“We’ll now hear Comrade Erchie Robison,” the chairman announced. Comrade Robison rose nervously to his feet, to be received with shouts of “Come awa, Erchie! Oot wi’t, man. Rub their noses in’t.” But there was no violence in Comrade Erchie, who gave them a dull ten minutes, composed mainly of figures which he read from a penny exercise book. He was followed by Comrade Jimmy Macleish, who was likewise received with favour by the audience and exhorted to “pu’ up his breeks and gie them hell.” But Jimmy, too, was a wet blanket, confining himself to a dirge-like enunciation of Tory misdeeds in various foreign places, the pronunciation of which gave him pain. “Whaur did ye say that happened?” said a voice. “Tchemshooershoo,” said Jimmy. “Man, there couldna be sic a place. Ye’ve got a cauld in your heid, Jimmy,” was the verdict. The only exception to this dismal decorum was a woman, who had a real gift of scolding rhetoric. Her theme was “huz puir folk,” and she announced that she came from a “Glesca stair-heid.” She was vigorous and abusive, but she had a voice like a saw, and five minutes of her were a torment to the ear.
Then the candidate rose. He was elegant, he was wholesome, and he was young; he had not made the mistake of dressing down to his part; in that audience of grim faces, worn with toil and weather, he looked as out of place as a flamingo among crows. His speech, which he delivered with the fluency born of frequent repetition, was an emotional appeal for the under-dog. He deprecated bitterness, he repudiated any intent of violence; such arguments as he gave were a plea rather for a change of heart than a change of the social fabric. He was earnest, he was eloquent, he was transparently honest, and there was something in his youthful candour which attracted his hearers, for his periods were punctuated with loud applause. But from the man on Jaikie’s right they evoked only heartbroken groans.
Jaikie looked at this neighbour and recognised him. He was a middle-aged man, with a good deal of hair and beard plentifully streaked with grey. His features were regular and delicate, and his whole air was of breeding and cultivation—all but his eyes, which were like live coals under his shaggy brows. His name was David Antrobus, a name once famous in Latin scholarship, till the War suddenly switched his attention violently on to public affairs. He had been a militant pacifist, and had twice gone to gaol for preaching treason. In 1920 he had visited Russia and had returned a devout votary of Lenin, whose mission it was to put alcohol into the skim milk of British Socialism. In Glasgow he was known as Red Davie, and Jaikie had met him there in Dougal’s company, when he had been acutely interested to hear a creed of naked nihilism expounded in accents of the most scholarly precision. He had met him in Cambridge, too, the preceding term. Mr Antrobus had been invited to lecture to a group of young iconoclasts, and Jaikie, in company with certain Rugby notables, had attended. There had been a considerable row, and Jaikie, misliking the manner of Mr Antrobus’s opponents, had, along with his friends, entered joyfully into the strife, and had helped to conduct the speaker safely to his hotel and next morning to the station.
The man returned Jaikie’s glance, and there was recognition in his eyes. “Mr Galt, isn’t it?” he asked. “I am very glad to see you again. Have you come to spy out the nakedness of the land?”
“I came to be amused,” was the answer. “I have no politics.”
“Amused!” said Mr Antrobus. “That is the right word. This man calls himself a Socialist candidate, but his stuff is the merest bleating of the scared bourgeois sheep. Evils, for which the only remedy is blood and steel and the extreme rigour of thought, he would cure with a penny bun.”
“Are you here to help him?”
“I am here to break him,” was the grim answer. “My business is to hunt down that type of humbug and keep it out of Parliament. Answer me. Would it not terrify you to think that such a thing as that was fighting BESIDE YOU in the day of battle? His place is among our enemies, to be food for our powder.”
Mr Antrobus would have said more, but his attention was distracted by the neighbour on his other side, who asked him a question. He bent his head deferentially to listen, and over the back of it Jaikie saw the strong profile and the heavy jaw of the man whom a few hours before he had observed with Allins at the Hydropathic door.
There was a short colloquy between the two, and then Mr Antrobus inclined again towards Jaikie. The man was courtesy incarnate, and he seemed to think that the debt he owed Jaikie for his escape at Cambridge must be paid by a full confession of faith. He enlarged on the folly of British Socialism, the ineptitude and dishonesty of official Labour. “Toryism,” he said, “is our enemy—a formidable enemy. We respect it and some day will slay it. Liberalism is an antique which we contemptuously kick out of the road. But Labour is treason, treason to our own cause, and its leaders will have the reward of traitors.”
Jaikie put his mouth close to his ear: “Who is the man on your right?” he asked. “I fancy I have seen him before.”
“Abroad?”
“Abroad,” Jaikie mendaciously agreed.
“It must have been abroad, for this is his first visit to Britain. It would not do to advertise his name, for he is travelling incognito. But to you I can tell it, for I can trust you. He is a very great man, one of the greatest living. Some day soon all the world will ring with his deeds. To me he is an old friend, whom I visit several times each year for counsel and inspiration. He is the great Anton Mastrovin. You have heard of him?”
“Yes. And I must have seen him—perhaps in Vienna. One does not easily forget that face.”
“It is the face of a maker of revolutions,” said Mr Antrobus reverentially.
But at that moment the great man rose, having no doubt had enough, and Mr Antrobus docilely followed him. Jaikie sat tight through the rest of the candidate’s speech, and did not squeeze out till the proposing of the resolutions began. But it may be assumed that he did not pay very strict attention to the candidate’s ingenious attempt to identify the latest Labour programme with the Sermon on the Mount. He had something more urgent to think about.
CHAPTER 14
PORTAWAY—ALISON
Jaikie rose next morning with the light of a stern purpose in his eye. He had thought a good deal about his troubles before he fell asleep, and had come to certain conclusions… But he must go cannily with Mr Craw. That gentleman was in an uncomfortable humour and at breakfast showed every sign of being in a bad temper. The publication of Tibbets’s interview had roused a very natural wrath, and, though he had apparently acquiesced in Jaikie’s refusal to send his telegram or transport him to Castle Gay, his aspect had been rebellious. At breakfast he refused to talk of the Labour meeting the night before, except to remark that such folly made him sick. Jaikie fore-bore to disclose his main suspicion. The news of other Evallonians in the field, Evallonians of a darker hue than those at Knockraw, would only scare him, and Jaikie preferred an indignant Craw to a panicky one.
Yet it was very necessary to smooth him down, so after breakfast Jaikie and Woolworth went out into the street. At a newsagent’s he bought a copy of that morning’s View, and to his relief observed that Mr Craw’s article was on the leader page. There it was, with half-inch headlines—The Abiding Human Instincts. That would keep him quiet for a little. He also visited a chemist and purchased two small bottles.
Mr Craw seized avidly on the paper, and a glimmer of satisfaction returned to his face. Jaikie took advantage of it.
“Mr Craw,” he said with some nervousness, “I found out some queer things yesterday, which I’ll tell you when I’m a little more certain about them. But one thing I can tell you now. Your man Allins is a crook.”
Mr