The Leithen Stories

by John Buchan

  ‘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 rear-guard, 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 whole-heartedly 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.

  ‘I think you’d better all come indoors,’ he said.

  FIFTEEN

  Haripol – the Armistice

  THE GREAT DRAWING-room had lost all its garishness with the approach of evening. Facing eastward, it looked out on lawns now dreaming in a green dusk, though beyond them the setting sun, over-topping the house, washed the woods and hills with gold and purple. Lady Claybody sat on a brocaded couch with something of the dignity of the late Queen Victoria, mystified, perturbed, awaiting the explanation which was her due. Her husband stood before her, a man with such an air of being ready for any emergency that even his kilt looked workmanlike. The embarrassed party from Crask clustered in the background; the shameful figures of Lamancha and Johnson stood in front of the window, thereby deepening the shadow. So electric was the occasion that Lady Claybody, finically proud of her house, did not notice that these two were oozing water over the polished parquet and devastating more than one expensive rug.

  Lamancha, now that the worst had happened, was resigned and almost cheerful. Since the Claybodys had bagged Leithen and Palliser-Yeates and detected the complicity of Sir Archie, there was no reason why he should be left out. He hoped, rather vaguely, that his captors might not be inclined to make the thing public in view of certain episodes, but he had got to the pitch of caring very little. John Macnab was dead, and only awaited sepulture and oblivion. He looked towards Johnson, expecting him to take up the tale.

  But Johnson had no desire to speak. He had been very much shaken and scared by the Bluidy Mackenzie and had not yet recovered his breath. Also a name spoken by his father, as they entered the room, had temporarily unsettled his wits. It was Lord Claybody who broke the uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Who owns that dog?’ he asked, looking, not at Lamancha, but at his son.

  ‘The brute’s mine,’ said Archie penitently. ‘He followed the car, and I left him tied up. Can’t think how he got loose and started this racket.’

  The master of the house turned to Lamancha. ‘How did you come here, my lord? You look as if you had been having a rough journey.’

  Lamancha laughed. Happily the waning light did not reveal the full extent of his dirt and raggedness. ‘I have,’ he said, ‘I’m your son’s prisoner. Fairly caught out. I daresay you think me an idiot, unless Leithen or Palliser-Yeates has explained.’

  Lord Claybody looked more mystified than ever.

  ‘I don’t understand. A prisoner?’

  ‘He’s John Macnab,’ put in Johnson, whose breath was returning, and with it sulkiness. He was beginning to see that there was to be no triumph in this business, and a good deal of unpleasant explanation.

  ‘Well, a third of him,’ said Lamancha. ‘And as you’ve already annexed the other two-thirds you have the whole of the fellow under your roof.’

  Lord Claybody’s gasp suddenly revealed to Lamancha that he had been premature in his confession. How his two friends had got into the Haripol drawing-room he did not know, but apparently it was not as prisoners. The mischief was done, however, and there was no going back.

  ‘You mean to say that you three gentlemen are John Macnab? You have been poaching at Glenraden and Strathlarrig? Does Colonel Raden – does Mr Bandicott know who you are?’

  Lamancha nodded. ‘They found out after we had had our shot at their preserves. They didn’t mind – took it very well indeed. We hope you’re going to follow suit?’

  ‘But I am amazed. You had only to send me a note and my forest was at your disposal for as long as you wished. Why – why this – this incivility?’

  ‘I assure you, on my honour, that the last thing we dreamed of was incivility … Look here, Lord Claybody, I wonder if I can explain. We three – Leithen, Palliser-Yeates, and myself – found ourselves two months ago fairly fed up with life. We weren’t sick, and we weren’t tired – only bored. By accident we discovered each other’s complaint, and we decided to have a try at curing ourselves by attempting something very difficult and rather dangerous. There was a fellow called Tarras used to play this game – he was before your time – and we resolved to take a leaf out of his book. So we quartered ourselves on Archie – he’s not to blame, remember, for he’s been protesting bitterly all along – and we sent out our challenge. Glenraden and Strathlarrig accepted it, so that was all right; you didn’t in so many words, but you accepted it by your action, for you took elaborate precautions to safeguard your ground … Well, that’s all. Palliser-Yeates lost at Glenraden owing to Miss Janet. Leithen won at Strathlarrig, and now I’ve made a regular hat of things at Haripol. But we’re cured, all of us. We’re simply longing to get back to the life which in July we thought humbug.’

  Lord Claybody sat down in a chair and brooded.

  ‘I still don’t follow,’ he said. ‘You are people who matter a great deal to the world, and there’s not a man in this country who wouldn’t have been proud to give you the chance of the kind of holiday you needed. You’re one of the leaders of my party. Personally, I have always considered you the best of them. I’m looking to Sir Edward Leit
hen to win a big case for me this autumn. Mr Palliser-Yeates has done a lot of business with my firm, and after the talk I’ve had with him this afternoon I look to doing a good deal more with him in the future. You had only to give me a hint of what you wished and I would have jumped at the chance of obliging you. You wanted the thrill of feeling like poachers. Well, I would have seen that you got it. I would have turned on every man in the place and used all my wits to make your escapade difficult. Wouldn’t that have contented you?’

  ‘No, no,’ Lamancha cried. ‘You are missing the point. Don’t you see that your way would have taken all the gloss off the adventure and made it a game? We had to feel that we were taking real risks – that, being what we were, we should look utter fools if we were caught and exposed.’

  ‘Pardon me, but it is you who are missing the point.’ Lord Claybody was smiling. ‘You could never have been exposed – except perhaps by those confounded journalists,’ he added as he caught sight of Crossby.

  ‘We had the best of them on our side,’ Lamancha put in. ‘Mr Crossby has backed us up nobly.’

  ‘Well, that only made your position more secure. Colonel Raden and Mr Bandicott accepted your challenge, and in any case they were sportsmen, and you knew it. If they had caught one or the other of you they would never have betrayed you. You must see that. And here at Haripol you were on the safest ground of all. I’m not what they call a sportsman – not yet – but I couldn’t give you away. Do you think it conceivable that I would do anything to weaken the public prestige of a statesman I believe in, a great lawyer I brief, and a great banker whose assistance is of the utmost value to me. I’m a man who has made a fortune by my own hard work and I mean to keep it; therefore in these bad times I am out to support anything which buttresses the solid structure of society. You three are part of that structure. You might poach every stag on Haripol, and I should still hold my tongue.’