Huntingtower Part 9

"Half an hour ago," said Heritage, consulting a wrist watch.

"It was him that keepit me waitin' so long. But he's safe enough now, for five minutes syne he was splittin' firewood at the back door o' his hoose.... I've found a ladder, an auld yin in ahint yon lot o' bushes.

It'll help wi' the wall. There! I've gotten my breath again and we can start."

The ladder was fetched by Heritage and proved to be ancient and wanting many rungs, but sufficient in length. The three stood silent for a moment, listening like stags, and then ran across the intervening lawn to the foot of the verandah wall. Dougal went up first, then Heritage, and lastly d.i.c.kson, stiff and giddy from his long lie under the bushes.

Below the parapet the verandah floor was heaped with old garden litter, rotten matting, dead or derelict bulbs, fibre, withies and strawberry nets. It was Dougal's intention to pull up the ladder and hide it among the rubbish against the hour of departure. But d.i.c.kson had barely put his foot on the parapet when there was a sound of steps within the House approaching the verandah door.

The ladder was left alone. Dougal's hand brought d.i.c.kson summarily to the floor, where he was fairly well concealed by a mess of matting.

Unfortunately his head was in the vicinity of some upturned pot-plants, so that a cactus ticked his brow and a spike of aloe supported painfully the back of his neck. Heritage was p.r.o.ne behind two old water-b.u.t.ts, and Dougal was in a hamper which had once contained seed potatoes. The house door had panels of opaque gla.s.s, so the new-comer could not see the doings of the three till it was opened, and by that time all were in cover.

The man--it was Spittal--walked rapidly along the verandah and out of the garden door. He was talking to himself again, and d.i.c.kson, who had a glimpse of his face, thought he looked both evil and furious. Then came some anxious moments, for had the man glanced back when he was once outside, he must have seen the tell-tale ladder. But he seemed immersed in his own reflections, for he hobbled steadily along the house front till he was lost to sight.

"That'll be the end o' them the night," said Dougal, as he helped Heritage to pull up the ladder and stow it away. "We've got the place to oursels, now. Forward, men, forward." He tried the handle of the house door and led the way in.

A narrow paved pa.s.sage took them into what had once been the garden room, where the lady of the house had arranged her flowers, and the tennis racquets and croquet mallets had been kept. It was very dusty and on the cobwebbed walls still hung a few soiled garden overalls. A door beyond opened into a huge murky hall, murky, for the windows were shuttered, and the only light came through things like port-holes far up in the wall. Dougal, who seemed to know his way about, halted them.

"Stop here till I scout a bit. The women bide in a wee room through that muckle door." Bare feet stole across the oak flooring, there was the sound of a door swinging on its hinges, and then silence and darkness.

d.i.c.kson put out a hand for companions.h.i.+p and clutched Heritage's; to his surprise it was cold and all a-tremble. They listened for voices, and thought they could detect a far-away sob.

It was some minutes before Dougal returned. "A bonny kettle o' fish," he whispered. "They're both greetin'. We're just in time. Come on, the pair o' ye."

Through a green baize door they entered a pa.s.sage which led to the kitchen regions, and turned in at the first door on their right. From its situation d.i.c.kson calculated that the room lay on the seaward side of the House next to the verandah. The light was bad, for the two windows were partially shuttered, but it had plainly been a smoking-room, for there were pipe-racks by the hearth, and on the walls a number of old school and college photographs, a couple of oars with emblazoned names, and a variety of stags' and roebucks' heads. There was no fire in the grate, but a small oil-stove burned inside the fender. In a stiff-backed chair sat an elderly woman, who seemed to feel the cold, for she was m.u.f.fled to the neck in a fur coat. Beside her, so that the late afternoon light caught her face and head, stood a girl.

d.i.c.kson's first impression was of a tall child. The pose, startled and wild and yet curiously stiff and self-conscious, was that of a child striving to remember a forgotten lesson. One hand clutched a handkerchief, the other was closing and unclosing on a k.n.o.b of the chair back. She was staring at Dougal, who stood like a gnome in the centre of the floor. "Here's the gentlemen I was tellin' ye about," was his introduction, but her eyes did not move.

Then Heritage stepped forward. "We have met before, Mademoiselle," he said. "Do you remember Easter in 1918--in the house in the Trinita dei Monte?"

The girl looked at him.

"I do not remember," she said slowly.

"But I was the English officer who had the apartments on the floor below you. I saw you every morning. You spoke to me sometimes."

"You are a soldier?" she asked, with a new note in her voice.

"I was then--till the war finished."

"And now? Why have you come here?"

"To offer you help if you need it. If not, to ask your pardon and go away."

The shrouded figure in the chair burst suddenly into rapid hysterical talk in some foreign tongue which d.i.c.kson suspected of being French.

Heritage replied in the same language, and the girl joined in with sharp questions. Then the Poet turned to d.i.c.kson.

"This is my friend. If you will trust us we will do our best to save you."

The eyes rested on d.i.c.kson's face, and he realised that he was in the presence of something the like of which he had never met in his life before. It was a loveliness greater than he had imagined was permitted by the Almighty to His creatures. The little face was more square than oval, with a low broad brow and proud exquisite eyebrows. The eyes were of a colour which he could never decide on; afterwards he used to allege obscurely that they were the colour of everything in Spring. There was a delicate pallor in the cheeks, and the face bore signs of suffering and care, possibly even of hunger; but for all that there was youth there, eternal and triumphant! Not youth such as he had known it, but youth with all history behind it, youth with centuries of command in its blood and the world's treasures of beauty and pride in its ancestry. Strange, he thought, that a thing so fine should be so masterful. He felt abashed in every inch of him.

As the eyes rested on him their sorrowfulness seemed to be shot with humour. A ghost of a smile lurked there, to which d.i.c.kson promptly responded. He grinned and bowed.

"Very pleased to meet you, Mem. I'm Mr. McCunn from Glasgow."

"You don't even know my name," she said.

"We don't," said Heritage.

"They call me Saskia. This," nodding to the chair, "is my cousin Eugenie.... We are in very great trouble. But why should I tell you? I do not know you. You cannot help me."

"We can try," said Heritage. "Part of your trouble we know already through that boy. You are imprisoned in this place by scoundrels. We are here to help you to get out. We want to ask no questions--only to do what you bid us."

"You are not strong enough," she said sadly. "A young man--an old man--and a little boy. There are many against us, and any moment there may be more."

It was Dougal's turn to break in. "There's Lean and Spittal and Dobson and four tinklers in the Dean--that's seven; but there's us three and five more Gorbals Die-Hards--that's eight."

There was something in the boy's truculent courage that cheered her.

"I wonder," she said, and her eyes fell on each in turn.

d.i.c.kson felt impelled to intervene.

"I think this is a perfectly simple business. Here's a lady shut up in this house against her will by a wheen blagyirds. This is a free country and the law doesn't permit that. My advice is for one of us to inform the police at Auchenlochan and get Dobson and his friends took up and the lady set free to do what she likes. That is, if these folks are really molesting her, which is not yet quite clear to my mind."

"Alas! It is not so simple as that," she said. "I dare not invoke your English law, for perhaps in the eyes of that law I am a thief."

"Deary me, that's a bad business," said the startled d.i.c.kson.

The two women talked together in some strange tongue, and the elder appeared to be pleading and the younger objecting. Then Saskia seemed to come to a decision.

"I will tell you all," and she looked straight at Heritage. "I do not think you would be cruel or false, for you have honourable faces....

Listen, then. I am a Russian and for two years have been an exile. I will not speak of my house, for it is no more, or how I escaped, for it is the common tale of all of us. I have seen things more terrible than any dream and yet lived, but I have paid a price for such experience.

First I went to Italy where there were friends, and I wished only to have peace among kindly people. About poverty I do not care, for, to us, who have lost all the great things, the want of bread is a little matter. But peace was forbidden me, for I learned that we Russians had to win back our fatherland again and that the weakest must work in that cause. So I was set my task and it was very hard.... There were jewels which once belonged to my Emperor--they had been stolen by the brigands and must be recovered. There were others still hidden in Russia which must be brought to a safe place. In that work I was ordered to share."

She spoke in almost perfect English, with a certain foreign precision.

Suddenly she changed to French, and talked rapidly to Heritage.

"She has told me about her family," he said, turning to d.i.c.kson. "It is among the greatest in Russia, the very greatest after the throne."

d.i.c.kson could only stare.

"Our enemies soon discovered me," she went on. "Oh, but they are very clever, these enemies, and they have all the criminals of the world to aid them. Here you do not understand what they are. You good people in England think they are well-meaning dreamers who are forced into violence by the persecution of Western Europe. But you are wrong. Some honest fools there are among them, but the power--the true power--lies with madmen and degenerates, and they have for allies the special devil that dwells in each country. That is why they cast their net as wide as mankind."

She s.h.i.+vered, and for a second her face wore a look which d.i.c.kson never forgot, the look of one who has looked over the edge of life into the outer dark.

"There were certain jewels of great price which were about to be turned into guns and armies for our enemies. These our people recovered and the charge of them was laid on me. Who would suspect, they said, a foolish girl? But our enemies were very clever, and soon the hunt was cried against me. They tried to rob me of them, but they failed, for I too had become clever. Then they asked the help of the law--first in Italy and then in France. Oh, it was subtly done. Respectable bourgeois, who hated the Bolsheviki but had bought long ago the bonds of my country, desired to be repaid their debts out of the property of the Russian Crown which might be found in the West. But behind them were the Jews, and behind the Jews our unsleeping enemies. Once I was enmeshed in the law I would be safe for them, and presently they would find the hiding-place of the treasure, and while the bourgeois were clamouring in the courts, it would be safe in their pockets. So I fled. For months I have been fleeing and hiding. They have tried to kidnap me many times, and once they have tried to kill me, but I, too, have become very clever--oh, very clever. And I have learned not to fear."

This simple recital affected d.i.c.kson's honest soul with the liveliest indignation. "Sich doings!" he exclaimed, and he could not forbear from whispering to Heritage an extract from that gentleman's conversation the first night at Kirkmichael. "We needn't imitate all their methods, but they've got hold of the right end of the stick. They seek truth and reality." The reply from the Poet was an angry shrug.

"Why and how did you come here?" he asked.

"I always meant to come to England, for I thought it the sanest place in a mad world. Also it is a good country to hide in, for it is apart from Europe, and your police, as I thought, do not permit evil men to be their own law. But especially I had a friend, a Scottish gentleman, whom I knew in the days when we Russians were still a nation. I saw him again in Italy, and since he was kind and brave I told him some part of my troubles. He was called Quentin Kennedy, and now he is dead. He told me that in Scotland he had a lonely chateau where I could hide secretly and safely, and against the day when I might be hard-pressed he gave me a letter to his steward, bidding him welcome me as a guest when I made application. At that time I did not think I would need such sanctuary, but a month ago the need became urgent, for the hunt in France was very close on me. So I sent a message to the steward as Captain Kennedy told me."