John MacNab

by John Buchan

  Then the faithful Stokes uplifted his voice. ‘I done as I was told, sir, and kep’ movin’ all right, but I ain’t seen nothing, and then I ‘ad a nawsty fall among them blasted rocks and ‘urt my leg. This gentleman comes along and finds me and ‘as a try at patchin’ me up. But for ‘im, sir, I’d be lyin’ jammed between two stones till the crows ‘ad a pick at me.’

  ‘You’re a good chap, Stokes,’ said Lamancha, ‘but you’re a liar. This man,’ he addressed Johnson, ‘was carrying out your orders, and challenged me. I wanted to pass, and he wouldn’t let me, so we had a rough-and-tumble, and through no fault of his he took a toss into a hole, and, as you see, broke his leg. I’ve set it and bound it up, but the sooner we get the job properly done the better. Hang it, it’s the poor devil’s livelihood. So we’d better push along.’

  His tone irritated Johnson. This scoundrelly poacher, caught red-handed with a rifle, presumed to give orders to his own men. He turned fiercely on Stokes.

  ‘You know this fellow? What’s his name?’

  ‘I can’t say as I rightly knows ‘im,’ was the answer. ‘But ‘im and me was in the war, and he once gave me a drink outside Jerusalem.’

  ‘Are you John Macnab?’ Johnson demanded.

  ‘I’m anything you please,’ said Lamancha, ‘if you’ll only hurry and get this man to bed.’

  ‘Damn your impudence! What business is that of yours? You’ve been caught poaching and we’ll march you down to Haripol and get the truth out of you. If you won’t tell me who you are, I’ll find means to make you . . . Macnicol, you and Macqueen get on each side of him, and you three fellows follow behind. If he tries to bolt, club him . . . You can leave this man here. He’ll take no harm, and we can send back for him later.’

  ‘I’m sorry to interfere,’ said Lamancha quietly, ‘but Stokes is going down now. You needn’t worry about me. I’ll come with you, for I’ve got to see him comfortably settled.’

  ‘You’ll come with us!’ Johnson shouted. ‘Many thanks for your kindness. You’ll damn well be made to come. Macnicol, take hold of him.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Lamancha. ‘Please don’t. It will only mean trouble.’

  Macnicol was acutely unhappy. He recognised something in Lamancha’s tone which was perhaps unfamiliar to his master – that accent which means authority, and which, if disregarded, leads to mischief. He had himself served in Lovat’s Scouts, and the voice of this tatterdemalion was unpleasantly like that of certain high-handed officers of his acquaintance. So he hesitated and shuffled his feet.

  ‘Look at the thing reasonably,’ Lamancha said. ‘You say I’m a poacher called John Something-or-other. I admit that you have found me walking with a rifle on your ground, and naturally you want an explanation. But all that can wait till we get this man down to a doctor. I won’t run away, for I want to satisfy myself that he’s going to be all right. Won’t that content you?’

  Johnson, to his disgust, felt that he was being manoeuvred into a false position. He was by no means unkind, and this infernal Macnab was making him appear a brute. Public opinion was clearly against him; Macnicol was obviously unwilling to act, Macqueen he knew detested him, and the three navvies might be supposed to take the side of their colleague. Johnson set a high value on public opinion, and scrupled to outrage it. So he curbed his wrath, and gave orders that Stokes should be taken up. Two men formed a cradle with their arms, and the cortege proceeded down the hillside.

  Lamancha took care to give his captors no uneasiness. He walked beside Macqueen, with whom he exchanged a few comments on the weather, and he thought his own by no means pleasant thoughts. This confounded encounter with Stokes had wrecked everything, and yet he could not be altogether sorry that it had happened. He had a chance now of doing something for an honest fellow – Stokes’s gallant lie to Johnson had convinced Lamancha of his superlative honesty. But it looked as if he were in for an ugly time with this young bounder, and he was beginning to dislike Johnson extremely. There were one or two points in his favour. The stag seemed to have departed with Wattie into the ewigkeit and happily no eye at the Beallach had seen the signs of the gralloch. All that Johnson could do was to accuse him of poaching, teste the rifle; he could not prove the deed. Lamancha was rather vague about the law, but he was doubtful whether mere trespass was a grave offence. Then the Claybodys would not want to make too much fuss about it, with the journalists booming the doings of John Macnab ... But wouldn’t they? They were the kind of people that liked advertisement, and after all they had scored. What a tale for the cheap papers there would be in the capture of John Macnab! And if it got out who he was? ... It was very clear that that at all costs must be prevented ... Had Johnson Claybody any decent feelings to which he could appeal? A sportsman? Well, he didn’t seem to be of much account in that line, for he had wanted to leave the poor devil on the hill.

  It took some time for the party to reach the Doran, which they forded at a point considerably below Archie’s former lair. Lamancha gave thanks for one mercy, that Archie and Wattie seemed to have got clean away. There was a car on the road which caused him a moment’s uneasiness, till he saw that it was not the Ford but a large car with an all-weather body coming from Haripol. The driver seemed to have his instructions, for he turned round – no light task in that narrow road with its boggy fringes – and awaited their arrival.

  Johnson gave rapid orders. ‘You march the fellow down the road, and bring the navvy – better take him to your cottage, Macqueen. I’ll go home in the car and prepare a reception for Macnab.’

  It may be assumed that Johnson spoke in haste, for he had somehow to work off his irritation, and desired to assert his authority.

  ‘Hadn’t Stokes better go in the car?’ Lamancha suggested in a voice which he strove to make urbane. ‘That journey down the hill can’t have done his leg any good.’

  Johnson replied by telling him to mind his own business, and then was foolish enough to add that he was hanged if he would have any lousy navvy in his car. He was preparing to enter, when something in Lamancha’s voice stopped him.

  ‘You can’t,’ said the latter. ‘In common decency you can’t.’

  ‘Who’ll prevent me? Now, look here, I’m fed up with your insolence. You’ll be well advised to hold your tongue till we make up our minds how to deal with you. You’re in a devilish nasty position, Mr John Macnab, if you had the wits to see it. Macnicol, and you fellows, I’ll fire the lot of you if he escapes on the road. You’ve my authority to hit him on the head if he gets nasty.’

  Johnson’s foot was on the step, when a hand on his shoulder swung him round.

  ‘No, you don’t.’ Lamancha’s voice had lost all trace of civility, for he was very angry. ‘Stokes goes in the car and one of the gillies with him. Here you, lift the man in.’

  Johnson had grown rather white, for he saw that the situation was working up to the ugliest kind of climax. He felt dimly that he was again defying public opinion, but his fury made him bold. He cursed Lamancha with vigour and freedom, but there was a slight catch in his voice, and a hint of anticlimax in his threats, for the truth was that he was a little afraid. Still it was a flat defiance, though it concluded with a sneering demand as to what and who would prevent him doing as he pleased, which sounded a little weak.

  ‘First,’ said Lamancha, ‘I should have a try at wringing your neck. Then I should wreck any reputation you may have up and down this land. I promise you I should make you very sorry you didn’t stay in bed this morning.’ Lamancha had succeeded in controlling himself – in especial he had checked the phrase ‘infernal little haberdasher’ which had risen to his lips – and his voice was civil and quiet again.

  Johnson gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I’m not afraid of a dirty poacher.’

  ‘If I’m a poacher that’s no reason why you should behave like a cad.’

  It is a melancholy fact which exponents of democracy must face that, while all men may be on a level in the eyes of the State, they will continue
in fact to be preposterously unequal. Lamancha had been captured in circumstances of deep suspicion which he did not attempt to explain; he had been caught on Johnson’s land, by Johnson’s servants; the wounded man was in Johnson’s pay, and might reasonably be held to be at Johnson’s orders; the car was without question Johnson’s own. Yet this outrageous trespasser was not only truculent and impenitent; he was taking it upon himself to give orders to gillies and navvies, and to dictate the use of an expensive automobile. The truth is, that if you belong to a family which for a good many centuries has been accustomed to command and to take risks, and if you yourself, in the forty-odd years of your life, have rather courted trouble than otherwise, and have put discipline into Arab caravans, Central African natives, and Australian mounted brigades – well, when you talk about wringing necks your words might carry weight. If, too, you have never had occasion to think of your position, because no one has ever questioned it, and you promise to break down somebody else’s, your threat may convince others, because you yourself are so wholly convinced of your power in that direction. It was the complete lack of bluster in Lamancha, his sober matter-of-factness, that made Johnson suddenly discover in this potato-bogle of a man something formidable. He hesitated, the gillies hesitated, and Lamancha saw his chance. Angry as he was, he contrived to be conciliatory.

  ‘Don’t let us lose our tempers. I’ve no right to dictate to you, but you must see that we’re bound to look after this poor chap first. After that I’m at your disposal to give you any satisfaction you want.’

  Johnson had not been practised in commercial negotiations for nothing. He saw that obstinacy would mean trouble, and would gain him little, and he cast about for a way to save his face. He went through a show of talking in whispers to Macnicol – a show which did not deceive his head-stalker. Then he addressed Macqueen. ‘We think we’d better get this fellow off our hands. You take him down in the car to your cottage, and put him in your spare bed. Then come round to the house and wait for me.’

  ‘This is my show, if you’ll allow me, sir,’ said Lamancha politely. He took a couple of notes from a wad he carried in an inner pocket. ‘Get hold of the nearest doctor – you can use the post-office telephone – and tell him to come at once, and get everything you need for Stokes. I’ll see you again. Don’t spare expense, for I’m responsible.’

  The car departed, and the walking party continued its way down the Doran glen. Lamancha’s anger was evaporating, philosophy had intervened, and he was prepared to make allowances for Johnson. But he recognised that the situation was delicate and the future cloudy, and, since he saw no way out, decided to wait patiently on events, always premising that on no account must he permit his identity to be discovered. That might yet involve violent action of a nature which he could not foresee. His consolation was the thought of the stag, now without doubt in the Crask larder. If only he could get clear of his captors, John Macnab would have won two out of the three events. Yes, and if Leithen and Palliser-Yeates had not blundered into captivity.

  He was presently reassured as to the fate of the latter. When the party entered the wooded lower glen of the Doran it was joined by four weary navvies who had been refreshing themselves by holding their heads in the stream. Interrogated by Macnicol, they told a tale of hunting an elusive man for hours on the hillside, of repeatedly being on the point of laying hold of him, of a demoniac agility and a diabolical cunning, and of his final disappearance into the deeps of the wood. Questioned about Stokes, they knew nothing. He had last been seen by them in the early morning when the mist first cleared, but it was his business to keep moving high up the hill near the rocks and he had certainly not joined in the chase when it started.

  Johnson’s temper was not improved by this news. Twice he had been put to public shame in front of his servants by this arrogant tramp who was John Macnab. He had been insulted and defied, but he knew in his heart that the true bitterness lay in the fact that he had also been frightened. Anger, variegated by fear, is apt to cloud a man’s common sense, and Johnson’s usual caution was deserting him. He was beginning to see red, and the news that there had been an accomplice was the last straw. Somehow or other he must get even with this bandit and bring him to the last extremity of disgrace. He must get him inside the splendours of Haripol, where, his foot on his native heath, he would recover the confidence which had been so lamentably to seek on the hill ... He would, of course, hand him over to the police, but his soul longed for some more spectacular dénouement . . .

  Then he thought of the journalists, who had made such a nuisance of themselves in the morning. They were certain to be still about the place. If they could see his triumphant arrival at Haripol they would write such a story as would blaze his credit to the world and make the frustrated poacher a laughing-stock.

  As it chanced, as they entered one of the woodland drives of Haripol, they met the gillie, Andrew, on his way home for a late tea. He was asked if he had seen any of the correspondents, and replied that he and Peter and Cameron had captured one after a hard chase, who at the moment was in Cameron’s charge and using strong language about the liberty of the Press. Andrew was privately despatched to bid Cameron bring his captive, with all civility and many apologies, up to the house, with a message that Mr Claybody would be glad to have a talk with him. Then, with three navvies as a vanguard and four as a rearguard, Lamancha was conducted down the glade between Johnson and Macnicol – the picture of a criminal in the grip of the law.

  That picture was seen by a small boy who was lurking among the bracken. To the eyes of Benjie it spelt the uttermost disaster. The stag was safe at Crask, but the major part of John Macnab was in the hands of his enemies. Benjie thought hard for a minute, and then wriggled back into the covert and ran as hard as he could through the wood. To him at this awful crisis there seemed to be but a single hope. Force must be brought against force. The Bluidy Mackenzie, now tied up under a distant tree, must be launched against the foe. The boy was aware that the dog had accepted him as an ally, but that it had developed for Lamancha the passion of its morose and solitary life.

  The prisoner’s uneasiness grew with every step he took down the sweet-scented twilit glade. He was being taken to the house, and in that house there would be people – women, perhaps – journalists, maybe – and a most embarrassing situation for a Cabinet Minister. The whole enterprise, which had been so packed with comedy and adventure, was about to end in fiasco and disgrace, and it was he, the promoter, who had let the show down. For the first time since he arrived at Crask Lamancha wholeheartedly wished himself out of the thing with a clean sheet. There was something to be said, after all, for a man keeping to his groove . . .

  They emerged from the trees, and before them stretched the lawns, with a large and important mansion at the other end. This was worse than his wildest dreams. He stopped short.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘isn’t it time to end this farce? I admit I was trespassing, and was fairly caught out. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘By Gad, it isn’t,’ said Johnson, into whose bosom a certainty of triumph and revenge had at last entered. ‘Into the house you go, and there we’ll get the truth out of you.’

  ‘I’ll pay any fine in reason, but I’m damned if I’m going near that house.’

  For answer, Johnson nodded to Macnicol, and the two closed in on the prisoner. Lamancha, now really desperate, shook off the stalker and was about to break to his left, when Johnson tackled high and held him.

  At the same moment the Bluidy Mackenzie took a hand in the game.

  That faithful hound, conducted by Benjie, had just arrived on the scene of action. He saw his adored Lamancha, the first man who had really understood him, being assaulted by another whose appearance he did not favour. Like a stone from a sling he leaped from the covert straight at Mr Johnson Claybody’s throat.

  It all happened in one crowded instant. Lamancha felt the impact of part of Mackenzie’s body, saw Johnson stagger and fall, and next observed
his captor running wildly for the house with Mackenzie hot on his trail. Then, with that preposterous instinct to help human against animal which is deeper than reason, he started after him.

  Never had a rising young commercial magnate shown a better gift of speed, for a mad dog was his private and particular fear, and this beast was clearly raving mad. Macnicol and the navvies were some twenty yards behind, but Lamancha was a close second. Crying hoarsely, Johnson leaped the flower-beds and doubled like a hare in and out of a pergola. Ahead lay his mother’s pet new lily-pond, and, remembering dimly that mad dogs did not love water, he plunged into it, and embraced a lead Cupid in the centre.

  Mackenzie loved water like a spaniel, and his great body shot after him. But the immersion caused a second’s delay and enabled Lamancha to take a flying leap which brought him almost atop of the dog. He clutched his collar and swung him back, making a commotion in the fountain like a tidal wave. Mackenzie recognised his friend and did not turn on him, but he still strained furiously after Johnson, who was now emerging like Proteus on the far side.

  Suddenly the windows of the house, which was not thirty yards off, opened, and the stage filled up with figures. First the amazed eyes of Lamancha saw Crossby entering from the right, evidently a prisoner, in the charge of two gillies. Then at one set of windows appeared Sir Edward Leithen with a scared face, while from the other emerged the forms of Sir Archibald Roylance, Mr Palliser-Yeates, and a stout gentleman in a kilt who might be Lord Claybody. To his mind, keyed by wrath and confusion to expectation of tragedy, there could only be one solution. Others besides himself had failed, and the secret of John Macnab was horridly patent to the world.

  ‘Archie,’ he panted, ‘for God’s sake call off your tripe-hound. I can’t hold on any longer . . . He’ll eat the little man.’

  Lord Claybody had unusual penetration. He observed his son and heir dripping and exhausted on the turf, and a figure, which looked like a caricature in the Opposition Press of an eminent Tory statesman, surrendering a savage hound to a small and dirty boy. Also he saw in the background a group of gillies and navvies. There was mystery here which had better be unriddled away from the gaze of the profane crowd. His eye caught Crossby’s and Lamancha’s.