by John Buchan
We all attended the clipping. It was a very hot day, and the air in the fold was thick with the reek of sheep and the strong scent of the keel-pot, from which the shorn beasts were marked with a great L. I have seen a good deal of shearing in my time, but I have never seen it done better than by these Borderers, who wrought in perfect silence and apparently with effortless ease. The Australian sheep-hand may be quicker at the job, but he could not be a greater artist. There was never a gash or a shear-mark, the fleeces dropped plumply beside the stools, and the sheep, no longer dingy and weathered but a dazzling white, were as evenly trimmed as if they had been fine women in the hands of a coiffeur. It was too smelly a place for the ladies to sit in long, but twenty yards off was crisp turf beginning to be crimsoned with bell-heather, and the shingle-beds and crystal waters of the burn. We ended by camping on a little hillock, where we could look down upon the scene, and around to the hills shimmering in the heat, and up to the deep blue sky on which were etched two mewing buzzards.
We had our luncheon there, when the work stopped for the midday rest, and Haraldsen and I went down afterwards to smoke with the herds. The clipping meal at Laverlaw was established by ancient precedent. There was beer for all, but whisky only for the older men. There were crates of mutton-pies for which the Hangingshaw baker was famous, and baskets of buttered scones and oatcakes and skim-milk cheese. The company were mighty trenchermen, and I observed the herd of the Back Hill of the Cludden, to whom this was a memorable occasion, put away six pies and enough cakes and cheese to last me for a week.
After that we went home, but Peter John stayed behind, for he had decided to become a sheep-farmer and was already deep in the confidence of the herds. In the afternoon I took Haraldsen to visit the keep of Hardriding ten miles off, an ancient tooth of masonry on a crag by a burn. I remember thinking that I had never seen him in better spirits, for his morning at the clipping seemed to have cheered him by its spectacle of decent, kindly folk.
When we got back just before dinner I found Peter John waiting for me with a graver face than usual.
There had been visitors, it appeared, at the clipping that afternoon. One was Little, the auctioneer from Laverkirk. That was to be expected, for ‘Leittle’, as the countryside pronounced his name, was a famous figure in the shire, a little red-faced man with a gift of broad humour, whose jokes in the sale-ring were famous through the Lowlands. But he had also a rough side to his tongue, and this, with his profound knowledge of black-faced sheep, made him respected as well as liked. He was a regular guest at the Laverlaw clippings, and was a special friend of Stoddart’s. But he had brought a friend with him whom nobody had met before. Peter John described him carefully. An average-sized man, quite young, with a small, well-trimmed moustache like a soldier. He wore riding breeches and cloth gaiters, and a check cap, and carried a shooting-stick. He was Scotch and spoke broadly, but not in the local fashion – Stoddart thought he must come from Dumfries way. His name was Harcus, and Little had introduced him as a rising dealer whom they would soon hear more of, and who was on holiday, taking a look at the Laver Water flocks. He seemed to know a lot about Cheviot sheep.
‘Well, he sounds harmless enough,’ I said, when I had heard his story. ‘A dealer is the kind of fellow you’d expect at a clipping, and if Little brought him he must be all right.’
But I could see from the boy’s face that he was not satisfied.
‘I didn’t much like him,’ he said. ‘He was too soft-spoken, and he wanted to know too much. Geordie Hamilton said he would “speir the inside out of a whelk”. He asked all about who was staying here, and if Lord Clanroyden was still here. He said a lot of nice things about Lord Clanroyden which Mr Stoddart thought cheek. Mr Stoddart thought he wanted something out of him.’
‘There’s nothing in that,’ I said. ‘That’s the habit of dealers. He probably wants to buy the Mains hoggs before they’re sent to Laverkirk. Was that the only thing that made you suspicious?’
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘There was another thing. He behaved rather queerly about me. I was sitting behind the keel-pot cutting a whistle, and I heard all his talk with Mr Stoddart and Mr Nickson. I saw that he had noticed me when he arrived. He pretended not to know we were staying in this house, and when Mr Stoddart said that you were here he looked surprised, and asked was that the General Hannay that he had heard about in the War? And then he said suddenly, “Sir Richard’s boy’s here. I would like to have a crack wi him,” and Mr Stoddart had to introduce us. That showed that he must have known all about us before, and that I was yourson.’
‘That was odd,’ I admitted, rather impressed by Peter John’s shrewdness, I asked what he had talked to him about, and he told me just ordinary things – what school he was at, what he thought of Scotland, what he was going to do when he grew up – and that he had laughed when he heard of the sheep-farming plan. Stoddart had given the two visitors a drink, and after an hour’s stay they had gone down the valley in Little’s car.
I said that I didn’t think there was any real cause to worry. But Peter John was obstinate, and then he added that which really alarmed me.
‘I thought I had better do something about it,’ he said, ‘so I asked Mr Sprot – he’s the young shepherd at Nether Laver and lives nearest to Hangingshaw – to try to find out when he got home if this Mr Harcus had been in the village before. Do you know what he told me? That he had been there for three days, and had been staying with Miss Newbigging at the post-office. He said he had been to a lot of farms, and had bought the short-horn bull at Windyways that got the second prize at the Highland Show.’
That word ‘post-office’ alarmed me. It was the very place a man would choose for his lodgings if he wanted to make private inquiries. There was no inn in Hangingshaw, and the post-office was the natural centre for a big countryside. Also Miss Newbigging, the post-mistress, was a most notorious old gossip, and lived to gather and retail news.
‘So I thought I’d better ask Geordie Hamilton to go down there’ (in this case alone Peter John dropped his habit of ‘mistering’ everybody, for it was impossible to call Geordie otherwise than by his Christian name). ‘He went off on his bicycle after tea. I thought he was the best man for the job, for he’s a great friend of Miss Newbigging.’
‘That was right,’ I said. ‘So far I give you good marks. I’ll have a talk to Geordie in the morning.’
I dressed for dinner with a faint uneasiness at the back of my head. It was increased when, just as we were drinking our coffee, I was told that Geordie Hamilton wanted to see me urgently. I found him in the gun-room with a glowing face, as if he had made some speed on his bicycle from Hangingshaw in the warm evening.
‘Yon man Haircus, sirr,’ he began at once. ‘Actin’ under instructions from Maister Peter John I proceeded to Hangingshaw and had a word wi’ Miss Newbiggin’. Sprot was speakin’ the truth. Haircus is no there noo, for he gaed off in the car wi’ Leittle the auctioneer, him and his pockmanty. But he’d been bidin’ there the last three days and – weel, sirr, I dinna like the look o’ things. I didna like the look o’ the man, for he was neither gentry nor plain folk. And gude kens what he’s been up to.’
Geordie proceeded with his report, delivered in the staccato fashion of the old Scots Fusilier days. He had found Miss Newbigging alone and had had a friendly cup of tea with her. ‘Yon’s an awfu’ ane to speak,’ he said. ‘She has a tongue on her like a pen-gun.’ The post-mistress had been full of her late lodger, and had described him as a ‘fine, couthy, cracky body’. He was Galloway bred, but had been a lot in the north of England, and his big market was Carlisle. He told her that he wanted to get in touch with the farmers in these parts, which he said were the pick of the Borders. ‘He was aye rimin’,’ said Miss Newbigging, ‘about this bonny countryside and the dacent folk that bode in it.’ She had been glad to answer his questions, for he was bringing trade into the parish. When asked if he had been curious about Laverlaw, she had replied that he had, just as eve
ryone would be curious about the Big House. He seemed to know all about Lord Clanroyden and to have a great opinion of him. ‘I telled him that his lordship was supposed to be in residence, but that I hadna clapped eyes on him for months. But says I, that’s naethin’ new, for his lordship comes and gangs like a bog-blitter, though I whiles think that he should pay mair attention to his leddy wife, and her no’ that strong.’ But Miss Newbigging had been positive that she had never given him the names of the party now at Laverlaw. ‘Though he might have read them on the letters,’ she had added.
On further examination Geordie discovered that Harcus had been what the post-mistress called ‘a usefu’ man about the house’. He had helped her every day to sort out the mail, both the incoming and the outgoing. He had often been jocose about the former. ‘Here’s ane to Sundhope frae the Bank,’ he would say. ‘That’ll be about the overdraft for the beasts he bocht at Kelso. And here is a bundle for her leddyship. It’s bigger than I get mysel’ after the back-end sales. But I see there’s two leddyships, Leddy Clanroyden and Leddy Hannay. There’s walth o’ rank the noo up the Laver Water.’
This had roused Geordie’s interest. He asked if Harcus had made a point of looking at the outgoing letters. Miss Newbigging had replied: ‘He did, now I come to think o’t. I was aye tellin’ him there was nae need, for the hale lot gangs to Laverkirk to be sorted. But he was a carefu’ man, and he had time on his hands, and he would set them out in wee packs as if he was playin’ at the cards. “That’s for Embro’,” he would say, “an’ that’s for the West country, an’ that heap’s for England.” He was aye awfu’ interested in the English letters, comin’ as he did frae Carlisle.’
Geordie, having learned all he wanted, had taken his departure after compliments. Now he sat before me with his shaggy brows drawn down. ‘Ye telled me, sirr, to let naething gang by me, however sma’, and there’s just a chance that there’s mischief here. Haircus doesna ken wha’s writin’ to the folk in this house, but he kens a wheen o’ the names that the folk here write to.’
That was precisely the point, and at first I thought that it did not matter. And then, when Geordie had gone, I suddenly remembered that though we were in a sanctuary our party was not complete. There was one absentee, one sheep outside the fold. Not Sandy – he could very well look after himself. It was Haraldsen’s child, his daughter Anna.
I started out to look for Haraldsen, but he had gone off with Peter John to dap for trout in the park lake. It was nearly eleven o’clock before they returned, and, as they entered the lit hall from the purple gloom which is all the night that Laverlaw knows in early July, I thought what a miracle recent weeks had wrought in Haraldsen’s appearance. He held his head up, and looked you straight in the face, and walked like a free man. When I called to him he was laughing like a care-free boy at the figure Peter John cut in Sandy’s short waders. It struck me that it was just in this recovered confidence that our danger lay.
He had often told me about his daughter Anna. She was at a well-known boarding-school for girls in Northamptonshire, called Brewton Ashes, under the name of Smith, the name he had taken when he sought refuge in England. At first he had looked after her in her holidays, and taken her to dismal seaside resorts which he had heard well spoken of. But as his dread of pursuit grew he had dropped all this, and had not seen her for nearly a year. It had been arranged that one of the mistresses, to whom she was attached, should look after her in the holidays, and Haraldsen must have paid for pretty expensive trips for the two, since it was the only way he could make up to the child for his absence. He had always been very careful about letters, writing to her not direct, but through his bank, and he had never dared to show himself within twenty miles of Brewton Ashes.
I turned the conversation on to the girl, being careful not to alarm him, for I didn’t want to spoil his convalescence. I pretended that Peter John wanted to write and tell her about Laverlaw, and asked how it was done. He told me that there was a choice of three banks, who all had their instructions.
‘It seems a roundabout way,’ I said; ‘but I dare say you are wise. Do you stick to it rigidly?’
‘Yes. It is better so. You never know… Well, to be quite honest, I have broken the rule once, and I do not intend to break it again. That was last Monday. Anna’s thirteenth birthday was yesterday, and I made a mistake about the dates, for I have been so busy here that I have grown careless. I could not bear to think that she would have no message from me on that day, so I wrote direct to her at Brewton Ashes.’ His smile was a little embarrassed, and he looked at me as if he expected reproaches. ‘I do not think that any harm is done. This place is so far away from everybody.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ I said. ‘You needn’t worry about that, but I think you’re wise all the same to stick to your rule. Now for bed. Lord, it’s nearly midnight.’
But I thought it by no means all right. It was infernally bad luck that Haraldsen should have chosen to be indiscreet just at the time when the mysterious Harcus was in the neighbourhood. I told myself that the latter would make nothing of a letter addressed to a Miss Anna Smith at a country address in England. But I have never made the mistake of underrating the intelligence of the people I was up against. Anyhow, I was taking no chances. I routed out Geordie Hamilton from his room above the stables and warned him for duty. Then I wrote a letter to Sandy in London, telling him all that had happened and my doubts about Harcus. I left it to him to decide whether any steps should be taken to safeguard the girl. Geordie was instructed to set off at once to Laverkirk, twenty miles distant, and post it there, so that it might catch the London mail – Laverkirk was on the main line to the south – and reach Sandy the following evening.
But I wasn’t content with a letter. I also wrote out a telegram to Sandy in a simple cypher we had often used before – a longish telegram, for I had to explain how it was possible that the enemy might have got the girl’s address. Geordie, when he had posted the letter, was to go to bed in the Station Hotel, be up betimes, and send the telegram as soon as the office was open. I had no fear of espionage in Laverkirk, which was a big bustling market-town with half a dozen post offices.
Then I went to bed with anxiety in my mind out of which I could not argue myself. The happy peace of Laverlaw had been flawed. I felt like the man in Treasure Island who was tipped the black spot.
CHAPTER NINE
Lochinvar
Next day the heat-wave broke in a deluge, and by midday the Laver was coloured and by evening in roaring spate. Peter John and I went out before dinner, and got a heavy basket with the worm in the pools above the park. The following morning it still drizzled, and we did well in the tributary burns with the fly known locally as the black spider. Burn-fishing has always had its charms for me, for no two casts are the same, and I love the changing scenery of each crook in the little glens. But after luncheon Peter John’s soul aspired to higher things. There was a tarn six miles off in the hills called the Black Loch, a mossy hole half overgrown with yellow water-lilies and uncommonly difficult to fish. We had tried it before in a quiet gloaming and had had no luck, though we had seen big trout feeding. Sim had always declared that it only fished well after rain, when its sluggish inmates were stirred by the swollen runnels from the hills. So we set off with Oliver and Georgie Hamilton, warning Barbara that we might be late for dinner.
We did not return till half-past nine. The weather cleared, the sun came out, and the warm evening was a kind of carnival for the Black Loch trout. They took whatever we offered them, but for every five, fish hooked four broke us or dropped off. We had to cast over an infernal belt of water-lilies and pond-weed, which meant a long line and a loose line. It was impossible to wade far out, for the bottom was treacherous, and once I went down to the waist. To land a fish we had to drag him by brute force through the water-weeds, and, as we were fishing far and fine, that usually meant disaster. There were two spits of gravel in the loch, and the only chance with a big one was to try to ma
noeuvre him towards one of these, not an easy job, since one had practically no purchase on him. Peter John, who was far the better performer, managed this successfully with two noble fellows, each nearly two pounds in weight, but he too had many failures. Nevertheless, between us we had two dozen and three fish, a total weight of just over twenty-seven pounds, the best basket that had been taken out of the Black Loch in Oliver’s memory.
These two days’ fishing had put everything else out of my mind, a trick fishing always has with me. As we tramped home over the dusky sweet-scented moors I had no thought except a bath and dinner. But as we approached the house I was suddenly recalled to my senses. Before the front door stood a big and very dirty car, from which a man in a raincoat had descended. He had no hat, he seemed to have a baldish head and red face mottled with mud, and his whole air was of fatigue and dishevelment. He was in the act of helping another figure to alight, which looked like a girl. And then suddenly there was a sound in the house, and from it Haraldsen emerged, shouting like a lunatic. He plucked the girl from the car, and stood hugging and kissing her.
When we got nearer I saw that the man was Lombard, but very unlike the spruce city magnate with whom I had been lately connected. He looked tired and dirty but content, and somehow younger, more like the Lombard I remembered in Africa. ‘Thank God we’re here at last,’ he said. ‘It’s been a roughish passage… What do I want most? First a bath, and then food – a lot of it, for we’ve been living on biscuits. I’ve brought no kit, so you must lend me some clothes to change into.’ As for Haraldsen, he went on behaving like a maniac, patting the girl’s shoulder and holding her as if he thought that at any moment she might disappear. ‘My happiness is complete,’ he kept declaring. This went on till Barbara and Mary appeared and swept the child off with them.