The Dancing Horse

by Angus MacVicar

  Donald handed him the kitten. Clumsy fingers played with its ears, and the scowl faded. The train jerked into a curve and Bulldog staggered and subsided heavily on the bed. ‘Ring for the attendant!’ he said.

  ‘The attendant? What for? I mean — ’

  ‘Ring for the attendant, boy!’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  Two minutes later a white-coated figure appeared in the gloom of the corridor. Myopically he peered into the sleeper. ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘A glass of milk, please, and a saucer.’ said Bulldog.

  ‘A whit?’ The man had been surprised enough by a summons at this dead hour of night, but such a bizarre request made him gape with astonishment and betrayed him into the use of his native Scots accent. ‘A whit did ye say?’

  ‘A glass of milk!’ thundered the News Editor, making the kitten squirm beneath his hand. ‘Can no one understand plain English!’

  ‘A glass o’ milk. I see.’ Sighing, the attendant moved away to carry out the order.

  ‘Milk?’ said Donald, when he had gone.

  ‘Kittens like it, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes. So I believe.’

  ‘Well — any comment?’

  ‘None at all.’

  Neither did he make one when the attendant reappeared with the milk and the kitten gratefully lapped it from the saucer, nor even when the boss’s new-found friend, gorged and replete, stretched its claws and scratched its benefactor on the wrist, causing a spate of lurid language which made the attendant blush and click his tongue. Later, however, after the kitten had been banished to the kitchen quarters of the train — the attendant suitably rewarded for his trouble by a munificent tip — and after he and Bulldog had retired for the second time to their respective beds, Donald lay back on his pillow and exploded into laughter. He had seen a new side to the boss’s character, one that he had never suspected. It was an engagingly human side, not at all in keeping with the masterful flamboyance displayed in the office, and he was glad he had made the discovery.

  Donald’s farmer father had died when he was a baby. He wondered now if his feeling for the News Editor might be something like the affection of a son for his father. An affection based to a small degree on respect and admiration, but mainly on a knowledge of weaknesses and idiosyncrasies carefully concealed from the rest of the world.

  At last he fell asleep, still smiling.

  At six o’clock in the morning, when he unlocked the door to the offer of a cup of tea, the Scots attendant was also smiling. ‘A desperate man that friend o’ yours,’ he said, conversationally.

  ‘Desperate’s the word!’

  ‘That scratch the kitten gave him — he felt it sore this mornin’ an’ made me bathe it wi’ iodine. Said the wee beastie’s claws were poisoned.’

  ‘Good heavens! And were they?’

  ‘No! He was haverin’! I got a scratch mysel’, but it’s as clean as a whistle. See!’

  ‘M’m. No gangrene there.’

  The man shook his head. ‘Aye, yon Mr. MacPhail, he’s a fair divert! Kept askin’ if I’d seen any suspicious characters in the train. He’ll no’ be a detective, eh?’

  ‘Actually he works for a newspaper. The Echo.’

  ‘Ach, so that’s it!’ He grinned, as if Donald’s answer had explained everything. ‘I might have known. Aye, well — half-an-hour to Glasgow, sir. You’d better drink up your tea and get dressed.’

  ‘Thanks. I will. What’s happening about the kitten?’

  ‘I’ll take it home to my wee lassie. That shows you how much I believe in his stories about poison and spies!’

  He went off with his tray, chuckling.

  Almost dead on time the train hissed into Glasgow Central, which echoed like an empty steel drum to the clank of slowing wheels. Donald and the News Editor collected their grips, said good-bye to the attendant, and stepped out on to the long platform. No one mentioned the events of the night.

  They found themselves at the tail of a streaming crowd of passengers.

  ‘Ach,’ grumbled Bulldog, determined to reassert his superiority, ‘you would get sleepers at the back of the train! We’ll be just about the last in the queue for the barrier.’

  ‘There’s no hurry, is there? Don’t you feel good to be back in Scotland, even at half past six in the morning?’

  ‘I don’t know. Trouble is, we’re working.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be happy if you weren’t.’

  ‘M’m. Something in that.’

  They made their way along the platform, dodging porters with barrows and sleepy passengers slow to find their bearings. On the tannoy a female film-star voice was announcing the arrival of the express. There was bustle, taxi-whistles, the yip and chuff of local trains. The permanent smell of steam and smoke was subtly invaded by an aroma of ham and eggs from the restaurant. As the crowd slowed to press through the bottleneck at the barriers, Donald sniffed appreciatively. There was a distinct difference, he thought, between stations in London and Glasgow. Not in the architectural details — in each case those were equally hideous — but rather in the atmosphere engendered by the people who used them. In London prim clothes, prim smells and prim accents: in Glasgow cloth caps, ham and eggs and uninhibited broad vowels.

  The stream moved turgidly, Donald and Bulldog captured like flotsam in an eddy. In the crush the News Editor behaved with surprising docility. He was still suspicious of people; but the incident of the kitten, and his own ignominious part in it, caused him to be less obviously savage in his reactions to strangers. He was still looking for trouble; but it had occurred to him that trouble might not necessarily lurk behind every sidelong glance.

  Fifty yards ahead, beyond the barrier, the first groups of passengers escaped, fanning out like flood-water into the sea. They swirled round the tall, polished shell-case, relic of the First World War, which stood near the Information Office and the main exit.

  Bulldog grunted, shouldering off a small man with a briefcase. ‘The Shell’s still to the fore, I see.’

  ‘Yes.’ Donald’s eye had a reminiscent gleam. ‘I used to meet a girl there when I started in the Glasgow office. Every Friday night, after she’d washed her hair. She had a red tammy like yon one, too. Good Lord!’

  ‘Eli?’ The other man was startled by his vehemence. ‘What’s biting you?’

  Donald pointed, causing a lady on his left to duck and glare. ‘That girl going past the Shell — with the red tammy and the grey suit.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘That’s Janet Marshall, boss! That’s Janet Marshall!’

  SIX

  Slim and quick and straight, as if intent on some important business, she was leaving the station in the direction of Gordon Street. She carried a mackintosh, handbag and suitcase. Imprisoned in the crowd as they were, Donald and Bulldog had no chance of pursuing her. Even as they watched, excited and overwhelmed by a sense of frustration, the red tammy disappeared into the wide maw of Glasgow.

  ‘Are you sure, boy?’ muttered Bulldog.

  ‘It was Janet Marshall,’ repeated Donald. ‘I’d know her anywhere. That walk of hers.’

  ‘She must have come on this train — in one of the front coaches.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  They struggled through the barrier. In the open stretches of the station they ran towards Gordon Street. They found it comparatively empty, however, with no red tammy in sight. But there was a taxi-rank, and Donald, offering half a crown, made an inquiry of the leading driver.

  ‘Red tammy, sir? Aye, she took the taxi in front o’ mine a minute ago. But I never noticed the way it went.’ Standing on the pavement, Bulldog said: ‘Maybe you’ll admit now that I’m not such a silly old fool as you thought!’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Those men who attacked us — d’you still believe Janet Marshall had nothing to do with them?’

  ‘Certainly. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.’


  ‘Then what’s the big idea, dogging us to Scotland?’

  ‘How d’you know she’s dogging us?’ Donald was irritated and upset and sounded like it.

  ‘I suppose you’ll say it’s just another coincidence?’ The question was rhetorical. Donald remained silent and Bulldog went on: ‘Ach, a nice bit of skirt and you lose all sense of judgement! Always the same with you young fellows. Come on, I want my breakfast. Where’s this Muir’s Hotel you said you’d show me?’

  ‘In Asia Street. We can walk there. It might do your liver a bit of good!’

  Bulldog glanced at him sideways. Then he smiled grimly and took a firmer hold of his bag. ‘Right, boy. Anything you say.’

  The morning was cool and cloudless. Buses and cars had begun to stir, and early workers were appearing hastily on the pavements. There was the sense of a great city beginning to wake up — an indefinable murmur and groan, like the groan of a giant sleeper turning over and deciding reluctantly that the time for swinging his legs over the edge of the bed had almost come. As yet the atmosphere was fresh and only vaguely sullied by the smell of petrol and dust, and the flat cobbles flanking the tramlines were, indeed, still damp. Occasionally, from a closemouth, there issued the aroma of a cooking breakfast. In an hour Glasgow would be roaring into another busy day. Meantime it enjoyed the luxury of stretching.

  The two men walked briskly along Bothwell Street. They knew it was foolish, but at every corner they looked around for a red tammy. They saw nothing, of course, but to both of them, gradually, there occurred an odd idea. Though in no obvious danger, they began to feel as if they were being watched — as if slowly but steadily they were being lured into a spiders web. Bulldog’s edginess had almost gone. He no longer believed that corporal attack was imminent. In its place, however, had come a fatalistic wariness: somewhere, sometime, they were going to find the trouble they were looking for; but not just yet — and not, perhaps, on this occasion, in the crude form of knife and bludgeon.

  Muir’s Hotel, hidden quietly in a backwater near Charing Cross, was Donald’s usual stopping-place when the paper sent him to Glasgow. It occupied nearly the whole length of a short street and was the result of several old family mansions having been knocked together. The taste of Victorian men of commerce — ironmasters, wool merchants, grain dealers and tobacco lords, waxing rich in the incoming tide of the Clyde’s prosperity — was clearly to be seen in the massive stonework and in the ornately carved iron balustrades flanking the steps up to the main door.

  He and Bulldog were greeted pleasantly by his friend Charles, the head porter from Skye, about whom he had written more than once. Wavy grey hair and a long dark face made Charles look much more distinguished than any of the guests for whom he blandly conjured up anything from an aspirin to a seat for the latest fully booked American musical. He had the blood of Gaelic chieftains in his veins — and in a beautifully modulated voice could speak their language for the interest and amusement of visitors from overseas — but his polished manners may have come from a Spanish grandee cast ashore in the Hebrides during the wreck of the Armada. Sallow skin and eagle nose provided evidence for this. With Donald he shared a deep interest in the game of golf and several times had introduced him to local players and courses.

  Civilities exchanged, he promised that while Donald and his News Editor shaved and had breakfast he would book for them a drive-yourself car at a nearby garage.

  ‘Bit of a character, eh?’ Bulldog sounded not a little impressed as he razored his lumpy face before a cloakroom mirror.

  ‘He’s one of the principal gimmicks in this hotel,’ replied Donald. ‘By acting like a gentleman himself, he makes you feel like one.’

  ‘H’m. I believe Miss Kelly would have liked to meet him.’

  ‘Perhaps. Feeling homesick?’

  ‘Homesick? Homesick my foot!’

  ‘Strange to think that before dinner tonight we’ll be at the Mull of Kin tyre. I wonder if we’ll find what we’re looking for?’

  ‘What — or whom, you mean?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t know, boy. Sometimes I get a feeling. Like I had once in the War. A bright spring day at Anzio, during the break-out. We were in the open, near a place they called “The Claw”. The enemy were all round us — we didn’t know where. We were making ourselves conspicuous to try and draw their fire. Exposed — that’s the word I’m looking for.’

  ‘And did you draw their fire?’

  ‘We did,’ He cleansed his ears of suds and began to re-pack his shaving kit.

  Donald carefully towelled his crooked nose. ‘I didn’t know you were a soldier, boss?’

  ‘Amateur. War service only. Scots Fusiliers. Damned idiots in Whitehall went and amalgamated us with the Highland Light Infantry. Mixing Lowlanders and Highlanders, trews and kilts. Might as well mix oil and water! C.S.M. — “D” Company, that’s what I was.’

  Donald grinned. ‘I might have known!’

  ‘Eh? Might have known what?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Well, I’m ready for breakfast, if you are.’

  ‘Sure. I’m starving.’

  In the dining-room, which was as bright and modern as the outside of the hotel was staidly Victorian, they had porridge with salt in it, accompanied by a little cream. Then they had a Loch Fyne kipper and a chat with a friendly waitress who told them that the weather forecast was good and hoped they would enjoy their trip to the West. Bulldog thanked her with joviality. Donald said he hoped so, too, though privately he had his doubts.

  What kept nagging in his mind as he drank the last of his coffee and lit a cigarette was the thought of Janet Marshall. Violence was remote from his impression of her character, which haunted him with its mixture of sadness and eager friendliness. In addition, if she were following them, it seemed incredible that she should have appeared openly in the Central Station. Yet Bulldog’s suspicions had infected him so much that he was beginning to wonder why she had been so determined, that night at the Minotaur, to discover the reason for his interest in Sorley Hetherington’s picture. Had she been, after all, the instigator of the ambush in Towser Lane? Was she still on their trail, planning with accomplices to attack them again?

  He thrust off his vague uncertainties. While Bulldog remained behind to pay the bill, he folded his napkin and went out into the main lounge. There he found Charles feeding a number of exotic goldfish in a glass tank.

  ‘Well, sir, enjoy your breakfast?’

  ‘I certainly did. Especially the kippers.’

  ‘I believe they are very good this morning. Loch Fyne has the reputation of producing the most succulent herring in the world. For some years they have been rather scarce — due to the presence of basking sharks — but now I am told they have returned in large numbers.’

  Donald bowed to this authoritative exposition. ‘Did you fix a car for us?’ he inquired.

  ‘It’s coming across from the garage, sir. A Morris Oxford less than a year old.’

  ‘Fine. Plenty of room for my long legs.’

  Charles lowered his voice, as if afraid that the goldfish might overhear. ‘You will have to sign a few papers and leave a deposit,’ he explained, going on to refer, with an expression of well-bred distaste, to the necessary financial details. ‘But I have vouched for you personally,’ he concluded, with an encouraging smile, ‘so they won’t keep you long.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, Charles.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ he replied, pocketing the tip with such dexterity that no one else in the lounge could possibly have known about it. ‘By the way,’ he went on, apparently with relief that ordinary social intercourse could now be re-established, ‘you didn’t tell me where you and Mr. MacPhail are going?’

  ‘Kintyre, actually. Just for a few days. Looking around, you know.’

  ‘Kintyre, sir?’ Bushy black eyebrows rose. ‘Now, that is a coincidence! We have a lady from Kintyre staying with us now. Over there in the corner.
’

  Donald looked up and saw an elderly lady with an old-fashioned dress. She had breakfasted in a remote part of the dining-room, he remembered; and it occurred to him now that her long, aristocratic nose, high-piled grey hair and heavy, jangling jewellery were somehow familiar.

  ‘Should I know her?’ he asked.

  ‘I believe so, sir. Lady Mary Kennedy of Drumgarvie Lodge. In Southend, beyond Campbeltown. She always makes use of our hotel when travelling to and from London. Came north yesterday, I am told.’

  ‘Lady Mary Kennedy?’ For a moment he was puzzled, then the lens of his memory moved into focus. ‘Of course! She does good work for European Displaced Persons — and writes poetry into the bargain. We feature her a lot in the Echo.’

  Charles inclined his head. ‘A charming lady, sir. A little eccentric, perhaps’ — his sidelong smile excused a human frailty — ‘but very kind. She’s travelling to Kintyre today, too.’

  ‘Is she now?’ An idea stirred. With a well-known person like Lady Mary in their company, a possible enemy might think twice before interfering with the progress of their car on the lonely roads of Argyll. Donald said quickly: ‘I wonder, could Mr. MacPhail and I give her a lift?’

  Charles looked benignantly approving. ‘How good of you to consider it, sir! If you like, I’ll introduce you.’

  ‘Splendid. But hold on until Mr. MacPhail comes from the dining-room.’

  ‘Very well. While we’re waiting perhaps you’d care to help me feed the goldfish?’

  ‘Good idea! Any newcomers this time?’

  ‘Only one, sir. He’s fat and friendly, so we call him “Oor Wullie”.’

  Donald chuckled. ‘You’re never at a loss, are you, Charles?’

  Bulldog emerged at last from the dining-room, counting his change, and, after a quiet word from Donald, nodded brightly. A moment later, like the Lord Chamberlain with minor foreign royalties, the head porter conducted them into the presence of Lady Mary Kennedy. As they approached she looked up sharply from a little book which she had been reading and snapped it shut. Around her, on the lush, tartan-style carpet, lay a grip and a suitcase, a blackthorn walking-stick and an assortment of rugs and shawls.