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

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СКАЧАТЬ heed. He can look after himsel’ braw and weel. Push on wi’ the cawr, sir, for it’s time we were ower the hill.”

      Archie obeyed, and presently they were climbing the long zigzag to the Crask pass. Wattie on the back seat kept an anxious look-out, issuing frequent bulletins, and Janet swept the glen with her glasses. But no sign of life appeared in the wide sunlit place except a buzzard high in the heavens and a weasel slipping into a cairn. Once the watershed had been crossed Wattie’s heart lightened.

      “Weel done, John Macnab,” he cried. “Dod, ye’re the great lad. Ye’ve beaten a hundred navvies and Macnicol and a’, and ye’ve gotten the best heid in the country-side…Hae ye a match for my pipe, Sir Erchie? Mine’s been in ower mony bogholes to kindle.”

      It was a clear, rain-washed world on which they looked, and the sky to the south was all an unbroken blue. The air was not sticky and oppressive like yesterday, but pure and balmy and crystalline. When Crask was reached the stag was decanted with expedition, and Archie addressed Janet with a new authority.

      “I’m goin’ to take you straight home in the Hispana. You’re drippin’ wet and ought to change at once.”

      “Might I change here?” the girl asked. “I told them to send over dry things, for I was sure it would be a fine afternoon. You see, I think we ought to go to Haripol.”

      “Whatever for?”

      “To be in at the finish—and also to give Lady Claybody her dog back. Wee Roguie is rather on my conscience.”

      “That’s a good notion,” Archie assented. So Janet was handed over to Mrs Lithgow, who admitted that a suitcase had indeed arrived from Glenraden. Archie repaired to the upper bathroom, which Lamancha had aforetime likened to a drain-pipe, and, having bathed rapidly, habited himself in a suit of a reasonable newness and took special pains with his toilet. And all the while he whistled and sang, and generally comported himself like a madman. Janet was under his roof—Janet would soon always be there—the most miraculous of fates was his! Somebody must be told, so when he was ready he went out to seek the Bluidy Mackenzie and made that serious-minded beast the receptacle of his confidences.

      He returned to find a neat and smiling young woman conversing with Fish Benjie, whose task had been that of comforter and friend to Roguie. It appeared that the small dog had been having the morning of his life with the Crask rats and rabbits. “He’s no a bad wee dog,” Benjie reported, “if they’d let him alane. They break his temper keepin’ him indoors and feedin’ him ower high.”

      “Benjie must come too,” Janet announced. “It would be a shame to keep him back. You understand—Benjie found Roguie in the woods—which is true, and handed him over to me—which is also true. I don’t like unnecessary fibbing.”

      “Right-o! Let’s have the whole bag of tricks. But, I say, you’ve got to stage-manage this show. Benjie and I put ourselves in your hands, for I’m hanged if I know what to say to Lady Claybody.”

      “It’s quite simple. We’re just three nice clean people—well, two clean people—who go to Haripol on an errand of mercy. Get out the Hispana, Archie dear, for I feel that something tremendous may be happening there.”

      As they started—Benjie and Roguie on the back seat—Bluidy Mackenzie came into view, hungrily eyeing an expedition from which he seemed to be barred.

      “D’you mind if we take Mackenzie,” Archie begged. “We’ll go very slow, and he can trollop behind. The poor old fellow has been havin’ a lonely time of it, and there’s likely to be such a mix-up at Haripol that an extra hound won’t signify.”

      Janet approved, and they swung down the hill and on to the highway, as respectable an outfit as the heart could wish, except for the waterproof-caped urchin on the back seat. The casual wayfarer would have noted only a very pretty girl and a well-appointed young man driving an expensive car at a most blameless pace. He could not guess what a cargo of dog-thieves and deer-thieves was behind the shining metal and spruce enamel…Benjie talked to Wee Roguie in his own tongue, and what Janet and Archie said in whispers to each other is no concern of this chronicle. The sea at Inverlarrig was molten silver running to the translucent blue of the horizon, the shore woods gleamed with a thousand jewels, the abundant waters splashing in every hollow were channels of living light. The world sang in streams and soft winds, the cries of plover and the pipe of shore-birds, and Archie’s heart sang above them all.

      Close to Haripol gates a tall figure rose from the milestone as the car slowed down.

      “Well, John, my aged sportsman, you did your part like a man. We saw it all.”

      “How are things going?”

      “Famously.”

      “The stag?”

      “In the Crask larder.”

      “And Charles?”

      “Lost. Believed to be still lurkin’ in the hills. Look here, John, get in beside Benjie. We are goin’ to Haripol and restore the pup. You’ll be a tower of strength to us, and old Claybody will be tremendously bucked to meet a brother magnate…Really, I mean it.”

      “I’m scarcely presentable,” said Palliser-Yeates, taking off an old cap and looking at it meditatively.

      “Rot! You’re as tidy as you’ll ever be. Rather dandified for you. In you get, and don’t tread on the hound…Bloody, you brute, don’t you know a pal when you see him?”

      XIII.

       HARIPOL—AUXILIARY TROOPS

       Table of Contents

      Half-way down the avenue, Archie drew up sharply.

      “I forgot about Mackenzie. We can’t have him here—he’ll play the fool somehow. Benjie, out you go. You’re one of the few that can manage him. Here’s his lead—you tie him up somewhere and watch for us, and we’ll pick you up outside the gates when we start home…Don’t get into trouble on your own account. I advise you to cut round to the bothies, and try to find out what is happenin’.”

      On the massive doorstep of Haripol stood Lady Claybody, parasol in one hand and the now useless dog-whip in the other.

      She made a motion as if to retreat, but thought better of it. Her face was flushed, and her air had abated something of its serenity. The sight of Janet—for she looked at Archie without recognition—seemed to awake her to the duties of hospitality, and she advanced with outstretched hand. Then a yelp from the side of Palliser-Yeates wrung from her an answering cry. In a trice Wee Roguie was in her arms.

      “Yes,” Janet explained sweetly, “it’s Roguie quite safe and well. There’s a boy who sells fish at Strathlarrig—Benjie they call him—he found him in the woods and brought him to me. I hope you haven’t been worried.”

      But Lady Claybody was not listening. She had set the dog on his feet and was wagging her forefinger at him, a procedure which seemed to rouse all the latent epilepsy of his nature. “Oh, you naughty, naughty Roguie! Cruel, cruel doggie! He loved freedom better than his happy home. Master and mistress have been so anxious about Wee СКАЧАТЬ