom at the travel-agency, Logan took out of his
pockets his passport, his traveller’s checks, and most of the pound
notes he had got at the hotel desk. He put them into the leather
money-belt he wore beneath his shirt. Logan had been around, though
most people wouldn’t credit it, apparently, when they looked at his
face; and he had the thorn stick with him. Then he took a cab to
Mutto’s Wynd, in the Gallowgate.
Mutto’s Wynd turning out too narrow for any motorcar, the driver
parked the cab at the mouth of the entry. In Mutto’s Wynd, most of the
buildings were derelict, and some unroofed, since the Scots pay no
taxes on roofless buildings. Even for smoke-grimed Glasgow, Mutto’s
Wynd was very black. The dreary little building that was No. 5 stood
near the mouth of the vennel, and the cab would be almost within call.
Although the windows of No. 5 seemed not to have been washed this
decade, a freshly-painted sign nailed above the door read “J. Dowie,
Commission Agent.” Logan gave the driver a pound note. “Keep the
change,” Logan said, “but wait for me.” The driver sighed, looking
uneasily down the wynd. Three doors beyond, there projected the sign of
a public house, the Dun Stirk. “But stay near the cab.”
“O aye,” the driver grunted, “ye needna teach this auld dog new
tricks.” Logan rapped at the battered door of No. 5.
Quite promptly, a heavy-jowled little man in a sagging business-suit
and a soiled old cap opened that door. “Come in, mon,” he said. “Ye’ll
be thinkin’ o’ the pool?” The little low room--this building, elderly
for rebuilt Glasgow, seemed once to have been a stable--contained a
decrepit desk and three straight chairs; the walls, long ago, had been
painted cream-color. The little man spoke the thickest Glasgow speech,
with its clipped words and rolled r’s.
“Mr. Dowie?” Aye, he was Mr. Dowie. “Mr. Dowie, I’ve been told you
might know of a way to get to Carnglass.”
Dowie, sucking in his fat cheeks, looked long and slyly at Logan. “Tak’
a chair, mon. Ye’ll no be frae these parts?”
Logan sat. “I’m an American, Mr. Dowie, with business in Carnglass.”
Dowie leaned against the desk. “An’ what wud that business be?”
“I’m representing my principal.”
“Weel, then, Mr. American, ye’ll no object if I draw the curtains.”
Dowie pulled heavy blanket-drapes across the filthy glass; he bolted
the door. Logan sat easily on the rickety chair. “If it be Carnglass,”
said Dowie, “that ye mean tae see, then ye’ll ken Tam Lagg?”
“The factor. Yes, we’ve corresponded with him.”
“Aye, just so. And ye’ll ken Dr. Jackman?” Here Dowie, stooping
slightly, looked Logan in the eyes.
“No, Mr. Dowie, I don’t know any Dr. Jackman.”
“Ye dinna ken Jackman? Noo think o’ this, Mr. American: I’m official
agent o’ Tam Lagg. Ye’ve no need to keep matters frae me. What might
your name be?”
“Hugh Logan. I’m to see Lady MacAskival.”
“O aye. Lady MacAskival. She’s no keepin’ verra weel, ye ken.”
“So I understand.”
“No weel enough for chit-chat, Mr. Logan.” Dowie nodded mournfully.
“And noo ye’re in auld Scotland, ye’ll tak’ a trip to Rabbie Burns’
country?”
“I’ve only time for a Carnglass trip.”
“Rabbie Burns’ country is Alloway and Ayr, ye ken, Mr. Logan. A braw
poet, Rabbie Bums. ‘A mon’s a mon for a’ that’--eh, Mr. Logan?” An
unconvincing smile came suddenly over Dowie’s sodden face, and he
clapped a dirty hand on Logan’s shoulder, in token of comradeship.
Logan did not move or smile.
“I suppose what Burns meant, Mr. Dowie, is that worth and genius matter
more than rank--or as much, anyway. I don’t know that he had Glasgow
bookies in mind.”
“O aye,” Dowie muttered, removing his hand. He scowled uneasily, and
then brightened artificially again. “O aye. I see ye’re a card, Mr.
Logan. Aye, a poet o’ the first water, Rabbie Burns. But ye’ve fine
writers in the States, too. Political writers. Ye’ll ken are or twa o’
them?”
Logan shook his head. “I don’t know a single political writer, Mr.
Dowie.”
“And ye’ll no ken Dr. Jackman?”
“This literary conversation is very pleasant, Mr. Dowie,” Logan said.
“But do you know of a ship or a launch that will take me to Carnglass?”
Dowie sat down at the desk and pulled open a drawer. “Noo your
principal, Mr. Logan--he’ll be Mr. Duncan MacAskival?”
Over the edge of the open drawer, a cablegram form was just visible.
“Then you’re the agent for forwarding the post to Carnglass, Mr. Dowie.”
“Wha’ loon told ye that?”
“Has Lady MacAskival received our cables?”
“Wud I be a miracle-mon, Mr. Logan? I canna send word tae Carnglass by
Tellie--by TV, ye Yanks say. And wha’ wi’ the high seas, there’s no
boat that wud put oot for Daldour nor Carnglass these three days syne.”
“Then I suppose Lady MacAskival’s not expecting me?”
“Ye can suppose wha’ ye like, Mr. Logan.”
“When can I get passage from Glasgow to Carnglass?”
“Na, na, mon, I’m thinkin’ there’ll be no boat for Carnglass.” Dowie
rested his chin in his pudgy hand. His eyes swept over Logan with
that look of low cunning Logan had seen, so often, in malingering or
thieving soldiers. “But bide a wee, Mr. Logan: we’ll fetch a cup o’
tea for ye while ye’re here. Jeanie! Jeanie!” He shouted toward a back
room. “Dinna fret, Mr. Logan: Jeanie’s my auld wifie. Jeanie! A cup o’
tea for a Yank gentleman!”
Around a door-jamb peered a worn face. Logan rose. “Na, na, Mr. Logan,
sit ye doon: it’s but Jeanie. Jeanie, chat wi’ the Yank gentleman while
I see wha’ can be done to obleege him.” Dowie slipped into the back
room at the moment Jeanie entered. Taking a chair, she sat staring
dully at the grimy floor, quite silent.
“Rather a clammy day, Mrs. Dowie.” Mrs. Dowie, who had a scarf tied
round her head, said nothing at all. Dowie seemed to be telephoning
from the back room; and Logan, an old hand at snapping up scraps of
whispered evidence, contrived to make out a few words:
“Aye, Jock, a Yank, but no in Yank’s clothes. Quick, noo.” The phone
was hung up, and Dowie returned, that fixed smile across his face.
“Jeanie! Hae ye no been entertainin’ the gentleman? Fetch the tea,
lass.”
Jeanie went. “Well, now, Mr. Dowie,” Logan said, “have you found
something for me?”
“Ye wudna wish to go where they’ll no be expectin’ ye, wud ye, sir?
And Lady MacAskival’s ower auld for company. Tak’ the plane home, Mr.
Logan. Ye’ll do no business in Carnglass.”
“If you’ll do nothing for me, Dowie, I’ll go elsewhere. It’s getting
late.”
The look of triumphant cunning was back in Dowie’s eyes. “Aye, but the
tea, Mr. Logan; bide for the tea.” Jeanie returned with a wooden tray,
a teapot under a cozy, and three cups. Logan stood up.
“I’m always in a hurry, Dowie. Thank you, Mrs. Dowie, but I haven’t
time for tea.” There seemed to be voices raised outside in the wynd,
now, and a heavy thud, rather as if someone had kicked the side of an
automobile. “Good day to you.”
“But first, man,” said Dowie, sidling between Logan and the street
door, “we’ll shake hands a’ roun’, should auld acquaintance be forgot.”
Logan briefly took Dowie’s hand, and then Jeanie’s. “And ye’ll confess,
Mr. Logan, that ye came here o’ your ain free will, an’ no invitation.”
Logan agreed. “Ye heard, Jeanie,” Dowie muttered. “Ye’re a witness.”
In the street beyond the mouth of the wynd, a motor started, and Logan
thought he heard a car drive away.
“That may be my taxi leaving,” Logan said. He had his stick in his hand.
“Weel, noo, Mr. American,” Dowie told him, with what possibly was
intended for a convivial smile, “I’m sorry I couldna serve ye. Cheerio
the noo. I’ll open the door for ye.” He did. And the second Logan
stepped out, the door was slammed behind him and bolted.
Mutto’s Wynd was shadowy. Yes, the taxi had gone; and lounging against
the wall of No. 5 were four men. Logan faced them. They were very young
roughs, three of them, with the greasy sideburns and the pimpled faces
that went, in their sort, with a diet of fish and chips. The fourth
man, a big lank fellow, older, wore a wide leather belt round his
waist, and he had a very nasty smirk. By way of obstacle, the lank man
thrust out a long leg.
“Hello, Yank,” the lank man said. The other three came slowly round
Logan.
“Good evening, friend,” Logan answered. No one else was in the wynd.
“This is the auld Gallowgate, Yank,” the lank man went on. “This was
where they hangit the gallows-craws. We’re gallows-craws, Yank.” He
gave a short, harsh whiskey-laugh, and the three young roughs cackled
in echo. “Ye’ll stand us a dram at the Dun Stirk, Yank?”
“I’m sorry, friend, but I’m in a hurry.” It was quiet and dark in
Mutto’s Wynd.
The lank man smirked. “Damn ye, Yank, ye’ll no be in sic a hurry noo!”
He flung himself toward Logan, one foot going out to trip him.
Logan was ready. He thrust the point of the thorn stick into the lank
man’s belly, and the lank man screamed and stumbled back. But one of
the greasy youngsters had his arm round Logan’s throat, from the back.
Taking the boy’s fingers, Logan bent them backward: the rough yelled
and let go. And now they were on him, all four.
Someone had a long razor. Logan caught the wrist that held it, striking
with the point of his stick at the face behind; the razor dropped to
the cobblestones, but someone else got Logan’s legs out from under him.
He fell heavily on the wet stones, and took a kick in the ribs. Another
razor flashed. Someone had a hand inside Logan’s coat. The mackintosh
he wore hampered him. There came a kick at his head, though a glancing
blow. He had hold at last of someone’s thighs, and was struggling
upward. A kick in the back; and a razor slashed one sleeve of the
mackintosh. All that saved him for the second, Logan knew, was that
they were so close about him as to get in one another’s way.
This was no simple robbery: they meant to slash or cripple him, or
something worse. Another fierce kick in his ribs. The man he had got
by the thighs slipped and fell upon him. And as Logan fought clear, he
heard steel-plated heels running over the cobbles. Someone was helping
him up: a tall policeman. Another policeman was chasing four dim
figures down the wynd.
The policeman who had lifted Logan had a bruise over one eye. “That
was Jock Anderson’s lads, Donald,” he panted to the other policeman,
returned from the unsuccessful chase. “Jock gie me the bash over the
eye.” Logan was getting his breath back. “If ye’ll prefer charges,
sir,” the policeman said to him, “we’ll have warrants out for these
chaps; we know them.”
“There’s small harm done, constable, and I’m leaving Glasgow tomorrow.”
“Did they not take your money, sir?”
Logan felt inside his coat and discovered no billfold. “Yes, but I
hadn’t much with me.”
If the gentleman would come to the station and swear to a complaint,
the second constable told him, they might not have to trouble him
further. “Your cabbie found us, sir; they forced him awa’.” Logan left
a five-pound note with the policeman for the driver. “Were ye in No. 5
yonder, sir?”
Though the constable named Donald knocked hard at the door of No. 5, no
one answered, and the building showed no light. “By this time,” Donald
said, “Jim Dowie’s flitted, and his wife Jeanie with him. And I dinna
think we could charge them. But we’re keepin’ watch on Dowie, sir: a
slippery one.”
Then, in the Gallowgate, they found him another taxi to take him back
to the hotel. And in India Street, Logan washed the grime of Mutto’s
Wynd from himself. Stiff and bruised: but no ribs broken, and the razor
had slashed only the mackintosh. There still was time to go down to
dinner. Afterward, Logan had promised, he would go round to the station
and swear to a statement.
In his hot tub, Logan tried to make sense of what had happened. The
policemen took it for a simple case of pocket-picking, perhaps abetted
by Jim Dowie, Commission Agent. But Logan thought that Dowie had meant
to keep him out of Carnglass--possibly. Who was this Jackman that Dowie
had mentioned? Lady MacAskival’s private physician, or merely some
crony or invention of Dowie’s? And what interest had Dowie, or anyone
else, in keeping him out of Carnglass? And why should Thomas Lagg the
factor have a friend, and mail-forwarder, like J. Dowie? Logan felt
full of fight. He would take the morning train to Oban, and there, no
matter what the price, he’d find passage to Carnglass.
On going down to dinner, Logan stopped at the reception-desk to see if
there might be a message from Carnglass. There was none. Presumably
Dowie really had Duncan MacAskival’s cables in his desk. But also it
was likely that Dowie, during this weather, had no way of getting word
to Carnglass. If so, Logan would be quite unexpected when he landed.
That might be just as well, supposing that Lagg had some connection
with the queer business in Mutto’s Wynd.
As he turned away from the reception-counter, Logan felt himself being
watched. Or were his nerves on edge? He glanced to the right, and a
man’s eyes met his, but dropped away hastily. It was like looking into
the eyes of a bird: little black eyes, darting and quick to flee. The
man, he thought, had been looking at the top leaf of the open hotel
register. As Logan went into the dining room, he looked back; the man
was going out into the street. But he had a good view of him.
Birdlike? The man’s body was anything but birdlike, unless one thought
of a stork. Tall, with shoulders thrown back; a heavy, rather clumsy
torso, protruding in front; but the legs extremely thin. The man wore
a bowler and a good worsted town-suit, dark gray; he was getting
into a raincoat as he passed out of Logan’s sight into India Street.
He carried a long malacca stick. Even in these brief glimpses, Logan
had the impression that this fellow meant to be taken for a country
gentleman or a retired officer. Yet somehow the effect did not quite
come off. Logan told himself not to be edgy: it wouldn’t do to suspect
every hotel-guest of dark designs. Perhaps the man had only been
glancing at a raw spot on Logan’s cheek, where Jock Anderson’s boot had
scraped.
Yet after dinner, and just before he took a cab to the police station,
the receptionist with the taffy hair spoke to Logan. “Did the gentleman
find you, sir?”
“What gentleman?”
“He didn’t leave his name, sir; he only asked after you--if you were
staying in the hotel--and waited a moment by the counter. I thought he
would have seen you when you went into dinner. A military gentleman,
perhaps.”
Yes, that would have been the man with the bird’s eyes: a military, or
pseudo-military, gentleman. Logan made up his mind to remember that
gentleman.
Of that gentleman, and of his business in Carnglass, however, Logan
said nothing to the Glasgow police, who took his deposition and
promised action. Already they had been looking for Jock and his lads,
but with no luck. It was odd, the constable named Donald said: to get
out of town, or to find some snug hidie-hole, Jock and his gang would
have required more money than they took from the gentleman. Yet somehow
they had gone to earth, and so had Dowie.
Logan told the sergeant that he was touring Scotland, and would be in
Oban a few days, at the Station Hotel. “Never place money with lads
like Jim Dowie,” they told him.
An hour later, in bed at Todd’s Hotel, and tired though he was, Logan
took up “A Summary History of Carnglass and Daldour.” Balmullo, the old
minister, might have been a bigot; yet he had a keen eye and ear. There
was a page of description of the New House of Fear, built down by the
harbor by Donald MacAskival--one of the extravagances that had ruined
him--in 1777.
“It had been the MacAskival’s design,” Balmullo wrote, “to have
demolished _in toto_ the Old House. But the chieftain’s means did
not permit of this undertaking. Accordingly,--and to the chagrin of
every connoisseur of the arts who sets foot upon the mole of Askival
harbour,--the rude Gothic construction has been permitted to loom
intact upon its ruder eminence, denuded of its plenishing save for the
gigantic carven chimneypieces. There remains also, above the principal
entrance to the Old House, a tremendous escutcheon, its bearings in
some part defaced, but yet displaying the graceless figure of a Wild
Man, armed with a dirk, which Wild Man the vulgar name Askival, the
reputed founder of the fortress; and beside the Wild Man a female
figure in a state of undress, whom, with still less authority, the
folk of the island call Marin or Merin. Below these sculptures, in the
letters of a later period, is inscribed the legend, ‘They have said and
they will saye. Let them be saying.’
“Of baseless rumor and frantic conjecture, the island of Carnglass has
no stint. In contempt, I must record that the natives of this island,
blind to the perfections of the New House, continue to allege that
Donald MacAskival built afresh not out of an elevated taste, but rather
because, in the Old House, he had dwelt in dread of the wraiths of his
fathers, said to have waxed wroth with their descendant for his prudent
decision to expel from Carnglass the superfluous population. A gaunt
and bearded spectre, to which is given the appellation of Old Askival,
is reputed to stalk the empty corridors and chambers, in particular
the subterranean portions of the oldest tower. An obscure tradition
asseverates that a hidden passage leads from these cellars to a recess,
and thence to the outer world. Yet the Old House having been builded
upon the living rock, as has been observed elsewhere in these pages,
this supposition can have no more substance than the Kingdom of the
Fairies.”
Here Logan turned out the light. For all his aches and pains, he never
had slept sounder in his life.
On his second Scottish morning, Hugh Logan took the train for Oban. The
wind had gone down somewhat, and the rain was over, though grim gray
clouds still lay to the west. Through Larbert and Stirling, past the
Castle high on its rock, the train puffed up to Callender. Logan sat
in a compartment where two old ladies dozed over their knitting. Half
the time he looked at the hills and villages, and half the time he read
in Balmullo’s “Summary History.” And so the train swept into the West
Highlands.
As they approached Loch Awe, someone paused outside the glass door of
Logan’s compartment. Looking up, Logan saw the man clear: the man in
the bowler, the “military gentleman” with the little black bird-eyes.
That military gentleman was observing him; but the furtive look moved
on to the two somnolent old ladies opposite. For a moment, Logan
thought the man was about to pull back the door and enter. Yet the face
turned away, and the military gentleman was gone from the corridor.
Logan had enjoyed a thorough look at his face: the swollen long nose;
the red and purple veins that bulged against the coarse skin; and those
tiny, frightened, frightening black eyes, sunk into the skull. About
fifty years old, Logan estimated, though seeming older. And a cashiered
British officer, some intuition suggested.
Cashiered, yes. Logan made almost a hobby of collecting clippings from
newspapers about curious cases of criminal law, strange points of
evidence, failures to convict despite strong testimony. It was power
of memory, as much as anything else, that had brought Logan success
at the bar while he still was young. Now he tried to dredge up from
memory that repugnant face of the military gentleman. Cashiered,
cashiered. Hadn’t he read of a captain or major cashiered in India,
and subsequently tried by a criminal court for some separate, though
related, offense--and got off by a very clever barrister? A barrister
with somewhat unsavory political connections? The case had been nasty,
remarkably nasty--and the officer’s acts nastier still. Hadn’t some
London friend, years ago, sent Logan the penny-press clippings about
the case, with a picture or two of the accused? What had the fellow’s
name been? Something short? Gale, or Hare? No, even Logan’s trained
memory could not recall the details. Yet the face of the military
gentleman at the hotel and in the corridor, Logan felt, was curiously
like the nasty face he half-recollected from the smudgy newspaper
photograph. Had there been espionage hinted at the military hearings?
The man had been a bad lot in many ways. But Logan couldn’t feel quite
sure he had not fancied the resemblance.
By Ben Cruachan, through the Pass of Brander; across the river at
Bridge of Awe; then Connel Ferry. The mountains loomed nobly as the
train approached the coast. The military gentleman did not return. A
few minutes more, and the train swung into the resort and fishing-port
of Oban, on the Firth of Lorn. Now the Western Isles were in plain
sight--Kerrera, at least, right opposite Oban. Logan could see its
treeless bulk from the window of his hotel. Of the military gentleman,
no trace. Logan looked for him in the railway station, but he must have
got off hurriedly from a forward coach and have gone into the town. Not
that Logan much desired to see the military gentleman again.
3
“You might inquire at the North Pier, Mr. Logan,” said the Reverend
Andrew Crawford, “but I do not believe any fisherman will undertake
to set you ashore in Carnglass. All the boats will be gone from the
harbour until sunset: the storm kept them in port for three days,
and they won’t wish to waste another day in carrying a passenger to
Carnglass.”
The Reverend Andrew Crawford, minister of St. Ninian’s Church, was a
knowledgeable man. The people at the Station Hotel had sent Logan to
him, not knowing themselves how he might get to Carnglass. Mr. Crawford
had set foot in most of the Outer Isles that still were inhabited. Now
he and Logan stood at the door of the manse, looking down the hill to
Oban town and the piers, with the dim gray Hebrides far beyond the blue
sea.
“I’d pay whatever they might ask,” Logan told him.
“It’s not wholly a matter of _l.s.d._, Mr. Logan. The swell round
Carnglass and Daldour always is heavy. I had difficulty in getting
ashore in Daldour, the day I visited, and I never have seen Carnglass,
except from Daldour or a boat. Lady MacAskival does not let even the
minister or the priest ashore. She has her own style of religion.
And these trawlers from the mainland aren’t popular with the island
folk. Once the keepers fired at an Oban boat that tried to put into
Askival harbour; nor are the men in Daldour much more hospitable. No, I
think you’d best take MacBrayne’s steamer to Loch Boisdale: the South
Uist fishermen know the Carnglass waters. The reefs off Carnglass are
murderous.”
“Who lives in Daldour, Mr. Crawford?”
“There is but one name in Daldour--MacAskival. An inbred folk. In
Daldour there is a little machair--that’s the sandy land of the
Island--and the island people fertilize it with seaweed, and grow
potatoes. Also they gather seaweed and sell it; in the season, a
drifter puts close into shore, and the Daldour men bring out the
seaweed in their lobster-boats and load it aboard, and it is sold on
the mainland. On the day I visited Daldour, all the folk were at the
beach with their carts, running straight into the surf to gather the
tangle. Theirs is a poor life. The Daldour women weave a few decent
rugs and sweaters. They speak a strange Gaelic, with some Norse words
in it. For a month, one of our missionaries lived in Daldour, but he
was half daft when he left. ‘Mr. Crawford, I have served my time among
the Mau Mau,’ he said to me. And that though he was a Highlander and a
Gaelic speaker.”
“Can you tell me anything about Lady MacAskival, Mr. Crawford?” Logan
asked. But--after a slight discreet pause--Mr. Crawford could not.
Logan, leaving him, went down to the North Pier to make inquiries after
any boat that might carry him to Carnglass.
He had no luck. It would have to be MacBrayne’s steamer to Loch
Boisdale in the morning, he thought, for already it was late afternoon.
If the sea should be calm tomorrow, even a big motor-launch ought to be
able to carry him from South Uist to Carnglass. After a stroll along
the esplanade to the cathedral, Logan went back to his hotel at the
other end of the town and had dinner. The trawlers were in the harbor
now, unloading their catch upon the quay. But the fishermen were too
busy to be bothered with eccentric Americans that wanted passage to
Ultima Thule, Logan suspected. A light rain was coming down. Despite
that, after dinner Logan put his oilskin cape over his shoulders, took
up his stock, and--for lack of anything better to do--climbed the hill
behind the town.
At the summit there was a strange building, Logan had noticed as soon
as he had come out of Oban railway station: a circular roofless affair,
like a ruined temple. This, according to the hotel people, was called
McCaig’s Folly, and had been built long ago as an observation-tower,
but never finished. Now, in the gloaming, Logan found himself close
beside the Folly. The season being too early for tourists at Oban,
the area round the Folly was deserted, so that Logan walked alone in
the drizzle, thinking idly of the Old House of Fear and old Duncan
MacAskival and his own solitary and work-laden life. A scrap from Scott
came into his head:
“Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.”
Was that the way it went? Even leading his battalion, Logan never
had known that crowded hour. And as he thought of how some men are
drunken with drink, and others drunken with work, he heard steps in the
darkness behind him.
Looking over his shoulder, Logan made out a familiar figure, a few
paces distant: the military gentleman. When Logan slackened pace, the
military gentleman hesitated for a moment, and then strode on toward
him. “Captain Gare!” the military gentleman called out, by way of
introduction.
“Good evening, sir,” Logan said. Captain Gare, coming very close up to
him with a swagger of sorts, looked down from his stork-height upon
Logan. Flickering from side to side, the disconcertingly mobile little
black bird-eyes never paused for more than a fraction of a second to
meet Logan’s stare. The man struck his long stick against his own
trousers-leg. He opened his mouth, paused, gripped his stick more
firmly, and then spoke in a reedy educated voice.
“Look here,” said Captain Gare. “I say--I.... That is, cigarettes--yes,
cigarettes....” There was an aroma of whiskey about Captain Gare,
but Logan did not think he was drunk. Certainly Gare was exceedingly
nervous, and he seemed disposed toward bullying.
“I’m sorry,” Logan told him mildly, “but I don’t have any cigarettes
about me.”
“No, no.” Captain Gare, scowling, paused afresh, perhaps trying to
take a new tack. “No, I don’t require cigarettes, not really. I don’t
smoke--nor drink, either. I say: you’re an American, are you not?”
“Why should you think so, sir?”
“Don’t take offense,” said Captain Gare. “Are you ashamed of being an
American? I’m not a chap people can take liberties with. You’re an
American chap, I know. Your name is Logan.”
“I saw you at Todd’s Hotel,” Logan observed.
“Did you? Did you really? I travel a great deal, Mr. Logan: private
means, you know. Yes, that’s it: I saw your name in the hotel register,
and thought we might have something in common.”
“What might we have in common, Captain Gare?” Logan spoke evenly.
Captain Gare swept his bird-eyes across Logan’s face again, seeming
to gain heart. He slapped the stick against his leg, below the short
mackintosh he wore.
“I say--don’t know India, I suppose? Never tried pig-sticking? No, I
suppose not; not you American chaps. True sport, you know. I was rather
good.” He towered belligerently above Logan. “There’s nothing like
steel. See here.” Captain Gare tugged at the head of his stick, and it
came away from the wood. It was a sword-stick, two or three inches of
blade showing above the cane. Logan had an amusing momentary vision of
a fencing-match there in the rain, complete with cries of “touché!”
Captain Gare, glowering upon him, rammed the blade back into its
stick-scabbard.
“I take it that you know the world, Captain Gare,” Logan said, smiling
slightly.
“Rather better than you do, I fancy, Logan.” It was clear that Captain
Gare now felt himself master of the situation. “I say, we needn’t beat
about the bush, eh? I’m told you’ve been at the pier inquiring after
passage to Carnglass.”
“You’re an astute man, Captain Gare.”
“That’s as it may be.” Captain Gare’s swollen features bent toward
Logan. “Look here: it’s quite pointless for you to go to Carnglass, you
know--quite. I suppose you’re a solicitor-chap, are you not?”
“That’s as it may be,” said Logan. “My father and grandfather were
Writers to the Signet. You have an interest in Carnglass, Mr.--that is,
Captain--Gare?”
“One of my friends has an interest there, sir. He knows Lady MacAskival
very well. Handles her affairs, as a matter of fact. Saves her
annoyance. She never welcomes callers, you understand.”
“I’m afraid my business is with Lady MacAskival herself.”
Captain Gare edged still closer. “Lady MacAskival is not competent to
transact business, Mr. Logan. I mean to say that she’s infirm. Quite
old, you know. No taste for American trippers.”
“She has been in correspondence with my principal.”
“Nonsense!” Captain Gare brandished his stick. “Mean to say, that’s
rubbish, you know. Lady MacAskival never writes. Infirm, a very elderly
party. Come, now, Logan: I dare say you’ve gone to moderate expense in
this fool’s errand. You’ll never see Carnglass. My friend is a liberal
man, and very close to Lady MacAskival. Money’s little object to him or
her. Suppose, now, on their behalf, I give you three hundred pounds, if
you like? Simply by way of reimbursement, we may put it, Logan. Fair
enough, eh? And then back to Brooklyn with you, eh?”
“You have the money in your pocket?” Logan inquired.
“Of course not.” Captain Gare gave him a supercilious smile. “A man
doesn’t carry such sums on his person, you know. Come back into town
with me, like a good chap, and I’ll write a cheque in your favor.”
“I do happen to carry such sums on my person, Captain Gare,” Logan told
him.
The military gentleman’s little eyes widened and flickered. His left
hand stole nervously along the sword-stick. “Not really? Hundreds of
pounds in notes in your pocket? I say....”
“Not in notes, Captain Gare: in traveller’s cheques.” Here Captain Gare
sighed slightly, and his grip on the stick slackened. “Now could you be
interested, Captain Gare, in some such sum as six hundred pounds?”
“Six hundred pounds?” Captain Gare drew a sudden breath. “Really, my
dear fellow, are you suggesting that you might pay me six hundred
pounds? Whatever for?”
“For certain information.”
“What manner of information, my dear sir?” Captain Gare turned
slightly, there in the dark, as if to make sure no one was at hand.
“For instance,” Logan said, “detailed information concerning the past,
present, and future of Jackman.”
That bow, drawn at a venture, sent its arrow home. On Gare’s unpleasant
face the mottled veins seemed to swell; the man stepped back. “Who the
devil are you?” cried Captain Gare, with a quaver in the reedy voice.
“I take it that you know now what I am,” said Logan, still quietly.
“Whatever made you think I might accept money?”
“I beg your pardon, sir; really, I ...” Captain Gare was stumbling over
his words. “That is, you did not seem precisely an American. All a
pose, eh? I say, you don’t mean that you’re ... that I’m....”
“If you tell me about Jackman,” Logan went on, “we need say no more of
all this, so far as you are concerned. We already know a great deal
about Dr. Jackman, of course, but conceivably you might add something
or other. You’re the fellow who was cashiered, I take it. We know
enough about you.”
“I swear it was a miscarriage of justice, Mr. Logan--or whatever your
name is, sir. I mean that affair in Madras.” Gare was almost panting.
“But Jackman--no, really, I can’t say anything, not for six thousand
pounds. My life wouldn’t--but you know that quite as well as I do.”
The swollen face had gone deathly pale. Even had he been able to probe
deeper without giving away his game, Logan reflected, this man would
have been too frightened to be of any real help. It had been a good
random thrust, that mention of Jackman, whoever Jackman might be.
“Very well, Gare,” Logan said. “If you don’t choose to clear yourself,
that’s not my concern. Very likely you’d be of no use to us. We’ll
have Dowie and Anderson any hour now.” Gare shivered. That shot, too,
had gone home. “As for you, Gare, you understand that if you don’t
sever all connection with this business, we’ll see that you’re taken
into custody? Perhaps the Continent would be a safer place for you at
present. And throw away that silly sword-stick: you couldn’t frighten
babies with it.” Logan snatched the thing from Gare’s hand and flung
it toward the lip of the hill; the steel flashed in the moonlight, and
then blade and stick were lost in the gorse. “Be off, now; I’ve tired
of you.”
Gare, backing further away, muttered pitifully, “Then you’re.... Then
I’m not under...?” Logan gestured impatiently toward the town below.
“You can go to the devil, Gare.”
Captain Gare turned with clumsy haste, all his swagger gone, and
scuttled heavily down the path toward town; after he had gone a few
paces in the dark, Logan thought he heard him break into a run. Yes, it
had been a thoroughly satisfying random shot. He did not think he would
see Captain Gare again.
Yet whoever thought it worthwhile to offer Logan three hundred pounds
to steer clear of Carnglass? Gare had bungled the business badly; he
must have been acting without instruction from his principal, Logan
thought--whoever that principal might be. Dowie? Or Lagg? Or this
fellow Jackman? There were depths in this business, surely, unplumbed
by old Duncan MacAskival. Trying to piece the thing together, Logan
walked slowly back to the Station Hotel. There the night porter gave
him tea and biscuits, and afterwards Logan went up to his rather chilly
high-ceilinged room, and stared at the plaster cornice for half an hour
before he went to sleep. But he could form no clear picture of what he
had begun to call to himself the Carnglass Case.
* * * * *
As he dressed, next morning, Logan saw from his window the steamer
“Lochness” at the pier: it would take him to Loch Boisdale, and
he hurried into his clothes and gulped down tea at 5:45. This was
Wednesday, his third morning in Scotland. Thus far, only frustration:
and yet the sort of frustration which roused Logan’s energies. To
judge from the impromptu and ineffectual measures that Dowie and Gare
had adopted, he was dealing only with an ill-organized and eccentric
opposition--though with adversaries sufficiently unscrupulous. And it
seemed to be an ill-informed opposition. Either that, or else Dowie and
Gare were out of touch with the real intelligence at work, for some
reason, supposing that they _had_ principals for whom they were acting.
Certainly neither of those two had seemed quite the man to concoct a
scheme to keep an American from his prospective purchase of Carnglass.
If there were a principal, would he be in the island? Lagg, the factor?
The storm of two days ago might have kept the people in Carnglass from
communicating with the mainland; but presumably messages now could be
sent and received by boat. Whatever messages might be sent, it scarcely
was possible that he should receive in Carnglass the sort of rude
welcome he had got in Mutto’s Wynd. Even if Carnglass was Ultima Thule,
still it was part of Britain, the most law-abiding of nations; and
there would be Lady MacAskival for surety.
At six o’clock the “Lochness” steamed away from the pier toward the
Sound of Mull. They crossed the Firth of Lorne; and then, to the south,
they skirted the great rocky mass of Mull, while the wild shores of
Morven frowned upon them from the north. Several islanders were among
the passengers, and for the first time in years Logan heard the Gaelic
spoken naturally, that beautiful singing Gaelic of the Hebrides. It
went with the cliffs, the sea-rocks, the ruined strongholds of Mull and
Morven, the damp air, the whitewashed lonely cottages by the deep and
smoothly sinister sea.
As the hours passed, the steamer put into Tobermory, and later touched
at the flat islands of Col and Tiree. It crossed the broad rough waters
of the Little Minch, with the romantic line of the Outer Isles before
them, and the round bulk of Barra drawing closer. After Castlebay, in
Barra, the “Lochness” steamed north past Eriskay, and into the splendid
dark anchorage of Loch Boisdale, in South Uist, that sprawling low
island of peat.
It was nearly midnight now. Going ashore, Logan got himself a room at
the homely, cordial inn above the harbor. There was a schoolmaster
in Loch Boisdale village, the hotelkeeper said, who might know of a
drifter that could put Logan ashore in Carnglass.
Once more alone in a rented room with only conjectures for company,
Hugh Logan settled himself in bed and took up that battered pamphlet by
the Reverend Samuel Balmullo. Mr. Balmullo’s taste certainly had run to
old bones. Here was a tidbit:
“Even in the fierce chronicles of the Western Isles, the chieftains
of MacAskival are distinguished by a repute for deeds of blood and
passion exceedingly disproportionate to the wealth and power of their
sept. In the last century, upon the removal of the plenishing of the
Old House to the New House of Fear, there were discovered in a curious
pit or oubliette in the crypts the skeletal remains of a human being,
still bearing the marks of violence. This pit long had been put to the
office of a brine-tub, and it is supposed, accordingly, that the bones
had lain hid at the bottom for a great while, perhaps some centuries.
By any person inured to the sorry superstitions of the people of
Carnglass, it might have been anticipated--as, indeed, it befell--that
the vulgar peasantry, upon the exhibition of these sad relics of
mortality, would allege the bones--some of which were curiously injured
or deformed--to be those of a Firgower, or Man-Goat. A legend less
incredible, however, relates that the skeleton is that of an illicit
lover of a lady of MacAskival, seized by stealth at his abode in North
Uist, transported to Carnglass, subjected to indescribable torments,
and at length drowned in the brine of the oubliette. What the Duke
of Clarence suffered in a butt of Malmsey, some obscure chieftain of
the barbarous Hebrides, about the same period of antiquity, may have
endured in a darksome pit filled to its brink with pickled herring.”
At the close of this charming paragraph, Logan settled himself to sleep.
In the morning, on his way to seek out the schoolmaster who might
help him to a passage to Carnglass, Logan was surprised to find Loch
Boisdale and its neighborhood bursting with activity. Navvies were
unloading enormous crates from a freighter; two new bulldozers rumbled
down the road toward the interior of the island; recently-built huts of
corrugated iron, an age away from the primitive thatched Uist cottages
of field-stone that stood scattered over the oozy plain, shouldered one
another near the pier. The hotelkeeper had said briefly that something
important, in a military way, was in progress in the heart of South
Uist. A range for guided missiles, perhaps; and perhaps something even
newer. Idle policemen, the hotelkeeper had said, lounged about the
approaches to the construction-area. He did not like it. It would spoil
the snipe-shooting, and also evict honest families from their crofts.
“Those men in London are spoiling the best places and the best people.”
About the middle of the morning, Logan plodded up the soggy road to the
schoolhouse. The sky was very gray again, and a fairly heavy rain was
falling; but even the guidebook confessed that the climate of South
Uist was the worst in Britain. MacLean, the rawboned schoolmaster,
would do what he could to assist the gentleman. Leaving the schoolroom
in charge of a senior boy, he went back with Logan toward the harbor.
Yes, Mr. MacLean knew the master of a drifter, now in Loch Boisdale,
who might conceivably engage to land Mr. Logan in Carnglass. This
fisherman, though akin to the schoolmaster, was a very remote cousin,
mind, and in need of money, to pay a fine. A fine for what? For
poaching. Logan wanted to know what sort of poaching--fishing in
forbidden waters?
“No,” said MacLean, shortly, “sheep. Judge not that ye be not judged.
My cousin Colin knows all the shore of all the lonely islands, and on
some of the islands there are sheep, and deer. Whatever Colin is or is
not, there is no better pilot in all the Outer Isles.”
Although Colin’s boat was in the harbor, the man himself was not in
sight when the schoolmaster and Logan got down to the pier. “He will be
drinking somewhere,” the schoolmaster said. “But here are some people
to interest you: people from Daldour.”
Seated on the clammy pier, eating bread and butter in the drizzle,
were three men in rough island dress and rubber boots--or, rather, two
men and a bright-eyed boy. All three had about them a twilight look.
Their bodies were lean, their cheeks were hollow, their teeth protruded
slightly; a Lowlander might have said that they were not canny.
They seemed so much alike that, but for differences in age, they might
have been triplets. “MacAskivals,” the schoolmaster murmured. “A dying
breed. In Daldour, now, most are old bachelors and old maids; they have
seen too much of one another, and will not marry. The last of an old
song. That big lobster boat by the pier is theirs; the MacAskivals have
but a naked beach at Daldour. I will speak the Gaelic to them, for they
will speak no English, although this boy knows the English well enough.
Among themselves, Mr. Logan, they speak a dialect as strange to me as
the Gaelic is to you.”
Except for the boy’s bright glance, the three MacAskivals had given
no sign of recognition as the schoolmaster and Logan approached. Now,
as Mr. MacLean spoke to the three in Gaelic, there came very faint
shy smiles to all three narrow faces; the two men nodded, and the boy
replied in the slow flowing Gaelic. Presently, in a cautious tone, the
schoolmaster seemed to say something significant. The boy turned to the
elder of the two men, who spoke curtly, and the boy translated for him
to the schoolmaster. As he finished speaking, over the boy’s eyes came
a kind of glaze, and the two men turned again to munching bread and
butter, as if they had forgotten the existence of everyone else.
“I asked them,” the schoolmaster told Logan, “whether they would take
you with them to Daldour, and then to Carnglass. They are in Loch
Boisdale for this day only, to buy what few things they do buy, from
month to month. They said they would not take you to Carnglass; it is
not a good place for a man to go.”
“Not for fifty pounds?” Logan asked.
“For no price, I believe. But if money speaks, my cousin Colin is the
man for you. And here he comes.” A squat man was sauntering along the
pier. “Colin is not overly civil, and he is fond of the drink; but
he knows the waters and the coasts.” They turned away from the three
silent MacAskivals and walked to meet the fisherman-poacher.
What is uncommon among the people of the Isles, Colin MacLean seemed
surly. He did not acknowledge the schoolmaster’s introduction of Logan.
“Colin,” said the schoolmaster, “Mr. Logan asks you to set him ashore
in Carnglass. I will leave you to make your bargain.” Logan shook his
hand, and the schoolmaster strode up the hill.
Colin MacLean gave Logan a long hard look from under the brim of his
sou’wester. “Carnglass, is it?” The only polish about Colin was his
careful English speech, no doubt learned from the British Broadcasting
Company, and uttered with a musical Gaelic intonation. Colin MacLean
spat upon the pier. “Carnglass: and so Lagg and his keepers would shoot
holes in my boat. You may go to hell, Mr. Logan.”
Logan drew from his billfold ten big colorful notes of the Royal Bank
of Scotland: five-pound notes. “This is yours, Mr. MacLean,” he said,
“if you’ll set me ashore anywhere in Carnglass. It needn’t be Askival
harbor. Is there no other spot where a boat might put in?”
Colin stared at the notes. “There is a place, Dalcruach, in the east,
where at high tide a boat--a small boat--can pass over the reefs, if
the sea is calm. All the rest is cliff. But I would not risk my drifter
among the rocks. You would need to row over the reefs alone. Here: I
have an old dinghy. For twenty pounds more, I would sell it to you. I
would bring you as close to Dalcruach as I could, and then you would
take the dinghy and fend for yourself, Mr. Logan. Are you a seaman?”
“I’ve rowed before,” Logan said. “Here’s another twenty pounds for the
dinghy.”
“The swell about Carnglass is a fearful thing,” Colin went on, shaking
his heavy head in doubt, “and the reefs are like knives. Now would you
sign a paper to say that Colin MacLean would be in no way responsible
for the possible drowning of Mr. Hugh Logan?”
“I would,” Logan answered. “Take me aboard your drifter, and I’ll write
it now.”
Colin tucked the five-pound notes into his pocket. “Midnight, Mr.
Logan: come aboard at midnight, and we will make for Carnglass. It is
not good to be seen landing in Carnglass; there might be a keeper with
a rifle, even at Dalcruach. I will land you at Dalcruach early in the
morning, with the tide in flood, the weather permitting. And then I
wash my hands of it.”
That afternoon, Logan borrowed from the hotelkeeper an old knapsack,
into which he put some socks and underclothing, a shirt, sandwiches and
chocolate, and a thermos of coffee. He would leave his suitcase at the
hotel. He put on heavy waterproof boots and an old cap, and wore his
oilskin and carried his stick. And he was ready long before midnight.
Colin MacLean, with two less dour South Uist men who made up his crew,
received him solemnly aboard the drifter. They puffed out of Loch
Boisdale into the sea, with only two lights showing; and after that,
for hours, Logan could perceive nothing but the obscurity of the night
sky, clouds shutting out moon and stars. Before dawn, they stopped
the engine, and Logan thought he could make out, vaguely, an enormous
land-mass to the south. The drifter rolled heavily in a menacing swell;
and there came the noise of that swell breaking upon rocks. “I will
give you back your money for this dinghy,” said Colin, with a sour
grin, “if you have changed your mind.”
“Let me into the dinghy,” Logan told him, “and I’ll cast off.”
“The more fool you,” Colin growled. They picked their way over the
uneasy little deck to the stern, where the dinghy was in tow. MacLean
let down a rope ladder into the little boat; he held an electric torch
to light Logan’s descent. “Here,” said Colin, in a last-minute access
of charity, “I will make you a present of the torch, Mr. Logan. And
here is something else for you.” Colin took a bottle of whiskey from
a jacket-pocket and thrust it into Logan’s canvas pack. “You will be
wetted in beaching the boat, and the sea is cold. Row straight for the
cliff ahead. The tide will carry you over the reef, but you must watch
sharp for the needle-rocks. At Dalcruach clachan there is a keeper’s
cottage, and perhaps you can dry yourself there.” Under his breath,
Colin muttered something like “God help you.”
Then Logan cast off and took the dinghy’s oars. The drifter receded
into the night.
For a moment, breaking through the pall of cloud, the moon showed him
the cliff-head above Dalcruach. What with oars, tide, and a slight
breeze at his back, Logan swept in toward Carnglass, the Heap of Gray
Stones.
4
At Logan’s back, as he rode the crest of that grim darkling swell, the
forlorn hope of sunrise was fighting upward in the sky. By that pallid
light, diffused through a gray mist, he saw that he was in perilous
waters. Had the breeze been higher, he could have had no hope for
making shore, amateur oarsman that he was. Sweeping round the reefs
toward the sheer cliffs just visible in the west, a current tugged in
ugly mood at the oars; and he pulled hard against this current, for
it would have hurried him against that fearsome wall. Still coming in
toward shore, the tide helped him against the current. And now he was
among rocks.
From the white heave of the water, he perceived that he was passing
over skerries which would be dry at low tide. What was worse to the
eye, here and there stuck up sharp rocks like swords menacing the sky,
the “needles” of which Colin had spoken. Had it not been dawn, surely
he would have run straight upon one. All about them--they lay all too
close, and suddenly he was passing some by--were wicked immense swirls
and eddies, enough to bring a man’s heart into his mouth. And Logan’s
heart did come into his mouth.
Once only, in all his life before, had he been so frightened; and that
had been in a place very different, though equally eerie--a broken
tomb in Okinawa, where he had crouched with two other cut-off soldiers
while the Japanese scouts shuffled and whispered in the dark all about.
This fearsome coast was worse than the tomb had been, for here he was
utterly alone, in a hostile element. The mind-picture of the Okinawan
tomb, hurrying through his brain in this horrid wet moment, vanished
when the dinghy swung toward one of the smaller needles as if drawn by
a magnet. Logan thrust the tip of an oar hard against the rock, and
the boat slipped past. A wild scraping sound and a trembling assailed
him then: the dinghy hesitated, in the flood of the tide, right upon a
reef barely submerged. Yet her bottom held; and next she was off that
rasping bed and hurtling on toward the dim line of the beach.
Logan was nearly powerless. What a fool he had been! This one crowded
hour of glorious life he would have exchanged, gladly, for a lifetime
of servitude in the law-office. Yet there seemed to be sand dead ahead;
and if he could pull hard enough against the weakened current, he might
yet get ashore.
In the growing light, the island of Carnglass loomed like one
tremendous barrier of naked and sheer precipice, except for a kind of
fissure or den which was his goal, vague beyond the whitecaps. The
needles were gone now; the swell was full and heavy, as if the skerries
were past; and he could make out the waves flinging themselves upon a
dark beach, fighting high toward some grass and stunted trees, and then
retreating to the terror of the abyss. Two minutes more, and the dinghy
was tossed by those waves right upon the sand.
Leaping out, Logan tugged with all his remaining strength at a line
attached to the bow, to draw the boat as high upon the shore as he
might, the water swirling about his waist. Back came the surf, flinging
the dinghy higher yet, and blinding and drenching Logan, almost taking
his feet from under him. Yet, persisting, he dragged the little boat
over the sand with a power he had not known was in him; and when he
thought she might be safe, he reached over the gunwale, grasped the
heavy chunk of rusted iron that was her anchor, and flung it into the
oozing sand. More he could not do; if the waves swept her out again,
that was beyond his power to remedy. He staggered from the boat toward
the tide-line and the grass beyond. When the sand grew firm under his
feet, he fell nerveless to the beach, a spent man. And there he lay
perhaps five or ten minutes, like a stranded jellyfish.
It was done. The thing was done. He was ashore in Carnglass, and a
whole man, though shivering and shaking with the reaction from his
fright among the needles. Perhaps the game, after all, might be worth
the candle.
As some strength returned to him, his first thought was for the
dinghy, in which his knapsack lay. Her anchor having held, the little
boat rested askew upon the sand; he must have come in at the very
flood of the tide, for already the combers broke further out, and the
dinghy’s bows were altogether out of the water. Reeling to the boat’s
side, Logan hauled out the knapsack and then plodded up the beach to
the place where the heather and the gorse began to grow. He was in
a kind of cove or pocket between thousand-foot cliffs, a triangle
of land sloping steeply upward toward a third range of cliff at the
back; and upon the face of that rearward cliff, not so beetling as
its sea-neighbors, he thought he could make out the faint line of an
ancient path.
Something more welcome, however, now huddled close before him: a line
of low rubble walls, the work of man. These were primitive cottages,
no doubt the clachan of Dalcruach. They were larochs, roofless ruins,
deserted these many years.
All but one. Toward the end of the row of forlorn dwellings, a single
thatched roof remained, kept secure against the Hebridean gales by a
wide-meshed net spread over the rough thatch and anchored by big stones
lashed to the net-ends. The hut had no chimney, but only a hole in the
middle of the thatch; it had no windows, and a single door; this must
be the “black house” of the Isles, one of those Viking-age cottages
still inhabited, squat, thick-walled, snug, out of the childhood of the
race. People dwelt in them still, Logan had been told, here and there
in Uist and Barra. And this one might be the cottage of the keeper or
gillie that Colin MacLeod had mentioned. Incautious in his weariness,
Logan limped to the heavy door and pounded. No one answered: the
hut seemed to be as empty as its roofless neighbors. And then Logan
observed that the door had been secured by a padlock and hasp, but
the hasp had been ripped away from the door-frame, the screws hanging
impotent in their holes. Lifting the latch, Logan entered.
Yes, it was a black house. Lacking proper fireplace or chimney, the
peat smoke had eddied round the single room for centuries, perhaps,
turning stone walls and beams and thatch to ebony. But it was dry,
and it was furnished. There were a table and shelves, and a chair or
two, and a heap of dry peats by the rough hearth below the gap in the
thatch. And in a corner stood that rare object, the old-fashioned
cotter’s closet-bed, built of boards up to the roof to keep off the
draughts, with only a wide hole for the occupant to crawl in upon his
mattress, and a curtain over that aperture. Logan pulled back the
curtain. There was no one inside, but there were decent blankets upon
the bed. Feeling like Goldilocks in the house of the Three Bears, Logan
flung down his pack.
Some dry bits of driftwood lay by the peats. Logan tested the
cigar-lighter he had kept in an inner pocket of his jacket, to see
if it would work; it still would. Making a little heap of kindling
upon the hearth, he banked peats about it, and lit a fire; in three or
four minutes, some of the brown and springy squares of peat had begun
to smoulder, and Logan piled more peat upon them to keep the fire
going while he slept. Only then did he throw off his drenched clothes,
laying them upon a chair near the fire, and drag himself naked into the
venerable bed, rolling deep into its blankets. Swiftly Logan sank into
unconsciousness.
* * * * *
The sea-water having affected his watch, Logan could not tell what time
it was, precisely, when at length he woke; but surely it was well into
the afternoon. Some vigor had returned to his body. The slow-burning
peats still glowed upon the hearth; the house was warm, and thick with
the sweet smoke; daylight--the sun must be free of the clouds for a
time--came through the smoke-gap in the thatch. There was no sound
but the unending wash of the sea upon the beach, deadened here by the
thickness of the walls of rubble. His clothes, still very damp but
wearable, lay faintly steaming on the chair by the fire. This was the
loneliest spot Logan ever had known.
Having dressed, Logan turned out the contents of his knapsack, which
had not suffered badly from the sea. A pair of binoculars he had bought
before leaving America was intact, and he had his shaving-things, and
the ordnance-map and old Balmullo’s pamphlet, and what mattered most
to him, the thermos of coffee, Colin’s bottle of whiskey, and the big
parcel of sandwiches from the hotel. Of those sandwiches, he promptly
ate all but a reserve of two. Pouring the coffee into a pan he found
upon the shelves, he set it to warm by the peats. Life was liveable
again. And opening the door with the broken hasp, Logan went out into
the Carnglass afternoon.
The ghostly clachan of Dalcruach lay silent in a cul-de-sac formed
by the sea, the two sea-cliffs, and the inland cliff. Just now the
sun was peeping through the gray blanket above. Everywhere water was
running: little torrents foamed from the lip of the cliffs, and springs
sent tiny streams down to the rocky bay, through gorse and heather
and bracken. Between cliffs and tide, this bit of lowland must have
been cultivated intensively for centuries, but now a towering forest
of green bracken, high as Logan’s head, came right down to the backs
of the ruined cottages. Except for some gulls, the only animate thing
which Logan could see was a shape high up the face of the landward
cliff: a goat, or perhaps a deer. Primroses already flowered upon the
cliff-face. Upon these scanty and isolated acres, a little village of
MacAskivals had subsisted from time out of mind. But they were gone,
and Logan stood in this wet green desolation as if he were the last man
on earth.
He went down to the dinghy. The receding tide had left her high enough,
but soon the sea would return; so he took off shoes and stockings and
tried to drag her to a more sheltered place by a shelf of rock that ran
up from the skerries into the silver sands of the beach. But though he
bailed her out, she was too heavy for him; only the tide could budge
her. Her oars he carried back to the black house. And now he would make
his way across the island to the Old House, before evening came. The
sun had withdrawn again, but surely he could find his way up the cliff,
despite the mists, and so across brae and valley and hill to the Old
House and Lady MacAskival. Already he had been nearly six days on the
way.
Sitting on a boulder by the door of the black house, he examined
the ordnance survey map of Carnglass, Daldour, and the waters round
about. Carnglass really was a peculiar island. A ring of tremendous
cliffs seemed to guard her from the sea at all points, except here
at Dalcruach and at Askival harbor, a larger opening at the opposite
extremity of Carnglass, away to the southwest. To judge by the
contour-lines, these sea-cliffs also had an inner face, standing some
five hundred feet high above a kind of central valley or moor. Halfway
between Dalcruach and the Old House by Askival harbor, this valley was
interrupted by a tall, sharp hill, ridges from which extended across
the valley to the cliffs on either side of the island, a sort of
watershed.
As the gull flies, it could not be more than three miles from Dalcruach
to the Old House. But there was the hard climb of the landward cliff
behind Dalcruach; then the valley or moor would be boggy; and the ridge
in the middle of the island must be surmounted; and between that ridge
and the Old House were some markings which Logan took to indicate a bad
bog. The trip would require some hours, and he had best set off. The
dotted line of a minor path, on the map, suggested that some track ran
across the island, but surely nothing like a road. Then Logan took up
his thorn stick and began the ascent of the landward cliff.
Up this dim path, surely little but sheep, goats, and deer had gone
for many years. Here and there a hazel bush clung to the cliff’s edge.
Though the day was cool, that sharp climb made Logan pant. After half
an hour, he was at the summit, and much of Carnglass spread out before
him--or would have been visible, had not the mist been growing thicker.
He could make out the big hill--on the map it was called Mucaird--in
the middle of the island, but the ridge and hill would have shut off
Old House and New House, even had the day been clear. As a gust of wind
in this high place dissolved the fog for a few moments, he glimpsed
a derelict farm or sheep-steading nestled against Mucaird. And the
valley between him and the high hill was not an even plateau, but
rugged and broken with spurs of rock, though the bracken waved over
the higher parts of it. He turned his glasses toward the south. There,
across the deep blue of the Sound of Carnglass, lay the low isle of
Daldour.
Now he would have to descend the inner face of the cliff, perhaps four
hundred feet high, to the green valley: a descent more precarious than
the climb from Dalcruach, for boulders lay tumbled upon the inner face,
as if ready to fall to the valley floor, and their shapes were hidden
by a dense growth of fern. He must step with care. Down he started.
But about three boulders down, he halted again. The mist--here it hung
cloud-like--lay just over his head, the sunlight coming through in a
dim religious way. At the moment, the valley beneath him, nevertheless,
was quite clear of fog. And almost straight down, in the part of the
valley at the foot of his cliff, men were moving. Logan turned his
binoculars upon them.
Away to his left, a small puppet that must be a very big man was
running frantically across the valley floor, just here rocky and bare.
Some two hundred yards behind him, three other men trotted. These were
armed men: it was rifles they seemed to be carrying. None of them were
looking upward toward Logan. One of the three halted, knelt, brought
his gun to his shoulder, and fired. The report echoed uncannily from
the cliffs. He had shot at the big man leaping toward the further
rocks: there could be no doubt of it.
But the big man was not hit. He had reached some boulders near the
southern cliff, and now crouched behind one of them, drawing something
from the long cloak or coat he wore. As his three pursuers came on--the
man must have been hidden from their view, Logan thought--a report
came from behind the cluster of boulders: the big man had a pistol.
Immediately after firing, the man in the coat darted on to the next
clump of boulders, and waited there. Stooping and taking what cover
they could in the bracken, his three adversaries cautiously pushed
forward, about ten yards from one another. The big man held the
advantage of higher ground. As the three neared the rocks he had just
left, and so came within range of his pistol, the big man fired a
second time. Now the three pursuers fell flat on their faces, for the
bullet seemed to have ricocheted against a boulder perilously close to
the foremost rifleman. And taking advantage of their discomfiture, the
big man scrambled on toward the mouth of a small ravine that appeared
to twist into the southern cliff.
Swinging his glasses toward the three riflemen, Logan thought he caught
some movement to _their_ rear. He focused the binoculars. Though he
could not be sure, it seemed to him that someone or something was
stealthily drawing closer, through bracken and gorse, to the three
men. Whatever it might be--and if it was not an optical illusion--it
kept hid in the green stuff; no head ever showed. If there, it must be
moving on all fours, beast-like; what one detected was not a form, but
a trail of movement through the dense bracken, to be discerned only by
an observer who, like Logan, was perched high above.
Logan looked back toward the big man, who was just disappearing into
the gully or den at the southern cliff. Two of the pursuers, who
now had got to their feet, fired at him as they stood. The big man
stumbled, recovered, and was gone into the recess. And the riflemen
resumed, at a walk, their tracking. Then the bank of mist settled over
Logan’s head and lower into the valley, cutting Logan off from sight
of whatever was happening below. He heard two more shots, though; and
then silence followed. Through all this, no human voice had drifted up
to him.
Logan clung astonished to his perch. Here in Carnglass were wheels
within wheels. He had suspected something was amiss in the island: but
to discover, as if he were an Olympian looking down upon the follies
of humankind, this curious sport of island man-hunting was bewildering
even to Hugh Logan, who had been around. This, after all, was a
small corner of Great Britain, in the year of Our Lord one thousand
nine hundred and sixty. In Mutto’s Wynd, his own struggle with Jock
Anderson’s gang conceivably might have been only a chance encounter;
and even if it had been part of someone’s design, no more had been
meant, perhaps, than a brutal robbery. The sinister-ludicrous figure of
Captain Gare had come to him at Oban through no chance encounter, but
that insubstantial personality had vanished before a little chaffing.
This affair in the valley of Carnglass was deadly serious--this
stalking of a man as if he were a rabbit. And Logan had not the
faintest notion of what pursuers and pursued might be.
So what should he do now? The mist, reinforced by a light rain, had
become so dense below him that the remaining descent of the cliff,
in these conditions, would be almost foolhardy until some sunlight
worked its way through. In any event, what with this delay, it seemed
improbable that he could make his way to the Old House before sunset.
And, judging from the silent hunters far below, to knock at the gate
of the Old House after sunset might be highly imprudent. Logan did not
relish the thought of being taken for the big man with the pistol,
supposing that person still to be in the land of the living. Besides,
the quarry might be doubling back across the valley by this time,
and for Logan to descend unknown into that scene from the Inferno,
with bullets flying, wasn’t the best policy for a rising man of law.
Everything considered, he had better creep back along the dim path
to Dalcruach, and there spend another night in the black house,
even though this must mean he had taken a full week to reach Lady
MacAskival. He could make a safer start early in the morning; perhaps
Lady MacAskival’s demoniac gillies did not hunt before breakfast. And
there was a queasy feeling at the pit of his stomach. It was thoroughly
improbable that any man would try to make his way over the cliff to
Dalcruach this evening, what with fog, wind, and the clammy emptiness
of the dead clachan in the cul-de-sac.
So Logan, still marvelling, shuffled carefully back toward Dalcruach,
where he could enjoy the peat fire, and eat his remaining sandwiches,
and write some memoir of this past week to post to Duncan MacAskival
when the business was accomplished. He had found a kerosene lamp on one
of the shelves, with fuel still in it. He might even read a bit in old
Balmullo, for the sake of settling his nerves. Though the hasp was torn
loose, the heavy door could be barred from within by a balk of sea-worn
timber that fitted into holes on either side of the door-frame; and
Logan did bar it. Now no one could get at him suddenly except through
the thatch of the roof. And if folk outside did not know Logan to be
unarmed, they would think twice about bursting blindly through the
roof. Lighting the lamp, Logan took some sheets of paper--somewhat
blurred and dampened by water--from a pad in his pack, settled himself
at the table, and began to write with his ball-point pen.
He would save the sandwiches until he had finished writing. He was
hungry, though; and despite the moist air, his throat felt dry. Logan
put down his pen, threw his oilskin over his shoulders, and went out
to the spring that bubbled only ten yards from the door. Coming back
with a full pail, he drank deep and put the rest of the water--tasting
faintly of peat--by the shelves. He drew up the chair and resumed his
writing.
Then a deep voice spoke behind him. “Will you be a writer, or a
philosophist?” the voice said.
Upsetting his chair, Logan sprang nimbly round to face the voice. He
saw a very big man in a drenched ragged overcoat; and in the man’s
massive fist was a little old pistol, held steadily. The big man was
bareheaded and bald-headed: a sloping dome of a head, with strong
flattish features, battered and seared, and a broad, full-lipped mouth.
Blood was caked all down one cheek of that hard face, and seemed still
to be oozing from a gash high on the bald skull, where a little flap of
skin fell away from the bone.
Logan’s visitor stood gigantic in the shadows, close by the boxed
bed; probably he had hidden there. “Don’t move your hands,” the deep
voice said. “I’m Seamus Donley: so don’t move your hands. I said to
you, ‘Will you be a writer, or a philosophist?’ Or, now, will you be a
police-detective?”
Immobile, Logan thought he detected some humor in that wide mouth.
“Good evening, Mr. Donley,” Logan said. “Put away that toy, and eat a
sandwich with me.”
“Turn round, Mr. Police-Detective,” Donley told him, “and hold your
hands high.” There was nothing else Logan could do; besides, if the man
had meant to shoot him in the back, he could have done that already.
Donley’s rough hands ran over and into Logan’s pockets. “Now where
might your gun be, Mr. Police-Detective? Your friend Seamus has looked
in your rucksack and in the bed already.” This was a wild Irishman: the
brogue was pronounced, and possibly a little exaggerated, as if Donley
strove for effect.
“I have no gun, Mr. Donley.”
“Swing round again and let me look at you,” Donley grunted. He had
stepped back a pace, by way of precaution, but in the lamp-light Logan
saw clearly enough the reckless, not ill-natured face of a man in late
middle age; and below that face an immense barrel-chest and powerful
arms. The gun man must stand nearly six feet six. “Faith,” Donley went
on, “I come near to believing you. You’ve the look of innocence. But
whatever were they thinking of to send an acolyte of a police-detective
after Jackman’s fellows? Now listen to me, Mr. Police-Detective: if
you’ve a gun about you, fetch it out, for you need it as much as yours
truly, Seamus Donley. Would the lads in the Republican Army ever have
believed that old Seamus should be asking a police-detective to help
him? Sure, it’s your life, man, as much as mine. We can’t tell but
Jackman’s chaps might be at the door this living minute.”
“I don’t understand you, Mr. Donley, and I didn’t bring a gun.”
Donley scowled. “Saints in heaven! Now’s no time for playing little
games, Mr. Police-Detective. This is not London. Those fellows would
put you over the cliff as quick as myself. That’s what they did with
Lagg; but you can’t know that. You know me: any police-detective knows
Seamus Donley, that lay in Derry gaol four hard years, breaking out
last Christmas. Do you think it’s myself would be telling you my own
name, and showing you my own face, if we’d no need for standing back to
back? A fine young police-detective you are! Here, now: I’ll send Meg
to bed.” He thrust the gun back inside his coat. “There, I’m trusting
you, Mr. Police-Detective, and you must be after trusting me. We’ll
put out the light, for ’tis a standing invite to Jackman and his bully
boys.” Donley blew out the wick. “And we’ll trample the turfs.” Donley
crushed under his boots most of the peats, and tossed ashes over the
rest of the fire, leaving only a faint glow. “These three days gone,
Mr. Police-Detective, Jackman’s gang have let me be after dark, but
they might change; and there’s others might come.”
Logan groped about the table in the dark. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you
much refreshment, Seamus Donley, but there are two sandwiches left, and
most of a bottle of whiskey. Why do you take me for a detective?”