JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated). Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ still pretty useful!” Dougal, mopping his brow with the rag he called his handkerchief, observed sourly that he objected to going scouting with a herd of elephants.

      Once indoors his spirits rose. The party from the Mains had brought several electric torches, and the one lamp was presently found and lit. “We can’t count on the polis,” Dougal announced, “and when the foreigners is finished wi’ the Tower they’ll come on here. If no’, we must make them. What is it the sodgers call it? Forcin’ a battle? Now see here! There’s the two roads into this place, the back door and the verandy, leavin’ out the front door which is chained and lockit. They’ll try those two roads first, and we must get them well barricaded in time. But mind, if there’s a good few o’ them, it’ll be an easy job to batter in the front door or the windies, so we maun be ready for that.”

      He told off a fatigue party—the Princess, Sir Archie, and McGuffog—to help in moving furniture to the several doors. Sime and Carfrae attended to the kitchen entrance, while he himself made a tour of the ground-floor windows. For half an hour the empty house was loud with strange sounds. McGuffog, who was a giant in strength, filled the passage at the verandah end with an assortment of furniture ranging from a grand piano to a vast mahogany sofa, while Saskia and Sir Archie pillaged the bedrooms and packed up the interstices with mattresses in lieu of sandbags. Dougal on his turn saw fit to approve the work.

      “That’ll fickle the blagyirds. Down at the kitchen door we’ve got a mangle, five wash-tubs, and the best part of a ton o’ coal. It’s the windies I’m anxious about, for they’re ower big to fill up. But I’ve gotten tubs of water below them and a lot o’ wire-nettin’ I fund in the cellar.”

      Sir Archie morosely wiped his brow. “I can’t say I ever hated a job more,” he told Saskia. “It seems pretty cool to march into somebody else’s house and make free with his furniture. I hope to goodness our friends from the sea do turn up, or we’ll look pretty foolish. Loudon will have a score against me he won’t forget.”

      “Ye’re no’ weakenin’?” asked Dougal fiercely.

      “Not a bit. Only hopin’ somebody hasn’t made a mighty big mistake.”

      “Ye needn’t be feared for that. Now you listen to your instructions. We’re terrible few for such a big place, but we maun make up for shortness o’ numbers by extra mobility. The gemkeeper will keep the windy that looks on the verandy, and fell any man that gets through. You’ll hold the verandy door, and the ither lame man—is’t Carfrae ye call him?—will keep the back door. I’ve telled the one-armed man, who has some kind of a head on him, that he maun keep on the move, watchin’ to see if they try the front door or any o’ the other windies. If they do, he takes his station there. D’ye follow?”

      Sir Archie nodded gloomily.

      “What is my post?” Saskia asked.

      “I’ve appointed ye my Chief of Staff,” was the answer. “Ye see we’ve no reserves. If this door’s the dangerous bit, it maun be reinforced from elsewhere; and that’ll want savage thinkin’. Ye’ll have to be aye on the move, Mem, and keep me informed. If they break in at two bits, we’re beat, and there’ll be nothing for it but to retire to our last position. Ye ken the room ayont the hall where they keep the coats. That’s our last trench, and at the worst we fall back there and stick it out. It has a strong door and a wee windy, so they’ll no’ be able to get in on our rear. We should be able to put up a good defence there, unless they fire the place over our heads… Now, we’d better give out the guns.”

      “We don’t want any shootin’ if we can avoid it,” said Sir Archie, who found his distaste for Dougal growing, though he was under the spell of the one being there who knew precisely his own mind.

      “Just what I was goin’ to say. My instructions is, reserve your fire, and don’t loose off till you have a man up against the end o’ your barrel.”

      “Good Lord, we’ll get into a horrible row. The whole thing may be a mistake, and we’ll be had up for wholesale homicide. No man shall fire unless I give the word.”

      The Commander-in-Chief looked at him darkly. Some bitter retort was on his tongue, but he restrained himself.

      “It appears,” he said, “that ye think I’m doin’ all this for fun. I’ll no’ argy wi’ ye. There can be just the one general in a battle, but I’ll give ye permission to say the word when to fire… Macgreegor!” he muttered, a strange expletive only used in moments of deep emotion. “I’ll wager ye’ll be for sayin’ the word afore I’d say it mysel’.”

      He turned to the Princess. “I hand over to you, till I am back, for I maun be off and see to the Die-Hards. I wish I could bring them in here, but I daren’t lose my communications. I’ll likely get in by the boiler-house skylight when I come back, but it might be as well to keep a road open here unless ye’re actually attacked.”

      Dougal clambered over the mattresses and the grand piano; a flicker of waning daylight appeared for a second as he squeezed through the door, and Sir Archie was left staring at the wrathful countenance of McGuffog. He laughed ruefully.

      “I’ve been in about forty battles, and here’s that little devil rather worried about my pluck and talkin’ to me like a corps commander to a newly joined second-lieutenant. All the same he’s a remarkable child, and we’d better behave as if we were in for a real shindy. What do you think, Princess?”

      “I think we are in for what you call a shindy. I am in command, remember. I order you to serve out the guns.”

      This was done, a shot-gun and a hundred cartridges to each, while McGuffog, who was a marksman, was also given a sporting Mannlicher, and two other rifles, a .303 and a small-bore Holland, were kept in reserve in the hall. Sir Archie, free from Dougal’s compelling presence, gave the gamekeeper peremptory orders not to shoot till he was bidden, and Carfrae at the kitchen door was warned to the same effect. The shuttered house, where the only light apart from the garden-room was the feeble spark of the electric torches, had the most disastrous effect upon his spirits. The gale which roared in the chimney and eddied among the rafters of the hall seemed an infernal commotion in a tomb.

      “Let’s go upstairs,” he told Saskia; “there must be a view from the upper windows.”

      “You can see the top of the old Tower, and part of the sea,” she said. “I know it well, for it was my only amusement to look at it. On clear days, too, one could see high mountains far in the west.” His depression seemed to have affected her, for she spoke listlessly, unlike the vivid creature who had led the way in.

      In a gaunt west-looking bedroom, the one in which Heritage and Dickson had camped the night before, they opened a fold of the shutters and looked out into a world of grey wrack and driving rain. The Tower roof showed mistily beyond the ridge of down, but its environs were not in their prospect. The lower regions of the House had been gloomy enough, but this bleak place with its drab outlook struck a chill to Sir Archie’s soul. He dolefully lit a cigarette.

      “This is a pretty rotten show for you,” he told her. “It strikes me as a rather unpleasant brand of nightmare.”

      “I have been living with nightmares for three years,” she said wearily.

      He cast his eyes round the room. “I think the Kennedys were mad to build this confounded barrack. I’ve always disliked it, and old Quentin hadn’t any use for it either. Cold, cheerless, raw monstrosity! It hasn’t been a very giddy place for you, Princess.”

      “It СКАЧАТЬ