SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan John

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      XII.

       HARIPOL—TRANSPORT

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      It may be doubted whether in clear weather Sir Archie could ever have reached his station unobserved by the watchers on the hill. The place was cunningly chosen, for the road, as it approached the Doran, ran in the lee of a long covert of birch and hazel, so that for the better part of a mile no car on it could be seen from beyond the stream, even from the highest ground. But as the car descended from the Crask ridge it would have been apparent to the sentinels, and its non-appearance beyond the covert would have bred suspicion. As it was the clear spell had gone before it topped the hill, for Sir Archie was more than an hour behind the scheduled time.

      This was Janet’s doing. She had started off betimes on the yellow pony for Crask, intending to take the by-way from the Larrig side, but before she reached the Bridge of Larrig she had scented danger. One of the correspondents, halted by the roadside with a motor bicycle, accosted her with great politeness and begged a word. She was Miss Raden, wasn’t she? and therefore knew all about John Macnab. He had heard gossip in the glen of the coming raid on Haripol, and understood that this was the day. Would Miss Raden advise him from her knowledge of the country-side? Was it possible to find some coign of vantage from which he might see the fun?

      Janet stuck to the simple truth. She had heard the some story, she admitted, but Haripol was a gigantic and precipitous forest, and it was preserved with a nicety unparalleled in her experience. To go to Haripol in the hope of finding John Macnab would be like a casual visit to England on the chance of meeting the King. She advised him to go to Haripol in the evening. “If anything has happened there,” she said, “you will hear about from the gillies. They’ll either be triumphant or savage, and in either case they’ll talk.”

      “We’ve got to get a story, Miss Raden,” the correspondent observed dismally, “and in this roomy place it’s like looking for a needle in a hayfield. What sort of people are the Claybodys?”

      “You won’t get anything from them,” Janet laughed. “Take my advice and wait till the evening.”

      When he was out of sight she turned her pony up the hill and arrived at Crask with an anxious face. “If these people are on the loose all day,” she told Sir Archie, “they’re bound to spoil sport. They may stumble on our car, or they may see more of Mr Palliser-Yeates’s doings than we want. Can nothing be done? What about Mr Crossby?”

      Crossby was called into consultation and admitted the gravity of the danger. When his help was demanded, he hesitated. “Of course I know most of them, and they know me, and they’re a very decent lot of fellows. But they’re professional men, and I don’t see myself taking on the job of gulling them. Esprit de Corps, you know…No, they don’t suspect me. They probably think I left the place after I got off the Strathlarrig fish scoop, and that I don’t know anything about the Haripol business. I daresay they’d be glad enough to see me if I turned up…I might link on to them and go with them to Haripol and keep them in a safe place.”

      “That’s the plan,” said Sir Archie. “You march them off to Haripol— say you know the ground—which you do a long sight better than they. Some of the gillies will be hunting the home woods for Lady Claybody’s pup. Get them mixed up in that show. It will all help to damage Macnicol’s temper, and he’s the chap we’re most afraid of…Besides, you might turn up handy in a crisis. Supposin’ Ned Leithen—or old John—has a hard run at the finish you might confuse the pursuit…That’s the game, Crossby my lad, and you’re the man to play it.”

      It was after eleven o’clock before the Ford car, having slipped over the pass from Crask in driving sleet, came to a stand in the screen of birches with the mist wrapping the world so close that the foaming Doran six yards away was only to be recognised by its voice. All the way there Sir Archie had been full of forebodings.

      “We’re givin’ too much weight away, Miss Janet,” he croaked. “All we’ve got on our side is this putrid weather. That’s a bit of luck, I admit. Also we’ve two of the most compromisin’ objects on earth, Fish Benjie and that little brute Roguie…Claybody has a hundred navvies, and a pack of gillies, and every beast will be in the Sanctuary, which is as good as inside a barb-wire fence…The thing’s too ridiculous. We’ve got to sit in this car and watch an eminent British statesman bein’ hoofed off the hill, while old John tries to play the decoy-duck, and Ned Leithen, miles off, is hoppin’ like a he-goat on the mountains…It’s pretty well bound to end in disaster. One of them will be nobbled—probably all three—and when young Claybody asks, ‘Wherefore this outrage?’ I don’t see what the cowerin’ culprit is goin’ to answer and say unto him.”

      But when the car stopped in the drip of the birches, and Archie had leisure to look at the girl by his side, he began to think less of impending perils. The place was loud with wind and water, and yet curiously silent. The mist had drawn so close that the two seemed to be shut into a fantastic, secret world of their own. Janet was wearing breeches and a long riding-coat covered by a grey oilskin, the buttoned collar of which framed her small face. Her bright hair, dabbled with raindrops, was battened down under an ancient felt hat. She looked, thought Sir Archie, like an adorable boy. Also for the last half-hour she had been silent.

      “You have never spoken to me about your speech,” she said at last, looking away from him.

      “Yours, you mean,” he said. “I only repeated what you said that afternoon on Carnmore. But you didn’t hear it. I looked for you everywhere in the hall, and I saw your father and your sister and Bandicott, but I couldn’t see you.”

      “I was there. Did you think I could have missed it? But I was too nervous to sit with the others, so I found a corner at the back below the gallery. I was quite near Wattie Lithgow.”

      Archie’s heart fluttered. “That was uncommon kind. I don’t see why you should have worried about that—I mean I’m jolly grateful. I was just going to play the ass of all creation when I remembered what you had said—and—well, I made a speech instead of repeating the rigmarole I had written. I owe everything to you, for, you see, you started me out—I can never feel just that kind of funk again…Charles thinks I might be some use in politics…But I can tell you when I sat down and hunted through the hall and couldn’t see you it took all the gilt off the gingerbread.”

      “I was gibbering with fright,” said the girl, “when I thought you were going to stick. If Wattie hadn’t shouted out, I think I would have done it myself.”

      After that silence fell. The rain poured from the trees on to the cover of the Ford, and from the cover sheets of water cascaded to the drenched heather. СКАЧАТЬ