The Leithen Stories. Buchan John
coming to luncheon – I want to meet him. He’s probably afraid of Nettie, and I don’t blame him, for she’s a brazen hussy, and he does well to be shy of old Bandicott. I’m scared to death by the old fellow myself.’
‘You know you’ve promised to let him dig in the Piper’s Ring, papa.’
‘I know I have, and I would have promised to let him dig up my lawn to keep him quiet. Never met a man with such a flow of incomprehensible talk. He had the audacity to tell me that I was no more Celtic than he was, but sprung from some blackguard Norse raiders a thousand years back. Judging by the sketch he gave me of their habits, I’d sooner the Radens were descended from Polish Jews.’
‘I thought him a darling,’ said his elder daughter, ‘and with such a beautiful face.’
‘He may be a darling for all I know, but his head is stuffed with maggots. If you admired him so much, why didn’t you take him off my hands? I liked the look of the young fellow and wanted to have a word with him. More by token’ – the Colonel was hunting about for the marmalade – ‘what were you two plotting with him in the corner after dinner?’
‘We were talking about John Macnab.’
The Colonel’s face became wrathful.
‘Then I call it dashed unfilial conduct of you not to have brought me in. There was I, deafened with the old man’s chatter – all about a fellow called Harald Blacktooth or Bottle-nose or some such name, that he swears is buried in my grounds and means to dig up – when I might have been having a really fruitful conversation. What was young Bandicott’s notion of John Macnab?’
‘Mr Junius thinks he is a lunatic,’ said the elder Miss Raden. She was in every way her sister’s opposite, dark of hair and eye where Janet was fair, tall where Janet was little, slow and quiet of voice where Janet was quick and gusty.
‘I entirely differ from him. I think John Macnab is perfectly sane, and probably a good fellow, though a dashed insolent one. What’s Bandicott doing about his river?’
‘Patrolling it day and night between the 1st and 3rd of September. He says he’s taking no chances, though he’d bet Wall Street to a nickel that the poor poop hasn’t the frozenest outside.’
‘Nettie, he said nothing of the kind!’ Miss Agatha was indignant. ‘He talks beautiful English, with no trace of an accent – all Bostonians do, he told me.’
‘Anyhow, he asked what steps we were taking and advised us to get busy. We come before him, you know … Heavens, papa, it begins tomorrow night! Oh, and I did so want to consult Sir Archibald. I’m sure he could help.’
Colonel Raden, having made a satisfactory breakfast, was lighting a pipe.
‘You need not worry, my dear. I’m an old campaigner and have planned out the thing thoroughly. I’ve been in frequent consultation with Macpherson, and yesterday we had Alan and James Fraser in, and they entirely agreed.’
He produced from his pocket a sheet of foolscap on which had been roughly drawn a map of the estate.
‘Now, listen to me. We must assume this fellow Macnab to be in possession of his senses, and to have more or less reconnoitred the ground – though I don’t know how the devil he can have managed it, for the gillies have kept their eyes open, and nobody’s been seen near the place. Well, here are the three beats. Unless young Bandicott is right and the man’s a lunatic, he won’t try the Home beat, for the simple reason that a shot there would be heard by twenty people and he could not move a beast twenty yards without being caught. There remains Carnmore and Carnbeg. Macpherson was clear that he would try Carnmore, as being farthest away from the house. But I, with my old campaigning experience’ – here Colonel Raden looked remarkably cunning – ‘pointed out at once that such reasoning was rudimentary. I said “He’ll bluff us, and just because he thinks that we think he’ll try Carnmore, he’ll try Carnbeg. Therefore, since we can only afford to watch one beat thoroughly, we’ll watch Carnbeg.” What do you think of that, my dears?’
‘I think you’re very clever, papa,’ said Agatha. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’
‘And you, Nettie?’
Janet was knitting her brows and looking thoughtful.
‘I’m … not … so … sure. You see we must assume that John Macnabis very ingenious. Heprobably made his fortune in the colonies by every kind of dodge. He’s sure to be very clever.’
‘Well but, my dear,’ said her father, ‘it’s just that cleverness that I propose to match.’
‘But do you think you have quite matched it? You have tried to imagine what John Macnab would be thinking, and he will have done just the same by you. Why shouldn’t he have guessed the conclusion you have reached and be deciding to go one better?’
‘How do you mean, Nettie?’ asked her puzzled parent. He was inclined to be annoyed, but experience had taught him that his younger daughter’s wits were not to be lightly disregarded.
Nettie took the estate map from his hand and found a stump of pencil in the pocket of her jumper.
‘Please look at this, papa. Here is A and B. B offers a better chance, so Macpherson says John Macnab will take B. You say, acutely, that John Macnab is not a fool, and will try to bluff us by taking A. I say that John Macnab will have anticipated your acumen.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said her father impatiently. ‘And then?’
‘And will take B after all.’
The Colonel stood rapt in unpleasant meditation for the space of five seconds.
‘God bless my soul!’ he cried. ‘I see what you mean. Confound it, of course he’ll go for Carnmore. Lord, this is a puzzle. I must see Macpherson at once. Are you sure you’re right, Nettie?’
‘I’m not in the least sure. We’ve only a choice of uncertainties, and must gamble. But, as far as I see, if we must plump for one we should plump for Carnmore.’
Colonel Raden departed from his study, after summoning Macpherson to that shrine of the higher thought, and Janet Raden, after one or two brief domestic interviews, collected her two terriers and set out for her morning walk. The morning was as fresh and bright as April, the rain in the night had set every burn singing, and the thickets and lawns were still damp where the sun had not penetrated. Her morning walk was wont to be a scamper, a thing of hops, skips, and jumps, rather than a sedate progress; but on this occasion, though two dogs and the whole earth invited to hilarity, she walked slowly and thoughtfully. The mossy broken tops of Carnbeg showed above a wood of young firs, and to the right rose the high blue peaks of the Carnmore ground. On which of these on the morrow would John Macnab begin his depredations? He had two days for his exploit; probably he would make his effort on the second day, and devote the first to confusing the minds of the defence. That meant that the problem would have to be thought out anew each day, for the alert intelligence of John Macnab – she now pictured him as a sort of Sherlock Holmes in knickerbockers – would not stand still. The prospect exhilarated, but it also alarmed her; the desire to win a new hunter was now a fixed resolution; but she wished she had a colleague. Agatha was no use, and her father, while admirable in tactics, was weak in strategy; she longed more than ever for the help of that frail vessel, Sir Archie.
Her road led her by a brawling torrent through the famous Glenraden beechwood to the spongy meadows of the haugh, beyond which could be seen the shining tides of the Raden sweeping to the high-backed bridge across which ran the road to Carnmore. The haugh was all bog-myrtle and heather and bracken, sprinkled with great boulders which the river during the ages had brought down from the hills. Half a mile up it stood the odd tumulus called the Piper’s Ring, crowned with an ancient gnarled fir, where reposed, according to the elder Bandicott, the dust of that dark progenitor, Harald Blacktooth. If Mr Bandicott proposed to excavate there he had his work cut out; the place was encumbered with giant stones since a thousand floods had washed its sides