Police-Detective, but you gave me no time. I’d but a moment to slip
through your door and into your bed while you were at the well. A fine
young police-detective you are! But Donley’s not the man to let his
host go hungry.” He handed back half a sandwich to Logan, wolfing the
others. “And the poteen: that’s the medicine for myself when I’ve been
three days and nights in caves and bogs. One morning I caught a rabbit
and ate it raw, and another time I cut a sheep’s throat and had a
supper of the bloody ribs; but for the rest, it was birds’ eggs got on
the cliffs and sucked on the run, and a few shellfish I pulled from the
rocks on this very beach.”
Logan--his eyes had adjusted fairly well to the dark now--brought two
tumblers from the shelves and filled them with whiskey. “Your health,
Mr. Seamus Donley.”
The Irishman chuckled. “There’s this to be said, young fellow my
lad: you’re a cool police-detective. And how do I know you’re a
police-detective? Why, what else might you be? It’s not an Englishman
that you are, though--there’s that for you. I’m thinking you’ll be an
Edinburgh man.”
He might get more information out of Donley, Logan reflected, if he did
not try to dispel this illusion. “More whiskey, Mr. Donley? Of course.
And what is it I can do for you?”
Donley drained at a gulp his second tumbler of whiskey. He had taken
a chair opposite Logan, and sat relaxed, though watchful: a hardened
customer. “Why, just this, Mr. Police-Detective: first we’ll take
those oars of yours out of this hovel, and then we’ll launch that boat
of yours between the two of us, with myself inside, and then it’s
Seamus for Scotland and Mr. Police-Detective back to his but-and-ben in
Carnglass--back to Hell, that is.”
Upon the thatch the rain fell heavily now, and the wind has risen. “You
have turned daft, Seamus Donley,” Logan said. “Listen to that wind.
You’d never get over the skerries in that little old boat this night,
let alone row to the mainland. Daldour would be the best you might hope
for.”
“Daldour?” Donley snorted. “And land among the heathens? Why not the
Cannibal Isles? Besides, there I would rot in Daldour till you, Mr.
Police-Detective, might choose to come for me in the police-launch. No,
it’s not Derry gaol for Seamus. It’s a Kerry man I am, and as good a
boatman as any in these islands--born by Bantry Bay. No, I’ll be hid
in Glasgow or Birmingham or Liverpool before you report to the Chief
Constable, my boy--supposing that ever you get clear from Carnglass,
which I do very much misdoubt.”
“If you must be fool enough to go boating this night, Mr. Donley, then
wait an hour on the chance of the wind falling. The boat’s light enough
for you and me to get her afloat, even so: the tide must be up beyond
her now. The risk of this wind is greater than the risk of low water on
the skerries.”
Bending forward, Donley gave Logan a light approving tap on the
shoulder. “For a police-detective, you’re a decent sort. What would
your name be?”
Logan told him.
“See here, Mr. Detective Logan: I’ll wait that hour, but no more.
Never would I have guessed a police-detective would have a regard for
Seamus Donley’s skin. And see here: you’d best come with me. If you’ll
give myself your word of honor bright--you’re no Englishman, that
I’ll say--to grant myself twelve hours pursuit-free once we set foot
ashore, then it’s Seamus who’ll set you in Scotland safe, Mr. Scots
Detective, and shake your hand at parting.”
“No, thank you, Seamus Donley,” Logan answered, “but I’ve business in
Carnglass. Lady MacAskival will see that I get to Oban or Glasgow, when
the business is done.”
“Lady MacAskival! Do you think they’d let you see her, or that
the Old One gives orders today? And even were they all saints in
Carnglass, they’ve no boat to put at the service of one Mr. Logan,
Police-Detective, with a face like the cherubim. Was it not my fire
that fetched you here?”
“What fire?”
A note of pique came into Donley’s voice. “Then you will have known of
Jackman’s doings earlier, and I’ve had half my labor in vain. I might
have told Jackman that what with his crew, the police were sure to find
him out. ’Tis this: I burnt the yacht and wrecked the launch three
nights gone. That was for spiting and hindering Jackman. And I had
hopes of folk spying the fire and sending word to shore.”
“Then they’ve had no communication with the mainland for three days?”
This, Logan thought, could explain the confusion of Dowie and Gare.
“Three days? What with the storm, Jackman’s sent no messages, nor got
any, all this week. The wireless is a wreck. Jackman will be raging
like an imp from the Pit, that oily limb of Satan. Oh, he’ll be cursing
the day he crossed Seamus Donley.”
He might worm the whole story gradually out of Donley, Logan hoped: it
was clear enough that Donley assumed he already knew a good deal of it.
“Tell me this, Mr. Donley, while we’re waiting here: what state are
matters in at the Old House?”
“Do you take me for an informer?” The heavy voice, there in the smoky
darkness, took on an ominous tone. It never would do to forget that
Donley must be a thoroughly dangerous man.
“I take you for a man who’s been tricked, Mr. Seamus Donley, and who
needs what aid he can find. While we’re on that topic, I’ll do what
I can for that bloody spot on your head. Did a bullet come close to
finishing you?” A little light shone from the peats, and by it Logan
set to washing the wound and bandaging it with two clean handkerchiefs
from his knapsack. Donley, gritting his teeth, seemed to trust Logan
sufficiently to let him do the job, though he kept one hand upon the
pistol within his coat. Logan put back the flap of skin upon the skull
and improvised a kind of scarf-bandage that probably would not endure
long; he washed the caked blood from Donley’s lined face.
“No, that was a damned fall this afternoon, when Ferd was shooting at
me, Mr. Detective Logan. In all my years with the I.R.A., I never came
so close to my end. But I’ll even scores, trust Seamus for that.”
The man had not winced much during the bandaging. “Keep your hand in,
my boy, and in no time you’ll be as fine a doctor as any at Dublin, or
as Jackman himself. Jackman will be no true physician, but I’ll not
need to be telling you that, Mr. Police-Detective. ’Tis a doctor of
philosophy he’ll be, University of Leningrad, or Moscow. Yet I’m not
the man to be stinting anyone of his praise: Jackman’s clever with
splints and medicines, and all else under the sun. A clever child,
Edmund Jackman. Jackman it was that drew me out of Derry gaol, he
having use for me. Jackman it was, sure, but not for Seamus’ sake. For
doing the Devil’s work, there’ll be none better than Jackman.”
“And what,” Logan continued as he adjusted the clumsy bandage, “is life
like at the Old House?”
“Well, now, Mr. Detective Logan, do you mind that bit in Dante’s
Inferno where old Dante and Vergil observe the stewing of the frauds
in the chasms? That’ll be your reception at the Old House, and if
you’ve a brain in your skull, Mr. Logan, you’ll be jumping into the
little boat with Seamus and making for your headquarters. You’ll
require a dozen constables with rifles, or more, to take Jackman’s
gang.”
Despite his brogue--which, Logan suspected, was in part the affectation
of a virulent Irish nationalist, or of whimsy--Donley had not spoken
like an unschooled man; and this literary allusion confirmed Logan’s
surmise. “I think you’re what you Irish call a ‘spiled praist,’ Seamus
Donley.”
“Sure, never a praist,” Donley answered, grinning, “not myself. Yet I
had some inclination after being a monk, and a lay-brother I was for
nine praying months, in Sligo, till the love of the drink and the love
of the girls undid me. Jackman was after calling me ‘Father Seamus’:
he’s eyes in his head, more eyes by one than most men. His boy Ferd
was for giving me a third eye for myself.” Here the gunman gingerly
touched his bandaged forehead. “Ferd will be the deadliest of Jackman’s
imps, as you’ll find to your sorrow; do you watch sharp for him. ’Tis
the Maltese Cat I call him. Swift with a gun, and swift with a knife.
And Jackman sent him to the Old One for a cook at the Old House! Ferd
has virtue as a cook, no denying: the father of him keeps a little
eating-house in Soho. But Ferd’s better at murthering than cooking.”
“How many others are in the Old House?”
Again Donley filled his tumbler of whiskey. “Jackman himself, and that
walking cadaver Royall, that he calls his secretary--the only other
political man in the lot. Then there will be five manservants, or a
set of cutthroats that Jackman pawned off on the Old One for servants:
butler, footman, gardener, gardener’s boy (a broth of a boy!) and a
fellow that passes for stableman or cowman. I was the keeper or gillie.
Then there are three men for the yacht and the launch, all Jackman’s
pick: I singed the whiskers of one of them, Harry Till, a Liverpool
longshoreman, and he may be at death’s door, praise be to the saints.
Because Jackman told them so, the Old One and the Young One turned off
all the old servants, even the laborers at the farm; Lagg sent his
wife back to Galloway, and at the end, he was living in a room or two
by himself at the New House. Except for the Old One and the Young One,
there’s but one woman in Carnglass, and that’s a poor shawlie, old
Agnes with the arthritis, fit for no better than scrubbing floors and
carrying trays to the Old One. So the odds will be ten or eleven to
one against Mr. Police-Detective, as they’ve been against myself these
three days past. Come away, Mr. Detective Logan: yourself would last
two days less than Seamus has.”
“Do you mean that Lagg is dead?”
Donley shifted uneasily. “Mind this, Mr. Logan: ’tis no doing of mine.
What could be done to help Lagg, the old toad, I did. Nor did I see him
die. They took him beyond the Chapel, to the highest of the cliffs,
and they did not bring him back. ’Twas Seamus was meant to do the job,
but I was one too many for even Dr. Edmund Jackman. Should ever there
be a trial, and should yourself and myself come alive out of this, Mr.
Logan, you’ll bear that in memory.”
“If I’m to bear witness for you, Seamus, perhaps you’ll tell me the
details of your part in the business.”
Donley sighed. “Never did I think myself would turn informer, but that
comes of the keeping of ill company. Not that Jackman and Royall will
be common criminals: they’re uncommon enough. The rest will not be
politicals, only hard cases that Jackman has some clutch upon. As for
myself, Mr. Detective Logan, I never took a penny that was not mine,
unless on Army orders.”
Getting up abruptly, Donley went to the door and put his ear against
it. “The wind is high still,” he said, “and sure they never will come
to us in such dark as this--not Jackman’s town crew. But ’tis my nerves
that are on edge, Mr. Logan: three days with next to nothing in my
belly, mind, so that there have been times when I thought more people
than Jackman’s were walking in Carnglass. A damned island. Well, then,
my autobiography, or a bit of it, Mr. Police-Detective. Much good may
the telling of it do you, or myself.” Thrusting his chair toward the
smouldering fire, Donley warmed his boots. What little light there was
played upon his scarred face. And Hugh Logan listened.
5
“Belfast it was where I met with Davie Anderson,” Donley began, “a
Glasgow razor-slasher of blasphemous conversation. Taking up with
him was folly, Mr. Logan, but I’d small choice. The Republican
Army--mollycoddles they are these days, to a man--would do nothing for
me but hide me a week or two, and that with ill grace.
“‘You’re impulsive, Donley,’ said they to me. I do believe they wished
me back in Derry gaol. And who was it that blew the bridge ten years
past? And who was it that was at the lighting of the fires in Belfast,
to show the Luftwaffe where to drop their bombs? Why, Seamus Donley,
none other. The Germans were nothing to myself, nor Jackman and his
politics, neither; but it was enough for me that the English would
catch it.
“No, the I.R.A. never sent the files that took me out of Derry gaol,
nor the money, nor the motorcar, though at the time I took it for their
work. Jackman it was: Jackman knew Seamus Donley for a man to handle
the explosives.” He poured more whiskey.
“When Davie Anderson came to me, I said I would do Jackman’s work for
Jackman’s pay. A month ago it was that they brought me to Carnglass,
and made me gamekeeper, and showed me the explosives, and told me the
work I was to do, when the time came. Davie Anderson! Davie Anderson!
Once let me come in reach of you, Davie Anderson, and you’ll seduce no
more honest rebels.”
“Does Davie Anderson have a brother Jock, in the Gallowgate of
Glasgow?” Logan put in.
“That has he, Mr. Detective Logan. I perceive you’re not so innocent
as you seem, not by half. A bad case, either Davie or Jock, like all
Jackman’s lot. Nine-tenths criminals, and but one-tenth politicals.
And that political tenth not my patriotic politics. ’Tis a rough life
I’ve led, Mr. Logan, and I’m no man for small scruples. But needless
murthering, unpolitical murthering, never suited my fancy. And in the
murthering of women I will have no part, not even the murthering of old
witches. And Jackman’s plan it was, or I’m a Black and Tan, to lay the
slaughter to Seamus Donley’s account.”
“What good would killing women be to Jackman?” Logan asked.
“There’s no need for you to play the cherub with me, Mr.
Police-Detective. ’Twas the money, of course: all that money. ’Tis not
for his own self’s sake Jackman seeks the money, but to ingratiate
himself again with his party. Sure, and didn’t they cast him out for
a premature deviationist, and for the wild things he’d done? But the
money, and the spying about the islands, and the explosives under the
new installations--faith, if that thing might be done, the party would
take him back, soon enough. A risky work it is, but if Jackman does it
well, all’s kisses. And the party is all Jackman’s life, he being a
political through and through: that I’ll say for him. Jackman and his
boys never told me, for never did they trust me, nor I them. But I’ve
eyes in my head, Mr. Detective Logan, and a brain for right reasoning.
When the time came, the women must die. And if ever it came to the
prisoner in the box, who would they have for scapegoat? Why, old
Seamus Donley, that’s a fugitive from English justice.”
“And did Lagg know of this?”
“Tam Lagg took Jackman’s money two years and more. Yet the murthering
never came into Lagg’s thick wits, I do believe, until a month ago.
To help Jackman to bully the Old One into making him her heir was one
thing; to plot murther was another. And treason, too. Lagg’s was no
stomach for such tactics. But where could Tam Lagg turn? He could not
get ashore, nor even post a letter, without Jackman’s leave. When Lagg
saw what I had seen, and thought the thoughts I had thought--concerning
the plot for murther, I mean--he took fright. Jackman sees through a
man as if flesh were glass, and Jackman will have known this month past
that Lagg could be trusted no more.
“Then Jackman was the cat, and Lagg the mouse. And Jackman and his boys
watched Lagg by day and by night. When they caught Lagg lighting the
fire behind the hill, they made an end of him.”
“What sort of fire, Donley?”
“Why, the fire that might have been seen by folk in Daldour, to bring
them over from curiosity; but it never came to a blaze. That afternoon
I sat by my cottage at the New House, mending rabbit-snares--for they
had lodged me in the keeper’s cottage, as if they feared to have
me much about the Old House, near the gelignite--when Jackman came
striding up, and with him Royall and Davie Anderson and Rab, that holy
terror of a boy. Three days ago it was, but for old Seamus it seems
like three years, what with the hiding and the running and the starving
since.
“‘Donley,’ Jackman says to me, in his quiet wicked way, ‘come along.
We’re hunting today.’
“‘Then I’ll be wanting my shotgun, Dr. Jackman,’ I say to him. But he
shakes his misbegotten head.
“‘No, Donley, you old ruffian,’ says he, ‘we’ve guns enough for this
hunting of ours.’ And I see that Rab and Davie have rifles slung over
their shoulders. Jackman himself carries no weapon ever, they say; and
sure I’ve not seen him with any. ’Tis terror that he carries.
“So up I get, as you see me now, bareheaded and in my coat, and tramp
round with Jackman and his boys to the shoulder of the hill they call
Mucaird, and over the shoulder till we come close up to the broken
farmhouse there. And from within the house, smoke is beginning to rise.
“‘Hush, gentlemen,’ whispers Jackman. ‘We must not disturb the factor
at his little games.’ In through the empty doorway we creep; and there
crouches that fat toad Lagg, his back to us, feeding a fire in a
corner, pouring petrol on a heap of trash, so as to set the whole ruin
ablaze. A noble beacon it would have made.
“Jackman grins his devil-grin. ‘Good day, Mr. Lagg,’ says he. ‘You’re a
warm friend, Mr. Lagg.’
“Tam Lagg squeals like a pig when you come with the butchering-knife,
and jumps round: a gross ugly man in corduroys, his face red and puffy
always, but now white as a cadaver’s. ‘Dr. Jackman!’ he squeals. ‘Dr.
Jackman!’ And he can say no more, for there is no more to be said.
“‘Yes, your old patron, Dr. Jackman,’ that Beelzebub tells him. ‘I
assume that you’re weary of our company, Mr. Lagg.’ Davie and Rab tramp
out the fire in the damp roofless room, while Lagg crouches by the wall
like a trapped hare.
“‘Even the fondest of friends must part, Mr. Lagg,’ says Jackman,
cheery as a cat with a rotten mackerel, ‘and you’re come to the end of
your tether, my good and faithful servant.’ Then Davie and Rab take
Lagg by the arms and fling him upon the rubbish, and Davie unslings his
rifle.
“‘For God’s sake, Dr. Jackman,’ says Lagg, puffing and weeping, ‘I’ve
an auld wifie in Galloway, by Gatehouse of Fleet, and four bairns. And
this is a civilized land.’
“‘Why, Donley’s compatriots have a phrase that fits your situation,
Mr. Lagg,’ smiles Jackman. ‘“What’s all the world to a man,” the Irish
say, “when his wife’s a widdy?” You’ll never be missed, Lagg. You’ll
have been lost at sea, merrily fishing. These are wild waters round
Carnglass. And as for civilized lands--why, “had ye been where I ha’
been, and seen wha’ I ha’ seen”--eh, Thomas Lagg? This is the end of
an old refrain for you. I never took to your red face. And even if I
wished to spare you, still there would be the problem of morale among
my associates here, wouldn’t there? There’s nothing like an execution
or two to encourage the others. And Lady MacAskival will be so obliging
as to write to the police concerning your sad disappearance at sea.’
He’s in love with dying--other men’s dying--is Jackman.
“It came to me then, Mr. Logan, that when my usefulness to Jackman
was done, Jackman and his boys would crowd old Seamus into some such
corner. There’s no honor among the lot of them. Lagg and Seamus were
outsiders. And that man Lagg did cry so, lying there in the smouldering
rubbish. David pokes him with the muzzle of his rifle, and Jackman
gloats, like a sloat down a rabbit’s burrow. I was standing behind
the crowd of them. ‘Though the creature’s a Presbyterian,’ I say to
Jackman, ‘at the least you’ll grant him a moment for his prayers.’ And
that said, I whisk out Meg here.” Donley patted the revolver inside his
coat. “Jackman’s lot never had known I kept Meg under my arm.
“They all turn to face me, Davie with the rifle half raised. ‘Davie
Anderson,’ say I, ‘drop it!’ And Davie lets the gun fall, for he
knows the reputation of Seamus Donley. Rab’s rifle is slung over his
shoulder; Royall’s pistol is in his pocket. Yet it is four to one.
Jackman’s devil-grin never changes.
“‘Why, Father Seamus,’ he says, genteel as Brian Boru, ‘I presume you
aspire to the role of confessor.’
“‘No, I’m no priest, Jackman,’ say I. ‘Yet you’ll have the grace to
grant Lagg a moment for repentance, or ’tis myself will have another
Englishman’s life on my conscience.’
“‘I’ll humor your piety, Father Seamus,’ Jackman says, though his black
eyes are like hell-coals. ‘Mr. Lagg, to your devotions.’
“Lagg grovels in the dirt, moaning; and if he prays, the words run all
together; and as for myself, I am too bent on watching Jackman and the
rest to listen to him. A long minute it was, Mr. Logan.
“Jackman looks at his wrist-watch. ‘_Pax vobiscum_,’ says he, ever so
sneering. ‘And now, Father Seamus, seeing that you have your little
gun conveniently in your Fenian paw, perhaps you will be so kind as to
administer the _coup de grace_ to our old comrade here.’ The eyes of
those four murtherers are turned on myself like dogs round a badger.
“‘Jackman,’ I tell him, ‘may I screech in Hell if I lift a finger in
this bloody business.’
“‘Perhaps, in any event, Mr. Lagg would prefer a cold plunge,’ Jackman
says, smoothly. Lagg does no more than look at me, gasping and choking,
as if I were the king of glory. But the odds are four to one, Mr.
Logan, and Seamus has himself to think of, and Lagg was a tricky old
toad.
“‘Being but one man, Jackman,’ say I, ‘I cannot hinder you. Yet you’ll
not harm the rascal in my sight.’
“‘As you wish, Reverend Father.’ And Jackman nods to Rab and Davie.
They take Lagg by the arms, he screaming out my name the while, and
drag him through the doorway; and Royall picks up Davie’s rifle, though
careful not to lift it high nor point it toward old Seamus. ‘Donley,’
Jackman murmurs, as he follows them out the door, ‘go back to your
cottage. You and I must have a serious conversation later.’
“And they lead Lagg along the hill toward St. Merin’s Chapel and the
cliffs, he weak as water, while I watch them from an empty window,
being cautious not to show much of myself, lest Rab or Davie be
inclined toward a lucky shot. And soon the bracken swallows them.
Seamus has given Tam Lagg his minute of grace, and now Lagg must give
Seamus Donley his hour for action.
“Jackman is cunning, think I to myself; but this once he’s reckoned
without his man. There were two things that I might try: first, to get
clean away from Carnglass, which would leave Jackman with no good hand
for the explosives, and no scapegoat; or second, to send up a signal
like the signal Lagg meant to make of that farmhouse, to call heed to
strange doings in Carnglass. Now being a runaway gaolbird, I preferred
the first method, Mr. Logan; and besides, ’tis the surer method; and it
might save the women, since what with Seamus gone to the mainland and
talking with whom he might, sure Jackman would think twice before doing
more murther.
“So soon, then, as Jackman and the rest were out of sight, I ran down
the track toward the New House and Askival harbor--and the boats. Two
craft there were in the harbor, both Lady MacAskival’s, though she’d
scant need of them for her own self: a sixty-foot sailing yacht,
old but with an auxiliary engine, and a fast motor-launch, half
decked. Could I but get aboard either, and take it out of harbor--the
motor-launch would be the better--I might make land somewhere and be
out of sight before either Jackman or you darling police might say
Daniel O’Connell.
“But somewhere there would be seven more of Jackman’s boys: Sam
Tompkins, a Cockney, with the grand title of butler--though he’s little
better than a pickpocket, and not to be dreaded; Ferd, the Cat o’
Malta; a tinker-like fellow called Niven, that they’d made gardener; a
Lancashire rough, Simmons, the stableman. Then the three boatmen, all
out of Liverpool: Jim Powert, Harry Till, and Bill Carruthers. If the
gang should be at the Old House, all of them, well and good: I never
would try for the Old House, that being a strong place with but one
gate. And if there should be but a man or two at the harbor, my little
Meg and myself, between the two of us, might do their business. Now I’d
a shotgun at my cottage, and like enough Lagg had a gun or two in the
New House, unless Jackman had taken precautions. A shotgun or a rifle
in the hands of such a one as myself is worth half a dozen men, Mr.
Detective Logan, as I fancy you’ve heard tell. So it was to my cottage
that I ran first, not looking back toward St. Merin’s Chapel, nor
liking to think what might be done there on the cliffs.
“All the way, I met no man. And my cottage was empty; but the shotgun
was gone. ‘Oho,’ say I to myself, ‘then Jackman will have a suspicion
of old Seamus, and will have left orders to keep a weather eye on him.’
I stuffed my coat pockets with biscuits from a tin, for there was no
saying when I might dine again; and then, very quiet, I had a look
about the New House, which has a little fir-plantation between it and
the gamekeeper’s cottage.
“As bad cess would have it, three men--Ferd, and Niven, and
Simmons--came out of the back gate of the New House when I looked that
way from the firs. They not spying me, I knelt there silent, and they
walked on toward the Old House, having locked the door behind them.
Simmons was carrying my own shotgun. These are dull dogs, Mr. Logan,
with no talent for hide-and-seek--though Ferd is sharp enough, but
being a Soho spiv, he’s out of his element in Carnglass. Once they were
gone, I trotted on to the harbor, just beyond the New House; they would
have taken the guns from the New House, for Ferd and Niven, too, had
been carrying weapons. Now it must be the boats for Seamus Donley,
with no help but little Meg. The night was coming down, praise be, and
I might creep along the quay safe enough, keeping behind a little low
breakwater that has a walk between it and the outer edge of the quay.
“On the yacht a light was burning, and she lay hard up against the
stone quay, with the launch moored just beyond her. Two men were on
deck, worse luck, and there might be a third below; I thought I heard
his voice. And one of the men--Powert, I thought--had a rifle across
his knees as he sat there. ‘Seamus,’ say I in my head, ‘this must be
neatly done, if ’tis to be done at all.’ So back along the quay to
the harbor-head I make my way, like a mouse, and to the shed by the
quayside. They had forgot to lock the door.
“Now if I might keep the men aboard the yacht with their hands full of
work, I might hope to take the launch; or, failing that, I might burn
both boats, making a beacon to be seen in Daldour or out to sea, and
vexing Jackman’s damned soul. In the shed, along with ropes and paints
and such, I found what I had hoped for, a tin of petrol and a brace of
empty bottles. And there were some oily bits of waste and rags on the
floor. You’ll have made a Molotov cocktail, Mr. Detective Logan? Now
that would have been a fine present for Dr. Jackman, considering his
political tastes; but I hadn’t the proper ingredients. And the real
explosives were tucked away at the Old House, beyond my reach. So the
bottles filled with petrol, and the waste and rags stuffed into the
mouths, would have to serve me. The matches I already had in my pocket.
“With the bottles in my coat, back I go along the quay, keeping out of
sight. But close to the yacht, my foot strikes a stone, that tumbles
into the harbor with a splash. Powert and Carruthers, sitting on deck,
seem to be nervous as pregnant cats, for Powert springs up with his
rifle and calls out, ‘Who’s there?’ And he catches a glimpse of my
bald head above the dyke. ‘Donley,’ he sings, ‘if that’s you, show
yourself.’
“What with Powert’s rifle in his hands, it was a risky stratagem. Yet I
bob up from behind the dyke and lob the first burning bottle right for
the open hatch, Powert firing at me on the moment. Powert misses, but
the bottle sails true. Right down the companionway it falls, and in a
second flames come bursting up. And up comes another thing: Till, who
has been below decks. I see him as I toss the second bottle. His hair
and shirt are all afire, and him screaming like a mad thing.
“The second bottle goes down the hatch, too, and more flames shoot
up; and then Carruthers takes panic and dives over the side into the
harbor, for I have lugged out Meg and sent a shot across the deck.
Powert runs aft for a fire-extinguisher, while Till rolls screaming
by the deck-house; but I try another shot at Powert, and he follows
Carruthers over the side, rifle and all, though I do not think I hit
him. If those three had kept their heads about them, they could have
put out the flames, but now it is too late. And now Seamus will have
his try at the launch; for below decks in the yacht, the fire from
the spattered petrol is gaining fine. Powert and Carruthers will have
struck out for the far side of the harbor, not liking the bark of
little old Meg in my paw.
“It was down the slimy old quayside steps and into the launch I went
then. Ferd and the rest from the Old House would be upon me in a
matter of minutes, seeing the fire from the yacht; and then, too, the
yacht might explode, if there were fuel in her tanks, though she did
not burn so hard and fast as I might have liked. The mist being heavy
that night, it was odds against the fire being seen from land, unless
from Daldour, for Askival harbor lies snug among the cliffs; and the
weather was too much for any chance aircraft.
“I tried the engine of the launch, but she was as dead as Lagg must
be. It may be they had taken the plug, or tampered with the wires,
Jackman being a man of forethought. Be it whatever, Mr. Logan, I could
do nothing with her. If there had been even oars, I would have put to
sea with no motor; but the launch was too big for rowing. One thing I
did find in the bows, for all that: a spanner. ‘Well, Seamus,’ I think,
‘if you’re not to have her, no more shall they.’ And with that spanner
I did abuse the engine so that no man might mend it, paying no heed to
the noise I made.
“On the yacht’s deck, Till had made an end of his moaning, and I could
not see him; like enough he had fallen overboard, which he should have
done the moment my bottle set him afire. But I could hear feet running
and voices near the harbor-head.
“With the tide ebbing, it came to my mind that if I were to cast off,
the current might carry the launch toward the harbor-mouth, perhaps
close enough to the other side of the harbor that I might leap ashore
dry. So I cut the painter with my clasp-knife, and no sooner than was
needful. The tide began to take the launch the few rods between me and
the harbor-mouth. But now four or five men were on the quay I had left,
and two rifles were firing. They hit the launch sure enough, and put
holes in her, like enough--but not in Seamus Donley. The blessed dark
that preserved me! In no time at all the launch had drifted right up
against the further quay, on her way to the harbor-mouth, and I had
hold of an iron ladder that’s fixed in the stones, and up I went.
“As for the launch, she will have drifted out with the tide, and sunk,
what with the holes in her, for when I looked down toward the harbor
from the cliffs the next morning, there was no trace of her. You can
trust Seamus for a job of sabotage.
“But there was no time for self-congratulations, Mr. Logan. They would
have seen me get ashore again, even in the fog, and would be at my
heels. The best route for myself was the low ground between the Old
House and the empty cottages at Duncambus, and then up to the caves
in the cliffs. Oh, I knew the island of Carnglass, what with shooting
rabbits and birds over the best part of it, while I played at keeper.
There was but one hope for Seamus left, and that was the coming of some
one in a boat, such as yourself.
“A man or two set out after me, I think, and there was shooting in the
dark; but I showed them my heels, and made my way up the north cliffs;
yet a climb it was that none but a drunken man, or a desperate one,
would undertake. And before I had got to the foot of the cliffs, there
came a great _boom!_ behind me, and I looked round, and the yacht was
blazing worse than ever, for her petrol-tanks had blown up. Yet they
had been half drained earlier, so the explosion was not all I had hoped
for. When I got to the cliff-head, the fire in the yacht was out, so
they must have got pumps to working on the quay; Jackman will have been
back with his boys by that time, and what he told the boatmen could not
have been fit for decent ears. At dawn, when I risked a look at the
harbor, I could see the wreck of the yacht settled into the harbor mud,
with the water up to her gunwales even at low tide; she must be all
awash at high tide, and I doubt she’ll ever sail again. Sure, Jackman
can’t repair her.”
Logan had interrupted seldom; that seemed the best policy, when Donley
was full of whiskey. Now he asked, “Do you mean you’ve bottled up
Jackman’s people altogether, Mr. Donley?”
“And myself with them, Mr. Detective Logan. Even had Jackman means for
sending messages to the mainland, he’d say nothing concerning the yacht
and the launch, for fear of police coming to investigate. And he has no
such means, public or private. There was a wireless in the yacht, but
that’s lost; and there was an old wireless in the Old House, but that’s
been broken for a fortnight, how no one knows.
“In a matter of days, sure, his agents in Glasgow will begin fretting
after Jackman, what with no word from Carnglass, and will send out some
boat with trusty men to see what’s wrong. Until he has another big
launch, though, Jackman can do no more spying among the islands, under
pretext of pleasure-cruising, nor get word from men that he pays in
South Uist and other places. And now there’s no Seamus Donley to handle
his explosives for him, though Royall and Jackman himself might make
shift, if ever they find a good time and place to use them. And Jackman
will be fearing that the fire was seen, and that inquiries will be
made.”
“How is it, Seamus Donley,” Logan asked him, “that you’ve contrived to
keep clear of Jackman on this little island for three whole days?”
Donley chuckled with a deep gratification. “There’ll be a dozen caves
in Carnglass; and faint cliff-paths that only a Kerry man could follow;
and two ruined villages, and the two empty farmhouses, and the barns
and outhouses and the rest. And the mist, the blessed mist. Would you
believe, Mr. Logan, that I’m sixty-four years of age? No more would
they. But old Seamus is three times the man that the best of them ever
was. Oh, I can lay false scents: I broke a window at night in the New
House, so they might think me hid inside, though I never entered; and
I smashed the lock on the door of this black house--it was kept for
a hunting-lodge on this shore--though I’ve not slept inside, to fool
them again; and they cannot tell where I lay my head. After dark, they
give up the hunt, huddling together in the Old House, for fright of
Seamus. And in the day, they dare not seek me in packs of less than
three, though I’ve but little Meg here against their rifles. Twice
they’ve come near to finishing me, the last time only this evening; but
the mist saved me again, and I climbed down the sea-face of the cliffs,
and came round to this hut of yours when the tide was low. They’ll be
on the scent again so soon as there’s daylight. For if Seamus got away
from Carnglass with a whole skin, their game would be played out.
“What they hope, Mr. Detective Logan, is that old Seamus will be worn
down by lack of victuals and broken sleep and being run like a hare all
day; and then they’ll bag him. And so they might have done, in a day
or two more, had you not brought your dinghy to Dalcruach sands, Mr.
Logan. But now I’ll take French leave of them.”
In his wild and ruinous way, this was a wonderful man, Logan thought.
“I’ve another plan, Seamus Donley,” he said. “It’s this: I suggest that
you and I go up to the Old House together, in the morning, and face
them down.”
Donley slapped his hand upon the table, approvingly; and then,
remembering his situation, glanced uneasily toward the door. “By St.
Patrick and St. Merin--whoever _she_ was--you’ve a heart in your body,
Mr. Logan! You’d do honor to the Republican Army. Get thee behind me,
Satan Logan. ’Tis a temptation: and I might yield, if only we had a
brace of rifles. Mr. Detective Logan to stand for the majesty of the
law, and Mr. Seamus Donley for justice outraged! Ah, the pleasure of
seeing Jackman’s face, under the circumstances. Now tell me true: have
you no gun hid anywhere?”
“I’ve nothing but a walking-stick and a long razor,” Logan said.
Donley shook his bald head. “No, the thing won’t do, sir. Look
here: there’s but three bullets left in old Meg.” He swung open the
revolver’s cylinder. “The rest were spent, though I had a pocketful
of cartridges, in keeping off Jackman’s boys when they came within my
range. Fine figures you and I would cut, Mr. Detective, with one little
gun to the pair of us, tossing a sixpence for who might have the third
shot at Jackman. No, they call me a reckless Irishman, but I’m not the
fighting fool you seem to be. ’Tis away in your boat I must be tonight;
and if you’ve mind as well as heart, Mr. Logan, you’ll come away with
me, and let me set you ashore in safety, to fight another day.”
“I’m thinking of the women’s safety,” Logan said. Donley nodded. “But
you can do one thing for me, Seamus Donley: let me write a note or two,
and you can carry them with you, and post them the moment you reach a
postbox; for I take it that I’ll need help.”
“That I will do,” Seamus Donley said. “And more: the moment I reach a
telephone-kiosk, Mr. Detective, I will telephone your damned police,
and tell them there is trouble in Carnglass. But promise this much to
me, that you’ll not put my name into your letter. And you must hurry,
for midnight’s near, and I’ll need the ebbing of the tide to take me
clear of the skerries.”
“Give me five minutes,” Logan told him, “and your leave to light the
lamp again, and you’ll have my word. You can read the note, for that
matter. And then I’ll see you launched in the dinghy. But unless you’re
a better boatman than any I’ve met, I can’t understand how you expect
to keep clear of the rocks, and fight the currents, let alone cross
open water, in an open boat.”
“Seamus Donley,” that modest man said, “is as skilled with boats as
with explosives. Trust me, Mr. Logan: I’ll bring your message to land.”
In haste, Logan scribbled a few words to the chief constable, Glasgow,
or any police-officer into whose hands the note might come, saying that
a man probably had been murdered in Carnglass, and that more trouble
might be expected, and that immediate action was required. He put the
paper into a soggy envelope, and Donley thrust it into an inner pocket.
“Now,” Logan said, “I’m your man, Seamus Donley. But watch for that
current just beyond the needle-rocks: with the wind we’ve had for these
past four or five hours, the odds are that it may be too strong for
you, and smash the boat against the western cliffs.” Logan stripped
off shoes, stockings, and trousers, for it would be drenching work to
launch the dinghy. And then the two of them went cautiously out of the
black house. So far as they could tell, they stood alone on the dark
beach.
Though the wind had gone down an hour earlier, and the tide was flowing
back toward that lonely sea, still two strong men would be needed to
launch even a light boat in that surge on the beach. Neither moon nor
stars showed through the blackness. Between them, with much panting and
heaving, they dragged the dinghy to the water’s edge, and then pulled
her along the beach to a more sheltered spot behind an outcrop of gray,
weed-shrouded stone, where there was a good chance of getting her
really afloat. They staggered in water up to their waists; once Logan
fell, taking in a mouthful of salt water. The dinghy having shipped
some sea, Donley bailed her as best he could with her rusty bucket. Now
the trial must be made, and they would thrust her against the surf.
Donley flung his overcoat into the boat. “If you’ve no strong
objection, Mr. Detective Logan,” he growled, “I’ll take with me the
remnant of your good whiskey: I slipped the bottle into my coat pocket
as we left the hut. You’ve a brave heart, but no eye for sneak-thieves.
Yet I’ll give value for value.” He handed to Logan something dark and
weighty: it was the little gun called Meg, in a shoulder-holster with a
strap.
Logan fitted the holster under his arm. “That’s generous of you, Seamus
Donley.”
“She’s a well-balanced weapon, Mr. Detective, and never was meant for
a free gift to a policeman. But how three bullets will prevail against
Jackman’s boys, I cannot advise you.”
“Give me your hand,” Logan said. The tremendous grip of the Irishman
almost made him cry out.
“We should have been Dominicans together, Mr. Logan,” Donley grinned.
He let go Logan’s hand. “Now put your shoulder to the dinghy.”
They forced her bow against the comber, and Donley, rolling his great
body over the gunwale, seized the oars. Logan flung his strength
against the stern, running up to his nose in the receding wave. Now
Donley was plying his oars: the shelter of the rocks helped him; yet
only a man of his vast strength could have made head against that surly
swell.
Then, suddenly, the crest of a wave was carrying the little boat
outward; Donley got her round the rocks that had helped her launching.
If he called out anything to Logan at the last, his voice was lost in
the noise of waves smashing against stone and sand. The dinghy passed
into the Hebridean night, and Logan wished that fierce man good fortune
upon his nocturnal sea. A minute later, Logan caught one final glimpse
of the boat passing over the inner reef, Donley rowing mightily. After
that, the mist settled upon the face of the waters.
6
Some strange bird, perhaps a shearwater, swept high above Logan as he
made his way back to the hovel: it shrieked like nothing canny. That
cry was a fitting farewell to Seamus Donley.
How much might Logan credit of the gunman’s story? While Donley had
sat before him, sinister and humorous, talking in his Kerry way, even
the more amazing parts of the tale had seemed fairly credible. But
now Logan felt grave doubts. Donley was a terrorist, his hand against
every man’s. That someone named Jackman should have designs upon Lady
MacAskival’s money was not improbable; but Donley’s assertion that
Jackman meant sabotage, espionage, and murder would not quite go down:
not in a quiet Scottish island owned by an old lady.
Yet there had been Logan’s own encounter with violence in Mutto’s Wynd,
and that unnerving scene in the valley just back of the cliff, with the
three men firing at Donley. And Donley’s account of Lagg’s end had the
ring of truth.
Logan barred the cottage door behind him. Whatever measures Jackman’s
people had taken with an escaped convict, surely they would not deal
similarly with an American lawyer, known by several people to have
been bound for Carnglass. Yet the feel of Donley’s pistol Meg, snug
under his arm, was a comfort. Well, he must spend five hours more in
the black house, though he had risen from his long sleep only ten hours
ago, and did not feel in the least tired, even after the launching of
the dinghy. There could be no climbing the cliffs until dawn. He let
the fire expire altogether, and did not re-light the lamp: Donley’s
warnings had that much effect upon him. Lying on the old bed with a
blanket about him, Logan thought of what he must do as soon as the sun
began to rise.
The odds were that Donley’s pursuers would be out in force when light
came; they had nearly caught or shot Donley the previous evening,
and they would know that he was tired, and probably almost out of
ammunition. And if those men with rifles were even half so rough a crew
as Donley had suggested, it would be more prudent for Logan to avoid
a sudden encounter with them--particularly since they would take any
moving figure to be Donley himself. The best course, it seemed, would
be for Logan to keep to the cliff-tops, if possible, until close to the
Old House; and then to descend and go straight up to the door. If they
wouldn’t let him see Lady MacAskival, at least they could not mistake
him for Donley; and he could lay his cards before this Dr. Jackman--or
as many of his cards as might seem prudent. In Jackman, at least, Logan
took it, he would confront a rational being.
It was inconceivable that any such man could persist in plans of
violence--supposing he contemplated any schemes of that character--once
he knew that he was facing a responsible person who had come to
Carnglass on legitimate business. And if Mr. Lagg should be alive
still--Donley, after all, had admitted that he had not seen Lagg
die--presumably Logan would find an ally in him. Yet it might be wise
to reconnoitre the Old House before knocking at the gate.
It was possible to half-believe Donley’s tale because of the deathly
solitude that enveloped Carnglass. The island was like a great bony
corpse. Even here within the thick walls of the black house, the whole
drowned mountain seemed dehumanized--perhaps hostile to humanity. Small
non-human night noises drifted through the hole in the thatch: the
rustle of bracken, unpleasantly like sepulchral whispering; the cry,
again, of that nocturnal bird of prey: the surge of the devouring sea
against the cliffs. Listening to these, Logan fell into a restless
doze, now and then rousing himself with a start. Fragments of nightmare
beset him during the sporadic periods when consciousness drifted away.
And one of those fragments was deeply disturbing.
* * * * *
He found himself in some place utterly dark, and made all of stone,
without door or window; and his hands, when he extended his arms, could
touch the cold walls on either side. Whether he was lying or standing,
it was hard to guess: time and space and gravity and equilibrium had no
meaning here. Something was belted to his side--a sword. And he was not
alone.
Something else, foul and malign, existed there in that oppressive dark
space. Of this, he could perceive nothing but its eyes; and there were
three of its eyes. It was a devouring thing. In that cramped dead
place, he drew the sword, and he hacked at those eyes. Yet the sword
rebounded, as if he were striking feebly with a blade of grass against
some enormous hard-shelled insect. “Strike through the sham!” a voice
cried within him. “Strike through the sham!” Frantically he thrust
against the blackness below the eyes. He was in terror not so much
for himself as for someone else; but the name and face of that other
someone would not come to him. And then, trembling and suffering from
cramp in one leg, Hugh Logan woke.
* * * * *
Outside the black house, birds were singing at the first feeble
gleam of light in the east. Still shaken by the vividness of that
nightmare vision, Logan flung on his clothes and strapped his knapsack
on his back and took up his stick. It would be well to vacate this
cottage before the man-stalkers of Carnglass were up and about; for,
considering the direction in which Donley had fled the previous
evening, Dalcruach was the most likely target for them this morning.
Donley’s pistol, in its holster, Logan fixed round his shoulder under
his tweed jacket; it seemed adequately concealed.
He climbed the landward cliff more easily than he had the previous
afternoon, now knowing the neglected path; and when he reached the
summit, and saw the valley empty before him, he turned to his left
along the ragged crest of those titanic cliffs.
The cliff-top was no narrow ledge: rather, it constituted an irregular
plateau, in some places only a few feet wide, but in most twenty or
thirty yards, and here or there a good deal wider. Broken by great
boulders and dotted with springs or pools--some of them almost little
ponds--this summit was rough going; surely it would take Logan almost
twice as long to reach the Old House by this route. Up here, no doubt,
Donley had lurked much of the time. When the mists were dense, it would
be next to impossible to track down a solitary man at the top of this
little world.
This was one of those high places in which Satan offers the kingdoms of
the earth, Logan thought. Because of the winds, and the lack of soil,
nothing grew here except occasional clumps of heather and little ferns
and rock-plants. For the most part, the summit-plateau sloped inward
toward the valleys of the island; the sea-face seemed to be sheer
drop, almost everywhere. Today the wind was fairly strong, sweeping the
spring fog out to sea, and Logan had clear glimpses, half the time,
of the interior of Carnglass. The island was much better wooded than
are most of the Hebrides: thick plantations were dotted here and there
below the screes, doubtless the work of old Sir Alastair MacAskival.
Twice, as he made his precarious way over the windswept rocks, Logan
saw red deer grazing near the cliff-foot. And everywhere was trickling
water. Early spring in the Western Isles has its charms, but it made
the rocks treacherous for Logan, and soaked his boots through. He used
his binoculars when he came to a bold promontory of cliff, looking
northward, though he lay down to avoid making a mark of himself. Near
the ruined farmhouse at Mucaird, a small flock of sheep was browsing,
some straying upward upon the hill itself; yet there was no sign of any
man.
But a quarter of an hour later, as he drew near to a jumbled mass of
living rock and broken boulders covered with lichens, something moving
against the heather of Mucaird caught his eye. Half sheltering himself
behind a rock, he took out the binoculars again. Yes, it was three men
with rifles, close to the derelict farmhouse and sheilings, and walking
in the direction of Dalcruach. Something in their movements suggested
that they were very ill at ease. And at that moment Logan felt himself
to be in peril.
For only fifty yards away, and scrambling toward him, came two armed
men. Their attention was fixed upon the scene in the valley, as his
had been, and apparently they did not see Logan. He slid quickly down
behind his boulder. It scarcely was possible that this cliff-patrol
should fail to detect him. Should he stand up and call out to them now,
or wait until they should be right upon him? Either course had its
perils. Then the decision was taken out of his hands.
Down in the valley, one of the men flung his rifle to his shoulder and
fired into the bracken on his left. The other hunters in that party
knelt and fired also. Having put his binoculars back into their case,
Logan could not see whether there was any movement in that brush.
Whatever could they be firing at? Mere nerves, probably, since they had
no idea Donley had escaped from the island; or possibly a stray sheep
or a deer, which they in their tension mistook for a man.
“Ferd!” one of the men on the cliff called out to the other. “Ferd!”
They were so close to Logan now that they sounded almost on the other
side of his rock. “They’ve flushed him!” Then the voices of his
neighbors receded, and Logan risked a peek around the boulder. The two
had turned about and were retracing their steps, apparently looking for
some way down the cliff to the screes, and so to the valley floor. It
had been a close call. As the two riflemen scrambled round a rock shelf
and began a tentative descent, Logan crept toward the seaward side of
the cliff and so on toward the west, sometimes on hands and knees,
until he felt safe from their sight.
When next he ventured toward the inland side of the cliff and took out
his binoculars, the party of three men in the valley was vanishing
behind a knoll toward the northern cliffs, and the other two, who had
so nearly stumbled upon him, were nowhere to be seen; presumably they
still were groping for a way down. Now, Logan guessed, he would be
secure from such patrols until he came close to the Old House. Likely
enough, two or three men had been sent to search the northern line of
cliffs, so as to drive the elusive Donley like a wild beast toward
Dalcruach; and that would leave only a handful of men about the Old
House, the New House, and the harbor--if, indeed, even these last, or
most of them, were not out searching elsewhere. He ought to be able to
get very close up to the Old House before being noticed.
Soon he was past the ridge or saddle that joined the cliffs to the hill
of Mucaird; and now he could look down upon the further valley. Broader
than the first, it also was less stricken by the plague of bracken;
there were cattle grazing--yes, the shaggy Highland beasts, he could
see. The ring of cliffs was lower here than at the other end of the
island. At the southwestern extremity, those gray walls dipped down to
the ocean, forming the neck of Askival harbor. On the northern side of
the harbor, the cliffs rose again and merged into a steep hill, which
must be the one called Cailleach, The Nun. At its foot he could make
out the scanty ruins of an ancient village: here Duncan MacAskival’s
crofting ancestors had lived.
Askival harbor was a good deep anchorage. On either side of its mouth,
an old pier of rubble ran out to narrow the entrance still further
against the ravenous ocean. And at the quay nearest to him, the burnt
yacht lay lurched against the rocks; it was low tide again now, and her
deck, or what remained of it, was just awash. The New House, rather a
modest and neat eighteenth-century mansion, stood close by the harbor,
surrounded by plantations and overgrown gardens. Further up the valley,
in the shelter of the southern cliffs on which he stood, there was
another farmhouse, apparently empty, but in better condition than the
one by Mucaird; and near it some cottages and sheilings.
All this, Logan took in through a long, low sweep of the binoculars.
Then he focused upon the object of this troubled journey of his, the
Old House of Fear. A quarter of a mile back from the harbor, the stark
gray walls of the Old House rose upon a massive outcrop of rock: a
place of great strength once. No man was stirring about it.
Fine old trees grew at the very foot of the living rock on which
the Old House was built; but the castle defied the wind in its naked
power, showing no touch of greenery except a glimpse of leaves at
the back, possibly in a small walled garden. The late-Victorian wing
blended fairly harmoniously with the mass of the ancient tower, and
seemed to close off the original entrance from the present exterior of
the complex; the modern gate must front toward the harbor, and so lie
hidden from Logan’s view, from his present position upon the cliffs.
Talk of castles in Spain! The Old House of Fear, here upon the desolate
verge of civilization--at the limits, indeed, of human existence
itself--had a brooding glamour denied to Roman and Saracen lands.
Here toward the harbor, the cliff-face was easier than the precipices
toward the northeastern end of the island. If he were cautious, he
might make the descent without alarming anyone at the Old House. Having
climbed several summers both in the highlands of Perthshire and in the
Rockies, Logan could avoid sending boulders thundering before him.
Supposing no one chanced to make a target of him, he might reach the
Old House about noon.
Now how might he descend toward the Old House unobserved? Coming down
the cliff-face and the screes, if he should try it just now, he must
make a fair mark; although when he should reach the cliff-foot, he
might pass to the back of the New House through the plantations and
then slink along a belt of aspens and firs which stretched from the
New House to the wood round the base of the rock where stood the Old
House. First, however, he must make his way along the cliffs until he
should come nearly abreast of the New House, and then seek for a way
down. And the thing might be done, in this mistiest of islands, in
this mistiest of seasons. For the breeze was subsiding again, and the
sky had darkened; and once more the fog might settle over cliffs and
hill-tops, though possibly it would not sink low into the valley.
It took Logan half an hour to discover--always taking advantage of
cover--a tolerable fissure in the cliff down which he might make his
way. Still no one was to be seen between him and the Old House. Twice
he thought he heard gunshots in the distant northeastern valley; but,
the wind being eccentric and generally against him, he might have been
mistaken. And presently, as he had hoped, the mist began to settle like
a shroud upon the cliffs. His tweeds blended with rock and heather. For
twenty minutes more, he crouched at the summit, the fog slowly shutting
off his view of harbor and New House and Old House. Then, carefully, he
began the slippery descent. When he reached the talus-slope, he walked
gingerly, lest he start a warning slide of rock debris.
Still he saw no one, nor heard anything. At length he was in the firs
of the outlying plantations of the New House, and moving swiftly toward
the Old House. It was midday, on a Wednesday, a full week since he had
left Michigan. And now he stood, sheltered by old trees, right below
the Old House of Fear.
Immediately above him, nearly thirty feet up the steeply-sloping gray
outcrop, was the little walled garden he had glimpsed from the cliffs;
and a stout stone dyke about eight feet high enclosed it. The garden
was set against the rear wall of the great ancient tower, the windows
of which looked upon the wood, so that the moment Logan should emerge
from the cover of the trees, he must be fully visible to anyone at
those windows. Most of the apertures in the tower-wall--from this
position below, it seemed like a skyscraper--were the original or at
least medieval windows, perhaps a foot square, though now closed with
glass panes; but the windows of the third story had been much enlarged,
perhaps at the end of the seventeenth century, so that they were
taller than a man, and fitted with double sashes of nine panes each.
Crouching near the northeastern angle of the tower as he did, Logan
could see the range of seventeenth-century buildings that extended
to the smaller medieval tower, and beyond that the jutting bulk of
the late-Victorian additions, which covered the whole surface of the
seaward part of the rock. So long as he kept to the rear of the old
tower, he could not be observed from the later portions of the mansion.
And it stood to reason that some sort of postern-door must open from
the old tower into the walled garden.
There drifted to him a sound of voices. Lying flat in the wood, Logan
made out two men with guns, striding from behind the façade of the
Victorian building in the direction of the hill called Cailleach; thus
their backs were to him, or soon would be. The leader was a tall gaunt
gawky creature, possibly Donley’s “walking cadaver,” Royall. So Logan
knew that he had not yet been seen; and there were two less snipers to
fret about for the moment. He let them go out of sight downhill. By
hooking the handle of his stick over the lip of the garden dyke, he
thought, he should be able to scramble up and into the little garden.
It had best be now.
But at that moment, as he rose to step out of the wood and clamber upon
the rock, he perceived someone at the nearest third-story window of the
old tower. “Saints be praised,” Donley would have said; for it was a
woman’s shape. If this should be Lady MacAskival herself, Logan’s work
might be made easier for him. He stepped into the open.
From high above, she saw him; and though perhaps she started a little,
she gave no sign of real dread. This was the first calming thing that
Logan had observed in Carnglass. Unhurried, the woman lifted the sash.
Surely she could not be Lady MacAskival, for she was slim and graceful
and apparently young; that much Logan could make out, though she stood
so high above him. Could this be the “Young One” to whom Donley had
referred vaguely? There had not been much time for asking incidental
questions of Donley. Then she spoke, with a gentle lilt to her voice,
and very low, so that her words just carried to Logan. “If you can come
over the dyke,” she said, “I will open the little door for you.” Her
shape vanished from the window.
Logan skipped up the great rock and hooked his stick upon the dyke,
putting his feet against the wall; and up he went, and grasped the
top--luckily there was no broken bottle-glass set into it--and pulled
himself over, and sprang into the square of garden, which must have
been wearisomely established by patient labor in this unlikely spot.
There were a half-dozen flowering shrubs, and some small yews, and two
neat beds of flowers. And beyond these lay a small heavy iron door set
into the great wall. Logan waited a long minute before bolts grated
back and the door swung inward.
“Quickly, now,” that soft voice said, “and please take off your boots
once you are inside.” The foundation-wall into which the doorway had
been cut must be at least ten feet thick. Logan slipped past the woman,
who bolted the door behind him, and he had unlaced and removed his
boots almost before she turned to him. They stood in an enormous empty
vaulted chamber, in the earliest days of the stronghold a stable and
storehouse, no doubt. At one angle, a stone stair wound upward into the
blackness of the great wall itself. Though the only light came from
slits three feet above their heads, he saw her fairly plain.
“Really, sir,” she was saying, ever so quietly, but with an undertone
of amusement, “you seem to have scrambled over the worst of Carnglass.”
Logan became conscious of his rock-bruises and his two-day beard. “Now
what is your name, please, and who sent you?”
She was young, less than twenty, and a tiny beauty: her shapely head
came scarcely above Logan’s shoulder. The oval face with the high
cheek-bones was a charming pink-and-white; the firm lips had an
infinite grace and mobility, and the dreamy wide eyes were green. The
nose, perhaps, was a trifle masculine in so small a face, straight and
strong. And the flaming glory of her red hair, which descended to her
supple waist! She wore a close-fitting simple suit, of the green tweed
of the Islands. Blood tells, Logan thought: this girl is of the old
line. She made him stammer.
“I’m Hugh Logan,” he said, “representing Mr. Duncan MacAskival.”
She clapped her slender hands noiselessly. “I knew you must come from
him! It was I that sent for you, you know. Are there others just
outside?”
Logan shook his head. This would be the Young One. But who was she?
“And I am Mary MacAskival,” she told him. “Come away, and make no
noise. I do not think we shall be long alone together. Carry your
boots.” She sprang to the twisting dark stair in the wall, with Logan
at her heels. They were naked delicate heels, Logan saw, as they
scampered up into the wall: she wore no shoes and stockings, as if
the chill stones of the Hebrides were warm sand to her. The bare feet
of Scottish girls, it came to him incongruously, had been one of the
principal attractions of the land for French visitors in the eighteenth
century.
In silence, they passed a shallow landing and a massive door; and
hurried up another corkscrew flight, she pausing to whisper, “Do watch
your feet here; it is the bad step--the place they made to trip enemies
in the fighting with claymores, you know.” Yes, the single step was
two inches higher than the rest, to throw off balance a man leaping
upward. They passed a second recessed landing and a second heavy door;
and then Mary MacAskival swung open the door opening upon the third
story, ushering Logan into a noble ancient vaulted chamber. “This is my
very own parlor,” she told him, with just a hint of vanity.
The square room had a ceiling painted in faded reds and browns,
geometrical designs by men long dead; and there were a few good
pieces of furniture, principally eighteenth century, and a crimson
Victorian sofa. A door in the further wall gave entrance, probably, to
the seventeenth-century domestic range of the Old House; and another
led, presumably, to a sleeping-closet. “Do sit down,” the girl said,
gesturing toward the sofa, “and you may put on your boots, if you like.
I did not wish them to hear us on the stair.” For herself, she settled
nimbly into a window-nook opposite him, her tiny feet hid by her skirt.
“Now tell me truly,” she went on. “Are you a real American? I thought
all Americans wore synthetic suits, and carried great cameras over
their shoulders, and smoked cigars incessantly, and said ‘You bet’ and
‘I guess,’ and wore their hair sheared ever so close. Do you know, Mr.
Logan, you could pass muster for a Scot? Now wherever are the others?”
“There’s no one with me,” Logan said. She still had him nearly
tongue-tied, like an adolescent.
A little charming ripple of dismay passed over that lively face of
hers. “No others? Then where are Mr. Duncan MacAskival and all his
people?”
“I came alone from America, Miss MacAskival, and it was all I could do
to make Carnglass by myself.”
“No!” That sweet mouth rounded to give force to the negation. “No!”
She threw back from her forehead a lock of red hair, bewildered. “Mr.
Logan, I’m afraid I have made a serious error. You must understand
that I am not very worldly; I’m sorry for it. I thought any American
millionaire would come in his own grand yacht, and servants beside
him, and perhaps policemen and soldiers and cabinet-ministers. I never
guessed that you, or anyone else, might come all alone. I do fear
that I may have fetched you into a dangerous plight.” Her musical
island English--and yet she must have been to a good school somewhere,
too--was so pleasant to the ear that Logan almost neglected the warning
in her words. “Now look here, Mr. Logan.” A quality of decision came
into her soft voice that had some connection with that high-bridged
nose of hers. “Do you think you could pretend--successfully, I mean--to
be an Edinburgh man? A young bank-clerk? The British Linen Bank, shall
we say?” Despite the girl’s childish look, in some respects she was in
advance of her years; just now she might have been a dowager duchess.
“You can? Then you must do precisely that. I do hope you studied
play-acting once upon a time. I did, you know, at the convent-school.
You’re very young, Mr. Logan--I had expected a very rich and very fat
old man--but really, you must contrive to carry it off. Everything
depends on it.”
“Just a question or two, please,” Logan said. “I met a man named Donley
at the other end of the island.”
“Of course.” She smiled. “A great cheerful ruffian. And he said some
things to you? They will not have caught him yet?”
“I don’t believe they’ll ever catch that man, Miss MacAskival. He told
me that matters are dangerous here in the Old House.”
“He told you truly. What else did he tell you?”
“He said that Dr. Jackman intends to--to have Lady MacAskival die.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “O, no! Donley was mistaken. Lady MacAskival would
not have been alive these past two months had not Dr. Jackman tended
her with all his skill. He has been a good nurse. It’s to his own
interest that she should live.”
Logan looked her compassionately in the eyes. “And Donley hinted that
you, too, were to die.”
The girl shook her bright head impatiently. “Donley did not understand.
Dr. Jackman does not mean to have me die--not now, and perhaps never.
Dr. Jackman means to marry me.”
Logan had cultivated a calm courtroom presence, but now he blinked.
“You’re not joking?”
Mary MacAskival smiled ever so slightly. “Do you think Dr. Jackman
shows bad taste? Hush, now!” She sat listening intently, her head
inclined toward the door that opened upon the body of the Old House.
Logan could hear nothing, but of course this girl’s ears would be
attuned to every footfall in that strange place.
“Stand up, please,” she said; and then, silent on her nimble naked
feet, she approached him. “I do hope you’ll forgive me, Mr. Logan, but
I am about to do something rude. I’ve done it seldom, and I may do it
badly.” There came a light tap at the door. “Hold me, if you please,”
she whispered, and pressed that lithe body against him, flinging her
arms about his neck. Logan heard the door creak open, but he could
not see, for the moment, who entered; and this was because Mary
MacAskival’s red lips were thrust upon his, and the glory of her red
hair was all about his face. Then, as she let him go a trifle, over her
shoulder he saw a man standing in the doorway.
It was a small man, sturdy enough, but with an indescribable air
of deformity about him--perhaps a curious thrusting forward of the
shoulders. With his forehead, too, there was something faintly wrong.
But the eyes were splendid: black, and piercing, piercing. The man’s
face was one of those faces which never were young and never will be
ancient. The face tightened, as if resisting shock, and Logan thought
the man’s right hand strayed toward the back of his coat; but it
returned gently to his side.
The man’s voice was controlled and well modulated. “I am surprised to
find you have a visitor, Miss MacAskival.”
Mary MacAskival let go her arms from Logan’s neck and turned on her
toes to face the man, with a wonderfully convincing air of surprise and
embarrassment. “Oh, Dr. Jackman!” she murmured. “We must have looked
dreadfully silly. Dr. Jackman, may I present Mr. Hugh Logan, of the
British Linen Bank, Edinburgh? Mr. Logan and I are to be married.”
7
“Why, then,” Dr. Jackman said, “Mr. Logan is a fortunate young man.”
The note of irony was faint. “I seem to recollect, Miss MacAskival,
your mentioning that you met a young man at an Edinburgh party, last
Christmas: I suppose this is he. And however did your betrothed
contrive to come into this house, in this season?”
Whatever game the girl was playing, Logan thought, he too would have
to play it now. And possibly he might carry it off. Jackman he took
for an Englishman. Logan had some talent for languages and dialects;
his courtroom years had taught him dissimulation; and since the war he
had been in several amateur performances of the Players’ Club. Now for
his present role: he had best play the part of a rather callow, but
ambitious, clerk from the Lothians. His speech ought to have a strong
suggestion of Scots, but to seem an imitation of public-school English,
and with a touch of what people called “la-de-da.” A small moustache
might have gone well with the part; it was a pity he hadn’t been given
time to cultivate one.
So Logan stepped forward rather stiffly, offering his hand to Jackman.
“Now the fat is in the fire, isn’t it? Rather. It’s grand to make your
acquaintance, Dr. Jackman, but really, I must apologize for coming
informally this way. It’s my fortnight’s holiday, and I had promised
Mary to come for a holiday as soon as ever I could. Somehow my letters
hadn’t reached her. The post is beastly nowadays, is it not? Some
fishing-johnnies brought me over from North Uist, and set me ashore
at the other end of your wee island. Now I must see Lady MacAskival
today and ask her approval. For Mary and I do not mean to wait another
quarter, do we, Mary, darling?”
The girl had stepped forward with him; and now Logan, putting an arm
about her waist, gave her an overdemonstrative squeeze, in keeping with
his new character. She did not seem disconcerted. “No, Hughie,” she
said, “we mustn’t wait a day longer than necessary.”
Dr. Jackman’s thin lips contracted, but he took Logan’s hand briefly.
“You and I will have much to discuss soon, Mr. Logan,” he said, “but
just now, tell me this: if you came from the shore at Dalcruach, did
you meet no one on your way?”
“Indeed I did see some men hunting,” Logan replied, easily, “but
they were away down in the glen, and their backs to me, so they did
not see me when I waved.” He was doing well enough with his assumed
pronunciation, he thought; he threw just a suggestion of “awa’ doon”
into his words. “Then there were two sportsmen on the cliffs, and I
called after them, but the mist came up and hid them. I kept to the
cliffs, the better for finding the castle. And Mary here”--he squeezed
her again--“had told me her rooms were at the back of the house, so I
went round, and Mary saw me and let me in.” He felt sure that Jackman
disliked him intensely. Who wouldn’t, in his present role? He hoped he
was convincing as a pushing, canny, and unmannerly junior clerk.
Jackman looked vexed, though not especially with him. “Mr. Logan,”
Jackman said, “did you ever dream that you were the commander of a
garrison, for instance, with Red Indians all about your fort; but that
the moment you turned your back, your troops would vanish like shadows;
and any shot that was fired at the enemy, would have to be fired by
yourself?”
“No, sir,” Logan replied, with what he trusted was a properly oafish
perplexity, “I never did. The fact of the matter is, I never do dream.”
“I should have thought of that,” Jackman observed. “No, I’m sure you
never dream. But to return to the heart of the matter: I dream a great
deal. And the conduct of Lady MacAskival’s servants is like a nightmare
to me. What incompetence! Yet several of them saw service during the
late war. If none of them spied you on the cliffs, they must be even
duller than I thought. I suppose that Miss MacAskival has told you a
very dangerous man is at large in the island?”
“She has, sir; and I am thankful I did not meet with him on my way. An
Irishman, she says.”
“Yes, Donley: an Irishman, and a homicidal maniac. Our people have been
seeking to arrest him for more than three days, but he always escapes
their net. Those were not sportsmen you saw, Mr. Logan, but our people
tracking this Donley. Neither Miss MacAskival nor anyone else in this
house will be able to set foot outside while that man is at large,
unless accompanied by an armed guard. I regret to say, Miss MacAskival,
that I must forbid you to visit your garden until the man is caught.
And please have the goodness to remember to keep back from the windows.
The man is armed, Mr. Logan, and a crack shot. Only Ferd Caggia, our
cook, is his peer with a gun. To be defended by a Maltese cook in one’s
own castle! Ludicrous, isn’t it, Mr. Logan? I suppose you wonder why
we haven’t summoned the police. But possibly Miss MacAskival has had
time to tell you that the madman destroyed our boats, and we have been
quite out of communication with the mainland. Presumably, however, our
agents in Glasgow will send a launch to us in a day or two, by way of
inquiry, and then we can call in the police. That launch, by the way,
can give you passage back to the mainland, Mr. Logan.”
“That’s very thoughtful, I’m sure, sir,” Logan said innocently, “but
it’s my plan to stay the best part of a fortnight, if Lady MacAskival
will permit me.”
“Lady MacAskival is in no condition to make decisions of any nature.
As for your remaining here--why, we’d best go upstairs to my study
and discuss certain matters, Mr. Logan. Will you excuse me, Miss
MacAskival?”
That barefoot little girl stepped forward like a princess. “Dr.
Jackman: surely you remember my Airedale, Tyke?”
“Yes,” Jackman said with a frosty smile, “I do. A great pity, that
rabbit-hunting accident.”
“You took Tyke for a walk, Dr. Jackman,” Mary MacAskival went on,
dispassionately, “and never did you bring him back. I wish you to bring
Hugh back to me. I intend to give him tea here in my parlor, one hour
from now.”
“Of course, my dear young lady.” Jackman bowed slightly. “I shall bring
him back safe in wind and limb: eh, Logan?” He clapped Logan lightly
on the back. “And now, be so good as to follow me up these stairs.
Mind the worn stone treads: they’re treacherous. No one knows how many
generations of MacAskivals have trodden that granite through. There’s
a legend that the ghost of Old Askival snatches at one’s ankles on
those stairs. Eh, Miss MacAskival? I’m sure he’d snatch at yours, and
small blame to him.” Jackman nodded at the girl with a kind of paternal
gallantry.
Mary MacAskival stood in the doorway as Logan and Jackman began to
ascend. “I believe it was my ankles that you noticed first, wasn’t it,
Hughie?” Though the stair was dark, Logan thought that Jackman almost
winced. “I suppose I really ought to tell you how it was that Hugh
and I came to meet, Dr. Jackman. You’ve already guessed that it must
have been during that wonderful fortnight Lady MacAskival and you let
me spend in Edinburgh in December with Anne Lindsay, who had been at
school with me. I happened to go into the Lawnmarket office of the
British Linen Bank to change a five-pound note; and Hugh was so very
helpful; and we found that he knew the Lindsays of George Square;
and....”
“Quite,” said Dr. Jackman, “quite. Perhaps we had best leave the rest
to my fertile imagination? Really, I am not in the least surprised; if
you will pardon my saying so, Miss Mary MacAskival, the little episode
is part and parcel with the traditional impulsiveness of ladies of your
family. You understand what I mean. The inscription by the door of the
old tower, for instance--we’ll show you that incised slab later, Mr.
Logan. Just now, I’ve only one thing to say to you, Miss MacAskival. I
advise you to go in to Lady MacAskival and tell her that a young man
has come to call upon you. As for any mention of marriage, the shock
might put an end to your aunt; and you know as well as I do the certain
consequence to your own prospects. Yet you had best mention Mr. Logan’s
coming, because old Agnes would tell her soon enough, in any event. I
advise you to be extremely gentle and prudent in the telling. And while
you are having your little chat with Lady MacAskival, I shall have my
little chat with your Mr. Logan.”
Mary MacAskival sent a glance from her disturbing green eyes at Hugh as
he followed Jackman up the dark stair; and she gave him a demure wink.
Whatever else the girl had or lacked, she had sufficient courage in
adversity. Then she was gone, and Jackman led him round and round the
twisting stair in the thickness of the wall, past several shut doors,
to the topmost chamber of the tower. Upon three sides were windows,
not so large as those of Miss MacAskival’s room, but still big and
handsome; and on the fourth wall was an immense fireplace, perhaps
fifteenth-century work, with a ponderous chimney-piece carved crudely
from basalt. On one side of the mantel, and standing two feet high,
carved almost in the round, was the effigy of a naked man holding an
axe; and on the other, a naked woman clutching a cross to her breast.
“A ponderous quaint affair, isn’t it?” Jackman observed, nodding toward
the fireplace. “There are similar figures set into the outer wall, by
the door of this tower: Askival and Merin, they say. The Old House is
so well preserved only because it stood empty, but not a ruin, nearly
the whole of the nineteenth century: the proprietors lived in the New
House. They used the ground floors of the Old House for byres and
rubbish-rooms. Sir Alastair MacAskival, the present old lady’s husband,
restored the Old House--with his wife’s money. It’s far too large for
such a household as she has now. The block that Sir Alastair added
is all great drawing-rooms and dining-rooms and billiard-rooms and
ball-rooms, with the kitchens below; and the present servants sleep in
the upper rooms of that wing. Lady MacAskival has a grand bedroom hung
with Spanish leather, in the Renaissance range; and I have rooms in
that building. But I spend much of my time in this study. For centuries
it was the private chamber of the chiefs of MacAskival. There’s a fine
prospect; but I’ll show you that later, Mr. Logan. And have you noticed
the ceiling? But I presume you’re no antiquarian.”
Indeed, the ceiling was a wonder. Though the colors in which its panels
were painted were much like those of the ceiling in Mary MacAskival’s
parlor, here geometrical designs alternated with scores of stiff
representations of queer men and beasties: kings, perhaps, and knights,
and ladies, and lions, and leopards, and griffins, and water-horses,
and unicorns, and things for which Logan knew no name--no two alike.
“Late fifteenth century, perhaps,” Jackman said, “and almost unique in
the islands, this ceiling.”
At the center of all these painted ceiling-panels was a panel with
a dull red background; and on it, little faded, was depicted a very
odd creature. It had the body of a man; but there were cloven hoofs
instead of feet, though it showed human hands; and the head was
the narrow malign head of a goat. The face itself seemed to be a
dismaying blend of human and animal features, in which the cunning
slit goat-eyes dominated. “I see you are looking at the Firgower--the
central panel,” Jackman went on. “A beast peculiar to Carnglass, it
seems, the Firgower: half goat, half man. There’s still a ruinous
building upon the cliffs called the Firgower’s house. I take it to
have been the house of the last Pictish chief of Carnglass, before the
Vikings came. There’s some remote Pict strain, as well as Norse, in
your own Miss MacAskival, Mr. Logan. She is of the old family, true
enough--not that she has the faintest legitimate claim to the property,
you understand. But I suppose you have little interest in fictions like
the Firgower. These legends sometimes have meaning, all the same. Once
an archeologist told me that the Firgower may be some island memory
of the last Pict chieftain himself: an ugly brute, to judge from this
portrait. The old islanders used to say that the Firgower never died,
but lives on from age to age. And that’s true enough, Mr. Logan, after
a fashion--the goat strain, I mean. I don’t scruple to say that a
goatish strain has run through the line of MacAskival, from beginning
to end. Gallant men and handsome women; but concupiscent, Mr. Logan,
concupiscent. You understand me? There are vessels for honor, and
vessels for dishonor.”
“I can’t say that I do understand, precisely, sir.” The two of them
were seated in leather chairs now, and Jackman was pouring sherry from
an eighteenth-century decanter. What with Mary MacAskival absent,
Logan could spend his time studying this unnerving Dr. Jackman. As
Donley had told him, the fellow was clever, immensely clever; and
more than that, wise, perhaps; and voluble. He made Logan uneasy to a
degree Logan never had experienced with that gunman Donley. The little
deformed man had a commanding presence. And still Logan was unsure of
the nature of Jackman’s deformity: it was something about the spine and
shoulders, though not crippling or really noticeable. Yet Jackman’s
lean face had about it just a suggestion of that look of suffering
and humiliation which one sometimes sees on the faces of congenital
hunchbacks. And there was something dismaying about the man’s forehead.
Right at the middle of his brow existed a small and shallow depression,
about the size and shape of a sixpence; and there seemed to be no bone
behind the skin at that spot. Now and then the place seemed to stir a
little, as if the skin lay upon the quick brain. In an unpleasant way,
it was fascinating.
“Very good old sherry, this,” Jackman was saying. “Sir Alastair kept
an admirable cellar, and much of it still is below stairs. One has to
watch the servants. There’s a quantity--perhaps two bins--of Jamaica
rum of 1800 or earlier, commencing to lose its savor now, alas. Another
drop, Mr. Logan? You’ve been looking at the hole in my head: not that
I mean to reproach you, for you’d have to be blind to ignore it. It’s
a souvenir of Spain. In the lines outside Teruel, a spent bullet went
right through the bone. But there was a Russian surgeon in Teruel
that day, luckily, and he got the bullet out, and now there’s a bit
of plastic set into my poor skull. I call the place my third eye.
You’ve read the Hebridean legends of third eyes, Mr. Logan? No? I
suppose you’ve little time for general reading, what with the getting
and spending of your vocation. For that matter, I presume you know
next to nothing of the Spanish trouble, more than twenty years ago:
a youthful indiscretion of mine. But possibly that’s just as well.
Every man to his last. You will be twenty-seven years old, Mr. Logan,
or perhaps twenty-eight? And earning seven pounds a week, like as
not. And you aspire to marry the sole survivor of the old, old line
of MacAskival. Not that I blame you, not in the least. In the coming
world, Mr. Logan, there will be no rank and no class. And intellect
will have its rewards. No, so far as social status is concerned, I
offer no objection. ‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ as you Scots say, Mr.
Logan. Yet I would be no friend to you if I neglected to give you some
description of the difficulties in your way.”
His face and his facility of speech had served him well, Logan
thought: Dr. Jackman had no doubt, it appeared, that Logan was indeed
an Edinburgh clerk; and astute though Jackman obviously was, he had
underestimated Logan’s age by nearly a decade. The man could make
mistakes. Logan intended that Jackman should continue to make mistakes,
at least until he could discover more about Lady MacAskival and Mary
MacAskival and Jackman himself. “Difficulties, Dr. Jackman?” Logan
said, leaning forward and acting the pushing clerk, at once brash and
smarmy. “Difficulties? Mary has told me more than once that there will
be no financial problem, for she says she’s money to burn. And look
at this grand house. Aye, I’ll take more sherry, and I thank you.
Would Lady MacAskival raise difficulties, do you think, Dr. Jackman?
Look here, sir: I ask you as a son to his dad. If Lady MacAskival’s
incapacitated, would it be asking too much for you to give away the
bride, sir?”
That twist of the knife had been felt, Logan could tell: the skin
twitched about the strange spot in Jackman’s forehead; but the man’s
expression did not change, nor the tone of his voice alter. “Why,”
Jackman said, “before you and I speak of marrying and giving in
marriage, there is some history I must tell you, Mr. Logan. And I fear
I have been neglecting my duties as host in Lady MacAskival’s absence.”
He put his hand on a old-fashioned velvet bell-pull, and jerked it.
“Among the difficulties of life in Carnglass, Mr. Logan, is the problem
of staff. We take men where we find them, and try to be thankful for
small mercies. Life in the remotest of the Hebrides isn’t to the taste
of modern servants. Our butler, however, is rather a jewel; you’ll see
him in a moment. The footman is a diamond, though rough. We may have
to let the footman, Anderson, go; for he has involved us in all this
trouble, doubtless with the best of intentions. It was on his urging
that we engaged that Irish brute of a gamekeeper, Seamus Donley, who
was some connection of Anderson’s. I could see that Donley was three
parts savage, but in a lonely island like Carnglass, savagery may be a
virtue in a keeper. What I failed to detect was his insanity. For a man
of his age, Donley is astonishingly strong and quick--for a man of any
age, so far as that goes. And quite out of his head. He concealed his
madness with a certain Kerry wheedling wit. I must confess that I knew
Donley had been in gaol at one time, in Belfast or Derry; but I mistook
him for a mere simple-minded Irish rebel, relatively harmless. I’ve
still some fellow-feeling for rebels: in my younger days I was rather
a radical--almost an activist. I still have many acquaintances in the
labor movement. You are not a Socialist, by any chance, Mr. Logan?”
“Oh, no, sir,” Logan demurred wholeheartedly, “that never would do at
the British Linen Bank. The manager never would allow it.”
“Quite.” Dr. Jackman nodded approval, with the merest suggestion of a
pucker about the corners of his mouth. “Quite right. Socialism is a
snare and a delusion, at least as socialism is understood in Britain.
Hold fast by your principles, Mr. Logan.”
A tap at the door, then; and a small gray-haired man in a neat velvet
jacket entered. He almost stumbled upon Logan, and his mouth fell
open. “Blimey!” he cried; and then, to Jackman, “Begging your pardon,
that is, sir.” This must be the Cockney butler Donley had mentioned,
Sam Tompkins; and he certainly did not look like a ruffian or a
conspirator, though there was a shiftiness about the little eyes. South
of Mason’s and Dixon’s Line, Logan reflected, such a servant would be
given to “totin’ victuals.” Yet, the times and the place considered, a
very decent-looking butler.
“Tompkins,” Dr. Jackman said, “this gentleman is Mr. Hugh Logan, a
friend of Miss MacAskival. He was landed from a boat this morning.
We shall put him in the brown room, opposite mine, and you are to
see that everything is in order. Take his sack and stick and cape
with you. And you’d best tell the others as they come in, for fear of
misunderstanding. Niven is standing guard at the door just now? Very
well. Make sure he gets nothing to drink. And tell Miss MacAskival that
Mr. Logan will be late for tea; he and I are having a very interesting
talk.”
As Tompkins went out, Jackman smiled at Logan. “Your arrival will be
a nine-days’ wonder below stairs. If you observe some surliness or
fecklessness below, please accept my apologies in advance. I never
tolerate deliberate rudeness; report anything of that sort to me.
Whatever the deficiencies of these fellows, I suppose they make up a
better staff than the mob of Anguses and Annies that must have slept on
the stairs and in the kitchens of the Old House in the grand old days
of the MacAskivals--before Donald MacAskival was sold up, I mean. Miss
MacAskival has told you something of the history of the family? Quite
so. And speaking of old Donald MacAskival, who died raving in the New
House, I have a curiosity to show you.” Jackman, going to a cupboard
set in the wall, carefully drew out a heavy box and set it on the table
before Logan.
The big box, or rather casket, seemed to be carved from a single block
of stone, almost blue in color, but here and there shading into gray.
The lid was of the same polished stone. “If the servants had the
slightest notion of the value of these,” Jackman remarked, “I should
have to put the casket under lock and key.” He lifted the lid and
began to lift out strange stone figures, each some five inches high.
“You play chess, Mr. Logan? I have a marble chessboard here--modern,
I regret to say. But these chessmen are ancient, and Norse. They are
called the Table-Men of Askival.”
The little statuettes were marvellously carved by some master of the
Viking age. Each was wrapped in cotton-wool, and Jackman put them
deftly in place on the marble board. They were of the same blue stone
as the casket in which they had lain; and, after a thousand years, they
remained almost perfect, only three or four being badly chipped. “The
chiefs of MacAskival would have slit a hundred throats rather than have
parted with these toys,” Jackman went on. “For more than a century,
it was thought they were lost altogether, but Sir Alastair MacAskival
discovered them when he was restoring the family tombs by St. Merin’s
Chapel. The casket was resting, of all places, in the stone coffin
that is said to be Askival’s own tomb. Perhaps Donald MacAskival hid
them there when his creditors were hard at his heels, for even in the
eighteenth century these things would have brought a pretty price. If
so, they are all he left to his descendants. Sir Alastair died less
than a month after the finding of these, and Lady MacAskival has told
no one of them, so far as I am aware; so you are looking at works of
art never photographed or catalogued by the museum-people. Do you ever
go to the Queen Street Museum in Edinburgh? No? A pity. There they
have walrus-ivory chessmen from Lewis, also Norse work, and perhaps
as old as these. And there are others in the British Museum. You have
not visited the British Museum? Once, like Marx, I went there daily.
But I presume it is all _l.s.d._ with you, Mr. Logan. ‘Put money in thy
purse, and yet again, put money in thy purse.’ So the world goes. Shall
we make a game of it as we talk?”
Yes, fearfully and wonderfully made, these chessmen. The kings held
drawn swords across their knees, and stared stonily out of bulging
merciless eyes; the queens, with long wild faces, held daggers; the
rooks were berserkers, biting on their shields; and all the other
pieces, even the pawns, were modelled from the life of the age of the
Sea-Kings. One set of men had been saturated in some reddish dye or
paint; the other retained its natural blue hue. To play with these
priceless and timeless things was to sink into a remote past. “They’re
very nice, I’m sure,” Logan the bank-clerk said, with what he trusted
was a Philistine indifference. “Aye, I’ll play you a game, sir, if
you’ll promise me I sha’n’t miss my spot of tea with Miss Mary.”
“Miss MacAskival will excuse you; and it occurs to my mind, Logan, that
perhaps we can discuss certain delicate matters more easily in the
progress of a match. But I warn you, Mr. Logan, that I rarely lose.
Here: I submit to a handicap.” Jackman removed his own queen from the
board. “No protests: I think you’ll find me an old hand at chess.”
Logan advanced the pawn before his queen’s bishop. “I’ve had many a
grand match at the West End Young Men’s Society for the Advancement of
Chess, Dr. Jackman.”
“Indeed.” Jackman made a similar move with his king’s bishop’s pawn.
“Now the question of marriage aside, Mr. Logan, I don’t suppose you’d
choose to live in a great rambling ill-lit place such as the Old House
of Fear is, would you?”
“Oh, never in the world, sir.” Logan moved again, and lost a pawn
to Jackman. “No, sir, give me a nice semi-detached villa beyond
Bruntsfield Links, any day. Even the New Town of Edinburgh is too old
and stuffy for my taste, Dr. Jackman. I like a bit of a rockery in the
front garden, and an Aga cooker, and a fridge, and a parlor with a pair
of Portobello china dogs by the hearth.” He advanced his king’s knight.
Jackman shot a sharp glance at him. Had he overplayed his role a
trifle? Logan wondered. The Aga cooker and the Portobello dogs were
spreading the butter rather thick. He smiled ingenuously at Dr.
Jackman; and apparently the smile was fatuous enough to convince that
alarming gentleman.
“That is precisely the sort of man I took you to be, Logan: my
congratulations. And do you think Miss MacAskival would share these
reasonable ambitions?” He took Logan’s knight.
Logan captured one of Jackman’s pawns. “I don’t see why Mary shouldn’t,
sir; she’s a canny lass, and the day of grand houses like this one is
long past.”
Having sent a bishop on a raid deep into Logan’s territory, Jackman
leaned back in his armchair. “Canny, Mr. Logan? Sensible? Miss
MacAskival? Charming, certainly; beautiful, at least in many eyes; but
canny is the last word I should apply to her. I consider her my ward
_de facto_, you understand, and what I say now is for her good and your
own, and is to be held in confidence.”
Logan took one of Jackman’s knights. “Perhaps you’ll take the trouble
to enlighten me, Dr. Jackman.” He hunched forward, the picture of the
respectful and hopeful young man on the rise.
Jackman frowned at the chessboard. “I take it that Miss MacAskival
has given you to understand that she has large expectations, or
possibly that she already has ample independent means? That she is Lady
MacAskival’s heiress?”
“Why, sir, we’ve not discussed the matter in detail, but I have assumed
that Mary was to have her due.”
“Her due, Mr. Logan? To be quite frank, Miss MacAskival is very little
better than a waif. Her grandfather was first cousin to Sir Alastair
MacAskival--though the closest male relative left to Sir Alastair, at
the end of his life. But Sir Alastair and his cousin were on bad terms;
and, in any event, Miss Mary MacAskival was born nearly a generation
after old Sir Alastair died. This is a most tenuous family bond, you
see, although it is true that the old line of MacAskival being almost
extinct altogether, Mary MacAskival has a better claim than anyone else
to be the head of her little dispersed and forgotten clan. Our Mary’s
father was a ship’s second mate, and drowned off Naples in the late
war. The girl, who cannot remember her father, was left with the widow
at a village in North Uist. Had matters followed their usual course,
probably she would have grown up knitting sweaters and milking cows,
and have married some crofter. But then her mother died. The girl was
left quite alone.
“Lady MacAskival is an old friend of mine, but I cannot say she has
been known for openhandedness. A minister in North Uist wrote to
her, however; and, oddly enough, Lady MacAskival agreed to take the
child into her own household and provide for her schooling. Perhaps
Lady MacAskival felt she owed some debt to her husband’s name; she is
oppressed by a sense of guilt where her husband is concerned, but I
sha’n’t enter into that. Whatever her reason, she took the girl Mary,
and sent her to good schools--to the convent-school at Bridge of Earn,
most recently. I must make it clear here, Mr. Logan, that she did not
adopt Miss MacAskival, nor make any provision for her future.”
Jackman’s narration did not take his mind altogether from the
chess-match. He played with assurance and even arrogance, while Logan
lost three more pieces to him. Logan set his face in an expression
meant to suggest alarm at both the account of Mary MacAskival and the
match.
“What’s in a name, Mr. Logan,” Jackman continued, “or in the
inheritance of family traits? The scientists have been at work on these
things for a century and better, but nothing is settled. Possibly
you followed the course of the Lysenko affair in the Soviet Union?
No, I didn’t suppose that was an especial interest of yours. As I
said, these problems of hereditary traits are not settled, though for
my part I feel confident that the Russians will give us the answers
before 1965. Well, our Miss Mary MacAskival seems to offer some
decided evidence that a certain type of character is conveyed from
generation to generation within a family, whether the cause is genetic
or environmental. Since time out of mind, the MacAskival men and
women--the family of the chiefs, I mean--have been rash, spendthrift,
fearless, and--why, promiscuous, shall we say. Sir Alastair was an
exception, true, going to the contrary extreme. It has been a family
exceedingly inbred. I think I am not venturing too far when I suggest
that the stock is worn out. The qualities I mentioned just now were
dominant in both Mary’s father and mother. The beauty and the daring
may survive long after the strength and the wits are gone.”
“Dr. Jackman, what are you telling me?” Logan deliberately threw a
strong burr into his words, to simulate dismay; and his disturbance was
not altogether feigned. But he did not neglect to take Dr. Jackman’s
other knight.
Jackman compressed his mouth, as if pained at the necessity for
speaking out. “Lady MacAskival, while she was still in full possession
of her faculties, gave me a detailed account of the girl’s
conduct--sometimes she calls Mary her niece, out of kindness--from the
age of seven upward. I have made some serious study in the realm of
psychiatric disturbances, if I may say so, Mr. Logan. From the month
Lady MacAskival took the child under her patronage, there was trouble
with the girl. The reports from the schools--she changed schools a
number of times--were disturbing. Mary was haughty, full of notions
of her family’s importance; shy, at the same time; and sometimes what
I must call ferocious. Compensation, perhaps; no doubt she was very
lonely. Lady MacAskival is not a cordial woman, and, besides, Mary saw
her ‘aunt’ very seldom; and she did not make many friends at school.
And now I am about to tell you something that may shock you, Logan, or
may not. Did it ever occur to your mind that sexual overindulgence,
like drunkenness, often is a retreat into a world of fantasy, caused by
a deep unhappiness in this real world? Our Mary has fed on fantasies of
one sort or another, it seems, ever since she was a baby. For her, the
legends of Carnglass, for instance, are real: real in the most literal
sense of that word. She might happen to identify you with her legendary
ancestor, Sigurd Askival; and herself with his bride, Merin or Marin;
and me with--why, the monster, the man-goat, the tyrant: the Firgower,
that pleasant creature we see overhead.”
“Check,” said Logan. Jackman retrieved his situation promptly. “Aye,
sir,” Logan said, “I know Mary is dreamy; but that’s small harm, if
we’ve money enough for the whole of our lives.”
“I scarcely think you understand how extremely and dangerously fanciful
Miss MacAskival is, Mr. Logan; nor what consequences that sort of
mental sickness may lead to. She may have let you think, for instance,
that she’s a great heiress, or rich already. In plain fact, she hasn’t
a shilling of her own, and I may have difficulty in persuading Lady
MacAskival to leave her two or three thousand pounds. My old friend
says she has given the girl--who is no kin of hers really--schooling
and breeding enough to make her a governess or schoolmistress; and
she owes her no more. What is worse, perhaps, Mary lives in her
own irrational private world of gods and devils. And that way lies
... why, extreme eccentricity, at the least. And then there is the
concupiscence, which may be an inherited tendency, or at least the next
thing to a biological characteristic.”
Logan took another pawn. “Oh, surely now, Dr. Jackman, you don’t mean
to say that my Mary’s a wild girl?”
Jackman reached gently across the board and gave Logan a pat on the
shoulder. “It’s best to know these things early, Logan. I do mean just
that. When our Mary was scarcely thirteen, there was--well, what I
really must call an affair with a farm laborer here in Carnglass, in
the summer. The man was dismissed as soon as the thing was discovered;
he could have been sent to prison, I suppose. And yet he does not seem
to have taken the initiative. Then there was a report from school that
the girl was found with an hotel porter. I sha’n’t say more concerning
that. There have been two lesser incidents of the same nature--two that
we know of. And finally, your case.”
“Dr. Jackman!” Logan had half convinced himself that he really was
a decent, ambitious bank-clerk, and threw corresponding indignation
and bewilderment into his outcry. “Dr. Jackman! I’d never think of
anything--anything not proper with Mary. I mean the girl to be my wife,
Dr. Jackman.”
Jackman raised his eyebrows. “Frankly, now: would you care to begin
married life with a young woman of these tendencies? Possibly you don’t
quite believe what I’ve told you, though I could show you letters.
Yet you’d discover the truth after marriage, if you refused to credit
it before. So far as your own conduct is concerned, Mr. Logan, I’m
satisfied that you have behaved decently. But look at the matter from
another point of view. Here is a girl who throws herself at the head
of a young man she encounters casually in a bank, because he is bold
enough to say he likes her ankles. She invites him to her house without
even informing her guardians. She conducts, I suppose, some clandestine
correspondence with him. She rushes into his arms after not having seen
him for three months. Really, Lady MacAskival ought not to have allowed
Mary that Christmas holiday in Edinburgh.”
“Dr. Jackman,” Logan said, “I trust you, and I see you’re an educated
man. As for me, I never attended the varsity; it was not my line. But
cannot this be all rumor and misunderstanding about Mary?”
“I don’t mean to be harsh upon the girl; after all, she is as much of
a daughter as I possess, Logan. Oh, check again, by the way. I am not
condemning--only explaining. I doubt if the girl can help herself.
I suspect the concupiscence is in the blood. And her loneliness
contributes: as I suggested, sexual promiscuity sometimes is more a
symptom of a disorder than a disorder itself. I will be entirely blunt,
if you will allow me, Mr. Logan: in the legal meaning of the phrase,
and in other meanings, Mary MacAskival is not sane. She is not sane
where men are concerned, nor in certain other matters. She suffers from
a variety of delusions--I give you my word. She might suddenly tell
you, for instance, that I, Edmund Jackman, desire to marry her--an
absurdity, because it would be almost as if I were to marry my own
granddaughter, of course. At times she has even come to me with--well,
shall we say hints and invitations? That was when no younger man was
available. It has been necessary to forbid her very strictly ever to
be alone even with the servants; Mr. Royall and I take care, one or
the other of us, to be in this house whenever she is. I’m sorry, Mr.
Logan. But to tell you all this is the best service I can render you.”
“I had no notion, sir,” Logan told him. He took Jackman’s king’s rook.
And Logan had no difficulty in looking perplexed. Jackman was a very
different sort of being from the charlatan or bully he had thought
he might be. Those fine black eyes of Jackman’s looked candidly into
Logan’s.
“And I confess I am somewhat surprised, Logan,” Jackman was saying,
“that you got yourself engaged to the girl while she is a minor.”
“Oh, surely, Dr. Jackman, Mary’s old enough to choose for herself.”
“I fear she already has chosen quite often, Logan; she began at a
tender age, to put it somewhat coarsely. You do know just how old she
is, I take it?”
“Not precisely, sir; she would not tell me her birthday. She said I
ought not to spend the money for a present. Nineteen, nearing twenty, I
suppose?”
“Then I have been unjust to you, Logan. If you had known ... Miss Mary
MacAskival is barely fifteen. She prevaricates on that topic, as on
many others. Of course, as any man with eyes in his head can see, Mary
is a well-developed girl. Again, it runs in her family, I am told.
Physically mature, yes; but emotionally and morally immature; and
always will be.”
Why this disclosure affected Logan so deeply, he hardly could explain
to himself. It was as if he actually had turned himself into the
fictitious bank-clerk he was impersonating. In this matter, as in
related matters, he might have been on the verge of making a great fool
of himself. He had begun to fancy himself in the role of Galahad--or of
Sigurd Askival--rescuing a beautiful maiden from a wicked enchanter.
And it seemed to be turning out that the maiden was no maid, nor right
in the head; and that the enchanter was by no means thoroughly wicked.
He had listened to a drunken Irish terrorist spreading scandals
about an unknown Dr. Jackman. He had not the least proof, indeed,
that Jackman had any real connection with J. Dowie, Commission Agent,
or with Captain Gare of the frightened eyes; they might be someone
else’s agents, perhaps in the pay of those London connections of Lady
MacAskival. It remained possible, and even probable, that this Dr.
Jackman had aspirations after some of Lady MacAskival’s money; but he
doubted very much whether Jackman was a conspirator, or a saboteur, or
even a charlatan. Some sort of political radical, likely enough; and a
dabbler in odd learned subjects; but a keen and even likeable man. And
for what had Logan been paid to come to Carnglass? Not to criticize
Dr. Jackman’s character, or to carry off young women--or children--of
doubtful morals, but merely to buy a piece of real estate for his
principal. He might have made a thoroughgoing fool of himself. Indeed,
he had done so already. He had put himself in a ridiculous light with
Jackman by accepting the role of suitor which Mary MacAskival, in her
madcap childish way, had thrust upon him. He had sent a silly note to
the police in Glasgow--though that would do no real harm, since surely
Donley had no intention of delivering it. He may have helped a murderer
escape from the island--almost surely he had done just that. He was
almost an accomplice, what with the Irishman’s gun hidden in a sling
under his arm. Yes, he was a damned fool; and he might have to play the
fool a while longer, if only to extricate himself from this folly. He
moved at hazard on the chessboard; the glaring eyes of a berserker-rook
confronted him. One misgiving, however, did come into his head.
“Dr. Jackman,” he said, “I understand there was a factor, a Mr. Lagg.
Where is he?”
Jackman seemed taken aback at this _non sequitur_. “Surely Mary has
told you....”
“No, we had only a moment together before you came into the parlor,
sir. She had simply mentioned a puzzle of sorts, with Mr. Lagg
involved.”
Jackman was solemn and troubled. “I am virtually certain, Mr. Logan,
that Lagg has been murdered. We have searched every nook in the island
for him, these three days; but not a trace. As I have pieced matters
together, Donley drank too much and broke into Lagg’s house in search
of money. Lagg was very much of a Scot--if you’ll pardon me, Mr.
Logan--and the servants talked of how he hoarded five-pound notes in
his kitchen. Perhaps Lagg returned from a visit to the farm while
Donley was doing his mischief. From the wreckage inside the New House,
we can only conjecture that there was a struggle. Donley, we know to
our sorrow, was armed. He may have forced Lagg, at the point of his
pistol, to the cliff’s edge. But we cannot find the body. Then, after
Lagg had disappeared and we had begun to question Donley, that Irishman
broke away and ran into the bracken. In the evening he came down and
burnt our boats, to keep us from reaching the police or in an attempt
to get a boat for his escape; and we have been after him ever since.
Presumably he is short of ammunition by this time. In the fight at the
harbor, he threw burning petrol into the boats, and one of our boatmen
was terribly burnt, poor fellow, and probably will lose the sight of at
least one eye; I must dress his face again tonight. But Lagg? A gone
gosling, I am very much afraid. And an efficient factor, for years.”
This account of Lagg’s end held together much better than did Donley’s.
And Logan had told Donley he might bear witness for him at any trial!
No whisper of this Carnglass episode, he hoped, would filter back to
America. At this moment, Jackman took Logan’s queen. Yes, Hugh Logan
had made a fool of himself through and through.
“But to return to a topic almost equally difficult for me, Logan: I
think you will perceive that your marrying Miss MacAskival is wholly
out of the question. To begin with, she simply isn’t of age. Besides,
the shock of an announcement of that sort might put an end to Lady
MacAskival, who is very old and very sick. And for your own sake,
Logan--and I rather like your face and your ways--don’t be rash. If
you still care for the girl after what I’ve told you, give her time to
reach moral womanhood, if ever she can. I don’t say you need to break
off the affair altogether. Be gentle with her; go back to Edinburgh;
exchange letters now and then, if you like. But marriage, for the next
two or three years, would be a catastrophe, I assure you.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Dr. Jackman,” Logan replied, still in his
bank-clerk role.
“I usually am right,” Jackman told him, smiling. “And there’s this: it
is worth something to Lady MacAskival to have a decent young man treat
her ward decently. My recommendations happen to carry considerable
weight with Lady MacAskival. Mary does not need a husband or a lover,
but she does need a friend. And I can see that you mean to move ahead
in the world; and you deserve to, Logan. So if you can contrive to act
as I suggest, where our Mary is concerned, I think I can guarantee that
Lady MacAskival will give you a cheque for fifteen hundred pounds. I
have no intention of bribing you: I know you’re above that. But you
deserve some compensation for the disappointment you’ve had, and for my
part, I’d not be sorry to give you a leg up in the world. Don’t feel
insulted, Logan. I put it to you plainly: will you do us the honor of
accepting that cheque?”