“Do you mind our talk coming up the road?… Providence has taken me at my word… Who do you think is sitting ben the house? It’s the man Craw!”
CHAPTER 4
THE RECONNAISSANCE OF CASTLE GAY
The westering sun was lighting up the homely furniture of Mrs Catterick’s best room—the sheepskins on the floor, the framed photographs decorated with strings of curlews’ eggs on the walls—when Dougal and Jaikie entered the presence of the great man. Mr Craw was not at the moment an impressive figure. The schoolmaster’s son of Kilmaclavers had been so long habituated to the attentions of an assiduous valet that he had found some difficulty in making his own toilet. His scanty hair was in disorder, and his spruce blue suit had attracted a good deal of whitewash from the walls of his narrow bedroom. Also he had lost what novelists call his poise. He sat in a horsehair-covered arm-chair drawn up at a table, and strove to look as if he had command of the situation, but his eye was uncertain and his fingers drummed nervously.
“This is Mr Galt, sir,” said Dougal, adding, “of St Mark’s College, Cambridge.”
Mr Craw nodded.
“Your friend is to be trusted?” and his wavering eyes sought Jaikie. What he saw cannot have greatly reassured him, for Jaikie was struggling with a strong inclination to laugh.
“I have need to be careful,” he said, fixing his gaze upon a photograph of the late Queen Victoria, and picking his words. “I find myself, through no fault of my own, in a very delicate position. I have been the subject of an outrage on the part of—of some young men of whom I know nothing. I do not blame them. I have been myself a student of a Scottish University… But it is unfortunate—most unfortunate. It was apparently a case of mistaken identity. Happily I was not recognised… I am a figure of some note in the world. You will understand that I do not wish to have my name associated with an undergraduate—’rag,’ I think, is the word.”
His two hearers nodded gravely. They were bound to respect such patent unhappiness.
“Mr—I beg your pardon—Crombie?—has told me that he is employed on one of my papers. Therefore I have a right to call upon his assistance. He informs me that I can also count on your goodwill and discretion, sir,” and he inclined his head towards Jaikie. “It is imperative that this foolish affair should never be known to the public. I have been successful in life, and therefore I have rivals. I have taken a strong stand in public affairs, and therefore I have enemies. My position, as you are no doubt aware, is one of authority, and I do not wish my usefulness to be impaired by becoming the centre of a ridiculous tale.”
Mr Craw was losing his nervousness and growing fluent. He felt that these two young men were of his own household, and he spoke to them as he would have addressed Freddy Barbon, or Sigismund Allins, or Archibald Bamff, or Bannister, his butler, or that efficient spinster Miss Elena Cazenove.
“I don’t think you need be afraid, sir,” said Dougal. “The students who kidnapped you will have discovered their mistake as soon as they saw the real Linklater going about this morning. They won’t have a notion who was kidnapped, and they won’t want to inquire. You may be sure that they will lie very low about the whole business. What is to hinder you sending a wire to Castle Gay to have a car up here to-morrow, and go back to your own house as if nothing had happened? Mrs Catterick doesn’t know you from Adam, and you may trust Jaikie and me to hold our tongues.”
“Unfortunately the situation is not so simple.” Mr Craw blinked his eyes, as if to shut out an unpleasing picture, and his hands began to flutter again. “At this moment there is a by-election in the Canonry—a spectacular by-election… The place is full of journalists—special correspondents—from the London papers. They were anxious to drag me into the election, but I have consistently refused. I cannot embroil myself in local politics. Indeed, I intended to go abroad, for this inroad upon my rural peace is in the highest degree distasteful… You may be very certain that these journalists are at this moment nosing about Castle Gay. Now, my household must have been alarmed when I did not return last night. I have a discreet staff, but they were bound to set inquiries on foot. They must have telephoned to Glasgow, and they may even have consulted the police. Some rumours must have got abroad, and the approaches to my house will be watched. If one of these journalists learns that I am here—the telegraph office in these country parts is a centre of gossip—he will follow up the trail. He will interview the woman of this cottage, he will wire to Glasgow, and presently the whole ridiculous business will be disclosed, and there will be inch headlines in every paper except my own.”
“There’s something in that,” said Dougal. “I know the ways of those London journalists, and they’re a dour crop to shift. What’s your plan, sir?”
“I have written a letter.” He produced one of Mrs Catterick’s disgraceful sheets of notepaper on which her disgraceful pen had done violence to Mr Craw’s neat commercial hand. “I want this put into the hand of my private secretary, Mr Barbon, at once. Every hour’s delay increases the danger.”
“Would it not be best,” Dougal suggested, “if you got on to one of the bicycles—there are two in the outhouse, Mrs Catterick says— and I escorted you to Castle Gay this very night. It’s only about twenty miles.”
“I have never ridden a bicycle in my life,” said Mr Craw coldly. “My plan is the only one, I fear. I am entitled to call upon you to help me.”
It was Jaikie who answered. The first day’s walk in the hills was always an intoxication to him, and Mrs Catterick’s tea had banished every trace of fatigue.
“It’s a grand night, Dougal,” he said, “and there’s a moon. I’ll be home before midnight. There’s nothing I would like better than a ride down Garroch to the Callowa. I know the road as well as my own name.”
“We’ll go together,” said Dougal firmly. “I’m feeling fresher than when I started… What are your instructions, sir?”
“You will deliver this letter direct into Mr Barbon’s hands. I have asked him to send a car in this direction to-morrow before midday, and I will walk down the glen to meet it. It will wait for me a mile or so from this house … You need not say how I came here. I am not in the habit of explaining my doings to my staff.”
Mr Craw enclosed his letter in a shameful envelope and addressed it. His movements were brisker now and he had recovered his self-possession. “I shall not forget this, Mr Crombie,” he said benignly. “You are fortunate in being able to do me a service.”
Dougal and Jaikie betook themselves to the outhouse to examine the bicycles of John Catterick and the herd of the west hirsel.
“I eat the man’s bread,” said the former, “so I am bound to help him, but God forbid that I should ever want to accept his favours. It’s unbelievable that we should spend the first night of our holiday trying to save the face of Craw… Did you ever see such an image? He’s more preposterous even than I thought. But there’s a decency in all things, and if Craw’s bones are to be picked it will be me that has the picking of them, and not those London corbies.”
But this truculence did not represent Dougal’s true mind, which presently became apparent to his companion as they bumped their way among the heather bushes and flood-gravel which composed the upper part of the Garroch road. He was undeniably excited. He was a subaltern officer in a great army, and now he had been brought face to face with the general-in-chief. However ill he might think of that general, there was romance in the sudden juxtaposition, something to set the heart beating and to fire the fancy. Dougal regarded Mr Craw much as a stalwart republican might look on a legitimate but ineffectual