JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated). Buchan John
in much the same parody of a Boy Scout’s uniform, but with corduroy shorts instead of a kilt, stood before him at rigid attention. Some command was issued, the child saluted, and trotted back past the travellers with never a look at them. Discipline was strong among the Gorbals Die-Hards; no Chief of Staff ever conversed with his General under a stricter etiquette.
Dougal received the travellers with the condescension of a regular towards civilians.
“They’re off their gawrd,” he announced. Thomas Yownie has been shadowin’ them since skreigh o’ day, and he reports that Dobson and Lean followed ye till ye were out o’ sight o’ the houses, and syne Lean got a spy-glass and watched ye till the road turned in among the trees. That satisfied them, and they’re both away back to their jobs. Thomas Yownie’s the fell yin. Ye’ll no fickle Thomas Yownie.”
Dougal extricated from his pouch the fag of a cigarette, lit it, and puffed meditatively. “I did a reckonissince mysel’ this morning. I was up at the Hoose afore it was light, and tried the door o’ the coal-hole. I doot they’ve gotten on our tracks, for it was lockit—aye, and wedged from the inside.”
Dickson brightened. Was the insane venture off?
“For a wee bit I was fair beat. But I mindit that the lassie was allowed to walk in a kind o’ a glass hoose on the side farthest away from the Garple. That was where she was singin’ yest’reen. So I reckonissinced in that direction, and I fund a queer place.” Sacred Songs and Solos was requisitioned, and on a page of it Dougal proceeded to make marks with the stump of a carpenter’s pencil. “See here,” he commanded. “There’s the glass place wi’ a door into the Hoose. That door maun be open or the lassie maun hae the key, for she comes there whenever she likes. Now’ at each end o’ the place the doors are lockit, but the front that looks on the garden is open, wi’ muckle posts and flower-pots. The trouble is that that side there’ maybe twenty feet o’ a wall between the pawrapet and the ground. It’s an auld wall wi’ cracks and holes in it, and it wouldn’t be ill to sklim. That’s why they let her gang there when she wants, for a lassie couldn’t get away without breakin’ her neck.”
“Could we climb it?” Heritage asked.
The boy wrinkled his brows. “I could manage it mysel’—I think—and maybe you. I doubt if auld McCunn could get up. Ye’d have to be mighty carefu’ that nobody saw ye, for your hinder end, as ye were sklimmin’, wad be a grand mark for a gun.”
“Lead on,” said Heritage. “We’ll try the verandah.”
They both looked at Dickson, and Dickson, scarlet in the face, looked back at them. He had suddenly found the thought of a solitary march to Auchenlochan intolerable. Once again he was at the parting of the ways, and once more caprice determined his decision. That the coal-hole was out of the question had worked a change in his views, Somehow it seemed to him less burglarious to enter by a verandah. He felt very frightened but—for the moment—quite resolute.
“I’m coming with you,” he said.
“Sportsman,” said Heritage, and held out his hand. “Well done, the auld yin,” said the Chieftain of the Gorbals Die-Hards. Dickson’s quaking heart experienced a momentary bound as he followed Heritage down the track into the Garple Dean.
The track wound through a thick covert of hazels, now close to the rushing water, now high upon the bank so that clear sky showed through the fringes of the wood. When they had gone a little way Dougal halted them.
“It’s a ticklish job,” he whispered. “There’s the tinklers, mind, that’s campin’ in the Dean. If they’re still in their camp we can get by easy enough, but they’re maybe wanderin’ about the wud after rabbits. Then we maun ford the water, for ye’ll no’ cross it lower down where it’s deep. Our road is on the Hoose side o’ the Dean, and it’s awfu’ public if there’s onybody on the other side, though it’s hid well enough from folk up in the policies. Ye maun do exactly what I tell ye. When we get near danger I’ll scout on ahead, and I daur ye to move a hair o’ your heid till I give the word.”
Presently, when they were at the edge of the water, Dougal announced his intention of crossing. Three boulders in the stream made a bridge for an active man, and Heritage hopped lightly over. Not so Dickson, who stuck fast on the second stone, and would certainly have fallen in had not Dougal plunged into the current and steadied him with a grimy hand. The leap was at last successfully taken, and the three scrambled up a rough scaur, all reddened with iron springs, till they struck a slender track running down the Dean on its northern side. Here the undergrowth was very thick, and they had gone the better part of half a mile before the covert thinned sufficiently to show them the stream beneath. Then Dougal halted them with a finger on his lips, and crept forward alone.
He returned in three minutes. “Coast’s clear,” he whispered. “The tinklers are eatin’ their breakfast. They’re late at their meat though they’re up early seekin’ it.”
Progress was now very slow and secret, and mainly on all fours. At one point Dougal nodded downward, and the other two saw on a patch of turf, where the Garple began to widen into its estuary, a group of figures round a small fire. There were four of them, all men, and Dickson thought he had never seen such ruffianly-looking customers. After that they moved high up the slope, in a shallow glade of a tributary burn, till they came out of the trees and found themselves looking seaward.
On one side was the House, a hundred yards or so back from the edge, the roof showing above the precipitous scarp. Half-way down the slope became easier, a jumble of boulders and boiler-plates, till it reached the waters of the small haven, which lay calm as a mill-pond in the windless forenoon. The haven broadened out at its foot and revealed a segment of blue sea. The opposite shore was flatter, and showed what looked like an old wharf and the ruins of buildings, behind which rose a bank clad with scrub and surmounted by some gnarled and wind-crooked firs.
“There’s dashed little cover here,” said Heritage.
“There’s no muckle,” Dougal assented. “But they canna see us from the policies, and it’s no’ like there’s anybody watchin’ from the Hoose. The danger is somebody on the other side, but we’ll have to risk it. Once among thae big stones we’re safe. Are ye ready?”
Five minutes later Dickson found himself gasping in the lee of a boulder, while Dougal was making a cast forward. The scout returned with a hopeful report. “I think we’re safe till we get into the policies. There’s a road that the auld folk made when ships used to come here. Down there it’s deeper than Clyde at the Broomielaw. Has the auld yin got his wind yet? There’s no time to waste.”
Up that broken hillside they crawled, well in the cover of the tumbled stones, till they reached a low wall which was the boundary of the garden. The House was now behind them on their right rear, and as they topped the crest they had a glimpse of an ancient dovecot and the ruins of the old Huntingtower on the short thymy turf which ran seaward to the cliffs. Dougal led them along a sunk fence which divided the downs from the lawns behind the house, and, avoiding the stables, brought them by devious ways to a thicket of rhododendrons and broom. On all fours they travelled the length of the place, and came to the edge where some forgotten gardeners had once tended a herbaceous border. The border was now rank and wild, and, lying flat under the shade of an azalea, and peering through the young spears of iris, Dickson and Heritage regarded the north-western facade of the house.
The ground before them had been a sunken garden, from which a steep wall, once covered with creepers and rock plants, rose to a long verandah, which was pillared and open on that side; but at each end built up half-way and glazed for the rest. There was a glass roof, and inside untended shrubs sprawled in broken plaster vases.
“Ye maun bide here,” said Dougal, “and no cheep above your breath. Afore we dare to try that wall, I maun ken where Lean and Spittal and Dobson are. I’m off to spy the policies.’ He glided out of sight behind a clump of pampas grass.
For hours, so it seemed, Dickson was left to his own unpleasant reflections. His body, prone on the moist earth, was fairly comfortable, but his mind