John MacNab Page 5

  Leithen took off his hat with a flourish.

  ‘Have I the honour, sir, to address the owner of this lovely spot?’ he asked in what he hoped was the true accent of a tripper.

  The keeper stopped short and regarded him sternly.

  ‘What are ye daein’ here?’ he demanded.

  ‘Picking up a few pictures, sir. I inquired at your lodge, and was told that I might presume upon your indulgence. Pardon me, if I ‘ave presumed too far. If I ‘ad known that the proprietor was at ‘and I would have sought ‘im out and addressed my ‘umble request to ‘imself

  ‘Ye’re makin’ a mistake. I’m no the laird. The laird’s awa’ about India. But Mr Bandicott – that’s him that’s the tenant – has given strict orders that naebody’s to gang near the watter. I wonder Mactavish at the lodge hadna mair sense.’

  ‘I fear the blame is mine,’ said the agreeable tourist. ‘I only asked leave to enter the grounds, but the beauty of the scenery attracted me to the river. Never ‘ave I seen a more exquisite spot.’ He waved his arm towards the pool.

  ‘It’s no that bad. But ye maun awa’ out o’ this. Ye’d better gang by the back road, for fear they see ye frae the hoose.’

  Leithen followed him obediently, after presenting him with a cigarette, which he managed to extract without taking his case from his pocket. It should have been a fag, he reflected, and not one of Archie’s special Egyptians. As they walked he conversed volubly.

  ‘What’s the name of the river?’ he asked. ‘Is it the Strathlarrig?’

  ‘No, it’s the Larrig, and that bit you like sae weel is the Minister’s Pool. There’s no a pool like it in Scotland.’

  ‘I believe you. There is not,’ was the enthusiastic reply.

  ‘I mean for fish. Ye’ll no ken muckle aboot fishin’.’

  ‘I’ve done a bit of anglin’ at ‘ome. What do you catch here? Jack and perch?’

  ‘Jack and perch!’ cried the keeper scornfully. ‘Saumon, man. Saumon up to thirty pounds’ wecht.’

  ‘Oh, of course, salmon. That must be a glorious sport. But a friend of mine, who has seen it done, told me it wasn’t ‘ard. He said that even I could catch a salmon.’

  ‘Mair like a saumon wad catch you. Now, you haud down the back road, and ye’ll come out aside the lodge gate. And dinna you come here again. The orders is strict, and if auld Angus was to get a grip o’ ye, I wadna say what wad happen. Guid day to ye, and dinna stop till ye’re out o’ the gates.’

  Leithen did as he was bid, circumnavigated the house, struck a farm track, and in time reached the high road. It was a very doleful tourist who trod the wayside heather past the Wood of Larrigmore. Never had he seen a finer stretch of water or one so impregnably defended. No bluff or ingenuity would avail an illicit angler on that open greensward, with every keeper mobilised and on guard. He thought less now of the idiocy of the whole proceeding than of the folly of plunging in the dark upon just that piece of river. There were many streams where Jim Tarras’s feat might be achieved, but he had chosen the one stretch in all Scotland where it was starkly impossible.

  The recipient of the ginger-beer was still sitting by the shafts of his cart. He seemed to be lunching, for he was carving attentively a hunk of cheese and a loaf-end with a gully-knife. As he looked up from his task Leithen saw a child of perhaps twelve summers, with a singularly alert and impudent eye, a much-freckled face, and a thatch of tow-coloured hair bleached almost white by the sun. His feet were bare, his trousers were those of a grown man, tucked up at the knees and hitched up almost under his armpits, and for a shirt he appeared to have a much-torn jersey. Weather had tanned his whole appearance into the blend of greys and browns which one sees on a hillside boulder. The boy nodded gravely to Leithen, and continued to munch.

  Below the wood lay the half-mile where the Larrig wound sluggishly through a bog before precipitating itself into the chasm above the Bridge of Larrig. Leithen left his bicycle by the roadside and crossed the waste of hags and tussocks to the water’s edge. It looked a thankless place for the angler. The clear streams of the Larrig seemed to have taken on the colour of their banks, and to drowse dark and deep and sullen in one gigantic peat-hole. In spite of the rain of yesterday there was little current. The place looked oily, stagnant, and unfishable – a tract through which salmon after mounting the fall would hurry to the bright pools above.

  Leithen sat down in a clump of heather and lit his pipe. Something might be done with a worm after a spate, he considered, but any other lure was out of the question. The place had its merits for every purpose but taking salmon. It was a part of the Strathlarrig water outside the park pale, and it was so hopeless that it was not likely to be carefully patrolled. The high road, it was true, ran near, but it was little frequented. If only ... He suddenly sat up, and gazed intently at a ripple on the dead surface. Surely that was a fish on the move ... He kept his eyes on the river, until he saw something else which made him rub them, and fall into deep reflection . . .

  He was roused by a voice at his shoulder.

  ‘What for will they no let me come up to Crask ony mair?’ the voice demanded in a sort of tinker’s whine.

  Leithen turned and found the boy of the ginger-beer.

  ‘Hullo! You oughtn’t to do that, my son. You’ll give people heart disease. What was it you asked?’

  ‘What. . . for. . . will. . . they. . . no. . . let. . . mecome. . . up to Crask ... ony mair?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know. What’s Crask?’

  ‘Ye ken it fine. It’s the big hoose up the hill. I seen you come doon frae it yoursel’ this mornin’.’

  Leithen was tempted to deny this allegation and assert his title of tourist, but something in the extreme intelligence of the boy’s face suggested that such a course might be dangerous. Instead he said, ‘Tell me your name, and what’s your business at Crask?’

  ‘My name’s Benjamin Bogle, but I get Fish Benjie frae most folks. I’ve sell’t haddies and flukes to Crask these twa months. But this mornin’ I was tell’t no to come back, and when I speired what way, the auld wife shut the door on me.’

  A recollection of Sir Archie’s order the night before returned to Leithen’s mind, and with it a great sense of insecurity. The argus-eyed child, hot with a grievance, had seen him descend from Crask, and was therefore in a position to give away the whole show. What chance was there for secrecy with this malevolent scout hanging around?

  ‘Where do you live, Benjie?’

  ‘I bide in my cairt. My father’s in jyle, and my mither’s lyin’ badly in Muirtown. I sell fish to a’ the gentry.’

  ‘And you want to know why you can’t sell them at Crask?’

  ‘Aye, I wad like to ken that. The auld wife used to be a kind body and gie me jeely pieces. What’s turned her into a draygon?’

  Leithen was accustomed, in the duties of his profession, to quick decisions on tactics, and now he took one which was destined to be momentous.

  ‘Benjie,’ he said solemnly, ‘there’s a lot of things in the world that I don’t understand, and it stands to reason that there must be more that you don’t. I’m in a position in which I badly want somebody to help me. I like the look of you. You look a trusty fellow and a keen one. Is all your time taken up selling haddies?’

  ‘ ‘Deed no. Just twa hours in the mornin’, and twa hours at nicht when I gang doun to the cobles at Inverlarrig. I’ve a heap o’ time on my hands.’

  ‘Good. I think I can promise that you may resume your trade at Crask. But first I want you to do a job for me. There’s a bicycle lying by the roadside. Bring it up to Crask this evening between six and seven. Have you a watch?’

  ‘No, but I can tell the time braw and fine.’

  ‘Go to the stables and wait for me there. I want to have a talk with you.’ Leithen produced half a crown, on which the grubby paw of Fish Benjie instantly closed.

  ‘And look here, Benjie. You haven’t seen me here, or anybody like me. Above all, you didn’t
see me come down from Crask this morning. If anybody asks you questions, you only saw a man on a bicycle on the road to Inverlarrig.’

  The boy nodded, and his solemn face flickered for a second with a subtle smile.

  ‘Well, that’s a bargain.’ Leithen got up from his couch and turned down the river, making for the Bridge of Larrig, where the highway crossed. He looked back once, and saw Fish Benjie wheeling his bicycle into the undergrowth of the wood. He was in two minds as to whether he had done wisely in placing himself in the hands of a small ragamuffin, who for all he knew might be hand-in-glove with the Strathlarrig keepers. But the recollection of Benjie’s face reassured him. He did not look like a boy who would be the pet of any constituted authority; he had the air rather of the nomad against whom the orderly world waged war. There had been an impish honesty in his face, and Leithen, who had a weakness for disreputable urchins, felt that he had taken the right course. Besides, the young sleuth-hound had got on his trail, and there had been nothing for it but to make him an ally.

  He crossed the bridge, avoided the Crask road, and struck up hill by a track which followed the ravine of a burn. As he walked his mind went back to a stretch on a Canadian river, a stretch of still unruffled water warmed all day by a July sun. It had been as full as it could hold of salmon, but no artifice of his could stir them. There in the later afternoon had come an aged man from Boston, who fished with a light trout rod and cast a deft line, and placed a curious little dry-fly several feet above a fish’s snout. Then, by certain strange manoeuvres, he had drawn the fly under water. Leithen had looked on and marvelled, while before sunset that ancient man hooked and landed seven good fish . . . Somehow that bit of shining sunflecked Canadian river reminded him of the unpromising stretch of the Larrig he had just been reconnoitring.

  At a turn of the road he came upon his host, tramping homeward in the company of a most unprepossessing hound. Sir Archie paused for an instant to introduce Mackenzie. He was a mongrel collie of the old Highland stock, known as ‘beardies’, and his tousled head, not unlike an extra-shaggy Dandie Dinmont’s, was set upon a body of immense length, girth and muscle. His manners were atrocious to all except his master, and local report accused him of every canine vice except worrying sheep. He had been christened ‘The Bluidy Mackenzie’ after a noted persecutor of the godly, by someone whose knowledge of history was greater than Sir Archie’s, for the latter never understood the allusion. The name, however, remained his official one; commonly he was addressed as Mackenzie, but in moments of expansion he was referred to by his master as Old Bloody.

  The said master seemed to be in a strange mood. He was dripping wet, having apparently fallen into the river, but his spirits soared, and he kept on smiling in a light-hearted way. He scarcely listened to Leithen, when he told him of his compact with Fish Benjie. ‘I daresay it will be all right,’ he observed idiotically. ‘Is your idea to pass off one of his haddies as a young salmon on the guileless Bandicott?’ For an explanation of Sir Archie’s conduct the chronicler must retrace his steps.

  After Leithen’s departure it had seemed good to him to take the air, so, summoning Mackenzie from a dark lair in the yard, he made his way to the river – the beat below the bridge and beyond the high road, which was on Crask ground. There it was a broad brawling water, boulder-strewn and shallow, which an active man could cross dry-shod by natural stepping-stones. Sir Archie sat for a time on the near shore, listening to the sandpipers – birds which were his special favourites – and watching the whinchats on the hillside and the flashing white breasts of the water-ousels. Mackenzie lay beside him, an uneasy sphinx, tormented by a distant subtle odour of badger.

  Presently Sir Archie arose and stepped out on the half-submerged boulder. He was getting very proud of the way he had learned to manage his game leg, and it occurred to him that here was a chance of testing his balance. If he could hop across on the stones to the other side he might regard himself as an able-bodied man. Balancing himself with his stick as a rope-dancer uses his pole, he in due course reached the middle of the current. After that it was more difficult, for the stones were smaller and the stream more rapid, but with an occasional splash and flounder he landed safely, to be saluted with a shower of spray from Mackenzie, who had taken the deep-water route.

  ‘Not so bad that, for a crock,’ he told himself, as he lay full length in the sun watching the faint line of the Haripol hills overtopping the ridge of Crask.

  Half an hour was spent in idleness till the dawning of hunger warned him to return. The crossing as seen from this side looked more formidable, for the first stones could only be reached by jumping a fairly broad stretch of current. Yet the jump was achieved, and with renewed confidence Sir Archie essayed the more solid boulders. All would have gone well had not he taken his eyes from the stones and observed on the bank beyond a girl’s figure. She had been walking by the stream and had stopped to stare at the portent of his performance. Now Sir Archie was aware that his style of jumping was not graceful and he was discomposed by his sudden gallery. Nevertheless, the thing was so easy that he could scarcely have failed had it not been for the faithful Mackenzie. That animal had resolved to follow his master’s footsteps, and was jumping steadily behind him. But three boulders from the shore they jumped simultaneously, and there was not standing-room for both. Sir Archie, already nervous, slipped, recovered himself, slipped again, and then, accompanied by Mackenzie, subsided noisily into three feet of water.

  He waded ashore to find himself faced by a girl in whose face concern struggled with amusement. He lifted a dripping hand and grinned.

  ‘Silly exhibition, wasn’t it? All the fault of Mackenzie! Idiotic brute of a dog, not to remember my game leg!’

  ‘You’re horribly wet,’ the girl said, ‘but it was sporting of you to try that crossing. What about dry clothes?’

  ‘Oh, no trouble about that. I’ve only to get up to Crask.’

  ‘You’re Sir Archibald Roylance, aren’t you? I’m Janet Raden. I’ve been with papa to call on you, but you’re never at home.’

  Sir Archie, having now got the water out of his eyes and hair, was able to regard his interlocutor. He saw a slight girl with what seemed to him astonishingly bright hair and very blue and candid eyes. She appeared to be anxious about his dry clothes, for she led the way up the bank at a great pace, while he limped behind her. Suddenly she noticed the limp.

  ‘Oh, please forgive me, I forgot about your leg. You had another smash, hadn’t you, besides the one in the war – steeplechasing, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but it didn’t signify. I’m all right again and get about anywhere, but I’m a bit slower on the wing, you know.’

  ‘You’re keen about horses?’

  ‘Love ‘em.’

  ‘So do I. Agatha – that’s my sister – doesn’t care a bit about them. She would like to live all the year at Glenraden, but – I’m ashamed to say it – I would rather have a foggy November in Warwickshire than August in Scotland. I simply dream of hunting.’

  The ardent eyes and the young grace of the girl seemed marvellous things to Sir Archie. ‘I expect you go uncommon well,’ he murmured.

  ‘No, only moderate. I only get scratch mounts. You see I stay with my Aunt Barbara, and she’s too old to hunt, and has nothing in her stables but camels. But this year . . .’ She broke off as she caught sight of the pools forming round Sir Archie’s boots. ‘I mustn’t keep you here talking. You be off home at once.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m wet for days on end when I’m watchin’ birds in the spring. You were sayin’ about this year?’

  Her answer was a surprising question. ‘Do you know anybody called John Macnab?’

  Sir Archibald Roylance was a resourceful mountebank and did not hesitate.

  ‘Yes. The distiller, you mean? Dhuniewassel Whisky? I’ve seen his advertisements – “They drink Dhuniewassel, In cottage and castle -” That chap?’

  ‘No, no, somebody quite different. Listen, pl
ease, if you’re not too wet, for I want you to help me. Papa has had the most extraordinary letter from somebody called John Macnab, saying he means to kill a stag in our forest between certain dates, and daring us to prevent him. He is going to hand over the beast to us if he gets it and pay fifty pounds, but if he fails he is to pay a hundred pounds. Did you ever hear of such a thing?’

  ‘Some infernal swindler,’ said Archie darkly.

  ‘No. He can’t be. You see the fifty pounds arrived this morning.’

  ‘God bless my soul!’

  ‘Yes. In Bank of England notes, posted from London. Papa at first wanted to tell him to go to – well, where Papa tells people he doesn’t like to go. But I thought the offer so sporting that I persuaded him to take up the challenge. Indeed, I wrote the reply myself. Mr Macnab said that the money was to go to a charity, so Agatha is having the fifty pounds for her native weaving and dyeing – she’s frightfully keen about that. But if we win the other fifty pounds papa says the best charity he can think of is to prevent me breaking my neck on hirelings, and I’m to have it to buy a hunter. So I’m very anxious to find out about Mr John Macnab.’

  ‘Probably some rich Colonial who hasn’t learned manners.’

  ‘I don’t think so. His manners are very good, to judge by his letter. I think he is a gentleman, but perhaps a little mad. We simply must beat him, for I’ve got to have that fifty pounds. And – and I want you to help me.’

  ‘Oh, well, you know – I mean to say – I’m not much of a fellow . . .’

  ‘You’re very clever, and you’ve done all kinds of things. I feel that if you advised us we should win easily, for I’m sure you had far harder jobs in the war.’

  To have a pretty young woman lauding his abilities and appealing with melting eyes for his aid was a new experience in Sir Archie’s life. It was so delectable an experience that he almost forgot its awful complications. When he remembered them he flushed and stammered.

  ‘Really, I’d love to, but I wouldn’t be any earthly good. I’m an old crock, you see. But you needn’t worry – your Glenraden gillies will make short work of this bandit ... By Jove, I hope you get your hunter, Miss Raden. You’ve got to have it somehow. Tell you what, if I’ve any bright idea I’ll let you know.’