“You never called me,” he explained apologetically.
“I did not, but I’ve been up since six myself. I’ve been thinking hard. Jaikie, there’s more in this business than meets the eye. I’ve lain awake half the night considering it. But first I had to act. We can’t let the Wire‘s stuff go uncontradicted. So I bicycled into Portaway and called up the office on the telephone. I caught Tavish just as he was going out to his breakfast. I had to take risks, so I said I was speaking from Castle Gay on Mr Craw’s behalf… Tavish must have wondered what I was doing there… I said that Mr Craw had left for the Continent yesterday and would be away some weeks, and that an announcement to that effect was to appear in all the Craw papers.”
“Did he raise any objection?”
“I thought he would, for this is the first time that Craw has advertised his movements, and I was prepared with the most circumstantial lies. But I didn’t need to lie, for he took it like a lamb. Indeed, it was piper’s news I was giving him, for he had had the same instructions already. What do you think of that?”
“He got them from Barbon the secretary?”
“Not a bit of it. He had had no word from Castle Gay. He got them yesterday afternoon from London. Now, who sent them?”
“The London office.”
“I don’t believe it. Bamff, the General Manager, is away in Canada over the new paper contracts. Don’t tell me that Craw instructed London to make the announcement before he was bagged by the students. It isn’t his way… There’s somebody else at work on this job, somebody that wants to have it believed that Craw is out of the country.”
Jaikie shook a sceptical head.
“You were always too ingenious, Dougal. You’ve got Craw on the brain, and are determined to find melodrama… Order my breakfast like a good chap. I’ll be down in twenty minutes.”
Jaikie bathed in the ancient contrivance of wood and tin, which was all that the inn provided, and was busy shaving when Dougal returned. The latter sat himself resolutely on the bed.
“The sooner we’re at the Castle the better,” he observed, as if the remark were the result of a chain of profound reasoning. “The more I think of this affair the less I like it. I’m not exactly in love with Craw, but he’s my chief, and I’m for him every time against his trade rivals. Compared to the Wire crowd, Craw is respectable. What I want to get at is the state of mind of the folk in the Castle. They’re afraid of the journalists, and they’ve cause. A fellow like Tibbets is as dangerous as nitro-glycerine. They’ve lost Craw, and they want to keep it quiet till they find him again. So far it’s plain sailing. But what in Heaven’s name did they mean by barricading the gate at the big lodge?”
“To prevent themselves being taken by surprise by journalists in motor-cars or on motor-bicycles,” said Jaikie, who was now trying to flatten out his rebellious hair.
“But that’s not sense. To barricade the gate was just to give the journalists the kind of news they wanted. ‘Mr Craw’s House in a State of Siege.’ ‘Amazing Precautions at Castle Gay’—think of the headlines! Barbon and the rest know everything about newspaper tricks, and we must assume that they haven’t suddenly become congenital idiots… No, Jaikie my lad, they’re afraid—blind afraid—of something more than the journalists, and the sooner we find out what it is the better for you and me and Craw… I’ll give you twenty minutes to eat your breakfast, and then we take the road. It’ll be by the bridge and the water-side, the same as last night.”
It was a still hazy autumn morning with the promise of a warm midday. The woods through which the two sped were loud with pheasants, the shooting of which would be at the best perfunctory, for the tenant at the Castle never handled a gun. No one was on the road, except an aged stonebreaker in a retired nook. They hid their bicycles with some care in a mossy covert, for they might be for some time separated from them, and, after a careful reconnaissance to see that they were unobserved, entered the park by way of the bridge parapet, the traverse and the ten-foot drop. This time they had not the friendly night to shield them, and they did not venture on the lawn-like turf by the stream side. Instead they followed a devious route among brackeny hollows, where they could not be seen from any higher ground. The prospect from the highway was, they knew, shut out by the boundary wall.
Dougal moved fast with a sense of purpose like a dog on a scent. He had lost his holiday discursiveness, and had no inclination to linger in bypaths earthly or spiritual. But Jaikie had his familiar air of detachment. He did not appear to take his errand with any seriousness or to be much concerned with the mysteries which filled Dougal’s thoughts. He was revelling in the sounds and scents of October in that paradise which possessed the charm of both lowland and highland. The film of morning was still silver-grey on rush and grass and heather, and the pools of the Callowa smoked delicately. The day revealed some of the park’s features which night had obscured. In particular there was a tiny lochan, thronged with wildfowl, which was connected by a reedy burn with the Callowa. A herd of dappled fallow-deer broke out of the thicket, and somewhere near a stag was belling.
The house came suddenly into sight at a slightly different angle from that of the night before. They were on higher ground, and had a full view of the terrace, where even now two gardeners were trimming the grass edges of the plots. That seemed normal enough, and so did the spires of smoke ascending straight from the chimneys into the windless air. They stood behind a gnarled, low-spreading oak, which must have been there as a seedling when steel-bonneted reivers rode that way and the castle was a keep. Dougal’s hand shaded his eyes, and he scanned warily every detail of the scene.
“We must push forward,” he said. “If anyone tries to stop us we can say we’ve a letter to Mr Barbon from Mr Craw. Knowing Barbon’s name will be a sort of passport. Keep your eyes skinned for Tibbets, for he mustn’t see us. I daresay he’ll be at his breakfast in Portaway—he’ll be needing it if he has been hunkering here all night. We haven’t… “
He broke off, for at that instant two animals precipitated themselves against his calves, thereby nearly unbalancing him. They were obviously dogs, but of a breed with which Dougal was unfamiliar. They had large sagacious heads, gentle and profoundly tragic eyes, and legs over which they seemed to have no sort of control. Over Dougal they sprawled and slobbered, while he strove to evade their caresses.
Then came a second surprise, for a voice spoke out of the tree above them. The voice was peremptory and it was young. It said, “Down, Tactful! Down, Pensive!” And then it added in a slightly milder tone: “What are YOU doing here?”
These last words were so plainly addressed to the two travellers that they looked up into the covert, half green, half russet, above their heads. There, seated in a crutch made by two branches, they beheld to their amazement a girl.
Her face was visible between the branches, but the rest of her was hidden, except one slim pendant brown leg ending in a somewhat battered shoe. The face regarded them solemnly, reprovingly, suspiciously. It was a pretty face, a little sunburnt, not innocent of freckles, and it was surmounted by a mop of tawny gold hair. The eyes were blue and stern. The beagle pups, having finished their overtures to Dougal, were now making ineffective leaps at her shoe.
“How did you get up that tree?” The question was wrung from Jaikie, a specialist in such matters, as he regarded the branchless bole and the considerable elevation of the bough on which she sat.
“Quite easily,” was the answer. “I have climbed much harder trees than this. But that is not the question. What are you two doing here?”
“What are you?”
“I have permission to go anywhere in the Castle grounds. I have a key for the gates. But you are trespassers, and there will be an awful row if Mackillop catches you.”
“We’re not,” said Dougal. “We’re carrying a letter from Mr Craw to Mr Barbon. I have it in my pocket.”
“Is that true?” The eyes were sceptical,