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

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      “No, no,” Lamancha cried. “You are missing he point. Don’t you see that your way would have taken all the gloss off the adventure and made it a game? We had to feel that we were taking real risks—that, being what we were, we should look utter fools if we were caught and exposed.”

      “Pardon me, but it is you who are missing the point.” Lord Claybody was smiling. “You could never have been exposed—except perhaps by those confounded journalists,” he added as he caught sight of Crossby.

      “We had the best of them on our side,” Lamancha put in. “Mr Crossby has backed us up nobly.”

      “Well, that only made your position more secure. Colonel Raden and Mr Bandicott accepted your challenge, and in any case they were sportsmen, and you knew it. If they had caught one or the other of you they would never have betrayed you. You must see that. And here at Haripol you were on the safest ground of all. I’m not what they call a sportsman—not yet—but I couldn’t give you away. Do you think it conceivable that I would do anything to weaken the public prestige of a statesman I believe in, a great lawyer I brief, and a great banker whose assistance is of the utmost value to me. I’m a man who has made a fortune by my own hard work and I mean to keep it; therefore in these bad times I am out to support anything which buttresses the solid structure of society. You three are part of that structure. You might poach every stag on Haripol, and I should still hold my tongue.”

      Lamancha, regardless of the condition of his nether garments, sat down heavily on an embroidered stool which Lady Claybody erroneously believed to have belonged to Marie Antoinette, and dropped his head in his hands.

      “Lord, I believe you’re right,” he groaned. “We’ve all been potting at sitting birds. John, do you hear? We’ve been making godless fools of ourselves. We thought we had got outside civilisation and were really taking chances. But we weren’t. We were all the time as safe as your blessed bank. It can’t be done—not in this country anyway. We’re in the groove and have got to stay there. We’ve been a pretty lot of idiots not to think of that.”

      Then Johnson spoke. He had been immensely cheered by Lord Claybody’s words, for they had seemed to raise Haripol again to that dignity from which it had been in imminent risk of falling.

      “I don’t complain personally, Lord Lamancha, though you’ve given me a hard day of it. But I agree with my father—you really were gambling on a certainty and it wasn’t very fair to us. Besides, you three, who are the supporters of law and order, have offered a pretty good handle to the enemy, with those infernal journalists advertising John Macnab. There may be a large crop of Macnabs springing up, and you’ll be responsible. It’s a dangerous thing to weaken the sanctities of property.”

      He found, to his surprise, a vigorous opponent in his mother. Lady Claybody had passed from mystification to enlightenment, and from enlightenment to appreciation. It delighted her romantic soul that Haripol should have been chosen for the escapade of three eminent men; she saw tradition and legend already glorifying her new dwelling. Moreover, she scented in Johnson’s words a theory of life which was not her own, a mercantile creed which conflicted with her notion of Haripol, and of the future of her family.

      “You are talking nonsense, Johnson.” She said “You are making property a nightmare, for you are always thinking about it. You forget that wealth is made for man, and not man for wealth. It is the personality that matters. It is so vulgar not to keep money and land and that sort of thing in its proper place. Look at those splendid old Jacobites and what they gave up. The one advantage of property is that you can disregard it.”

      This astounding epigram passed unnoticed save by Janet, for the lady, smiling benignly on the poaching trinity, went on to a practical application. “I think the whole John Macnab adventure has been quite delightful. It has brightened us all up, and I’m sure we have nothing to forgive. I think we must have a dinner for everybody concerned to celebrate the end of it. What Claybody says is perfectly true—you must have known you could count on us, just as much as on Colonel Raden and Mr Bandicott. But since you seem not to have realised that, you have had the fun of thinking you were in real danger, and after all it is what one thinks that matters. I am so glad you are all cured of being bored. But I’m not quite happy about those journalists. How can we be certain that they won’t make a horrid story of it?”

      “My wife is right,” said Lord Claybody emphatically. “That is the danger.” He looked at Crossby. “They are certain to want some kind of account.”

      “They certainly will,” said the latter. “And that account must leave out names and—other details. I don’t suppose you want the navvy business made public?”

      “Perhaps not. That was Johnson’s idea, and I don’t consider it a particularly happy inspiration.”

      “Well, there is nothing for it but that I should give them the story and expurgate it discreetly. John Macnab has been caught and dismissed with a warning—that’s all there is to it. I suppose your gillies won’t blab? They can’t know very much, but they might give away some awkward details.”

      “I’ll jolly well see that they don’t,” said Johnson. “But who will you make John Macnab out to be?”

      “A lunatic—unnamed. I’ll hint at some family skeleton into which good breeding forbids me to inquire. The fact that he has failed at Haripol will take the edge off my colleagues’ appetites. If he had got his stag they would have been ramping on the trail. The whole thing will go the way of other stunts, and be forgotten in two days. I know the British Press.”

      Within half an hour the atmosphere in that drawing-room had changed from suspicion to something not far from friendliness, but the change left two people unaffected. Johnson, doubtless with Lamancha’s behaviour on the hill in his memory, was still sullen, and Janet was obviously ill at ease.

      Lamancha, who was suffering a good deal from thirst and hunger and longed for a bath, arose from his stool.

      “I think,” he said, “that we three—especially myself—owe you the most abject of apologies. I see now that we were taking no risks worth mentioning, and that what we thought was an adventure was only a faux pas. It was abominably foolish, and we are all very sorry about it. I think you’ve taken it uncommonly well.”

      Lord Claybody raised a protesting hand. “Not another word. I vote we break up this conference and give you something to drink. Johnson’s tongue is hanging out of his mouth.”

      The voice of Janet was suddenly raised, and in it might have been detected a new timidity. “I want to apologise also. Dear Lady Claybody, I stole your dog…I hope you will forgive me. You see we wanted to do something to distract Macnicol, and that seemed the only way.”

      A sudden silence fell. Lady Claybody, had there been sufficient light, might have been observed to flush.

      “You—stole—Roguie,” she said slowly, while Janet moved closer to Sir Archie. “You—stole—Wee Roguie. I think you are the—”

      “But we were very kind to him, and he was very happy.”

      “I wasn’t happy. I scarcely slept a wink. What right had you to touch my precious little dog? I think it is the most monstrous thing I ever heard in my life.”

      “I’m so very sorry. Please, please forgive me. But you said yourself that the only advantage of property was that you could disregard it.”

      Lady Claybody, to her enormous credit, stared, СКАЧАТЬ