Initial commit of ebook 77800 filesHEADmain

1 files changed, 8055 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/77800-0.txt b/77800-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a45df6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77800-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8055 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77800 ***
+
+
+
+
+What was happening on Carnglass, that “Heap of Gray Stones” beyond the
+Outer Islands of the Hebrides? Old Lady MacAskival, the proprietress,
+had brought in a queer lot of people from England, and the hostility
+toward outsiders seemed to emanate from the frowning cliffs of
+Carnglass. Anyone who tried to land, it was rumored, might be fired
+upon. On a black night at sea, five MacAskivals from the neighboring
+island of Daldour had seen a pillar of flame rise near Askival Harbor,
+and had heard something like gunfire. And away in Michigan, old
+Duncan MacAskival, the retiring head of the MacAskival Iron Works,
+had encountered but stony silence in his many attempts to communicate
+with Lady MacAskival concerning his desire to purchase the home of his
+ancestors.
+
+When Duncan, for all his pains, receives an odd water-stained note in
+an unsigned, hastily-scrawled female hand, requesting “confidential
+agents” and “immediate action,” he sends young Hugh Logan, his legal
+counsel, to investigate. The adventure that unfolds is calculated to
+transform the most comfortable armchair into a veritable bucket seat of
+suspense.
+
+In his efforts to reach Carnglass and the Old House, where Lady
+MacAskival resides, Logan is confronted by the sinister agents of a
+puzzling conspiracy--a baleful Glasgow “commission agent,” a cashiered
+British officer, an Irish terrorist on the run, and, behind the stone
+mass known as the Old House, the chilling man with the Third Eye.
+
+
+
+
+old house of fear
+
+
+
+
+  OLD
+  HOUSE
+  OF
+  FEAR
+
+  BY RUSSELL KIRK
+
+  FLEET PUBLISHING CORPORATION
+  230 PARK AVENUE
+  NEW YORK 17, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT © 1961
+  BY FLEET PUBLISHING CORPORATION
+  230 Park Avenue, New York 17, New York
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+  Protected under International Copyright Convention
+  and the Pan American Copyright Convention
+
+  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-7627
+
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+  This Gothick tale, in unblushing line
+  of direct descent from _The Castle of
+  Otranto_, I do inscribe to Abigail Fay.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  Chapter  1      _11_
+
+  Chapter  2      _26_
+
+  Chapter  3      _42_
+
+  Chapter  4      _58_
+
+  Chapter  5      _78_
+
+  Chapter  6      _95_
+
+  Chapter  7      _111_
+
+  Chapter  8      _136_
+
+  Chapter  9      _153_
+
+  Chapter 10      _173_
+
+  Chapter 11      _187_
+
+  Chapter 12      _201_
+
+  Chapter 13      _218_
+
+  Chapter 14      _230_
+
+  Chapter 15      _248_
+
+
+
+
+old house of fear
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+On this shrouded night, five men tossed in a boat off the island of
+Carnglass, where the sea never is smooth. So thick about them hung the
+fog that they could not see the great cliffs. Knowing, though, every
+rock and reef, they sensed where the island lay.
+
+Of a sudden, a tall flame shot up from Carnglass, fierce and unnatural.
+Across the swell there came to the men in the boat the crash of some
+explosion. Clinging to their oars, they stared silent toward the land;
+the oldest man crossed himself. The flame, surging and waving for some
+minutes, soon sank lower. In a little while they heard faint distant
+sounds, several of them, like gunshots. The younger men looked to the
+old helmsman, who pulled hesitantly at his white beard.
+
+Then he signed to them to put the boat about. Glancing fearfully at the
+distant flame as they heaved, two men hauled at the sail. In a minute
+they had changed course, and the fire in the night glowed at their
+backs as they pulled away from the uneasy neighborhood of silent and
+invisible Carnglass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three thousand miles away, two men sat in a handsome office. “That’s
+our island,” Duncan MacAskival said: “Carnglass.”
+
+Across the Ordnance Survey map his thick forefinger moved to a ragged
+and twisted little outline, away at the verge of the Hebrides, which
+even upon the linen of the map seemed to recoil from the Atlantic
+combers. “The tattered top of a drowned mountain. And that’s the
+castle, by the bay to the West, Hugh: Old House of Fear. I like
+the names. You’re to buy Carnglass for me, cliffs and clachans and
+deer-forest and Old House and all; and price is no object.”
+
+Hugh Logan smiled at the heavy old man in the swivel chair. “Why send
+me to the Western Isles to haggle for a speck of rock I know nothing
+about, Mr. MacAskival? Why do you need Carnglass? And why not have a
+Glasgow solicitor do the business for you? I’d enjoy the trip, right
+enough, but I don’t need to tell you that my time costs you bona-fide
+money. Any junior clerk could buy an island for you.”
+
+“Look out there, Hugh.” MacAskival swung round his chair to the big
+window at the back of his teak-panelled office. Far below, stretching
+eastward for a quarter of a mile along the river, the stacks and
+coke-ovens and corrugated-iron roofs of MacAskival Iron Works sent up
+to heaven their smoke and flame and thunder. “Look at it all. I made
+it. And what has it given me? Two coronary fits. I’m told to rest.
+But where could a man like me fade decently? I’m not made for quiet
+desperation. There’s just one place, Hugh, where I might lie quiet; and
+that’s Carnglass.”
+
+MacAskival peered at his map. “I haven’t seen Carnglass,” he went on,
+“except in pictures, and no more did my father, or his father. But the
+MacAskivals came out of Carnglass to Nova Scotia in 1780, and they
+didn’t forget the little croft below Cailleach--that’s the sharp hill
+north of the Old House, Hugh. Their Nova Scotia farm was sand and
+stumps, and yet not so barren as that Carnglass croft. Still, they’d
+have traded ten farms in Nova Scotia for that wet little plot in
+Carnglass. And after two strokes, I think I’d give the mills and all
+for that croft--with the island thrown in.”
+
+Logan had walked to the window, and now stood looking toward the glare
+of the coke-ovens; the flames went hotly up into the Michigan twilight,
+that April evening, and the incandescent masses of coal fell roaring.
+“Why, I think we might make a better bargain than that, Mr. MacAskival.
+Peat bogs and tumbledown castles go cheap nowadays. But why do you mean
+to send a man like me to buy you a few square miles of dripping misery?”
+
+“Cigar, Hugh?” MacAskival pushed a box toward him. “The doctor says I
+can have just one of these a day. Well, I’m not so crazy as I seem,
+and you know it. Under your veneer, you’re like me--sentimental as a
+sick old ironmaster. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of having an
+island all to yourself. So I’d like to see you hunt this dream of mine;
+you work too hard for your age. ‘Getting and spending, we lay waste
+our powers.’ I don’t plan to bare my bosom to the moon in Carnglass,
+but it should do you good to play at being a pagan suckled in a creed
+outworn--for a few days, anyhow.”
+
+Old Duncan MacAskival was a trifle vain of his quotations and
+allusions, Logan thought. But Logan liked MacAskival, a self-made
+man, a good deal better than the average product of the big
+business-administration schools. It came to Logan that he, Hugh Logan,
+rapidly was growing into an old man’s young man. It had been more than
+a dozen years since he had led a battalion in Okinawa. He knew much
+of Scotland, born in Edinburgh as he had been, though his parents had
+taken him to America when he was nine; and he had gone back to take
+a degree at Edinburgh University. A slackening of pace, for a week
+or two, might do no mischief. All his life he had hurried: schools,
+the university, the war, and the firm: in too much of a hurry, either
+side of the water, to laugh, to marry, or even to dream. “No, Mr.
+MacAskival,” Logan said, “I’m not the man to laugh at you. But you’re
+a canny Scot, though five generations removed. Do you need to pay my
+price just to draw up a deed to an island?”
+
+“You’re more of a Scot than I am, Hugh, though you look American enough
+nowadays.” MacAskival leant back in his heavy chair. “Well, yes, you’ll
+be worth your price in this business. You know something of Scots law
+and tenures. And you can wheedle odd customers; Lady MacAskival is one
+of that breed, they tell me. Here, look at yourself in that mirror.”
+MacAskival nodded toward the baroque glass against the teak panelling.
+
+Logan saw reflected a mild-seeming, amiable face--or so most people
+would call it, probably--almost unlined; still a young man’s face.
+Sometimes, when he had been a major of infantry, that face had tended
+to mislead people, and then Logan had to rectify impressions. He had a
+spare body. “Do I look like a fool?” he asked MacAskival.
+
+“Not exactly a fool, boy, but close enough. You’re innocent: that’s the
+word, Hugh. What a face to set before a jury--or a crazy old creature
+like Lady MacAskival! Anyone signing a contract with you assumes
+that he’s had the better of the bargain. Now I’ve tried before this
+to buy Carnglass; I’ve been at it more than three years. I’ve tried
+those Glasgow solicitors. They’re too sharp: what we need with Lady
+MacAskival is babyish innocence.”
+
+“All right: I’ll take my innocence to Carnglass.” Smiling, Logan turned
+back to the map on the big desk. “There still are MacAskivals in the
+island, then? And what sort of cousin of yours is this Lady MacAskival?”
+
+“Call me Duncan, Hugh,” MacAskival said, “if you’ll really take
+up the business for me. No, there’s not a real MacAskival left in
+Carnglass, so for as I can learn. Lady MacAskival was born Miss Ann
+Robertson; her family owned distilleries, money-makers. It was a
+queer match when she married Colonel Sir Alastair MacAskival, Indian
+Army, who was old enough to be her father, or more. Sir Alastair had
+scars and medals, but nothing besides. Though he was chief of the
+MacAskivals--and there’s precious few of that little clan left--he
+was born in a but-and-ben in North Uist. I get all this from an
+Edinburgh genealogist. Sir Alastair’s great-grandfather ran through his
+property so as to keep up a fine show in London. The Great Clearance
+of Carnglass was in 1780--that’s when my people were booted out, you
+remember--and it was the work of that old reprobate Donald MacAskival,
+our Sir Alastair’s great-grandfather: he turned the whole island into
+two big farms and a sheepwalk, on the chance of squeezing more money
+from the rents, and told all the crofting MacAskivals to go to Hell or
+Glasgow. A few had the money for steerage passage to Nova Scotia, which
+eventually made me president of MacAskival Iron Works. My father was a
+pushing Scot, and so am I--and you, too, Hugh.”
+
+“So Ann Robertson brought money back to the MacAskivals more than a
+hundred years after the Clearance?”
+
+“Not simply money, Hugh, but Carnglass itself. What little extra
+Donald MacAskival contrived to wring out of the rents after the Great
+Clearance did him no good. He died bankrupt; and the creditors took
+Carnglass. His son sank down to being the factor for a small laird
+in North Uist, and there the family lived on, hand to mouth, until
+young Alastair went out to India and got some reputation for himself
+along the Northwest Frontier. When he was past forty, he sailed home
+to Edinburgh on leave. There he met Ann Robertson, and married her,
+and they bought back Carnglass with Robertson money, and restored Old
+House of Fear.”
+
+Logan bent over the map to find the tiny square that marked the Old
+House. “That’s an uneasy name, Duncan, for an ironmaster who wants
+peace and quiet.”
+
+“But it’s a brave old house, Hugh. And the name is Gaelic, not English:
+‘fear’ is spelled ‘fir’ or ‘fhir,’ sometimes, and it means ‘man.’ Old
+House of Fear is Old House of Man. Old! Why, the foundations of the
+oldest tower go back to Viking times. The Norsemen took Carnglass in
+799 or thereabouts. But there was some sort of chiefs house--Picts or
+whatever they were--before then. There’s a tale in the island that
+Carnglass was Eden: man started there, and woman too, I suppose. But
+Carnglass hasn’t many living souls today. Old Donald MacAskival swept
+off five hundred people--MacAskivals and MacLeods and MacDonalds--in
+the Great Clearance, which left only thirty or forty souls, all named
+MacAskival, in the whole island. There still were twenty or thirty of
+their descendants living in Carnglass when Alastair and Ann bought it
+back. But Ann, Lady MacAskival, isn’t much of a hand for company, it
+seems; because when Sir Alastair died, in 1914, she got rid of what
+MacAskival crofters were left. Off they went to a smaller island,
+Daldour, three miles south across the Sound of Carnglass, one soaking
+peat-bog: if Carnglass was Eden, Daldour was Hell. And there they are
+still, for all I know, if they haven’t starved. Our Lady MacAskival,
+who’s over eighty now, lives alone at the Old House with only a handful
+of Lowland and English servants, according to what I could learn from
+Edinburgh. She never leaves Carnglass. And she doesn’t often answer
+letters.”
+
+“Then she’s not even a cousin of sorts to you?”
+
+“Not she. The chiefs of MacAskival were of Norse stock--the name’s
+Norse, at least. And she’s from the Lowlands. Sir Alastair and she
+never had children--I gather, besides, there wasn’t much love lost
+between them--and she has no heirs, so far as I can find. And anyway,
+Hugh, the odds are that I’m a Pict or a Scot, not a Viking. The island
+people generally took the chief’s name for a surname, though they might
+have no blood connection. I don’t mean to set up for chief of Clan
+MacAskival: my people were fishermen or crofters who got themselves
+killed, now and then, in MacAskival’s feuds. Old Donald MacAskival’s
+father was out for the Pretender in ’45, which is one reason why Donald
+went so deep in debt and made the Clearance. No, all I want is to live
+in the Old House and look across the Sound of Carnglass, Hugh. That’s
+the dream that I want you to buy for me.”
+
+“The Old House is liveable, then, Duncan?”
+
+“Sound enough, they say, though hardly anyone but Lady MacAskival and
+her servants has seen the inside of it since 1914. That Edinburgh man
+couldn’t find any photographs for me later than 1914.” MacAskival
+pulled open a drawer. “There they are: not very good pictures, taken
+the year Sir Alastair died. It seems to have been foggy that day.”
+
+“I presume it usually is foggy in your tight little island, Duncan,”
+Logan said as he took up the half-dozen old prints. “There’s no
+inhabited island further out into the Atlantic.” Foggy, yes; and yet
+the great bulk of Old House of Fear loomed distinctly enough in the
+middle ground of the photograph. Carnglass meant “gray stone,” and
+the whole stern mass of masonry was of a gray that blended into the
+outcrop of living rock upon which the Old House was built. But the
+castle was not of a single period. The first photograph showed, on the
+left, an enormous square tower of rubble, capped by a high-pitched
+roof apparently sheathed with stone slabs. At one corner of this
+tower, a little turret stood up, perhaps covering the top of a stair
+in the thickness of the wall; Logan knew something about Scottish
+medieval architecture. To this great tower was joined a range of
+domestic buildings, three stories high, with dormers and crowstepped
+gables, also built of gray rubble: early seventeenth-century work,
+Logan thought. A smaller square tower closed the range. And then,
+abruptly tacked upon the right side of the smaller tower, commenced
+a mansion-house of ashlar, with small barred windows on the ground
+floor but very large windows of plate glass above; this was in the
+Scottish “baronial” style of Victorian times, yet carried out with
+some taste and not altogether disharmonious with the medieval and
+seventeenth-century buildings. A large door in the middle of this
+latter-day façade seemed wide enough for a carriage to pass through;
+perhaps it led to an interior courtyard. “All this on the right is Sir
+Alastair’s addition?” Logan asked.
+
+“Yes,” said MacAskival, “and the place is bigger even than it looks:
+there’s a courtyard behind, with buildings all round. The Robertson
+distilleries paid for it. When Sir Alastair and his wife bought back
+the island, the original castle hadn’t been lived in for seventy years
+or more, and the roof was collapsing; but they put everything in shape
+and made the place twice as big. I suppose old Lady MacAskival rattles
+about in it now. Even though she’s one of the richest old women in
+Britain, income tax and surtax won’t let her keep much more than five
+thousand pounds’ income; and that probably only pays the servants she
+has left, and for her food. She has trouble finding help, by the way, I
+hear. It’s not everyone who wants to scrub floors in Old House of Fear.”
+
+“And you want a white mastodon?”
+
+“Only to die in,” MacAskival told him, cheerfully. “Every man to his
+own humor, Hugh. I have the money to keep the place as long as I live;
+and if I stay there only from time to time, I can keep clear of British
+income tax. I may as well spend a few million, because the Treasury
+and that foundation you set up for me will take all that’s left when I
+die, anyway. I might leave you the Old House, though: it shouldn’t take
+you long to acquire a taste for that style of living.”
+
+Hugh was turning over the other photographs. “One of the clachans:
+one of the two villages in Carnglass. These are what they call black
+houses, because the peat smoke just goes out of a hole in the roof,
+after circulating round the room--but I suppose you know all this,
+Hugh. Snug, anyway. And I don’t suppose any one of these is lived in
+now, except possibly by a gamekeeper or two. Now have a look at this
+other picture. What do you make of it?”
+
+In the foreground, Hugh saw a desolate graveyard, a low drystone wall
+enclosing it; some tall white monuments showed above the wall, and in
+the center stood, at a perilous angle, an immense Celtic cross. Beyond
+the monuments was what seemed to be an ancient chapel with a modern
+roof. And away in the background there hulked, dimly, a tall circular
+building, rather like a vast beehive.
+
+“It all looks like something from before the Flood,” Logan murmured.
+
+“Well, much of it is nearly as old as anything in Iona,” MacAskival
+observed. “That’s the chapel of St. Merin. She was stoned to death, I
+think, in the days of St. Columba. Sir Alastair restored the chapel
+as the family burial-vault. And that’s the famous Cross of Carnglass,
+tenth-century; or it would be famous, if Lady MacAskival ever let
+archeologists ashore. I don’t know what the thing beyond can be. Do you
+feel more like becoming Laird of Carnglass?”
+
+“It’s a strange island,” Logan said, unsmiling.
+
+“Yet it can’t be so strange as the rumors make it.” MacAskival was
+pleased, clearly, at having shaken Logan out of his commonsensical
+ways. “Except for a few friends from London, the old lady’s let nobody
+poke about since her own little clearance of 1914. They say that boats
+trying to put into the harbor have been shot at. And they say there
+are more bogles stalking through the heather than there are live folk.
+And servants who’ve left the Old House have told people in Oban and
+Glasgow that some of the London visitors are worse than the bogles.”
+
+“Scotland has no law of trespass--only acts of interdict after damage
+has been done to property.”
+
+“You can tell that to our old lady, Hugh. If we do get Carnglass, I’ll
+let the archeologists and the naturalists browse. I’m told there are
+rare plants and birds, and a few fallow deer still. Nearly the whole
+island has become deer-forest. One of the farms--the one closer to the
+old house--seems to be kept in fair order; they have Highland cattle. I
+learned that from Lagg, the factor, a Galloway man.”
+
+“You’ve corresponded with him, Duncan?”
+
+“In a unilateral way. First, three years ago, I wrote to Lady
+MacAskival herself: no answer. Then I found out the names of her London
+solicitors. I sent them an offer, and they wrote that they’d refer
+it to Lady MacAskival. Then silence. I wrote again. The solicitors
+answered that Lady MacAskival would give me a reply after reflection.
+More silence. I wrote to the solicitors a third time, a year ago
+yesterday, and got a letter back promptly: Lady MacAskival no longer
+did business with them, they said, and I should write to her factor
+in Carnglass, Thomas Lagg. I did. Ten months ago, Lagg replied that
+Lady MacAskival was indisposed, but would communicate with me after
+some interval. She never has said no--mind that, Hugh. Then still more
+silence. I wrote to Lagg three times; no reply. But yesterday this
+letter came.” From under his blotter MacAskival drew a sheet of cheap
+notepaper, which curled up as he tried to lay it before Logan.
+
+“I told you she was odd,” MacAskival said, as Logan smoothed the sheet.
+“The envelope was curled, too, and only partly straightened by having
+been in a mail-bag.” Also the paper seemed water-stained, and the
+writing in one corner had run badly. Though it was in a clear feminine
+hand, it appeared to have been written very hastily:
+
+                                                         “3rd March
+    “Duncan MacAskival, Esq.
+
+    “Sir:
+
+  Lady MacAskival desires to discuss with you at once the proposal
+  which you have set forth. She requests that you come in person to
+  Carnglass without delay, or send confidential agents. Immediate
+  action is imperative.”
+
+There was no signature. “Lady MacAskival’s own hand?” Logan inquired.
+
+“Presumably,” MacAskival said. “The doctor tells me that I’m not
+quite fit for ocean cruises just now. So Hugh Logan, Esquire, is my
+confidential agent. Do you think you can act properly conspiratorial? I
+saw you as Cassius in the Players’ Club performance of _Julius Caesar_
+last month, you remember, Hugh; and you were the best man in the cast.
+You’d have done as well as a professional actor as you have with the
+law. Well, I’ve cabled both the old lady and Lagg. I’ve told them that
+you’ll arrive this week.”
+
+“This week, Duncan? Next month, at the soonest.”
+
+MacAskival’s thick eyebrows lowered. “Hugh Logan, I’ve given you a
+boost for your firm, now and then. I’m not a man who enjoys being
+crossed--you know that. Now this business is something that matters to
+me. Who knows how much longer the old lady will live? I don’t intend to
+miss this chance, after three years of trying. If you think anything of
+me, you’ll fly to Prestwick tomorrow; and it will do you good, Hugh:
+an easy bit of work in a charming quiet place. We can’t delay. Notice
+the date of that letter. It’s been stuck somewhere en route; and it
+came by ordinary surface mail, which took a week or more. I don’t want
+the old lady to change her mind. In my cables, I asked to have Lady
+MacAskival’s yacht--I suppose she must own something of the sort--put
+into Glasgow or Greenock for you. You’ve a room reserved at Todd’s
+Hotel, Glasgow, and Lady MacAskival’s people should get in touch with
+you there. Will you go, or do I have to send some fool? I want to use
+your innocence-mask, Hugh.”
+
+“Needs must when the devil drives,” Logan said in his easy way. “Give
+me those plane tickets. I usually humor madmen. Besides, I mean to find
+out what that beehive building is.”
+
+“Then it’s my Carnglass.” Duncan MacAskival slapped his hand against
+the desk. “Here”--he fetched out a manila envelope--“here’s my
+correspondence with the old lady’s people. And here’s some estimate
+of what the island ought to cost, kit and kaboodle, that I got from
+solicitors in London and Glasgow. And this, too--this will interest
+you, Hugh.”
+
+It was a slim old pamphlet, the covers nearly ripped away. “It’s rare,
+Hugh. Thin’s of Edinburgh found a copy for me. Take it along to read on
+your plane.” MacAskival opened to the title page: “A Summary History of
+the Islands of Carnglass and Daldour, in the Western Isles of Scotland;
+with some Account of the Traditionary Tales of those Parts. By the
+Reverend Samuel Balmullo, sometime minister of the Parish of Carnglass
+and Daldour. 1818.” MacAskival was something of a book-collector. “I
+know you’re wanting dinner, Hugh,” MacAskival said, “and I’ll take you
+to the club in a minute or two, but let me read you a bit of this:
+
+“‘Among the surviving peasantry of Dalcruach village, on the eastern
+strand of Carnglass, superstition exerts an influence as powerful
+as it is debasing. In this clachan are said to reside four or five
+Sgeulaiche, or narrators of traditionary tales of an extravagant
+character, many of which antedate the arrival of Christian evangels
+from Ireland in the sixth century. These relations often reflect, and
+endeavor to excuse, the lingering of heathen and impious practices
+among this ignorant folk. They speak, for example, of a “Third Eye,”
+said to appear afresh, from generation to generation, among the
+inhabitants of Carnglass, whether native-born or newcomers; and such
+a spot upon the forehead is said to confer amatory powers, and is
+regarded by these children of the twilight with a respect not far
+removed from veneration. To labor among parishioners possessed by such
+delusions is weary work; it has been said that to preach the Gospels
+among the Pequots or Narragansetts is a facile undertaking by the side
+of any endeavor to redeem from heathen error these denizens of the
+furthermost Hebrides.’”
+
+MacAskival turned the page. “The Reverend Samuel Balmullo--he was
+from the Lowlands, Hugh--tends to be long-winded, but rewarding.
+Balmullo seems to have been a sour old fellow. He was interested in the
+MacAskivals, though--give me a moment more.” Duncan MacAskival leafed
+through the pamphlet.
+
+“‘Indubitably,’” he read, “‘a family of the first antiquity in the
+Isles, the chiefs of MacAskival, though at present reduced to mean
+estate, are said to be a sept of the MacDonalds, Lords of the Isles,
+early parted from their headship by internecine conflicts. These
+MacAskival chiefs themselves maintain, however--and with some show of
+reason--that they descend from a stock older still. As their ancestor
+and the founder of their fortunes, they claim a certain Sigurd Askival,
+a Viking adventurer, who espoused the Pictish heiress of Carnglass, one
+Mary or Merin. This noble lady of Carnglass was a woman of remarkable
+beauty, despite her flowing mane of red hair, which the refined taste
+of modern days would disapprove. In passing, it is necessary to notice
+a tale, germane to the genealogical claims of MacAskival, that one
+Mary or Merin, saint and princess, at a remote period was redeemed
+from captivity to a bestial creature, described as the Gabharfear,
+Firgower, or man-goat; and that her rescuer was Sigurd Askival, a Norse
+freebooter.
+
+“‘One single substantial proof of the venerable lineage of MacAskival
+is reputed to have survived well into the last century: a set of
+chessmen carven from a blue stone, the “Table-Men of Askival,”
+exhibiting the weird handiwork of a ferocious epoch, which objects
+long continued the proudest possession of the chieftain of MacAskival.
+These, however, no longer are to be found in the Old House of Fear,
+their asserted repository; nor have they been transferred to the
+elegant New House by the quay, although the present proprietor made
+close search for the pieces. According to one fabrication of the aged
+men of Carnglass, these “Table-Men” were immured in a tomb by the last
+chieftain, to propitiate the Fiend. Once more the author apologizes
+to his gentle readers for this trespass upon their hours of serious
+reflection.’”
+
+“Old Mr. Balmullo,” Logan broke in, “seems to have taken a fearful joy
+in recording superstitions. He protests too much.”
+
+“Yes, I think Carnglass bewitched Samuel Balmullo, Hugh. ‘Glamour’ is
+an old Scots word, you know. Watch out, boy, that some Hebridean witch
+doesn’t catch you: three days in Carnglass might turn the trick.”
+
+“Never fear, Duncan,” Logan told him, with his slow smile. “The Harding
+case comes up next month, and I’ll be back for it.”
+
+“Fear? Why, there’s no danger of any sort in Carnglass, I suppose.”
+MacAskival turned again to the window overlooking the plant. Now it was
+dark, and the coke-ovens glowed against the night like the flaming City
+of Dis. “Danger? Probably Carnglass is one of the few tolerably secure
+places on earth. Sometimes I think we’ll turn the world into one final
+hell of a coke-oven, Hugh. There may be some islands, though, left in
+that fire. And Carnglass, where man began, ought to endure when man has
+put an end to himself. I hope you can put this MacAskival back into his
+island, Hugh.”
+
+“You’re really going to give me dinner at your club, Duncan?”
+
+Nodding, MacAskival reached for their coats. As they went out of the
+office, he turned quizzically toward the younger man. “Speaking of
+witches and bogles and man-goats, Hugh, why hasn’t any woman ever
+captured you?”
+
+“Probably because there’s no romance in me,” Logan murmured,
+straightfaced.
+
+“Why, there’s a good deal in you, Hugh. You’re canny, but have a
+certain way with you.”
+
+“Don’t forget this, though, Duncan--
+
+  “‘You can grave it on his tombstone, you can cut it on his card:
+    A young man married is a young man marred.’”
+
+“Well! Hugh, you’re full of surprises. I thought only aged creatures
+like me still read Kipling. I can match you--
+
+  “‘Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
+    He travels fastest who travels alone.’
+
+Which way are you travelling, Hugh, with that innocent face of yours?”
+
+“Judging by what you tell me of the warlocks of Carnglass, down to
+Gehenna, Duncan.” Then the elevator came, and the club, and the dinner,
+and the brandy. That night Logan dreamed of a Carnglass Cutty Sark
+capering round Carnglass Cross. And the next night he was aboard the
+plane to Prestwick.
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+On a wet and windy morning, Logan descended from the plane at
+Prestwick. Once past the immigration officers, he took a taxi across
+the moors to Glasgow. Now and then they sped past rows of white-harled
+Scots cottages, some empty and far gone in decay. The heather and
+gorse by the roadside called to Hugh Logan. He had walked the Pentland
+Hills, and the Lammermuirs, in his Edinburgh years--sleeping in the
+open, sometimes, when he had been a university student. The law-office
+and the courtroom seemed remote in time and space, as he sat in this
+speeding Rolls; and he indulged the fancy that perhaps he ought never
+to have taken the bar-examination.
+
+In some ways, those savage months of pushing northward in Okinawa had
+been the best of his life. The law was safe, and might make him famous;
+yet there came hours, now and again, when Logan thought he ought to
+have settled for a life of risk, a life lived as if every moment might
+be the last.
+
+The cab-driver was saying something. “A foul day, sir. There’ll be
+a storm out tae sea, sir. Spring’s late to Scotland this year.” The
+driver never had heard of Carnglass, Logan found. Now they were coming
+into the ugly sprawl of outlying Glasgow council-houses. And then
+the great grimy city closed upon them, and soon Logan was getting out
+before Todd’s Hotel in India Street, a building of blackened white
+granite.
+
+At Todd’s Hotel, the taffy-haired little receptionist in the tight
+black dress never had heard of Carnglass. Having left his suitcase in
+his room, Logan came down again to inquire of the manager. That civil
+gentleman, indeed, had heard of Carnglass; but he never had known
+anyone to go there. And no messages from Lady MacAskival or Mr. Lagg
+were awaiting Logan. He was not altogether surprised: eccentricity and
+delay were to be expected in that quarter; he suspected that he might
+have to make his way independently to the island.
+
+He might telephone or telegraph, though, to learn whether the yacht
+or launch had been sent for him, and whether he would be welcome at
+the Old House. It was no use, he soon discovered: the information
+operator on the telephone, after lengthy consultation with someone at
+the Glasgow central exchange, informed Logan that there was no cable
+laid to Carnglass, and that no way of sending messages to the island
+was known, there being no wireless there recorded in the exchange’s
+books, except by post. Logan called the central postoffice. Letters
+and parcels for Carnglass, it appeared, and Daldour too, were sent
+by MacBrayne’s steamer to Loch Boisdale, in South Uist, where they
+were called for as anyone from those islands, or their agents, might
+happen to put into Loch Boisdale. How long would an express letter
+take? It was impossible to say: it might not reach Carnglass for some
+days, depending upon whether any boat should happen to call at Loch
+Boisdale. Also, however, letters for those islands sometimes were left
+with an agent of the Carnglass factor, here in Glasgow, depending upon
+instructions from Carnglass. Who was this agent of the factor? That
+information the postal authorities were not authorized to give out.
+
+But Logan was a patient man. After lunch, he returned to his room
+and dressed in a heavy suit that had been made for him during his
+university years: of indestructible Harris tweed, the suit still fitted
+tolerably well. Rain was coming down heavily now, so this suit was
+made for the climate. He had with him a thorn stick, a memento also
+of Edinburgh days; it might be useful for hill-walking in Carnglass,
+should there be time for that. The little receptionist, who smiled
+fondly upon Logan, recommended a travel-agent in Argyle Street; so
+Logan took a cab there.
+
+Before entering the door of Moore Brothers, Travel Agents, Ltd.,
+Founded 1887, he stopped at a shop adjacent and bought an oilskin cape,
+which probably would be the thing to wear in Carnglass; he had it sent
+to Todd’s Hotel. Then he went up to the counter in Moore’s, where an
+eager youth--with a manner the British call “smarmy”--proceeded to set
+his hand on a pile of tour-folders.
+
+But the eager youth had no notion of how a gentleman might find his
+way to Carnglass. He had special de luxe tours to Iona and Skye to
+offer; these were much better-known islands than Carnglass, he told the
+gentleman. No one ever went to Carnglass. Logan asked for the manager.
+
+This old man with steel spectacles at the end of his nose could suggest
+only that the gentleman take MacBrayne’s steamer to Loch Boisdale. From
+South Uist, drifters and trawlers sometimes coasted off Daldour; there
+was no harbour in Daldour, but he had heard that the islanders--“verra
+queer folk, sir”--sometimes launched a boat and came alongside a
+drifter. He did not know how anyone contrived to live in Daldour; it
+was Ultima Thule. As for Carnglass, he had been told landing never was
+permitted. Oh, the gentleman was invited? An American? Then no doubt it
+would be possible. Perhaps the people in Daldour could take him across
+the sound in their boat. The manager would be glad to sell the American
+gentleman a first-class steamer ticket to Loch Boisdale, but he could
+do no more. And a first-class railway ticket from Glasgow to Oban: that
+was where one boarded MacBrayne’s steamers. This month, ordinarily,
+there were plane flights three times a week to South Uist; but the
+weather had been so wretched for the past week that flights had been
+cancelled, and it might be two or three or four days before they could
+resume.
+
+Logan bought his railway and steamer tickets. As he turned to go, the
+manager had an afterthought. “One moment, sir. Meg, d’ye mind the
+card that man left? The man that spoke with me concerning Carnglass?”
+Aye, Meg--a stocky red-faced lass in her teens--minded it; she put it
+bashfully into the young American gentleman’s hand. “Aye, sir, I had
+near forgot,” the manager said, “but this man came in a month gone and
+said that should any gentleman inquire after Carnglass, he might put
+him in the way of a passage.”
+
+It was a soiled card with crumpled corners, cheaply printed, and it
+read, “James Dowie, Commission Agent. 5 Mutto’s Wynd, Gallowgate.”
+
+“How far is Gallowgate?” Logan asked.
+
+The old manager drew in his lower lip and then protruded it
+meditatively. “Why, sir, the Gallowgate’s far above the Tron. And it’s
+late in the day. Would tomorrow do as well, sir?”
+
+“No,” said Logan, “I’m usually in a hurry. Surely a taxi could take me
+there in ten minutes?”
+
+The manager fumbled with his spectacles. “Between ourselves, now, sir,
+the Gallowgate’s not the place for an American gentleman by himself,
+with the night coming on. Mind ye, sir, I’ve had no trouble of my
+own in the Gallowgate. But this Mutto’s Wynd will be some wee vennel
+or passage, and dark. Ye’ve heard tell of Teddy Boys and such? Aye.
+Well, if ye must go, take a cab, sir; and make the driver wait for ye.
+The man that left this card--he would be a bookie, I think. Nothing
+against him, sir, nothing whatsoever. And the chief constable has done
+fine work in the Gallowgate and the Gorbals, verra gude work. They
+were worse when I was a lad. But were I yourself, sir, I wouldna stop
+in a pub there. In the Gallowgate, the folk think all Americans are
+millionaires. Would it were true, sir? Ha, ha. Aye, would it were true.”
+
+Going into the washroom at the travel-agency, Logan took out of his
+pockets his passport, his traveller’s checks, and most of the pound
+notes he had got at the hotel desk. He put them into the leather
+money-belt he wore beneath his shirt. Logan had been around, though
+most people wouldn’t credit it, apparently, when they looked at his
+face; and he had the thorn stick with him. Then he took a cab to
+Mutto’s Wynd, in the Gallowgate.
+
+Mutto’s Wynd turning out too narrow for any motorcar, the driver
+parked the cab at the mouth of the entry. In Mutto’s Wynd, most of the
+buildings were derelict, and some unroofed, since the Scots pay no
+taxes on roofless buildings. Even for smoke-grimed Glasgow, Mutto’s
+Wynd was very black. The dreary little building that was No. 5 stood
+near the mouth of the vennel, and the cab would be almost within call.
+
+Although the windows of No. 5 seemed not to have been washed this
+decade, a freshly-painted sign nailed above the door read “J. Dowie,
+Commission Agent.” Logan gave the driver a pound note. “Keep the
+change,” Logan said, “but wait for me.” The driver sighed, looking
+uneasily down the wynd. Three doors beyond, there projected the sign of
+a public house, the Dun Stirk. “But stay near the cab.”
+
+“O aye,” the driver grunted, “ye needna teach this auld dog new
+tricks.” Logan rapped at the battered door of No. 5.
+
+Quite promptly, a heavy-jowled little man in a sagging business-suit
+and a soiled old cap opened that door. “Come in, mon,” he said. “Ye’ll
+be thinkin’ o’ the pool?” The little low room--this building, elderly
+for rebuilt Glasgow, seemed once to have been a stable--contained a
+decrepit desk and three straight chairs; the walls, long ago, had been
+painted cream-color. The little man spoke the thickest Glasgow speech,
+with its clipped words and rolled r’s.
+
+“Mr. Dowie?” Aye, he was Mr. Dowie. “Mr. Dowie, I’ve been told you
+might know of a way to get to Carnglass.”
+
+Dowie, sucking in his fat cheeks, looked long and slyly at Logan. “Tak’
+a chair, mon. Ye’ll no be frae these parts?”
+
+Logan sat. “I’m an American, Mr. Dowie, with business in Carnglass.”
+
+Dowie leaned against the desk. “An’ what wud that business be?”
+
+“I’m representing my principal.”
+
+“Weel, then, Mr. American, ye’ll no object if I draw the curtains.”
+Dowie pulled heavy blanket-drapes across the filthy glass; he bolted
+the door. Logan sat easily on the rickety chair. “If it be Carnglass,”
+said Dowie, “that ye mean tae see, then ye’ll ken Tam Lagg?”
+
+“The factor. Yes, we’ve corresponded with him.”
+
+“Aye, just so. And ye’ll ken Dr. Jackman?” Here Dowie, stooping
+slightly, looked Logan in the eyes.
+
+“No, Mr. Dowie, I don’t know any Dr. Jackman.”
+
+“Ye dinna ken Jackman? Noo think o’ this, Mr. American: I’m official
+agent o’ Tam Lagg. Ye’ve no need to keep matters frae me. What might
+your name be?”
+
+“Hugh Logan. I’m to see Lady MacAskival.”
+
+“O aye. Lady MacAskival. She’s no keepin’ verra weel, ye ken.”
+
+“So I understand.”
+
+“No weel enough for chit-chat, Mr. Logan.” Dowie nodded mournfully.
+“And noo ye’re in auld Scotland, ye’ll tak’ a trip to Rabbie Burns’
+country?”
+
+“I’ve only time for a Carnglass trip.”
+
+“Rabbie Burns’ country is Alloway and Ayr, ye ken, Mr. Logan. A braw
+poet, Rabbie Bums. ‘A mon’s a mon for a’ that’--eh, Mr. Logan?” An
+unconvincing smile came suddenly over Dowie’s sodden face, and he
+clapped a dirty hand on Logan’s shoulder, in token of comradeship.
+Logan did not move or smile.
+
+“I suppose what Burns meant, Mr. Dowie, is that worth and genius matter
+more than rank--or as much, anyway. I don’t know that he had Glasgow
+bookies in mind.”
+
+“O aye,” Dowie muttered, removing his hand. He scowled uneasily, and
+then brightened artificially again. “O aye. I see ye’re a card, Mr.
+Logan. Aye, a poet o’ the first water, Rabbie Burns. But ye’ve fine
+writers in the States, too. Political writers. Ye’ll ken are or twa o’
+them?”
+
+Logan shook his head. “I don’t know a single political writer, Mr.
+Dowie.”
+
+“And ye’ll no ken Dr. Jackman?”
+
+“This literary conversation is very pleasant, Mr. Dowie,” Logan said.
+“But do you know of a ship or a launch that will take me to Carnglass?”
+
+Dowie sat down at the desk and pulled open a drawer. “Noo your
+principal, Mr. Logan--he’ll be Mr. Duncan MacAskival?”
+
+Over the edge of the open drawer, a cablegram form was just visible.
+“Then you’re the agent for forwarding the post to Carnglass, Mr. Dowie.”
+
+“Wha’ loon told ye that?”
+
+“Has Lady MacAskival received our cables?”
+
+“Wud I be a miracle-mon, Mr. Logan? I canna send word tae Carnglass by
+Tellie--by TV, ye Yanks say. And wha’ wi’ the high seas, there’s no
+boat that wud put oot for Daldour nor Carnglass these three days syne.”
+
+“Then I suppose Lady MacAskival’s not expecting me?”
+
+“Ye can suppose wha’ ye like, Mr. Logan.”
+
+“When can I get passage from Glasgow to Carnglass?”
+
+“Na, na, mon, I’m thinkin’ there’ll be no boat for Carnglass.” Dowie
+rested his chin in his pudgy hand. His eyes swept over Logan with
+that look of low cunning Logan had seen, so often, in malingering or
+thieving soldiers. “But bide a wee, Mr. Logan: we’ll fetch a cup o’
+tea for ye while ye’re here. Jeanie! Jeanie!” He shouted toward a back
+room. “Dinna fret, Mr. Logan: Jeanie’s my auld wifie. Jeanie! A cup o’
+tea for a Yank gentleman!”
+
+Around a door-jamb peered a worn face. Logan rose. “Na, na, Mr. Logan,
+sit ye doon: it’s but Jeanie. Jeanie, chat wi’ the Yank gentleman while
+I see wha’ can be done to obleege him.” Dowie slipped into the back
+room at the moment Jeanie entered. Taking a chair, she sat staring
+dully at the grimy floor, quite silent.
+
+“Rather a clammy day, Mrs. Dowie.” Mrs. Dowie, who had a scarf tied
+round her head, said nothing at all. Dowie seemed to be telephoning
+from the back room; and Logan, an old hand at snapping up scraps of
+whispered evidence, contrived to make out a few words:
+
+“Aye, Jock, a Yank, but no in Yank’s clothes. Quick, noo.” The phone
+was hung up, and Dowie returned, that fixed smile across his face.
+“Jeanie! Hae ye no been entertainin’ the gentleman? Fetch the tea,
+lass.”
+
+Jeanie went. “Well, now, Mr. Dowie,” Logan said, “have you found
+something for me?”
+
+“Ye wudna wish to go where they’ll no be expectin’ ye, wud ye, sir?
+And Lady MacAskival’s ower auld for company. Tak’ the plane home, Mr.
+Logan. Ye’ll do no business in Carnglass.”
+
+“If you’ll do nothing for me, Dowie, I’ll go elsewhere. It’s getting
+late.”
+
+The look of triumphant cunning was back in Dowie’s eyes. “Aye, but the
+tea, Mr. Logan; bide for the tea.” Jeanie returned with a wooden tray,
+a teapot under a cozy, and three cups. Logan stood up.
+
+“I’m always in a hurry, Dowie. Thank you, Mrs. Dowie, but I haven’t
+time for tea.” There seemed to be voices raised outside in the wynd,
+now, and a heavy thud, rather as if someone had kicked the side of an
+automobile. “Good day to you.”
+
+“But first, man,” said Dowie, sidling between Logan and the street
+door, “we’ll shake hands a’ roun’, should auld acquaintance be forgot.”
+Logan briefly took Dowie’s hand, and then Jeanie’s. “And ye’ll confess,
+Mr. Logan, that ye came here o’ your ain free will, an’ no invitation.”
+Logan agreed. “Ye heard, Jeanie,” Dowie muttered. “Ye’re a witness.”
+In the street beyond the mouth of the wynd, a motor started, and Logan
+thought he heard a car drive away.
+
+“That may be my taxi leaving,” Logan said. He had his stick in his hand.
+
+“Weel, noo, Mr. American,” Dowie told him, with what possibly was
+intended for a convivial smile, “I’m sorry I couldna serve ye. Cheerio
+the noo. I’ll open the door for ye.” He did. And the second Logan
+stepped out, the door was slammed behind him and bolted.
+
+Mutto’s Wynd was shadowy. Yes, the taxi had gone; and lounging against
+the wall of No. 5 were four men. Logan faced them. They were very young
+roughs, three of them, with the greasy sideburns and the pimpled faces
+that went, in their sort, with a diet of fish and chips. The fourth
+man, a big lank fellow, older, wore a wide leather belt round his
+waist, and he had a very nasty smirk. By way of obstacle, the lank man
+thrust out a long leg.
+
+“Hello, Yank,” the lank man said. The other three came slowly round
+Logan.
+
+“Good evening, friend,” Logan answered. No one else was in the wynd.
+
+“This is the auld Gallowgate, Yank,” the lank man went on. “This was
+where they hangit the gallows-craws. We’re gallows-craws, Yank.” He
+gave a short, harsh whiskey-laugh, and the three young roughs cackled
+in echo. “Ye’ll stand us a dram at the Dun Stirk, Yank?”
+
+“I’m sorry, friend, but I’m in a hurry.” It was quiet and dark in
+Mutto’s Wynd.
+
+The lank man smirked. “Damn ye, Yank, ye’ll no be in sic a hurry noo!”
+He flung himself toward Logan, one foot going out to trip him.
+
+Logan was ready. He thrust the point of the thorn stick into the lank
+man’s belly, and the lank man screamed and stumbled back. But one of
+the greasy youngsters had his arm round Logan’s throat, from the back.
+Taking the boy’s fingers, Logan bent them backward: the rough yelled
+and let go. And now they were on him, all four.
+
+Someone had a long razor. Logan caught the wrist that held it, striking
+with the point of his stick at the face behind; the razor dropped to
+the cobblestones, but someone else got Logan’s legs out from under him.
+He fell heavily on the wet stones, and took a kick in the ribs. Another
+razor flashed. Someone had a hand inside Logan’s coat. The mackintosh
+he wore hampered him. There came a kick at his head, though a glancing
+blow. He had hold at last of someone’s thighs, and was struggling
+upward. A kick in the back; and a razor slashed one sleeve of the
+mackintosh. All that saved him for the second, Logan knew, was that
+they were so close about him as to get in one another’s way.
+
+This was no simple robbery: they meant to slash or cripple him, or
+something worse. Another fierce kick in his ribs. The man he had got
+by the thighs slipped and fell upon him. And as Logan fought clear, he
+heard steel-plated heels running over the cobbles. Someone was helping
+him up: a tall policeman. Another policeman was chasing four dim
+figures down the wynd.
+
+The policeman who had lifted Logan had a bruise over one eye. “That
+was Jock Anderson’s lads, Donald,” he panted to the other policeman,
+returned from the unsuccessful chase. “Jock gie me the bash over the
+eye.” Logan was getting his breath back. “If ye’ll prefer charges,
+sir,” the policeman said to him, “we’ll have warrants out for these
+chaps; we know them.”
+
+“There’s small harm done, constable, and I’m leaving Glasgow tomorrow.”
+
+“Did they not take your money, sir?”
+
+Logan felt inside his coat and discovered no billfold. “Yes, but I
+hadn’t much with me.”
+
+If the gentleman would come to the station and swear to a complaint,
+the second constable told him, they might not have to trouble him
+further. “Your cabbie found us, sir; they forced him awa’.” Logan left
+a five-pound note with the policeman for the driver. “Were ye in No. 5
+yonder, sir?”
+
+Though the constable named Donald knocked hard at the door of No. 5, no
+one answered, and the building showed no light. “By this time,” Donald
+said, “Jim Dowie’s flitted, and his wife Jeanie with him. And I dinna
+think we could charge them. But we’re keepin’ watch on Dowie, sir: a
+slippery one.”
+
+Then, in the Gallowgate, they found him another taxi to take him back
+to the hotel. And in India Street, Logan washed the grime of Mutto’s
+Wynd from himself. Stiff and bruised: but no ribs broken, and the razor
+had slashed only the mackintosh. There still was time to go down to
+dinner. Afterward, Logan had promised, he would go round to the station
+and swear to a statement.
+
+In his hot tub, Logan tried to make sense of what had happened. The
+policemen took it for a simple case of pocket-picking, perhaps abetted
+by Jim Dowie, Commission Agent. But Logan thought that Dowie had meant
+to keep him out of Carnglass--possibly. Who was this Jackman that Dowie
+had mentioned? Lady MacAskival’s private physician, or merely some
+crony or invention of Dowie’s? And what interest had Dowie, or anyone
+else, in keeping him out of Carnglass? And why should Thomas Lagg the
+factor have a friend, and mail-forwarder, like J. Dowie? Logan felt
+full of fight. He would take the morning train to Oban, and there, no
+matter what the price, he’d find passage to Carnglass.
+
+On going down to dinner, Logan stopped at the reception-desk to see if
+there might be a message from Carnglass. There was none. Presumably
+Dowie really had Duncan MacAskival’s cables in his desk. But also it
+was likely that Dowie, during this weather, had no way of getting word
+to Carnglass. If so, Logan would be quite unexpected when he landed.
+That might be just as well, supposing that Lagg had some connection
+with the queer business in Mutto’s Wynd.
+
+As he turned away from the reception-counter, Logan felt himself being
+watched. Or were his nerves on edge? He glanced to the right, and a
+man’s eyes met his, but dropped away hastily. It was like looking into
+the eyes of a bird: little black eyes, darting and quick to flee. The
+man, he thought, had been looking at the top leaf of the open hotel
+register. As Logan went into the dining room, he looked back; the man
+was going out into the street. But he had a good view of him.
+
+Birdlike? The man’s body was anything but birdlike, unless one thought
+of a stork. Tall, with shoulders thrown back; a heavy, rather clumsy
+torso, protruding in front; but the legs extremely thin. The man wore
+a bowler and a good worsted town-suit, dark gray; he was getting
+into a raincoat as he passed out of Logan’s sight into India Street.
+He carried a long malacca stick. Even in these brief glimpses, Logan
+had the impression that this fellow meant to be taken for a country
+gentleman or a retired officer. Yet somehow the effect did not quite
+come off. Logan told himself not to be edgy: it wouldn’t do to suspect
+every hotel-guest of dark designs. Perhaps the man had only been
+glancing at a raw spot on Logan’s cheek, where Jock Anderson’s boot had
+scraped.
+
+Yet after dinner, and just before he took a cab to the police station,
+the receptionist with the taffy hair spoke to Logan. “Did the gentleman
+find you, sir?”
+
+“What gentleman?”
+
+“He didn’t leave his name, sir; he only asked after you--if you were
+staying in the hotel--and waited a moment by the counter. I thought he
+would have seen you when you went into dinner. A military gentleman,
+perhaps.”
+
+Yes, that would have been the man with the bird’s eyes: a military, or
+pseudo-military, gentleman. Logan made up his mind to remember that
+gentleman.
+
+Of that gentleman, and of his business in Carnglass, however, Logan
+said nothing to the Glasgow police, who took his deposition and
+promised action. Already they had been looking for Jock and his lads,
+but with no luck. It was odd, the constable named Donald said: to get
+out of town, or to find some snug hidie-hole, Jock and his gang would
+have required more money than they took from the gentleman. Yet somehow
+they had gone to earth, and so had Dowie.
+
+Logan told the sergeant that he was touring Scotland, and would be in
+Oban a few days, at the Station Hotel. “Never place money with lads
+like Jim Dowie,” they told him.
+
+An hour later, in bed at Todd’s Hotel, and tired though he was, Logan
+took up “A Summary History of Carnglass and Daldour.” Balmullo, the old
+minister, might have been a bigot; yet he had a keen eye and ear. There
+was a page of description of the New House of Fear, built down by the
+harbor by Donald MacAskival--one of the extravagances that had ruined
+him--in 1777.
+
+“It had been the MacAskival’s design,” Balmullo wrote, “to have
+demolished _in toto_ the Old House. But the chieftain’s means did
+not permit of this undertaking. Accordingly,--and to the chagrin of
+every connoisseur of the arts who sets foot upon the mole of Askival
+harbour,--the rude Gothic construction has been permitted to loom
+intact upon its ruder eminence, denuded of its plenishing save for the
+gigantic carven chimneypieces. There remains also, above the principal
+entrance to the Old House, a tremendous escutcheon, its bearings in
+some part defaced, but yet displaying the graceless figure of a Wild
+Man, armed with a dirk, which Wild Man the vulgar name Askival, the
+reputed founder of the fortress; and beside the Wild Man a female
+figure in a state of undress, whom, with still less authority, the
+folk of the island call Marin or Merin. Below these sculptures, in the
+letters of a later period, is inscribed the legend, ‘They have said and
+they will saye. Let them be saying.’
+
+“Of baseless rumor and frantic conjecture, the island of Carnglass has
+no stint. In contempt, I must record that the natives of this island,
+blind to the perfections of the New House, continue to allege that
+Donald MacAskival built afresh not out of an elevated taste, but rather
+because, in the Old House, he had dwelt in dread of the wraiths of his
+fathers, said to have waxed wroth with their descendant for his prudent
+decision to expel from Carnglass the superfluous population. A gaunt
+and bearded spectre, to which is given the appellation of Old Askival,
+is reputed to stalk the empty corridors and chambers, in particular
+the subterranean portions of the oldest tower. An obscure tradition
+asseverates that a hidden passage leads from these cellars to a recess,
+and thence to the outer world. Yet the Old House having been builded
+upon the living rock, as has been observed elsewhere in these pages,
+this supposition can have no more substance than the Kingdom of the
+Fairies.”
+
+Here Logan turned out the light. For all his aches and pains, he never
+had slept sounder in his life.
+
+On his second Scottish morning, Hugh Logan took the train for Oban. The
+wind had gone down somewhat, and the rain was over, though grim gray
+clouds still lay to the west. Through Larbert and Stirling, past the
+Castle high on its rock, the train puffed up to Callender. Logan sat
+in a compartment where two old ladies dozed over their knitting. Half
+the time he looked at the hills and villages, and half the time he read
+in Balmullo’s “Summary History.” And so the train swept into the West
+Highlands.
+
+As they approached Loch Awe, someone paused outside the glass door of
+Logan’s compartment. Looking up, Logan saw the man clear: the man in
+the bowler, the “military gentleman” with the little black bird-eyes.
+That military gentleman was observing him; but the furtive look moved
+on to the two somnolent old ladies opposite. For a moment, Logan
+thought the man was about to pull back the door and enter. Yet the face
+turned away, and the military gentleman was gone from the corridor.
+Logan had enjoyed a thorough look at his face: the swollen long nose;
+the red and purple veins that bulged against the coarse skin; and those
+tiny, frightened, frightening black eyes, sunk into the skull. About
+fifty years old, Logan estimated, though seeming older. And a cashiered
+British officer, some intuition suggested.
+
+Cashiered, yes. Logan made almost a hobby of collecting clippings from
+newspapers about curious cases of criminal law, strange points of
+evidence, failures to convict despite strong testimony. It was power
+of memory, as much as anything else, that had brought Logan success
+at the bar while he still was young. Now he tried to dredge up from
+memory that repugnant face of the military gentleman. Cashiered,
+cashiered. Hadn’t he read of a captain or major cashiered in India,
+and subsequently tried by a criminal court for some separate, though
+related, offense--and got off by a very clever barrister? A barrister
+with somewhat unsavory political connections? The case had been nasty,
+remarkably nasty--and the officer’s acts nastier still. Hadn’t some
+London friend, years ago, sent Logan the penny-press clippings about
+the case, with a picture or two of the accused? What had the fellow’s
+name been? Something short? Gale, or Hare? No, even Logan’s trained
+memory could not recall the details. Yet the face of the military
+gentleman at the hotel and in the corridor, Logan felt, was curiously
+like the nasty face he half-recollected from the smudgy newspaper
+photograph. Had there been espionage hinted at the military hearings?
+The man had been a bad lot in many ways. But Logan couldn’t feel quite
+sure he had not fancied the resemblance.
+
+By Ben Cruachan, through the Pass of Brander; across the river at
+Bridge of Awe; then Connel Ferry. The mountains loomed nobly as the
+train approached the coast. The military gentleman did not return. A
+few minutes more, and the train swung into the resort and fishing-port
+of Oban, on the Firth of Lorn. Now the Western Isles were in plain
+sight--Kerrera, at least, right opposite Oban. Logan could see its
+treeless bulk from the window of his hotel. Of the military gentleman,
+no trace. Logan looked for him in the railway station, but he must have
+got off hurriedly from a forward coach and have gone into the town. Not
+that Logan much desired to see the military gentleman again.
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+“You might inquire at the North Pier, Mr. Logan,” said the Reverend
+Andrew Crawford, “but I do not believe any fisherman will undertake
+to set you ashore in Carnglass. All the boats will be gone from the
+harbour until sunset: the storm kept them in port for three days,
+and they won’t wish to waste another day in carrying a passenger to
+Carnglass.”
+
+The Reverend Andrew Crawford, minister of St. Ninian’s Church, was a
+knowledgeable man. The people at the Station Hotel had sent Logan to
+him, not knowing themselves how he might get to Carnglass. Mr. Crawford
+had set foot in most of the Outer Isles that still were inhabited. Now
+he and Logan stood at the door of the manse, looking down the hill to
+Oban town and the piers, with the dim gray Hebrides far beyond the blue
+sea.
+
+“I’d pay whatever they might ask,” Logan told him.
+
+“It’s not wholly a matter of _l.s.d._, Mr. Logan. The swell round
+Carnglass and Daldour always is heavy. I had difficulty in getting
+ashore in Daldour, the day I visited, and I never have seen Carnglass,
+except from Daldour or a boat. Lady MacAskival does not let even the
+minister or the priest ashore. She has her own style of religion.
+And these trawlers from the mainland aren’t popular with the island
+folk. Once the keepers fired at an Oban boat that tried to put into
+Askival harbour; nor are the men in Daldour much more hospitable. No, I
+think you’d best take MacBrayne’s steamer to Loch Boisdale: the South
+Uist fishermen know the Carnglass waters. The reefs off Carnglass are
+murderous.”
+
+“Who lives in Daldour, Mr. Crawford?”
+
+“There is but one name in Daldour--MacAskival. An inbred folk. In
+Daldour there is a little machair--that’s the sandy land of the
+Island--and the island people fertilize it with seaweed, and grow
+potatoes. Also they gather seaweed and sell it; in the season, a
+drifter puts close into shore, and the Daldour men bring out the
+seaweed in their lobster-boats and load it aboard, and it is sold on
+the mainland. On the day I visited Daldour, all the folk were at the
+beach with their carts, running straight into the surf to gather the
+tangle. Theirs is a poor life. The Daldour women weave a few decent
+rugs and sweaters. They speak a strange Gaelic, with some Norse words
+in it. For a month, one of our missionaries lived in Daldour, but he
+was half daft when he left. ‘Mr. Crawford, I have served my time among
+the Mau Mau,’ he said to me. And that though he was a Highlander and a
+Gaelic speaker.”
+
+“Can you tell me anything about Lady MacAskival, Mr. Crawford?” Logan
+asked. But--after a slight discreet pause--Mr. Crawford could not.
+Logan, leaving him, went down to the North Pier to make inquiries after
+any boat that might carry him to Carnglass.
+
+He had no luck. It would have to be MacBrayne’s steamer to Loch
+Boisdale in the morning, he thought, for already it was late afternoon.
+If the sea should be calm tomorrow, even a big motor-launch ought to be
+able to carry him from South Uist to Carnglass. After a stroll along
+the esplanade to the cathedral, Logan went back to his hotel at the
+other end of the town and had dinner. The trawlers were in the harbor
+now, unloading their catch upon the quay. But the fishermen were too
+busy to be bothered with eccentric Americans that wanted passage to
+Ultima Thule, Logan suspected. A light rain was coming down. Despite
+that, after dinner Logan put his oilskin cape over his shoulders, took
+up his stock, and--for lack of anything better to do--climbed the hill
+behind the town.
+
+At the summit there was a strange building, Logan had noticed as soon
+as he had come out of Oban railway station: a circular roofless affair,
+like a ruined temple. This, according to the hotel people, was called
+McCaig’s Folly, and had been built long ago as an observation-tower,
+but never finished. Now, in the gloaming, Logan found himself close
+beside the Folly. The season being too early for tourists at Oban,
+the area round the Folly was deserted, so that Logan walked alone in
+the drizzle, thinking idly of the Old House of Fear and old Duncan
+MacAskival and his own solitary and work-laden life. A scrap from Scott
+came into his head:
+
+  “Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
+     To all the sensual world proclaim
+   One crowded hour of glorious life
+     Is worth an age without a name.”
+
+Was that the way it went? Even leading his battalion, Logan never
+had known that crowded hour. And as he thought of how some men are
+drunken with drink, and others drunken with work, he heard steps in the
+darkness behind him.
+
+Looking over his shoulder, Logan made out a familiar figure, a few
+paces distant: the military gentleman. When Logan slackened pace, the
+military gentleman hesitated for a moment, and then strode on toward
+him. “Captain Gare!” the military gentleman called out, by way of
+introduction.
+
+“Good evening, sir,” Logan said. Captain Gare, coming very close up to
+him with a swagger of sorts, looked down from his stork-height upon
+Logan. Flickering from side to side, the disconcertingly mobile little
+black bird-eyes never paused for more than a fraction of a second to
+meet Logan’s stare. The man struck his long stick against his own
+trousers-leg. He opened his mouth, paused, gripped his stick more
+firmly, and then spoke in a reedy educated voice.
+
+“Look here,” said Captain Gare. “I say--I.... That is, cigarettes--yes,
+cigarettes....” There was an aroma of whiskey about Captain Gare,
+but Logan did not think he was drunk. Certainly Gare was exceedingly
+nervous, and he seemed disposed toward bullying.
+
+“I’m sorry,” Logan told him mildly, “but I don’t have any cigarettes
+about me.”
+
+“No, no.” Captain Gare, scowling, paused afresh, perhaps trying to
+take a new tack. “No, I don’t require cigarettes, not really. I don’t
+smoke--nor drink, either. I say: you’re an American, are you not?”
+
+“Why should you think so, sir?”
+
+“Don’t take offense,” said Captain Gare. “Are you ashamed of being an
+American? I’m not a chap people can take liberties with. You’re an
+American chap, I know. Your name is Logan.”
+
+“I saw you at Todd’s Hotel,” Logan observed.
+
+“Did you? Did you really? I travel a great deal, Mr. Logan: private
+means, you know. Yes, that’s it: I saw your name in the hotel register,
+and thought we might have something in common.”
+
+“What might we have in common, Captain Gare?” Logan spoke evenly.
+Captain Gare swept his bird-eyes across Logan’s face again, seeming
+to gain heart. He slapped the stick against his leg, below the short
+mackintosh he wore.
+
+“I say--don’t know India, I suppose? Never tried pig-sticking? No, I
+suppose not; not you American chaps. True sport, you know. I was rather
+good.” He towered belligerently above Logan. “There’s nothing like
+steel. See here.” Captain Gare tugged at the head of his stick, and it
+came away from the wood. It was a sword-stick, two or three inches of
+blade showing above the cane. Logan had an amusing momentary vision of
+a fencing-match there in the rain, complete with cries of “touché!”
+Captain Gare, glowering upon him, rammed the blade back into its
+stick-scabbard.
+
+“I take it that you know the world, Captain Gare,” Logan said, smiling
+slightly.
+
+“Rather better than you do, I fancy, Logan.” It was clear that Captain
+Gare now felt himself master of the situation. “I say, we needn’t beat
+about the bush, eh? I’m told you’ve been at the pier inquiring after
+passage to Carnglass.”
+
+“You’re an astute man, Captain Gare.”
+
+“That’s as it may be.” Captain Gare’s swollen features bent toward
+Logan. “Look here: it’s quite pointless for you to go to Carnglass, you
+know--quite. I suppose you’re a solicitor-chap, are you not?”
+
+“That’s as it may be,” said Logan. “My father and grandfather were
+Writers to the Signet. You have an interest in Carnglass, Mr.--that is,
+Captain--Gare?”
+
+“One of my friends has an interest there, sir. He knows Lady MacAskival
+very well. Handles her affairs, as a matter of fact. Saves her
+annoyance. She never welcomes callers, you understand.”
+
+“I’m afraid my business is with Lady MacAskival herself.”
+
+Captain Gare edged still closer. “Lady MacAskival is not competent to
+transact business, Mr. Logan. I mean to say that she’s infirm. Quite
+old, you know. No taste for American trippers.”
+
+“She has been in correspondence with my principal.”
+
+“Nonsense!” Captain Gare brandished his stick. “Mean to say, that’s
+rubbish, you know. Lady MacAskival never writes. Infirm, a very elderly
+party. Come, now, Logan: I dare say you’ve gone to moderate expense in
+this fool’s errand. You’ll never see Carnglass. My friend is a liberal
+man, and very close to Lady MacAskival. Money’s little object to him or
+her. Suppose, now, on their behalf, I give you three hundred pounds, if
+you like? Simply by way of reimbursement, we may put it, Logan. Fair
+enough, eh? And then back to Brooklyn with you, eh?”
+
+“You have the money in your pocket?” Logan inquired.
+
+“Of course not.” Captain Gare gave him a supercilious smile. “A man
+doesn’t carry such sums on his person, you know. Come back into town
+with me, like a good chap, and I’ll write a cheque in your favor.”
+
+“I do happen to carry such sums on my person, Captain Gare,” Logan told
+him.
+
+The military gentleman’s little eyes widened and flickered. His left
+hand stole nervously along the sword-stick. “Not really? Hundreds of
+pounds in notes in your pocket? I say....”
+
+“Not in notes, Captain Gare: in traveller’s cheques.” Here Captain Gare
+sighed slightly, and his grip on the stick slackened. “Now could you be
+interested, Captain Gare, in some such sum as six hundred pounds?”
+
+“Six hundred pounds?” Captain Gare drew a sudden breath. “Really, my
+dear fellow, are you suggesting that you might pay me six hundred
+pounds? Whatever for?”
+
+“For certain information.”
+
+“What manner of information, my dear sir?” Captain Gare turned
+slightly, there in the dark, as if to make sure no one was at hand.
+
+“For instance,” Logan said, “detailed information concerning the past,
+present, and future of Jackman.”
+
+That bow, drawn at a venture, sent its arrow home. On Gare’s unpleasant
+face the mottled veins seemed to swell; the man stepped back. “Who the
+devil are you?” cried Captain Gare, with a quaver in the reedy voice.
+
+“I take it that you know now what I am,” said Logan, still quietly.
+“Whatever made you think I might accept money?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir; really, I ...” Captain Gare was stumbling over
+his words. “That is, you did not seem precisely an American. All a
+pose, eh? I say, you don’t mean that you’re ... that I’m....”
+
+“If you tell me about Jackman,” Logan went on, “we need say no more of
+all this, so far as you are concerned. We already know a great deal
+about Dr. Jackman, of course, but conceivably you might add something
+or other. You’re the fellow who was cashiered, I take it. We know
+enough about you.”
+
+“I swear it was a miscarriage of justice, Mr. Logan--or whatever your
+name is, sir. I mean that affair in Madras.” Gare was almost panting.
+“But Jackman--no, really, I can’t say anything, not for six thousand
+pounds. My life wouldn’t--but you know that quite as well as I do.”
+
+The swollen face had gone deathly pale. Even had he been able to probe
+deeper without giving away his game, Logan reflected, this man would
+have been too frightened to be of any real help. It had been a good
+random thrust, that mention of Jackman, whoever Jackman might be.
+
+“Very well, Gare,” Logan said. “If you don’t choose to clear yourself,
+that’s not my concern. Very likely you’d be of no use to us. We’ll
+have Dowie and Anderson any hour now.” Gare shivered. That shot, too,
+had gone home. “As for you, Gare, you understand that if you don’t
+sever all connection with this business, we’ll see that you’re taken
+into custody? Perhaps the Continent would be a safer place for you at
+present. And throw away that silly sword-stick: you couldn’t frighten
+babies with it.” Logan snatched the thing from Gare’s hand and flung
+it toward the lip of the hill; the steel flashed in the moonlight, and
+then blade and stick were lost in the gorse. “Be off, now; I’ve tired
+of you.”
+
+Gare, backing further away, muttered pitifully, “Then you’re.... Then
+I’m not under...?” Logan gestured impatiently toward the town below.
+
+“You can go to the devil, Gare.”
+
+Captain Gare turned with clumsy haste, all his swagger gone, and
+scuttled heavily down the path toward town; after he had gone a few
+paces in the dark, Logan thought he heard him break into a run. Yes, it
+had been a thoroughly satisfying random shot. He did not think he would
+see Captain Gare again.
+
+Yet whoever thought it worthwhile to offer Logan three hundred pounds
+to steer clear of Carnglass? Gare had bungled the business badly; he
+must have been acting without instruction from his principal, Logan
+thought--whoever that principal might be. Dowie? Or Lagg? Or this
+fellow Jackman? There were depths in this business, surely, unplumbed
+by old Duncan MacAskival. Trying to piece the thing together, Logan
+walked slowly back to the Station Hotel. There the night porter gave
+him tea and biscuits, and afterwards Logan went up to his rather chilly
+high-ceilinged room, and stared at the plaster cornice for half an hour
+before he went to sleep. But he could form no clear picture of what he
+had begun to call to himself the Carnglass Case.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As he dressed, next morning, Logan saw from his window the steamer
+“Lochness” at the pier: it would take him to Loch Boisdale, and
+he hurried into his clothes and gulped down tea at 5:45. This was
+Wednesday, his third morning in Scotland. Thus far, only frustration:
+and yet the sort of frustration which roused Logan’s energies. To
+judge from the impromptu and ineffectual measures that Dowie and Gare
+had adopted, he was dealing only with an ill-organized and eccentric
+opposition--though with adversaries sufficiently unscrupulous. And it
+seemed to be an ill-informed opposition. Either that, or else Dowie and
+Gare were out of touch with the real intelligence at work, for some
+reason, supposing that they _had_ principals for whom they were acting.
+Certainly neither of those two had seemed quite the man to concoct a
+scheme to keep an American from his prospective purchase of Carnglass.
+If there were a principal, would he be in the island? Lagg, the factor?
+The storm of two days ago might have kept the people in Carnglass from
+communicating with the mainland; but presumably messages now could be
+sent and received by boat. Whatever messages might be sent, it scarcely
+was possible that he should receive in Carnglass the sort of rude
+welcome he had got in Mutto’s Wynd. Even if Carnglass was Ultima Thule,
+still it was part of Britain, the most law-abiding of nations; and
+there would be Lady MacAskival for surety.
+
+At six o’clock the “Lochness” steamed away from the pier toward the
+Sound of Mull. They crossed the Firth of Lorne; and then, to the south,
+they skirted the great rocky mass of Mull, while the wild shores of
+Morven frowned upon them from the north. Several islanders were among
+the passengers, and for the first time in years Logan heard the Gaelic
+spoken naturally, that beautiful singing Gaelic of the Hebrides. It
+went with the cliffs, the sea-rocks, the ruined strongholds of Mull and
+Morven, the damp air, the whitewashed lonely cottages by the deep and
+smoothly sinister sea.
+
+As the hours passed, the steamer put into Tobermory, and later touched
+at the flat islands of Col and Tiree. It crossed the broad rough waters
+of the Little Minch, with the romantic line of the Outer Isles before
+them, and the round bulk of Barra drawing closer. After Castlebay, in
+Barra, the “Lochness” steamed north past Eriskay, and into the splendid
+dark anchorage of Loch Boisdale, in South Uist, that sprawling low
+island of peat.
+
+It was nearly midnight now. Going ashore, Logan got himself a room at
+the homely, cordial inn above the harbor. There was a schoolmaster
+in Loch Boisdale village, the hotelkeeper said, who might know of a
+drifter that could put Logan ashore in Carnglass.
+
+Once more alone in a rented room with only conjectures for company,
+Hugh Logan settled himself in bed and took up that battered pamphlet by
+the Reverend Samuel Balmullo. Mr. Balmullo’s taste certainly had run to
+old bones. Here was a tidbit:
+
+“Even in the fierce chronicles of the Western Isles, the chieftains
+of MacAskival are distinguished by a repute for deeds of blood and
+passion exceedingly disproportionate to the wealth and power of their
+sept. In the last century, upon the removal of the plenishing of the
+Old House to the New House of Fear, there were discovered in a curious
+pit or oubliette in the crypts the skeletal remains of a human being,
+still bearing the marks of violence. This pit long had been put to the
+office of a brine-tub, and it is supposed, accordingly, that the bones
+had lain hid at the bottom for a great while, perhaps some centuries.
+By any person inured to the sorry superstitions of the people of
+Carnglass, it might have been anticipated--as, indeed, it befell--that
+the vulgar peasantry, upon the exhibition of these sad relics of
+mortality, would allege the bones--some of which were curiously injured
+or deformed--to be those of a Firgower, or Man-Goat. A legend less
+incredible, however, relates that the skeleton is that of an illicit
+lover of a lady of MacAskival, seized by stealth at his abode in North
+Uist, transported to Carnglass, subjected to indescribable torments,
+and at length drowned in the brine of the oubliette. What the Duke
+of Clarence suffered in a butt of Malmsey, some obscure chieftain of
+the barbarous Hebrides, about the same period of antiquity, may have
+endured in a darksome pit filled to its brink with pickled herring.”
+
+At the close of this charming paragraph, Logan settled himself to sleep.
+
+In the morning, on his way to seek out the schoolmaster who might
+help him to a passage to Carnglass, Logan was surprised to find Loch
+Boisdale and its neighborhood bursting with activity. Navvies were
+unloading enormous crates from a freighter; two new bulldozers rumbled
+down the road toward the interior of the island; recently-built huts of
+corrugated iron, an age away from the primitive thatched Uist cottages
+of field-stone that stood scattered over the oozy plain, shouldered one
+another near the pier. The hotelkeeper had said briefly that something
+important, in a military way, was in progress in the heart of South
+Uist. A range for guided missiles, perhaps; and perhaps something even
+newer. Idle policemen, the hotelkeeper had said, lounged about the
+approaches to the construction-area. He did not like it. It would spoil
+the snipe-shooting, and also evict honest families from their crofts.
+“Those men in London are spoiling the best places and the best people.”
+
+About the middle of the morning, Logan plodded up the soggy road to the
+schoolhouse. The sky was very gray again, and a fairly heavy rain was
+falling; but even the guidebook confessed that the climate of South
+Uist was the worst in Britain. MacLean, the rawboned schoolmaster,
+would do what he could to assist the gentleman. Leaving the schoolroom
+in charge of a senior boy, he went back with Logan toward the harbor.
+Yes, Mr. MacLean knew the master of a drifter, now in Loch Boisdale,
+who might conceivably engage to land Mr. Logan in Carnglass. This
+fisherman, though akin to the schoolmaster, was a very remote cousin,
+mind, and in need of money, to pay a fine. A fine for what? For
+poaching. Logan wanted to know what sort of poaching--fishing in
+forbidden waters?
+
+“No,” said MacLean, shortly, “sheep. Judge not that ye be not judged.
+My cousin Colin knows all the shore of all the lonely islands, and on
+some of the islands there are sheep, and deer. Whatever Colin is or is
+not, there is no better pilot in all the Outer Isles.”
+
+Although Colin’s boat was in the harbor, the man himself was not in
+sight when the schoolmaster and Logan got down to the pier. “He will be
+drinking somewhere,” the schoolmaster said. “But here are some people
+to interest you: people from Daldour.”
+
+Seated on the clammy pier, eating bread and butter in the drizzle,
+were three men in rough island dress and rubber boots--or, rather, two
+men and a bright-eyed boy. All three had about them a twilight look.
+Their bodies were lean, their cheeks were hollow, their teeth protruded
+slightly; a Lowlander might have said that they were not canny.
+
+They seemed so much alike that, but for differences in age, they might
+have been triplets. “MacAskivals,” the schoolmaster murmured. “A dying
+breed. In Daldour, now, most are old bachelors and old maids; they have
+seen too much of one another, and will not marry. The last of an old
+song. That big lobster boat by the pier is theirs; the MacAskivals have
+but a naked beach at Daldour. I will speak the Gaelic to them, for they
+will speak no English, although this boy knows the English well enough.
+Among themselves, Mr. Logan, they speak a dialect as strange to me as
+the Gaelic is to you.”
+
+Except for the boy’s bright glance, the three MacAskivals had given
+no sign of recognition as the schoolmaster and Logan approached. Now,
+as Mr. MacLean spoke to the three in Gaelic, there came very faint
+shy smiles to all three narrow faces; the two men nodded, and the boy
+replied in the slow flowing Gaelic. Presently, in a cautious tone, the
+schoolmaster seemed to say something significant. The boy turned to the
+elder of the two men, who spoke curtly, and the boy translated for him
+to the schoolmaster. As he finished speaking, over the boy’s eyes came
+a kind of glaze, and the two men turned again to munching bread and
+butter, as if they had forgotten the existence of everyone else.
+
+“I asked them,” the schoolmaster told Logan, “whether they would take
+you with them to Daldour, and then to Carnglass. They are in Loch
+Boisdale for this day only, to buy what few things they do buy, from
+month to month. They said they would not take you to Carnglass; it is
+not a good place for a man to go.”
+
+“Not for fifty pounds?” Logan asked.
+
+“For no price, I believe. But if money speaks, my cousin Colin is the
+man for you. And here he comes.” A squat man was sauntering along the
+pier. “Colin is not overly civil, and he is fond of the drink; but
+he knows the waters and the coasts.” They turned away from the three
+silent MacAskivals and walked to meet the fisherman-poacher.
+
+What is uncommon among the people of the Isles, Colin MacLean seemed
+surly. He did not acknowledge the schoolmaster’s introduction of Logan.
+“Colin,” said the schoolmaster, “Mr. Logan asks you to set him ashore
+in Carnglass. I will leave you to make your bargain.” Logan shook his
+hand, and the schoolmaster strode up the hill.
+
+Colin MacLean gave Logan a long hard look from under the brim of his
+sou’wester. “Carnglass, is it?” The only polish about Colin was his
+careful English speech, no doubt learned from the British Broadcasting
+Company, and uttered with a musical Gaelic intonation. Colin MacLean
+spat upon the pier. “Carnglass: and so Lagg and his keepers would shoot
+holes in my boat. You may go to hell, Mr. Logan.”
+
+Logan drew from his billfold ten big colorful notes of the Royal Bank
+of Scotland: five-pound notes. “This is yours, Mr. MacLean,” he said,
+“if you’ll set me ashore anywhere in Carnglass. It needn’t be Askival
+harbor. Is there no other spot where a boat might put in?”
+
+Colin stared at the notes. “There is a place, Dalcruach, in the east,
+where at high tide a boat--a small boat--can pass over the reefs, if
+the sea is calm. All the rest is cliff. But I would not risk my drifter
+among the rocks. You would need to row over the reefs alone. Here: I
+have an old dinghy. For twenty pounds more, I would sell it to you. I
+would bring you as close to Dalcruach as I could, and then you would
+take the dinghy and fend for yourself, Mr. Logan. Are you a seaman?”
+
+“I’ve rowed before,” Logan said. “Here’s another twenty pounds for the
+dinghy.”
+
+“The swell about Carnglass is a fearful thing,” Colin went on, shaking
+his heavy head in doubt, “and the reefs are like knives. Now would you
+sign a paper to say that Colin MacLean would be in no way responsible
+for the possible drowning of Mr. Hugh Logan?”
+
+“I would,” Logan answered. “Take me aboard your drifter, and I’ll write
+it now.”
+
+Colin tucked the five-pound notes into his pocket. “Midnight, Mr.
+Logan: come aboard at midnight, and we will make for Carnglass. It is
+not good to be seen landing in Carnglass; there might be a keeper with
+a rifle, even at Dalcruach. I will land you at Dalcruach early in the
+morning, with the tide in flood, the weather permitting. And then I
+wash my hands of it.”
+
+That afternoon, Logan borrowed from the hotelkeeper an old knapsack,
+into which he put some socks and underclothing, a shirt, sandwiches and
+chocolate, and a thermos of coffee. He would leave his suitcase at the
+hotel. He put on heavy waterproof boots and an old cap, and wore his
+oilskin and carried his stick. And he was ready long before midnight.
+
+Colin MacLean, with two less dour South Uist men who made up his crew,
+received him solemnly aboard the drifter. They puffed out of Loch
+Boisdale into the sea, with only two lights showing; and after that,
+for hours, Logan could perceive nothing but the obscurity of the night
+sky, clouds shutting out moon and stars. Before dawn, they stopped
+the engine, and Logan thought he could make out, vaguely, an enormous
+land-mass to the south. The drifter rolled heavily in a menacing swell;
+and there came the noise of that swell breaking upon rocks. “I will
+give you back your money for this dinghy,” said Colin, with a sour
+grin, “if you have changed your mind.”
+
+“Let me into the dinghy,” Logan told him, “and I’ll cast off.”
+
+“The more fool you,” Colin growled. They picked their way over the
+uneasy little deck to the stern, where the dinghy was in tow. MacLean
+let down a rope ladder into the little boat; he held an electric torch
+to light Logan’s descent. “Here,” said Colin, in a last-minute access
+of charity, “I will make you a present of the torch, Mr. Logan. And
+here is something else for you.” Colin took a bottle of whiskey from
+a jacket-pocket and thrust it into Logan’s canvas pack. “You will be
+wetted in beaching the boat, and the sea is cold. Row straight for the
+cliff ahead. The tide will carry you over the reef, but you must watch
+sharp for the needle-rocks. At Dalcruach clachan there is a keeper’s
+cottage, and perhaps you can dry yourself there.” Under his breath,
+Colin muttered something like “God help you.”
+
+Then Logan cast off and took the dinghy’s oars. The drifter receded
+into the night.
+
+For a moment, breaking through the pall of cloud, the moon showed him
+the cliff-head above Dalcruach. What with oars, tide, and a slight
+breeze at his back, Logan swept in toward Carnglass, the Heap of Gray
+Stones.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+At Logan’s back, as he rode the crest of that grim darkling swell, the
+forlorn hope of sunrise was fighting upward in the sky. By that pallid
+light, diffused through a gray mist, he saw that he was in perilous
+waters. Had the breeze been higher, he could have had no hope for
+making shore, amateur oarsman that he was. Sweeping round the reefs
+toward the sheer cliffs just visible in the west, a current tugged in
+ugly mood at the oars; and he pulled hard against this current, for
+it would have hurried him against that fearsome wall. Still coming in
+toward shore, the tide helped him against the current. And now he was
+among rocks.
+
+From the white heave of the water, he perceived that he was passing
+over skerries which would be dry at low tide. What was worse to the
+eye, here and there stuck up sharp rocks like swords menacing the sky,
+the “needles” of which Colin had spoken. Had it not been dawn, surely
+he would have run straight upon one. All about them--they lay all too
+close, and suddenly he was passing some by--were wicked immense swirls
+and eddies, enough to bring a man’s heart into his mouth. And Logan’s
+heart did come into his mouth.
+
+Once only, in all his life before, had he been so frightened; and that
+had been in a place very different, though equally eerie--a broken
+tomb in Okinawa, where he had crouched with two other cut-off soldiers
+while the Japanese scouts shuffled and whispered in the dark all about.
+This fearsome coast was worse than the tomb had been, for here he was
+utterly alone, in a hostile element. The mind-picture of the Okinawan
+tomb, hurrying through his brain in this horrid wet moment, vanished
+when the dinghy swung toward one of the smaller needles as if drawn by
+a magnet. Logan thrust the tip of an oar hard against the rock, and
+the boat slipped past. A wild scraping sound and a trembling assailed
+him then: the dinghy hesitated, in the flood of the tide, right upon a
+reef barely submerged. Yet her bottom held; and next she was off that
+rasping bed and hurtling on toward the dim line of the beach.
+
+Logan was nearly powerless. What a fool he had been! This one crowded
+hour of glorious life he would have exchanged, gladly, for a lifetime
+of servitude in the law-office. Yet there seemed to be sand dead ahead;
+and if he could pull hard enough against the weakened current, he might
+yet get ashore.
+
+In the growing light, the island of Carnglass loomed like one
+tremendous barrier of naked and sheer precipice, except for a kind of
+fissure or den which was his goal, vague beyond the whitecaps. The
+needles were gone now; the swell was full and heavy, as if the skerries
+were past; and he could make out the waves flinging themselves upon a
+dark beach, fighting high toward some grass and stunted trees, and then
+retreating to the terror of the abyss. Two minutes more, and the dinghy
+was tossed by those waves right upon the sand.
+
+Leaping out, Logan tugged with all his remaining strength at a line
+attached to the bow, to draw the boat as high upon the shore as he
+might, the water swirling about his waist. Back came the surf, flinging
+the dinghy higher yet, and blinding and drenching Logan, almost taking
+his feet from under him. Yet, persisting, he dragged the little boat
+over the sand with a power he had not known was in him; and when he
+thought she might be safe, he reached over the gunwale, grasped the
+heavy chunk of rusted iron that was her anchor, and flung it into the
+oozing sand. More he could not do; if the waves swept her out again,
+that was beyond his power to remedy. He staggered from the boat toward
+the tide-line and the grass beyond. When the sand grew firm under his
+feet, he fell nerveless to the beach, a spent man. And there he lay
+perhaps five or ten minutes, like a stranded jellyfish.
+
+It was done. The thing was done. He was ashore in Carnglass, and a
+whole man, though shivering and shaking with the reaction from his
+fright among the needles. Perhaps the game, after all, might be worth
+the candle.
+
+As some strength returned to him, his first thought was for the
+dinghy, in which his knapsack lay. Her anchor having held, the little
+boat rested askew upon the sand; he must have come in at the very
+flood of the tide, for already the combers broke further out, and the
+dinghy’s bows were altogether out of the water. Reeling to the boat’s
+side, Logan hauled out the knapsack and then plodded up the beach to
+the place where the heather and the gorse began to grow. He was in
+a kind of cove or pocket between thousand-foot cliffs, a triangle
+of land sloping steeply upward toward a third range of cliff at the
+back; and upon the face of that rearward cliff, not so beetling as
+its sea-neighbors, he thought he could make out the faint line of an
+ancient path.
+
+Something more welcome, however, now huddled close before him: a line
+of low rubble walls, the work of man. These were primitive cottages,
+no doubt the clachan of Dalcruach. They were larochs, roofless ruins,
+deserted these many years.
+
+All but one. Toward the end of the row of forlorn dwellings, a single
+thatched roof remained, kept secure against the Hebridean gales by a
+wide-meshed net spread over the rough thatch and anchored by big stones
+lashed to the net-ends. The hut had no chimney, but only a hole in the
+middle of the thatch; it had no windows, and a single door; this must
+be the “black house” of the Isles, one of those Viking-age cottages
+still inhabited, squat, thick-walled, snug, out of the childhood of the
+race. People dwelt in them still, Logan had been told, here and there
+in Uist and Barra. And this one might be the cottage of the keeper or
+gillie that Colin MacLeod had mentioned. Incautious in his weariness,
+Logan limped to the heavy door and pounded. No one answered: the
+hut seemed to be as empty as its roofless neighbors. And then Logan
+observed that the door had been secured by a padlock and hasp, but
+the hasp had been ripped away from the door-frame, the screws hanging
+impotent in their holes. Lifting the latch, Logan entered.
+
+Yes, it was a black house. Lacking proper fireplace or chimney, the
+peat smoke had eddied round the single room for centuries, perhaps,
+turning stone walls and beams and thatch to ebony. But it was dry,
+and it was furnished. There were a table and shelves, and a chair or
+two, and a heap of dry peats by the rough hearth below the gap in the
+thatch. And in a corner stood that rare object, the old-fashioned
+cotter’s closet-bed, built of boards up to the roof to keep off the
+draughts, with only a wide hole for the occupant to crawl in upon his
+mattress, and a curtain over that aperture. Logan pulled back the
+curtain. There was no one inside, but there were decent blankets upon
+the bed. Feeling like Goldilocks in the house of the Three Bears, Logan
+flung down his pack.
+
+Some dry bits of driftwood lay by the peats. Logan tested the
+cigar-lighter he had kept in an inner pocket of his jacket, to see
+if it would work; it still would. Making a little heap of kindling
+upon the hearth, he banked peats about it, and lit a fire; in three or
+four minutes, some of the brown and springy squares of peat had begun
+to smoulder, and Logan piled more peat upon them to keep the fire
+going while he slept. Only then did he throw off his drenched clothes,
+laying them upon a chair near the fire, and drag himself naked into the
+venerable bed, rolling deep into its blankets. Swiftly Logan sank into
+unconsciousness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sea-water having affected his watch, Logan could not tell what time
+it was, precisely, when at length he woke; but surely it was well into
+the afternoon. Some vigor had returned to his body. The slow-burning
+peats still glowed upon the hearth; the house was warm, and thick with
+the sweet smoke; daylight--the sun must be free of the clouds for a
+time--came through the smoke-gap in the thatch. There was no sound
+but the unending wash of the sea upon the beach, deadened here by the
+thickness of the walls of rubble. His clothes, still very damp but
+wearable, lay faintly steaming on the chair by the fire. This was the
+loneliest spot Logan ever had known.
+
+Having dressed, Logan turned out the contents of his knapsack, which
+had not suffered badly from the sea. A pair of binoculars he had bought
+before leaving America was intact, and he had his shaving-things, and
+the ordnance-map and old Balmullo’s pamphlet, and what mattered most
+to him, the thermos of coffee, Colin’s bottle of whiskey, and the big
+parcel of sandwiches from the hotel. Of those sandwiches, he promptly
+ate all but a reserve of two. Pouring the coffee into a pan he found
+upon the shelves, he set it to warm by the peats. Life was liveable
+again. And opening the door with the broken hasp, Logan went out into
+the Carnglass afternoon.
+
+The ghostly clachan of Dalcruach lay silent in a cul-de-sac formed
+by the sea, the two sea-cliffs, and the inland cliff. Just now the
+sun was peeping through the gray blanket above. Everywhere water was
+running: little torrents foamed from the lip of the cliffs, and springs
+sent tiny streams down to the rocky bay, through gorse and heather
+and bracken. Between cliffs and tide, this bit of lowland must have
+been cultivated intensively for centuries, but now a towering forest
+of green bracken, high as Logan’s head, came right down to the backs
+of the ruined cottages. Except for some gulls, the only animate thing
+which Logan could see was a shape high up the face of the landward
+cliff: a goat, or perhaps a deer. Primroses already flowered upon the
+cliff-face. Upon these scanty and isolated acres, a little village of
+MacAskivals had subsisted from time out of mind. But they were gone,
+and Logan stood in this wet green desolation as if he were the last man
+on earth.
+
+He went down to the dinghy. The receding tide had left her high enough,
+but soon the sea would return; so he took off shoes and stockings and
+tried to drag her to a more sheltered place by a shelf of rock that ran
+up from the skerries into the silver sands of the beach. But though he
+bailed her out, she was too heavy for him; only the tide could budge
+her. Her oars he carried back to the black house. And now he would make
+his way across the island to the Old House, before evening came. The
+sun had withdrawn again, but surely he could find his way up the cliff,
+despite the mists, and so across brae and valley and hill to the Old
+House and Lady MacAskival. Already he had been nearly six days on the
+way.
+
+Sitting on a boulder by the door of the black house, he examined
+the ordnance survey map of Carnglass, Daldour, and the waters round
+about. Carnglass really was a peculiar island. A ring of tremendous
+cliffs seemed to guard her from the sea at all points, except here
+at Dalcruach and at Askival harbor, a larger opening at the opposite
+extremity of Carnglass, away to the southwest. To judge by the
+contour-lines, these sea-cliffs also had an inner face, standing some
+five hundred feet high above a kind of central valley or moor. Halfway
+between Dalcruach and the Old House by Askival harbor, this valley was
+interrupted by a tall, sharp hill, ridges from which extended across
+the valley to the cliffs on either side of the island, a sort of
+watershed.
+
+As the gull flies, it could not be more than three miles from Dalcruach
+to the Old House. But there was the hard climb of the landward cliff
+behind Dalcruach; then the valley or moor would be boggy; and the ridge
+in the middle of the island must be surmounted; and between that ridge
+and the Old House were some markings which Logan took to indicate a bad
+bog. The trip would require some hours, and he had best set off. The
+dotted line of a minor path, on the map, suggested that some track ran
+across the island, but surely nothing like a road. Then Logan took up
+his thorn stick and began the ascent of the landward cliff.
+
+Up this dim path, surely little but sheep, goats, and deer had gone
+for many years. Here and there a hazel bush clung to the cliff’s edge.
+Though the day was cool, that sharp climb made Logan pant. After half
+an hour, he was at the summit, and much of Carnglass spread out before
+him--or would have been visible, had not the mist been growing thicker.
+He could make out the big hill--on the map it was called Mucaird--in
+the middle of the island, but the ridge and hill would have shut off
+Old House and New House, even had the day been clear. As a gust of wind
+in this high place dissolved the fog for a few moments, he glimpsed
+a derelict farm or sheep-steading nestled against Mucaird. And the
+valley between him and the high hill was not an even plateau, but
+rugged and broken with spurs of rock, though the bracken waved over
+the higher parts of it. He turned his glasses toward the south. There,
+across the deep blue of the Sound of Carnglass, lay the low isle of
+Daldour.
+
+Now he would have to descend the inner face of the cliff, perhaps four
+hundred feet high, to the green valley: a descent more precarious than
+the climb from Dalcruach, for boulders lay tumbled upon the inner face,
+as if ready to fall to the valley floor, and their shapes were hidden
+by a dense growth of fern. He must step with care. Down he started.
+
+But about three boulders down, he halted again. The mist--here it hung
+cloud-like--lay just over his head, the sunlight coming through in a
+dim religious way. At the moment, the valley beneath him, nevertheless,
+was quite clear of fog. And almost straight down, in the part of the
+valley at the foot of his cliff, men were moving. Logan turned his
+binoculars upon them.
+
+Away to his left, a small puppet that must be a very big man was
+running frantically across the valley floor, just here rocky and bare.
+Some two hundred yards behind him, three other men trotted. These were
+armed men: it was rifles they seemed to be carrying. None of them were
+looking upward toward Logan. One of the three halted, knelt, brought
+his gun to his shoulder, and fired. The report echoed uncannily from
+the cliffs. He had shot at the big man leaping toward the further
+rocks: there could be no doubt of it.
+
+But the big man was not hit. He had reached some boulders near the
+southern cliff, and now crouched behind one of them, drawing something
+from the long cloak or coat he wore. As his three pursuers came on--the
+man must have been hidden from their view, Logan thought--a report
+came from behind the cluster of boulders: the big man had a pistol.
+Immediately after firing, the man in the coat darted on to the next
+clump of boulders, and waited there. Stooping and taking what cover
+they could in the bracken, his three adversaries cautiously pushed
+forward, about ten yards from one another. The big man held the
+advantage of higher ground. As the three neared the rocks he had just
+left, and so came within range of his pistol, the big man fired a
+second time. Now the three pursuers fell flat on their faces, for the
+bullet seemed to have ricocheted against a boulder perilously close to
+the foremost rifleman. And taking advantage of their discomfiture, the
+big man scrambled on toward the mouth of a small ravine that appeared
+to twist into the southern cliff.
+
+Swinging his glasses toward the three riflemen, Logan thought he caught
+some movement to _their_ rear. He focused the binoculars. Though he
+could not be sure, it seemed to him that someone or something was
+stealthily drawing closer, through bracken and gorse, to the three
+men. Whatever it might be--and if it was not an optical illusion--it
+kept hid in the green stuff; no head ever showed. If there, it must be
+moving on all fours, beast-like; what one detected was not a form, but
+a trail of movement through the dense bracken, to be discerned only by
+an observer who, like Logan, was perched high above.
+
+Logan looked back toward the big man, who was just disappearing into
+the gully or den at the southern cliff. Two of the pursuers, who
+now had got to their feet, fired at him as they stood. The big man
+stumbled, recovered, and was gone into the recess. And the riflemen
+resumed, at a walk, their tracking. Then the bank of mist settled over
+Logan’s head and lower into the valley, cutting Logan off from sight
+of whatever was happening below. He heard two more shots, though; and
+then silence followed. Through all this, no human voice had drifted up
+to him.
+
+Logan clung astonished to his perch. Here in Carnglass were wheels
+within wheels. He had suspected something was amiss in the island: but
+to discover, as if he were an Olympian looking down upon the follies
+of humankind, this curious sport of island man-hunting was bewildering
+even to Hugh Logan, who had been around. This, after all, was a
+small corner of Great Britain, in the year of Our Lord one thousand
+nine hundred and sixty. In Mutto’s Wynd, his own struggle with Jock
+Anderson’s gang conceivably might have been only a chance encounter;
+and even if it had been part of someone’s design, no more had been
+meant, perhaps, than a brutal robbery. The sinister-ludicrous figure of
+Captain Gare had come to him at Oban through no chance encounter, but
+that insubstantial personality had vanished before a little chaffing.
+This affair in the valley of Carnglass was deadly serious--this
+stalking of a man as if he were a rabbit. And Logan had not the
+faintest notion of what pursuers and pursued might be.
+
+So what should he do now? The mist, reinforced by a light rain, had
+become so dense below him that the remaining descent of the cliff,
+in these conditions, would be almost foolhardy until some sunlight
+worked its way through. In any event, what with this delay, it seemed
+improbable that he could make his way to the Old House before sunset.
+And, judging from the silent hunters far below, to knock at the gate
+of the Old House after sunset might be highly imprudent. Logan did not
+relish the thought of being taken for the big man with the pistol,
+supposing that person still to be in the land of the living. Besides,
+the quarry might be doubling back across the valley by this time,
+and for Logan to descend unknown into that scene from the Inferno,
+with bullets flying, wasn’t the best policy for a rising man of law.
+Everything considered, he had better creep back along the dim path
+to Dalcruach, and there spend another night in the black house,
+even though this must mean he had taken a full week to reach Lady
+MacAskival. He could make a safer start early in the morning; perhaps
+Lady MacAskival’s demoniac gillies did not hunt before breakfast. And
+there was a queasy feeling at the pit of his stomach. It was thoroughly
+improbable that any man would try to make his way over the cliff to
+Dalcruach this evening, what with fog, wind, and the clammy emptiness
+of the dead clachan in the cul-de-sac.
+
+So Logan, still marvelling, shuffled carefully back toward Dalcruach,
+where he could enjoy the peat fire, and eat his remaining sandwiches,
+and write some memoir of this past week to post to Duncan MacAskival
+when the business was accomplished. He had found a kerosene lamp on one
+of the shelves, with fuel still in it. He might even read a bit in old
+Balmullo, for the sake of settling his nerves. Though the hasp was torn
+loose, the heavy door could be barred from within by a balk of sea-worn
+timber that fitted into holes on either side of the door-frame; and
+Logan did bar it. Now no one could get at him suddenly except through
+the thatch of the roof. And if folk outside did not know Logan to be
+unarmed, they would think twice about bursting blindly through the
+roof. Lighting the lamp, Logan took some sheets of paper--somewhat
+blurred and dampened by water--from a pad in his pack, settled himself
+at the table, and began to write with his ball-point pen.
+
+He would save the sandwiches until he had finished writing. He was
+hungry, though; and despite the moist air, his throat felt dry. Logan
+put down his pen, threw his oilskin over his shoulders, and went out
+to the spring that bubbled only ten yards from the door. Coming back
+with a full pail, he drank deep and put the rest of the water--tasting
+faintly of peat--by the shelves. He drew up the chair and resumed his
+writing.
+
+Then a deep voice spoke behind him. “Will you be a writer, or a
+philosophist?” the voice said.
+
+Upsetting his chair, Logan sprang nimbly round to face the voice. He
+saw a very big man in a drenched ragged overcoat; and in the man’s
+massive fist was a little old pistol, held steadily. The big man was
+bareheaded and bald-headed: a sloping dome of a head, with strong
+flattish features, battered and seared, and a broad, full-lipped mouth.
+Blood was caked all down one cheek of that hard face, and seemed still
+to be oozing from a gash high on the bald skull, where a little flap of
+skin fell away from the bone.
+
+Logan’s visitor stood gigantic in the shadows, close by the boxed
+bed; probably he had hidden there. “Don’t move your hands,” the deep
+voice said. “I’m Seamus Donley: so don’t move your hands. I said to
+you, ‘Will you be a writer, or a philosophist?’ Or, now, will you be a
+police-detective?”
+
+Immobile, Logan thought he detected some humor in that wide mouth.
+“Good evening, Mr. Donley,” Logan said. “Put away that toy, and eat a
+sandwich with me.”
+
+“Turn round, Mr. Police-Detective,” Donley told him, “and hold your
+hands high.” There was nothing else Logan could do; besides, if the man
+had meant to shoot him in the back, he could have done that already.
+Donley’s rough hands ran over and into Logan’s pockets. “Now where
+might your gun be, Mr. Police-Detective? Your friend Seamus has looked
+in your rucksack and in the bed already.” This was a wild Irishman: the
+brogue was pronounced, and possibly a little exaggerated, as if Donley
+strove for effect.
+
+“I have no gun, Mr. Donley.”
+
+“Swing round again and let me look at you,” Donley grunted. He had
+stepped back a pace, by way of precaution, but in the lamp-light Logan
+saw clearly enough the reckless, not ill-natured face of a man in late
+middle age; and below that face an immense barrel-chest and powerful
+arms. The gun man must stand nearly six feet six. “Faith,” Donley went
+on, “I come near to believing you. You’ve the look of innocence. But
+whatever were they thinking of to send an acolyte of a police-detective
+after Jackman’s fellows? Now listen to me, Mr. Police-Detective: if
+you’ve a gun about you, fetch it out, for you need it as much as yours
+truly, Seamus Donley. Would the lads in the Republican Army ever have
+believed that old Seamus should be asking a police-detective to help
+him? Sure, it’s your life, man, as much as mine. We can’t tell but
+Jackman’s chaps might be at the door this living minute.”
+
+“I don’t understand you, Mr. Donley, and I didn’t bring a gun.”
+
+Donley scowled. “Saints in heaven! Now’s no time for playing little
+games, Mr. Police-Detective. This is not London. Those fellows would
+put you over the cliff as quick as myself. That’s what they did with
+Lagg; but you can’t know that. You know me: any police-detective knows
+Seamus Donley, that lay in Derry gaol four hard years, breaking out
+last Christmas. Do you think it’s myself would be telling you my own
+name, and showing you my own face, if we’d no need for standing back to
+back? A fine young police-detective you are! Here, now: I’ll send Meg
+to bed.” He thrust the gun back inside his coat. “There, I’m trusting
+you, Mr. Police-Detective, and you must be after trusting me. We’ll
+put out the light, for ’tis a standing invite to Jackman and his bully
+boys.” Donley blew out the wick. “And we’ll trample the turfs.” Donley
+crushed under his boots most of the peats, and tossed ashes over the
+rest of the fire, leaving only a faint glow. “These three days gone,
+Mr. Police-Detective, Jackman’s gang have let me be after dark, but
+they might change; and there’s others might come.”
+
+Logan groped about the table in the dark. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you
+much refreshment, Seamus Donley, but there are two sandwiches left, and
+most of a bottle of whiskey. Why do you take me for a detective?”
+
+“I’d have eaten and drunk your victuals before now, Mr.
+Police-Detective, but you gave me no time. I’d but a moment to slip
+through your door and into your bed while you were at the well. A fine
+young police-detective you are! But Donley’s not the man to let his
+host go hungry.” He handed back half a sandwich to Logan, wolfing the
+others. “And the poteen: that’s the medicine for myself when I’ve been
+three days and nights in caves and bogs. One morning I caught a rabbit
+and ate it raw, and another time I cut a sheep’s throat and had a
+supper of the bloody ribs; but for the rest, it was birds’ eggs got on
+the cliffs and sucked on the run, and a few shellfish I pulled from the
+rocks on this very beach.”
+
+Logan--his eyes had adjusted fairly well to the dark now--brought two
+tumblers from the shelves and filled them with whiskey. “Your health,
+Mr. Seamus Donley.”
+
+The Irishman chuckled. “There’s this to be said, young fellow my
+lad: you’re a cool police-detective. And how do I know you’re a
+police-detective? Why, what else might you be? It’s not an Englishman
+that you are, though--there’s that for you. I’m thinking you’ll be an
+Edinburgh man.”
+
+He might get more information out of Donley, Logan reflected, if he did
+not try to dispel this illusion. “More whiskey, Mr. Donley? Of course.
+And what is it I can do for you?”
+
+Donley drained at a gulp his second tumbler of whiskey. He had taken
+a chair opposite Logan, and sat relaxed, though watchful: a hardened
+customer. “Why, just this, Mr. Police-Detective: first we’ll take
+those oars of yours out of this hovel, and then we’ll launch that boat
+of yours between the two of us, with myself inside, and then it’s
+Seamus for Scotland and Mr. Police-Detective back to his but-and-ben in
+Carnglass--back to Hell, that is.”
+
+Upon the thatch the rain fell heavily now, and the wind has risen. “You
+have turned daft, Seamus Donley,” Logan said. “Listen to that wind.
+You’d never get over the skerries in that little old boat this night,
+let alone row to the mainland. Daldour would be the best you might hope
+for.”
+
+“Daldour?” Donley snorted. “And land among the heathens? Why not the
+Cannibal Isles? Besides, there I would rot in Daldour till you, Mr.
+Police-Detective, might choose to come for me in the police-launch. No,
+it’s not Derry gaol for Seamus. It’s a Kerry man I am, and as good a
+boatman as any in these islands--born by Bantry Bay. No, I’ll be hid
+in Glasgow or Birmingham or Liverpool before you report to the Chief
+Constable, my boy--supposing that ever you get clear from Carnglass,
+which I do very much misdoubt.”
+
+“If you must be fool enough to go boating this night, Mr. Donley, then
+wait an hour on the chance of the wind falling. The boat’s light enough
+for you and me to get her afloat, even so: the tide must be up beyond
+her now. The risk of this wind is greater than the risk of low water on
+the skerries.”
+
+Bending forward, Donley gave Logan a light approving tap on the
+shoulder. “For a police-detective, you’re a decent sort. What would
+your name be?”
+
+Logan told him.
+
+“See here, Mr. Detective Logan: I’ll wait that hour, but no more.
+Never would I have guessed a police-detective would have a regard for
+Seamus Donley’s skin. And see here: you’d best come with me. If you’ll
+give myself your word of honor bright--you’re no Englishman, that
+I’ll say--to grant myself twelve hours pursuit-free once we set foot
+ashore, then it’s Seamus who’ll set you in Scotland safe, Mr. Scots
+Detective, and shake your hand at parting.”
+
+“No, thank you, Seamus Donley,” Logan answered, “but I’ve business in
+Carnglass. Lady MacAskival will see that I get to Oban or Glasgow, when
+the business is done.”
+
+“Lady MacAskival! Do you think they’d let you see her, or that
+the Old One gives orders today? And even were they all saints in
+Carnglass, they’ve no boat to put at the service of one Mr. Logan,
+Police-Detective, with a face like the cherubim. Was it not my fire
+that fetched you here?”
+
+“What fire?”
+
+A note of pique came into Donley’s voice. “Then you will have known of
+Jackman’s doings earlier, and I’ve had half my labor in vain. I might
+have told Jackman that what with his crew, the police were sure to find
+him out. ’Tis this: I burnt the yacht and wrecked the launch three
+nights gone. That was for spiting and hindering Jackman. And I had
+hopes of folk spying the fire and sending word to shore.”
+
+“Then they’ve had no communication with the mainland for three days?”
+This, Logan thought, could explain the confusion of Dowie and Gare.
+
+“Three days? What with the storm, Jackman’s sent no messages, nor got
+any, all this week. The wireless is a wreck. Jackman will be raging
+like an imp from the Pit, that oily limb of Satan. Oh, he’ll be cursing
+the day he crossed Seamus Donley.”
+
+He might worm the whole story gradually out of Donley, Logan hoped: it
+was clear enough that Donley assumed he already knew a good deal of it.
+“Tell me this, Mr. Donley, while we’re waiting here: what state are
+matters in at the Old House?”
+
+“Do you take me for an informer?” The heavy voice, there in the smoky
+darkness, took on an ominous tone. It never would do to forget that
+Donley must be a thoroughly dangerous man.
+
+“I take you for a man who’s been tricked, Mr. Seamus Donley, and who
+needs what aid he can find. While we’re on that topic, I’ll do what
+I can for that bloody spot on your head. Did a bullet come close to
+finishing you?” A little light shone from the peats, and by it Logan
+set to washing the wound and bandaging it with two clean handkerchiefs
+from his knapsack. Donley, gritting his teeth, seemed to trust Logan
+sufficiently to let him do the job, though he kept one hand upon the
+pistol within his coat. Logan put back the flap of skin upon the skull
+and improvised a kind of scarf-bandage that probably would not endure
+long; he washed the caked blood from Donley’s lined face.
+
+“No, that was a damned fall this afternoon, when Ferd was shooting at
+me, Mr. Detective Logan. In all my years with the I.R.A., I never came
+so close to my end. But I’ll even scores, trust Seamus for that.”
+
+The man had not winced much during the bandaging. “Keep your hand in,
+my boy, and in no time you’ll be as fine a doctor as any at Dublin, or
+as Jackman himself. Jackman will be no true physician, but I’ll not
+need to be telling you that, Mr. Police-Detective. ’Tis a doctor of
+philosophy he’ll be, University of Leningrad, or Moscow. Yet I’m not
+the man to be stinting anyone of his praise: Jackman’s clever with
+splints and medicines, and all else under the sun. A clever child,
+Edmund Jackman. Jackman it was that drew me out of Derry gaol, he
+having use for me. Jackman it was, sure, but not for Seamus’ sake. For
+doing the Devil’s work, there’ll be none better than Jackman.”
+
+“And what,” Logan continued as he adjusted the clumsy bandage, “is life
+like at the Old House?”
+
+“Well, now, Mr. Detective Logan, do you mind that bit in Dante’s
+Inferno where old Dante and Vergil observe the stewing of the frauds
+in the chasms? That’ll be your reception at the Old House, and if
+you’ve a brain in your skull, Mr. Logan, you’ll be jumping into the
+little boat with Seamus and making for your headquarters. You’ll
+require a dozen constables with rifles, or more, to take Jackman’s
+gang.”
+
+Despite his brogue--which, Logan suspected, was in part the affectation
+of a virulent Irish nationalist, or of whimsy--Donley had not spoken
+like an unschooled man; and this literary allusion confirmed Logan’s
+surmise. “I think you’re what you Irish call a ‘spiled praist,’ Seamus
+Donley.”
+
+“Sure, never a praist,” Donley answered, grinning, “not myself. Yet I
+had some inclination after being a monk, and a lay-brother I was for
+nine praying months, in Sligo, till the love of the drink and the love
+of the girls undid me. Jackman was after calling me ‘Father Seamus’:
+he’s eyes in his head, more eyes by one than most men. His boy Ferd
+was for giving me a third eye for myself.” Here the gunman gingerly
+touched his bandaged forehead. “Ferd will be the deadliest of Jackman’s
+imps, as you’ll find to your sorrow; do you watch sharp for him. ’Tis
+the Maltese Cat I call him. Swift with a gun, and swift with a knife.
+And Jackman sent him to the Old One for a cook at the Old House! Ferd
+has virtue as a cook, no denying: the father of him keeps a little
+eating-house in Soho. But Ferd’s better at murthering than cooking.”
+
+“How many others are in the Old House?”
+
+Again Donley filled his tumbler of whiskey. “Jackman himself, and that
+walking cadaver Royall, that he calls his secretary--the only other
+political man in the lot. Then there will be five manservants, or a
+set of cutthroats that Jackman pawned off on the Old One for servants:
+butler, footman, gardener, gardener’s boy (a broth of a boy!) and a
+fellow that passes for stableman or cowman. I was the keeper or gillie.
+Then there are three men for the yacht and the launch, all Jackman’s
+pick: I singed the whiskers of one of them, Harry Till, a Liverpool
+longshoreman, and he may be at death’s door, praise be to the saints.
+Because Jackman told them so, the Old One and the Young One turned off
+all the old servants, even the laborers at the farm; Lagg sent his
+wife back to Galloway, and at the end, he was living in a room or two
+by himself at the New House. Except for the Old One and the Young One,
+there’s but one woman in Carnglass, and that’s a poor shawlie, old
+Agnes with the arthritis, fit for no better than scrubbing floors and
+carrying trays to the Old One. So the odds will be ten or eleven to
+one against Mr. Police-Detective, as they’ve been against myself these
+three days past. Come away, Mr. Detective Logan: yourself would last
+two days less than Seamus has.”
+
+“Do you mean that Lagg is dead?”
+
+Donley shifted uneasily. “Mind this, Mr. Logan: ’tis no doing of mine.
+What could be done to help Lagg, the old toad, I did. Nor did I see him
+die. They took him beyond the Chapel, to the highest of the cliffs,
+and they did not bring him back. ’Twas Seamus was meant to do the job,
+but I was one too many for even Dr. Edmund Jackman. Should ever there
+be a trial, and should yourself and myself come alive out of this, Mr.
+Logan, you’ll bear that in memory.”
+
+“If I’m to bear witness for you, Seamus, perhaps you’ll tell me the
+details of your part in the business.”
+
+Donley sighed. “Never did I think myself would turn informer, but that
+comes of the keeping of ill company. Not that Jackman and Royall will
+be common criminals: they’re uncommon enough. The rest will not be
+politicals, only hard cases that Jackman has some clutch upon. As for
+myself, Mr. Detective Logan, I never took a penny that was not mine,
+unless on Army orders.”
+
+Getting up abruptly, Donley went to the door and put his ear against
+it. “The wind is high still,” he said, “and sure they never will come
+to us in such dark as this--not Jackman’s town crew. But ’tis my nerves
+that are on edge, Mr. Logan: three days with next to nothing in my
+belly, mind, so that there have been times when I thought more people
+than Jackman’s were walking in Carnglass. A damned island. Well, then,
+my autobiography, or a bit of it, Mr. Police-Detective. Much good may
+the telling of it do you, or myself.” Thrusting his chair toward the
+smouldering fire, Donley warmed his boots. What little light there was
+played upon his scarred face. And Hugh Logan listened.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+“Belfast it was where I met with Davie Anderson,” Donley began, “a
+Glasgow razor-slasher of blasphemous conversation. Taking up with
+him was folly, Mr. Logan, but I’d small choice. The Republican
+Army--mollycoddles they are these days, to a man--would do nothing for
+me but hide me a week or two, and that with ill grace.
+
+“‘You’re impulsive, Donley,’ said they to me. I do believe they wished
+me back in Derry gaol. And who was it that blew the bridge ten years
+past? And who was it that was at the lighting of the fires in Belfast,
+to show the Luftwaffe where to drop their bombs? Why, Seamus Donley,
+none other. The Germans were nothing to myself, nor Jackman and his
+politics, neither; but it was enough for me that the English would
+catch it.
+
+“No, the I.R.A. never sent the files that took me out of Derry gaol,
+nor the money, nor the motorcar, though at the time I took it for their
+work. Jackman it was: Jackman knew Seamus Donley for a man to handle
+the explosives.” He poured more whiskey.
+
+“When Davie Anderson came to me, I said I would do Jackman’s work for
+Jackman’s pay. A month ago it was that they brought me to Carnglass,
+and made me gamekeeper, and showed me the explosives, and told me the
+work I was to do, when the time came. Davie Anderson! Davie Anderson!
+Once let me come in reach of you, Davie Anderson, and you’ll seduce no
+more honest rebels.”
+
+“Does Davie Anderson have a brother Jock, in the Gallowgate of
+Glasgow?” Logan put in.
+
+“That has he, Mr. Detective Logan. I perceive you’re not so innocent
+as you seem, not by half. A bad case, either Davie or Jock, like all
+Jackman’s lot. Nine-tenths criminals, and but one-tenth politicals.
+And that political tenth not my patriotic politics. ’Tis a rough life
+I’ve led, Mr. Logan, and I’m no man for small scruples. But needless
+murthering, unpolitical murthering, never suited my fancy. And in the
+murthering of women I will have no part, not even the murthering of old
+witches. And Jackman’s plan it was, or I’m a Black and Tan, to lay the
+slaughter to Seamus Donley’s account.”
+
+“What good would killing women be to Jackman?” Logan asked.
+
+“There’s no need for you to play the cherub with me, Mr.
+Police-Detective. ’Twas the money, of course: all that money. ’Tis not
+for his own self’s sake Jackman seeks the money, but to ingratiate
+himself again with his party. Sure, and didn’t they cast him out for
+a premature deviationist, and for the wild things he’d done? But the
+money, and the spying about the islands, and the explosives under the
+new installations--faith, if that thing might be done, the party would
+take him back, soon enough. A risky work it is, but if Jackman does it
+well, all’s kisses. And the party is all Jackman’s life, he being a
+political through and through: that I’ll say for him. Jackman and his
+boys never told me, for never did they trust me, nor I them. But I’ve
+eyes in my head, Mr. Detective Logan, and a brain for right reasoning.
+When the time came, the women must die. And if ever it came to the
+prisoner in the box, who would they have for scapegoat? Why, old
+Seamus Donley, that’s a fugitive from English justice.”
+
+“And did Lagg know of this?”
+
+“Tam Lagg took Jackman’s money two years and more. Yet the murthering
+never came into Lagg’s thick wits, I do believe, until a month ago.
+To help Jackman to bully the Old One into making him her heir was one
+thing; to plot murther was another. And treason, too. Lagg’s was no
+stomach for such tactics. But where could Tam Lagg turn? He could not
+get ashore, nor even post a letter, without Jackman’s leave. When Lagg
+saw what I had seen, and thought the thoughts I had thought--concerning
+the plot for murther, I mean--he took fright. Jackman sees through a
+man as if flesh were glass, and Jackman will have known this month past
+that Lagg could be trusted no more.
+
+“Then Jackman was the cat, and Lagg the mouse. And Jackman and his boys
+watched Lagg by day and by night. When they caught Lagg lighting the
+fire behind the hill, they made an end of him.”
+
+“What sort of fire, Donley?”
+
+“Why, the fire that might have been seen by folk in Daldour, to bring
+them over from curiosity; but it never came to a blaze. That afternoon
+I sat by my cottage at the New House, mending rabbit-snares--for they
+had lodged me in the keeper’s cottage, as if they feared to have
+me much about the Old House, near the gelignite--when Jackman came
+striding up, and with him Royall and Davie Anderson and Rab, that holy
+terror of a boy. Three days ago it was, but for old Seamus it seems
+like three years, what with the hiding and the running and the starving
+since.
+
+“‘Donley,’ Jackman says to me, in his quiet wicked way, ‘come along.
+We’re hunting today.’
+
+“‘Then I’ll be wanting my shotgun, Dr. Jackman,’ I say to him. But he
+shakes his misbegotten head.
+
+“‘No, Donley, you old ruffian,’ says he, ‘we’ve guns enough for this
+hunting of ours.’ And I see that Rab and Davie have rifles slung over
+their shoulders. Jackman himself carries no weapon ever, they say; and
+sure I’ve not seen him with any. ’Tis terror that he carries.
+
+“So up I get, as you see me now, bareheaded and in my coat, and tramp
+round with Jackman and his boys to the shoulder of the hill they call
+Mucaird, and over the shoulder till we come close up to the broken
+farmhouse there. And from within the house, smoke is beginning to rise.
+
+“‘Hush, gentlemen,’ whispers Jackman. ‘We must not disturb the factor
+at his little games.’ In through the empty doorway we creep; and there
+crouches that fat toad Lagg, his back to us, feeding a fire in a
+corner, pouring petrol on a heap of trash, so as to set the whole ruin
+ablaze. A noble beacon it would have made.
+
+“Jackman grins his devil-grin. ‘Good day, Mr. Lagg,’ says he. ‘You’re a
+warm friend, Mr. Lagg.’
+
+“Tam Lagg squeals like a pig when you come with the butchering-knife,
+and jumps round: a gross ugly man in corduroys, his face red and puffy
+always, but now white as a cadaver’s. ‘Dr. Jackman!’ he squeals. ‘Dr.
+Jackman!’ And he can say no more, for there is no more to be said.
+
+“‘Yes, your old patron, Dr. Jackman,’ that Beelzebub tells him. ‘I
+assume that you’re weary of our company, Mr. Lagg.’ Davie and Rab tramp
+out the fire in the damp roofless room, while Lagg crouches by the wall
+like a trapped hare.
+
+“‘Even the fondest of friends must part, Mr. Lagg,’ says Jackman,
+cheery as a cat with a rotten mackerel, ‘and you’re come to the end of
+your tether, my good and faithful servant.’ Then Davie and Rab take
+Lagg by the arms and fling him upon the rubbish, and Davie unslings his
+rifle.
+
+“‘For God’s sake, Dr. Jackman,’ says Lagg, puffing and weeping, ‘I’ve
+an auld wifie in Galloway, by Gatehouse of Fleet, and four bairns. And
+this is a civilized land.’
+
+“‘Why, Donley’s compatriots have a phrase that fits your situation,
+Mr. Lagg,’ smiles Jackman. ‘“What’s all the world to a man,” the Irish
+say, “when his wife’s a widdy?” You’ll never be missed, Lagg. You’ll
+have been lost at sea, merrily fishing. These are wild waters round
+Carnglass. And as for civilized lands--why, “had ye been where I ha’
+been, and seen wha’ I ha’ seen”--eh, Thomas Lagg? This is the end of
+an old refrain for you. I never took to your red face. And even if I
+wished to spare you, still there would be the problem of morale among
+my associates here, wouldn’t there? There’s nothing like an execution
+or two to encourage the others. And Lady MacAskival will be so obliging
+as to write to the police concerning your sad disappearance at sea.’
+He’s in love with dying--other men’s dying--is Jackman.
+
+“It came to me then, Mr. Logan, that when my usefulness to Jackman
+was done, Jackman and his boys would crowd old Seamus into some such
+corner. There’s no honor among the lot of them. Lagg and Seamus were
+outsiders. And that man Lagg did cry so, lying there in the smouldering
+rubbish. David pokes him with the muzzle of his rifle, and Jackman
+gloats, like a sloat down a rabbit’s burrow. I was standing behind
+the crowd of them. ‘Though the creature’s a Presbyterian,’ I say to
+Jackman, ‘at the least you’ll grant him a moment for his prayers.’ And
+that said, I whisk out Meg here.” Donley patted the revolver inside his
+coat. “Jackman’s lot never had known I kept Meg under my arm.
+
+“They all turn to face me, Davie with the rifle half raised. ‘Davie
+Anderson,’ say I, ‘drop it!’ And Davie lets the gun fall, for he
+knows the reputation of Seamus Donley. Rab’s rifle is slung over his
+shoulder; Royall’s pistol is in his pocket. Yet it is four to one.
+Jackman’s devil-grin never changes.
+
+“‘Why, Father Seamus,’ he says, genteel as Brian Boru, ‘I presume you
+aspire to the role of confessor.’
+
+“‘No, I’m no priest, Jackman,’ say I. ‘Yet you’ll have the grace to
+grant Lagg a moment for repentance, or ’tis myself will have another
+Englishman’s life on my conscience.’
+
+“‘I’ll humor your piety, Father Seamus,’ Jackman says, though his black
+eyes are like hell-coals. ‘Mr. Lagg, to your devotions.’
+
+“Lagg grovels in the dirt, moaning; and if he prays, the words run all
+together; and as for myself, I am too bent on watching Jackman and the
+rest to listen to him. A long minute it was, Mr. Logan.
+
+“Jackman looks at his wrist-watch. ‘_Pax vobiscum_,’ says he, ever so
+sneering. ‘And now, Father Seamus, seeing that you have your little
+gun conveniently in your Fenian paw, perhaps you will be so kind as to
+administer the _coup de grace_ to our old comrade here.’ The eyes of
+those four murtherers are turned on myself like dogs round a badger.
+
+“‘Jackman,’ I tell him, ‘may I screech in Hell if I lift a finger in
+this bloody business.’
+
+“‘Perhaps, in any event, Mr. Lagg would prefer a cold plunge,’ Jackman
+says, smoothly. Lagg does no more than look at me, gasping and choking,
+as if I were the king of glory. But the odds are four to one, Mr.
+Logan, and Seamus has himself to think of, and Lagg was a tricky old
+toad.
+
+“‘Being but one man, Jackman,’ say I, ‘I cannot hinder you. Yet you’ll
+not harm the rascal in my sight.’
+
+“‘As you wish, Reverend Father.’ And Jackman nods to Rab and Davie.
+They take Lagg by the arms, he screaming out my name the while, and
+drag him through the doorway; and Royall picks up Davie’s rifle, though
+careful not to lift it high nor point it toward old Seamus. ‘Donley,’
+Jackman murmurs, as he follows them out the door, ‘go back to your
+cottage. You and I must have a serious conversation later.’
+
+“And they lead Lagg along the hill toward St. Merin’s Chapel and the
+cliffs, he weak as water, while I watch them from an empty window,
+being cautious not to show much of myself, lest Rab or Davie be
+inclined toward a lucky shot. And soon the bracken swallows them.
+Seamus has given Tam Lagg his minute of grace, and now Lagg must give
+Seamus Donley his hour for action.
+
+“Jackman is cunning, think I to myself; but this once he’s reckoned
+without his man. There were two things that I might try: first, to get
+clean away from Carnglass, which would leave Jackman with no good hand
+for the explosives, and no scapegoat; or second, to send up a signal
+like the signal Lagg meant to make of that farmhouse, to call heed to
+strange doings in Carnglass. Now being a runaway gaolbird, I preferred
+the first method, Mr. Logan; and besides, ’tis the surer method; and it
+might save the women, since what with Seamus gone to the mainland and
+talking with whom he might, sure Jackman would think twice before doing
+more murther.
+
+“So soon, then, as Jackman and the rest were out of sight, I ran down
+the track toward the New House and Askival harbor--and the boats. Two
+craft there were in the harbor, both Lady MacAskival’s, though she’d
+scant need of them for her own self: a sixty-foot sailing yacht,
+old but with an auxiliary engine, and a fast motor-launch, half
+decked. Could I but get aboard either, and take it out of harbor--the
+motor-launch would be the better--I might make land somewhere and be
+out of sight before either Jackman or you darling police might say
+Daniel O’Connell.
+
+“But somewhere there would be seven more of Jackman’s boys: Sam
+Tompkins, a Cockney, with the grand title of butler--though he’s little
+better than a pickpocket, and not to be dreaded; Ferd, the Cat o’
+Malta; a tinker-like fellow called Niven, that they’d made gardener; a
+Lancashire rough, Simmons, the stableman. Then the three boatmen, all
+out of Liverpool: Jim Powert, Harry Till, and Bill Carruthers. If the
+gang should be at the Old House, all of them, well and good: I never
+would try for the Old House, that being a strong place with but one
+gate. And if there should be but a man or two at the harbor, my little
+Meg and myself, between the two of us, might do their business. Now I’d
+a shotgun at my cottage, and like enough Lagg had a gun or two in the
+New House, unless Jackman had taken precautions. A shotgun or a rifle
+in the hands of such a one as myself is worth half a dozen men, Mr.
+Detective Logan, as I fancy you’ve heard tell. So it was to my cottage
+that I ran first, not looking back toward St. Merin’s Chapel, nor
+liking to think what might be done there on the cliffs.
+
+“All the way, I met no man. And my cottage was empty; but the shotgun
+was gone. ‘Oho,’ say I to myself, ‘then Jackman will have a suspicion
+of old Seamus, and will have left orders to keep a weather eye on him.’
+I stuffed my coat pockets with biscuits from a tin, for there was no
+saying when I might dine again; and then, very quiet, I had a look
+about the New House, which has a little fir-plantation between it and
+the gamekeeper’s cottage.
+
+“As bad cess would have it, three men--Ferd, and Niven, and
+Simmons--came out of the back gate of the New House when I looked that
+way from the firs. They not spying me, I knelt there silent, and they
+walked on toward the Old House, having locked the door behind them.
+Simmons was carrying my own shotgun. These are dull dogs, Mr. Logan,
+with no talent for hide-and-seek--though Ferd is sharp enough, but
+being a Soho spiv, he’s out of his element in Carnglass. Once they were
+gone, I trotted on to the harbor, just beyond the New House; they would
+have taken the guns from the New House, for Ferd and Niven, too, had
+been carrying weapons. Now it must be the boats for Seamus Donley,
+with no help but little Meg. The night was coming down, praise be, and
+I might creep along the quay safe enough, keeping behind a little low
+breakwater that has a walk between it and the outer edge of the quay.
+
+“On the yacht a light was burning, and she lay hard up against the
+stone quay, with the launch moored just beyond her. Two men were on
+deck, worse luck, and there might be a third below; I thought I heard
+his voice. And one of the men--Powert, I thought--had a rifle across
+his knees as he sat there. ‘Seamus,’ say I in my head, ‘this must be
+neatly done, if ’tis to be done at all.’ So back along the quay to
+the harbor-head I make my way, like a mouse, and to the shed by the
+quayside. They had forgot to lock the door.
+
+“Now if I might keep the men aboard the yacht with their hands full of
+work, I might hope to take the launch; or, failing that, I might burn
+both boats, making a beacon to be seen in Daldour or out to sea, and
+vexing Jackman’s damned soul. In the shed, along with ropes and paints
+and such, I found what I had hoped for, a tin of petrol and a brace of
+empty bottles. And there were some oily bits of waste and rags on the
+floor. You’ll have made a Molotov cocktail, Mr. Detective Logan? Now
+that would have been a fine present for Dr. Jackman, considering his
+political tastes; but I hadn’t the proper ingredients. And the real
+explosives were tucked away at the Old House, beyond my reach. So the
+bottles filled with petrol, and the waste and rags stuffed into the
+mouths, would have to serve me. The matches I already had in my pocket.
+
+“With the bottles in my coat, back I go along the quay, keeping out of
+sight. But close to the yacht, my foot strikes a stone, that tumbles
+into the harbor with a splash. Powert and Carruthers, sitting on deck,
+seem to be nervous as pregnant cats, for Powert springs up with his
+rifle and calls out, ‘Who’s there?’ And he catches a glimpse of my
+bald head above the dyke. ‘Donley,’ he sings, ‘if that’s you, show
+yourself.’
+
+“What with Powert’s rifle in his hands, it was a risky stratagem. Yet I
+bob up from behind the dyke and lob the first burning bottle right for
+the open hatch, Powert firing at me on the moment. Powert misses, but
+the bottle sails true. Right down the companionway it falls, and in a
+second flames come bursting up. And up comes another thing: Till, who
+has been below decks. I see him as I toss the second bottle. His hair
+and shirt are all afire, and him screaming like a mad thing.
+
+“The second bottle goes down the hatch, too, and more flames shoot
+up; and then Carruthers takes panic and dives over the side into the
+harbor, for I have lugged out Meg and sent a shot across the deck.
+Powert runs aft for a fire-extinguisher, while Till rolls screaming
+by the deck-house; but I try another shot at Powert, and he follows
+Carruthers over the side, rifle and all, though I do not think I hit
+him. If those three had kept their heads about them, they could have
+put out the flames, but now it is too late. And now Seamus will have
+his try at the launch; for below decks in the yacht, the fire from
+the spattered petrol is gaining fine. Powert and Carruthers will have
+struck out for the far side of the harbor, not liking the bark of
+little old Meg in my paw.
+
+“It was down the slimy old quayside steps and into the launch I went
+then. Ferd and the rest from the Old House would be upon me in a
+matter of minutes, seeing the fire from the yacht; and then, too, the
+yacht might explode, if there were fuel in her tanks, though she did
+not burn so hard and fast as I might have liked. The mist being heavy
+that night, it was odds against the fire being seen from land, unless
+from Daldour, for Askival harbor lies snug among the cliffs; and the
+weather was too much for any chance aircraft.
+
+“I tried the engine of the launch, but she was as dead as Lagg must
+be. It may be they had taken the plug, or tampered with the wires,
+Jackman being a man of forethought. Be it whatever, Mr. Logan, I could
+do nothing with her. If there had been even oars, I would have put to
+sea with no motor; but the launch was too big for rowing. One thing I
+did find in the bows, for all that: a spanner. ‘Well, Seamus,’ I think,
+‘if you’re not to have her, no more shall they.’ And with that spanner
+I did abuse the engine so that no man might mend it, paying no heed to
+the noise I made.
+
+“On the yacht’s deck, Till had made an end of his moaning, and I could
+not see him; like enough he had fallen overboard, which he should have
+done the moment my bottle set him afire. But I could hear feet running
+and voices near the harbor-head.
+
+“With the tide ebbing, it came to my mind that if I were to cast off,
+the current might carry the launch toward the harbor-mouth, perhaps
+close enough to the other side of the harbor that I might leap ashore
+dry. So I cut the painter with my clasp-knife, and no sooner than was
+needful. The tide began to take the launch the few rods between me and
+the harbor-mouth. But now four or five men were on the quay I had left,
+and two rifles were firing. They hit the launch sure enough, and put
+holes in her, like enough--but not in Seamus Donley. The blessed dark
+that preserved me! In no time at all the launch had drifted right up
+against the further quay, on her way to the harbor-mouth, and I had
+hold of an iron ladder that’s fixed in the stones, and up I went.
+
+“As for the launch, she will have drifted out with the tide, and sunk,
+what with the holes in her, for when I looked down toward the harbor
+from the cliffs the next morning, there was no trace of her. You can
+trust Seamus for a job of sabotage.
+
+“But there was no time for self-congratulations, Mr. Logan. They would
+have seen me get ashore again, even in the fog, and would be at my
+heels. The best route for myself was the low ground between the Old
+House and the empty cottages at Duncambus, and then up to the caves
+in the cliffs. Oh, I knew the island of Carnglass, what with shooting
+rabbits and birds over the best part of it, while I played at keeper.
+There was but one hope for Seamus left, and that was the coming of some
+one in a boat, such as yourself.
+
+“A man or two set out after me, I think, and there was shooting in the
+dark; but I showed them my heels, and made my way up the north cliffs;
+yet a climb it was that none but a drunken man, or a desperate one,
+would undertake. And before I had got to the foot of the cliffs, there
+came a great _boom!_ behind me, and I looked round, and the yacht was
+blazing worse than ever, for her petrol-tanks had blown up. Yet they
+had been half drained earlier, so the explosion was not all I had hoped
+for. When I got to the cliff-head, the fire in the yacht was out, so
+they must have got pumps to working on the quay; Jackman will have been
+back with his boys by that time, and what he told the boatmen could not
+have been fit for decent ears. At dawn, when I risked a look at the
+harbor, I could see the wreck of the yacht settled into the harbor mud,
+with the water up to her gunwales even at low tide; she must be all
+awash at high tide, and I doubt she’ll ever sail again. Sure, Jackman
+can’t repair her.”
+
+Logan had interrupted seldom; that seemed the best policy, when Donley
+was full of whiskey. Now he asked, “Do you mean you’ve bottled up
+Jackman’s people altogether, Mr. Donley?”
+
+“And myself with them, Mr. Detective Logan. Even had Jackman means for
+sending messages to the mainland, he’d say nothing concerning the yacht
+and the launch, for fear of police coming to investigate. And he has no
+such means, public or private. There was a wireless in the yacht, but
+that’s lost; and there was an old wireless in the Old House, but that’s
+been broken for a fortnight, how no one knows.
+
+“In a matter of days, sure, his agents in Glasgow will begin fretting
+after Jackman, what with no word from Carnglass, and will send out some
+boat with trusty men to see what’s wrong. Until he has another big
+launch, though, Jackman can do no more spying among the islands, under
+pretext of pleasure-cruising, nor get word from men that he pays in
+South Uist and other places. And now there’s no Seamus Donley to handle
+his explosives for him, though Royall and Jackman himself might make
+shift, if ever they find a good time and place to use them. And Jackman
+will be fearing that the fire was seen, and that inquiries will be
+made.”
+
+“How is it, Seamus Donley,” Logan asked him, “that you’ve contrived to
+keep clear of Jackman on this little island for three whole days?”
+
+Donley chuckled with a deep gratification. “There’ll be a dozen caves
+in Carnglass; and faint cliff-paths that only a Kerry man could follow;
+and two ruined villages, and the two empty farmhouses, and the barns
+and outhouses and the rest. And the mist, the blessed mist. Would you
+believe, Mr. Logan, that I’m sixty-four years of age? No more would
+they. But old Seamus is three times the man that the best of them ever
+was. Oh, I can lay false scents: I broke a window at night in the New
+House, so they might think me hid inside, though I never entered; and
+I smashed the lock on the door of this black house--it was kept for
+a hunting-lodge on this shore--though I’ve not slept inside, to fool
+them again; and they cannot tell where I lay my head. After dark, they
+give up the hunt, huddling together in the Old House, for fright of
+Seamus. And in the day, they dare not seek me in packs of less than
+three, though I’ve but little Meg here against their rifles. Twice
+they’ve come near to finishing me, the last time only this evening; but
+the mist saved me again, and I climbed down the sea-face of the cliffs,
+and came round to this hut of yours when the tide was low. They’ll be
+on the scent again so soon as there’s daylight. For if Seamus got away
+from Carnglass with a whole skin, their game would be played out.
+
+“What they hope, Mr. Detective Logan, is that old Seamus will be worn
+down by lack of victuals and broken sleep and being run like a hare all
+day; and then they’ll bag him. And so they might have done, in a day
+or two more, had you not brought your dinghy to Dalcruach sands, Mr.
+Logan. But now I’ll take French leave of them.”
+
+In his wild and ruinous way, this was a wonderful man, Logan thought.
+“I’ve another plan, Seamus Donley,” he said. “It’s this: I suggest that
+you and I go up to the Old House together, in the morning, and face
+them down.”
+
+Donley slapped his hand upon the table, approvingly; and then,
+remembering his situation, glanced uneasily toward the door. “By St.
+Patrick and St. Merin--whoever _she_ was--you’ve a heart in your body,
+Mr. Logan! You’d do honor to the Republican Army. Get thee behind me,
+Satan Logan. ’Tis a temptation: and I might yield, if only we had a
+brace of rifles. Mr. Detective Logan to stand for the majesty of the
+law, and Mr. Seamus Donley for justice outraged! Ah, the pleasure of
+seeing Jackman’s face, under the circumstances. Now tell me true: have
+you no gun hid anywhere?”
+
+“I’ve nothing but a walking-stick and a long razor,” Logan said.
+
+Donley shook his bald head. “No, the thing won’t do, sir. Look
+here: there’s but three bullets left in old Meg.” He swung open the
+revolver’s cylinder. “The rest were spent, though I had a pocketful
+of cartridges, in keeping off Jackman’s boys when they came within my
+range. Fine figures you and I would cut, Mr. Detective, with one little
+gun to the pair of us, tossing a sixpence for who might have the third
+shot at Jackman. No, they call me a reckless Irishman, but I’m not the
+fighting fool you seem to be. ’Tis away in your boat I must be tonight;
+and if you’ve mind as well as heart, Mr. Logan, you’ll come away with
+me, and let me set you ashore in safety, to fight another day.”
+
+“I’m thinking of the women’s safety,” Logan said. Donley nodded. “But
+you can do one thing for me, Seamus Donley: let me write a note or two,
+and you can carry them with you, and post them the moment you reach a
+postbox; for I take it that I’ll need help.”
+
+“That I will do,” Seamus Donley said. “And more: the moment I reach a
+telephone-kiosk, Mr. Detective, I will telephone your damned police,
+and tell them there is trouble in Carnglass. But promise this much to
+me, that you’ll not put my name into your letter. And you must hurry,
+for midnight’s near, and I’ll need the ebbing of the tide to take me
+clear of the skerries.”
+
+“Give me five minutes,” Logan told him, “and your leave to light the
+lamp again, and you’ll have my word. You can read the note, for that
+matter. And then I’ll see you launched in the dinghy. But unless you’re
+a better boatman than any I’ve met, I can’t understand how you expect
+to keep clear of the rocks, and fight the currents, let alone cross
+open water, in an open boat.”
+
+“Seamus Donley,” that modest man said, “is as skilled with boats as
+with explosives. Trust me, Mr. Logan: I’ll bring your message to land.”
+
+In haste, Logan scribbled a few words to the chief constable, Glasgow,
+or any police-officer into whose hands the note might come, saying that
+a man probably had been murdered in Carnglass, and that more trouble
+might be expected, and that immediate action was required. He put the
+paper into a soggy envelope, and Donley thrust it into an inner pocket.
+“Now,” Logan said, “I’m your man, Seamus Donley. But watch for that
+current just beyond the needle-rocks: with the wind we’ve had for these
+past four or five hours, the odds are that it may be too strong for
+you, and smash the boat against the western cliffs.” Logan stripped
+off shoes, stockings, and trousers, for it would be drenching work to
+launch the dinghy. And then the two of them went cautiously out of the
+black house. So far as they could tell, they stood alone on the dark
+beach.
+
+Though the wind had gone down an hour earlier, and the tide was flowing
+back toward that lonely sea, still two strong men would be needed to
+launch even a light boat in that surge on the beach. Neither moon nor
+stars showed through the blackness. Between them, with much panting and
+heaving, they dragged the dinghy to the water’s edge, and then pulled
+her along the beach to a more sheltered spot behind an outcrop of gray,
+weed-shrouded stone, where there was a good chance of getting her
+really afloat. They staggered in water up to their waists; once Logan
+fell, taking in a mouthful of salt water. The dinghy having shipped
+some sea, Donley bailed her as best he could with her rusty bucket. Now
+the trial must be made, and they would thrust her against the surf.
+
+Donley flung his overcoat into the boat. “If you’ve no strong
+objection, Mr. Detective Logan,” he growled, “I’ll take with me the
+remnant of your good whiskey: I slipped the bottle into my coat pocket
+as we left the hut. You’ve a brave heart, but no eye for sneak-thieves.
+Yet I’ll give value for value.” He handed to Logan something dark and
+weighty: it was the little gun called Meg, in a shoulder-holster with a
+strap.
+
+Logan fitted the holster under his arm. “That’s generous of you, Seamus
+Donley.”
+
+“She’s a well-balanced weapon, Mr. Detective, and never was meant for
+a free gift to a policeman. But how three bullets will prevail against
+Jackman’s boys, I cannot advise you.”
+
+“Give me your hand,” Logan said. The tremendous grip of the Irishman
+almost made him cry out.
+
+“We should have been Dominicans together, Mr. Logan,” Donley grinned.
+He let go Logan’s hand. “Now put your shoulder to the dinghy.”
+
+They forced her bow against the comber, and Donley, rolling his great
+body over the gunwale, seized the oars. Logan flung his strength
+against the stern, running up to his nose in the receding wave. Now
+Donley was plying his oars: the shelter of the rocks helped him; yet
+only a man of his vast strength could have made head against that surly
+swell.
+
+Then, suddenly, the crest of a wave was carrying the little boat
+outward; Donley got her round the rocks that had helped her launching.
+If he called out anything to Logan at the last, his voice was lost in
+the noise of waves smashing against stone and sand. The dinghy passed
+into the Hebridean night, and Logan wished that fierce man good fortune
+upon his nocturnal sea. A minute later, Logan caught one final glimpse
+of the boat passing over the inner reef, Donley rowing mightily. After
+that, the mist settled upon the face of the waters.
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+Some strange bird, perhaps a shearwater, swept high above Logan as he
+made his way back to the hovel: it shrieked like nothing canny. That
+cry was a fitting farewell to Seamus Donley.
+
+How much might Logan credit of the gunman’s story? While Donley had
+sat before him, sinister and humorous, talking in his Kerry way, even
+the more amazing parts of the tale had seemed fairly credible. But
+now Logan felt grave doubts. Donley was a terrorist, his hand against
+every man’s. That someone named Jackman should have designs upon Lady
+MacAskival’s money was not improbable; but Donley’s assertion that
+Jackman meant sabotage, espionage, and murder would not quite go down:
+not in a quiet Scottish island owned by an old lady.
+
+Yet there had been Logan’s own encounter with violence in Mutto’s Wynd,
+and that unnerving scene in the valley just back of the cliff, with the
+three men firing at Donley. And Donley’s account of Lagg’s end had the
+ring of truth.
+
+Logan barred the cottage door behind him. Whatever measures Jackman’s
+people had taken with an escaped convict, surely they would not deal
+similarly with an American lawyer, known by several people to have
+been bound for Carnglass. Yet the feel of Donley’s pistol Meg, snug
+under his arm, was a comfort. Well, he must spend five hours more in
+the black house, though he had risen from his long sleep only ten hours
+ago, and did not feel in the least tired, even after the launching of
+the dinghy. There could be no climbing the cliffs until dawn. He let
+the fire expire altogether, and did not re-light the lamp: Donley’s
+warnings had that much effect upon him. Lying on the old bed with a
+blanket about him, Logan thought of what he must do as soon as the sun
+began to rise.
+
+The odds were that Donley’s pursuers would be out in force when light
+came; they had nearly caught or shot Donley the previous evening,
+and they would know that he was tired, and probably almost out of
+ammunition. And if those men with rifles were even half so rough a crew
+as Donley had suggested, it would be more prudent for Logan to avoid
+a sudden encounter with them--particularly since they would take any
+moving figure to be Donley himself. The best course, it seemed, would
+be for Logan to keep to the cliff-tops, if possible, until close to the
+Old House; and then to descend and go straight up to the door. If they
+wouldn’t let him see Lady MacAskival, at least they could not mistake
+him for Donley; and he could lay his cards before this Dr. Jackman--or
+as many of his cards as might seem prudent. In Jackman, at least, Logan
+took it, he would confront a rational being.
+
+It was inconceivable that any such man could persist in plans of
+violence--supposing he contemplated any schemes of that character--once
+he knew that he was facing a responsible person who had come to
+Carnglass on legitimate business. And if Mr. Lagg should be alive
+still--Donley, after all, had admitted that he had not seen Lagg
+die--presumably Logan would find an ally in him. Yet it might be wise
+to reconnoitre the Old House before knocking at the gate.
+
+It was possible to half-believe Donley’s tale because of the deathly
+solitude that enveloped Carnglass. The island was like a great bony
+corpse. Even here within the thick walls of the black house, the whole
+drowned mountain seemed dehumanized--perhaps hostile to humanity. Small
+non-human night noises drifted through the hole in the thatch: the
+rustle of bracken, unpleasantly like sepulchral whispering; the cry,
+again, of that nocturnal bird of prey: the surge of the devouring sea
+against the cliffs. Listening to these, Logan fell into a restless
+doze, now and then rousing himself with a start. Fragments of nightmare
+beset him during the sporadic periods when consciousness drifted away.
+And one of those fragments was deeply disturbing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He found himself in some place utterly dark, and made all of stone,
+without door or window; and his hands, when he extended his arms, could
+touch the cold walls on either side. Whether he was lying or standing,
+it was hard to guess: time and space and gravity and equilibrium had no
+meaning here. Something was belted to his side--a sword. And he was not
+alone.
+
+Something else, foul and malign, existed there in that oppressive dark
+space. Of this, he could perceive nothing but its eyes; and there were
+three of its eyes. It was a devouring thing. In that cramped dead
+place, he drew the sword, and he hacked at those eyes. Yet the sword
+rebounded, as if he were striking feebly with a blade of grass against
+some enormous hard-shelled insect. “Strike through the sham!” a voice
+cried within him. “Strike through the sham!” Frantically he thrust
+against the blackness below the eyes. He was in terror not so much
+for himself as for someone else; but the name and face of that other
+someone would not come to him. And then, trembling and suffering from
+cramp in one leg, Hugh Logan woke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Outside the black house, birds were singing at the first feeble
+gleam of light in the east. Still shaken by the vividness of that
+nightmare vision, Logan flung on his clothes and strapped his knapsack
+on his back and took up his stick. It would be well to vacate this
+cottage before the man-stalkers of Carnglass were up and about; for,
+considering the direction in which Donley had fled the previous
+evening, Dalcruach was the most likely target for them this morning.
+Donley’s pistol, in its holster, Logan fixed round his shoulder under
+his tweed jacket; it seemed adequately concealed.
+
+He climbed the landward cliff more easily than he had the previous
+afternoon, now knowing the neglected path; and when he reached the
+summit, and saw the valley empty before him, he turned to his left
+along the ragged crest of those titanic cliffs.
+
+The cliff-top was no narrow ledge: rather, it constituted an irregular
+plateau, in some places only a few feet wide, but in most twenty or
+thirty yards, and here or there a good deal wider. Broken by great
+boulders and dotted with springs or pools--some of them almost little
+ponds--this summit was rough going; surely it would take Logan almost
+twice as long to reach the Old House by this route. Up here, no doubt,
+Donley had lurked much of the time. When the mists were dense, it would
+be next to impossible to track down a solitary man at the top of this
+little world.
+
+This was one of those high places in which Satan offers the kingdoms of
+the earth, Logan thought. Because of the winds, and the lack of soil,
+nothing grew here except occasional clumps of heather and little ferns
+and rock-plants. For the most part, the summit-plateau sloped inward
+toward the valleys of the island; the sea-face seemed to be sheer
+drop, almost everywhere. Today the wind was fairly strong, sweeping the
+spring fog out to sea, and Logan had clear glimpses, half the time,
+of the interior of Carnglass. The island was much better wooded than
+are most of the Hebrides: thick plantations were dotted here and there
+below the screes, doubtless the work of old Sir Alastair MacAskival.
+Twice, as he made his precarious way over the windswept rocks, Logan
+saw red deer grazing near the cliff-foot. And everywhere was trickling
+water. Early spring in the Western Isles has its charms, but it made
+the rocks treacherous for Logan, and soaked his boots through. He used
+his binoculars when he came to a bold promontory of cliff, looking
+northward, though he lay down to avoid making a mark of himself. Near
+the ruined farmhouse at Mucaird, a small flock of sheep was browsing,
+some straying upward upon the hill itself; yet there was no sign of any
+man.
+
+But a quarter of an hour later, as he drew near to a jumbled mass of
+living rock and broken boulders covered with lichens, something moving
+against the heather of Mucaird caught his eye. Half sheltering himself
+behind a rock, he took out the binoculars again. Yes, it was three men
+with rifles, close to the derelict farmhouse and sheilings, and walking
+in the direction of Dalcruach. Something in their movements suggested
+that they were very ill at ease. And at that moment Logan felt himself
+to be in peril.
+
+For only fifty yards away, and scrambling toward him, came two armed
+men. Their attention was fixed upon the scene in the valley, as his
+had been, and apparently they did not see Logan. He slid quickly down
+behind his boulder. It scarcely was possible that this cliff-patrol
+should fail to detect him. Should he stand up and call out to them now,
+or wait until they should be right upon him? Either course had its
+perils. Then the decision was taken out of his hands.
+
+Down in the valley, one of the men flung his rifle to his shoulder and
+fired into the bracken on his left. The other hunters in that party
+knelt and fired also. Having put his binoculars back into their case,
+Logan could not see whether there was any movement in that brush.
+Whatever could they be firing at? Mere nerves, probably, since they had
+no idea Donley had escaped from the island; or possibly a stray sheep
+or a deer, which they in their tension mistook for a man.
+
+“Ferd!” one of the men on the cliff called out to the other. “Ferd!”
+They were so close to Logan now that they sounded almost on the other
+side of his rock. “They’ve flushed him!” Then the voices of his
+neighbors receded, and Logan risked a peek around the boulder. The two
+had turned about and were retracing their steps, apparently looking for
+some way down the cliff to the screes, and so to the valley floor. It
+had been a close call. As the two riflemen scrambled round a rock shelf
+and began a tentative descent, Logan crept toward the seaward side of
+the cliff and so on toward the west, sometimes on hands and knees,
+until he felt safe from their sight.
+
+When next he ventured toward the inland side of the cliff and took out
+his binoculars, the party of three men in the valley was vanishing
+behind a knoll toward the northern cliffs, and the other two, who had
+so nearly stumbled upon him, were nowhere to be seen; presumably they
+still were groping for a way down. Now, Logan guessed, he would be
+secure from such patrols until he came close to the Old House. Likely
+enough, two or three men had been sent to search the northern line of
+cliffs, so as to drive the elusive Donley like a wild beast toward
+Dalcruach; and that would leave only a handful of men about the Old
+House, the New House, and the harbor--if, indeed, even these last, or
+most of them, were not out searching elsewhere. He ought to be able to
+get very close up to the Old House before being noticed.
+
+Soon he was past the ridge or saddle that joined the cliffs to the hill
+of Mucaird; and now he could look down upon the further valley. Broader
+than the first, it also was less stricken by the plague of bracken;
+there were cattle grazing--yes, the shaggy Highland beasts, he could
+see. The ring of cliffs was lower here than at the other end of the
+island. At the southwestern extremity, those gray walls dipped down to
+the ocean, forming the neck of Askival harbor. On the northern side of
+the harbor, the cliffs rose again and merged into a steep hill, which
+must be the one called Cailleach, The Nun. At its foot he could make
+out the scanty ruins of an ancient village: here Duncan MacAskival’s
+crofting ancestors had lived.
+
+Askival harbor was a good deep anchorage. On either side of its mouth,
+an old pier of rubble ran out to narrow the entrance still further
+against the ravenous ocean. And at the quay nearest to him, the burnt
+yacht lay lurched against the rocks; it was low tide again now, and her
+deck, or what remained of it, was just awash. The New House, rather a
+modest and neat eighteenth-century mansion, stood close by the harbor,
+surrounded by plantations and overgrown gardens. Further up the valley,
+in the shelter of the southern cliffs on which he stood, there was
+another farmhouse, apparently empty, but in better condition than the
+one by Mucaird; and near it some cottages and sheilings.
+
+All this, Logan took in through a long, low sweep of the binoculars.
+Then he focused upon the object of this troubled journey of his, the
+Old House of Fear. A quarter of a mile back from the harbor, the stark
+gray walls of the Old House rose upon a massive outcrop of rock: a
+place of great strength once. No man was stirring about it.
+
+Fine old trees grew at the very foot of the living rock on which
+the Old House was built; but the castle defied the wind in its naked
+power, showing no touch of greenery except a glimpse of leaves at
+the back, possibly in a small walled garden. The late-Victorian wing
+blended fairly harmoniously with the mass of the ancient tower, and
+seemed to close off the original entrance from the present exterior of
+the complex; the modern gate must front toward the harbor, and so lie
+hidden from Logan’s view, from his present position upon the cliffs.
+Talk of castles in Spain! The Old House of Fear, here upon the desolate
+verge of civilization--at the limits, indeed, of human existence
+itself--had a brooding glamour denied to Roman and Saracen lands.
+
+Here toward the harbor, the cliff-face was easier than the precipices
+toward the northeastern end of the island. If he were cautious, he
+might make the descent without alarming anyone at the Old House. Having
+climbed several summers both in the highlands of Perthshire and in the
+Rockies, Logan could avoid sending boulders thundering before him.
+Supposing no one chanced to make a target of him, he might reach the
+Old House about noon.
+
+Now how might he descend toward the Old House unobserved? Coming down
+the cliff-face and the screes, if he should try it just now, he must
+make a fair mark; although when he should reach the cliff-foot, he
+might pass to the back of the New House through the plantations and
+then slink along a belt of aspens and firs which stretched from the
+New House to the wood round the base of the rock where stood the Old
+House. First, however, he must make his way along the cliffs until he
+should come nearly abreast of the New House, and then seek for a way
+down. And the thing might be done, in this mistiest of islands, in
+this mistiest of seasons. For the breeze was subsiding again, and the
+sky had darkened; and once more the fog might settle over cliffs and
+hill-tops, though possibly it would not sink low into the valley.
+
+It took Logan half an hour to discover--always taking advantage of
+cover--a tolerable fissure in the cliff down which he might make his
+way. Still no one was to be seen between him and the Old House. Twice
+he thought he heard gunshots in the distant northeastern valley; but,
+the wind being eccentric and generally against him, he might have been
+mistaken. And presently, as he had hoped, the mist began to settle like
+a shroud upon the cliffs. His tweeds blended with rock and heather. For
+twenty minutes more, he crouched at the summit, the fog slowly shutting
+off his view of harbor and New House and Old House. Then, carefully, he
+began the slippery descent. When he reached the talus-slope, he walked
+gingerly, lest he start a warning slide of rock debris.
+
+Still he saw no one, nor heard anything. At length he was in the firs
+of the outlying plantations of the New House, and moving swiftly toward
+the Old House. It was midday, on a Wednesday, a full week since he had
+left Michigan. And now he stood, sheltered by old trees, right below
+the Old House of Fear.
+
+Immediately above him, nearly thirty feet up the steeply-sloping gray
+outcrop, was the little walled garden he had glimpsed from the cliffs;
+and a stout stone dyke about eight feet high enclosed it. The garden
+was set against the rear wall of the great ancient tower, the windows
+of which looked upon the wood, so that the moment Logan should emerge
+from the cover of the trees, he must be fully visible to anyone at
+those windows. Most of the apertures in the tower-wall--from this
+position below, it seemed like a skyscraper--were the original or at
+least medieval windows, perhaps a foot square, though now closed with
+glass panes; but the windows of the third story had been much enlarged,
+perhaps at the end of the seventeenth century, so that they were
+taller than a man, and fitted with double sashes of nine panes each.
+Crouching near the northeastern angle of the tower as he did, Logan
+could see the range of seventeenth-century buildings that extended
+to the smaller medieval tower, and beyond that the jutting bulk of
+the late-Victorian additions, which covered the whole surface of the
+seaward part of the rock. So long as he kept to the rear of the old
+tower, he could not be observed from the later portions of the mansion.
+And it stood to reason that some sort of postern-door must open from
+the old tower into the walled garden.
+
+There drifted to him a sound of voices. Lying flat in the wood, Logan
+made out two men with guns, striding from behind the façade of the
+Victorian building in the direction of the hill called Cailleach; thus
+their backs were to him, or soon would be. The leader was a tall gaunt
+gawky creature, possibly Donley’s “walking cadaver,” Royall. So Logan
+knew that he had not yet been seen; and there were two less snipers to
+fret about for the moment. He let them go out of sight downhill. By
+hooking the handle of his stick over the lip of the garden dyke, he
+thought, he should be able to scramble up and into the little garden.
+It had best be now.
+
+But at that moment, as he rose to step out of the wood and clamber upon
+the rock, he perceived someone at the nearest third-story window of the
+old tower. “Saints be praised,” Donley would have said; for it was a
+woman’s shape. If this should be Lady MacAskival herself, Logan’s work
+might be made easier for him. He stepped into the open.
+
+From high above, she saw him; and though perhaps she started a little,
+she gave no sign of real dread. This was the first calming thing that
+Logan had observed in Carnglass. Unhurried, the woman lifted the sash.
+Surely she could not be Lady MacAskival, for she was slim and graceful
+and apparently young; that much Logan could make out, though she stood
+so high above him. Could this be the “Young One” to whom Donley had
+referred vaguely? There had not been much time for asking incidental
+questions of Donley. Then she spoke, with a gentle lilt to her voice,
+and very low, so that her words just carried to Logan. “If you can come
+over the dyke,” she said, “I will open the little door for you.” Her
+shape vanished from the window.
+
+Logan skipped up the great rock and hooked his stick upon the dyke,
+putting his feet against the wall; and up he went, and grasped the
+top--luckily there was no broken bottle-glass set into it--and pulled
+himself over, and sprang into the square of garden, which must have
+been wearisomely established by patient labor in this unlikely spot.
+There were a half-dozen flowering shrubs, and some small yews, and two
+neat beds of flowers. And beyond these lay a small heavy iron door set
+into the great wall. Logan waited a long minute before bolts grated
+back and the door swung inward.
+
+“Quickly, now,” that soft voice said, “and please take off your boots
+once you are inside.” The foundation-wall into which the doorway had
+been cut must be at least ten feet thick. Logan slipped past the woman,
+who bolted the door behind him, and he had unlaced and removed his
+boots almost before she turned to him. They stood in an enormous empty
+vaulted chamber, in the earliest days of the stronghold a stable and
+storehouse, no doubt. At one angle, a stone stair wound upward into the
+blackness of the great wall itself. Though the only light came from
+slits three feet above their heads, he saw her fairly plain.
+
+“Really, sir,” she was saying, ever so quietly, but with an undertone
+of amusement, “you seem to have scrambled over the worst of Carnglass.”
+Logan became conscious of his rock-bruises and his two-day beard. “Now
+what is your name, please, and who sent you?”
+
+She was young, less than twenty, and a tiny beauty: her shapely head
+came scarcely above Logan’s shoulder. The oval face with the high
+cheek-bones was a charming pink-and-white; the firm lips had an
+infinite grace and mobility, and the dreamy wide eyes were green. The
+nose, perhaps, was a trifle masculine in so small a face, straight and
+strong. And the flaming glory of her red hair, which descended to her
+supple waist! She wore a close-fitting simple suit, of the green tweed
+of the Islands. Blood tells, Logan thought: this girl is of the old
+line. She made him stammer.
+
+“I’m Hugh Logan,” he said, “representing Mr. Duncan MacAskival.”
+
+She clapped her slender hands noiselessly. “I knew you must come from
+him! It was I that sent for you, you know. Are there others just
+outside?”
+
+Logan shook his head. This would be the Young One. But who was she?
+
+“And I am Mary MacAskival,” she told him. “Come away, and make no
+noise. I do not think we shall be long alone together. Carry your
+boots.” She sprang to the twisting dark stair in the wall, with Logan
+at her heels. They were naked delicate heels, Logan saw, as they
+scampered up into the wall: she wore no shoes and stockings, as if
+the chill stones of the Hebrides were warm sand to her. The bare feet
+of Scottish girls, it came to him incongruously, had been one of the
+principal attractions of the land for French visitors in the eighteenth
+century.
+
+In silence, they passed a shallow landing and a massive door; and
+hurried up another corkscrew flight, she pausing to whisper, “Do watch
+your feet here; it is the bad step--the place they made to trip enemies
+in the fighting with claymores, you know.” Yes, the single step was
+two inches higher than the rest, to throw off balance a man leaping
+upward. They passed a second recessed landing and a second heavy door;
+and then Mary MacAskival swung open the door opening upon the third
+story, ushering Logan into a noble ancient vaulted chamber. “This is my
+very own parlor,” she told him, with just a hint of vanity.
+
+The square room had a ceiling painted in faded reds and browns,
+geometrical designs by men long dead; and there were a few good
+pieces of furniture, principally eighteenth century, and a crimson
+Victorian sofa. A door in the further wall gave entrance, probably, to
+the seventeenth-century domestic range of the Old House; and another
+led, presumably, to a sleeping-closet. “Do sit down,” the girl said,
+gesturing toward the sofa, “and you may put on your boots, if you like.
+I did not wish them to hear us on the stair.” For herself, she settled
+nimbly into a window-nook opposite him, her tiny feet hid by her skirt.
+“Now tell me truly,” she went on. “Are you a real American? I thought
+all Americans wore synthetic suits, and carried great cameras over
+their shoulders, and smoked cigars incessantly, and said ‘You bet’ and
+‘I guess,’ and wore their hair sheared ever so close. Do you know, Mr.
+Logan, you could pass muster for a Scot? Now wherever are the others?”
+
+“There’s no one with me,” Logan said. She still had him nearly
+tongue-tied, like an adolescent.
+
+A little charming ripple of dismay passed over that lively face of
+hers. “No others? Then where are Mr. Duncan MacAskival and all his
+people?”
+
+“I came alone from America, Miss MacAskival, and it was all I could do
+to make Carnglass by myself.”
+
+“No!” That sweet mouth rounded to give force to the negation. “No!”
+She threw back from her forehead a lock of red hair, bewildered. “Mr.
+Logan, I’m afraid I have made a serious error. You must understand
+that I am not very worldly; I’m sorry for it. I thought any American
+millionaire would come in his own grand yacht, and servants beside
+him, and perhaps policemen and soldiers and cabinet-ministers. I never
+guessed that you, or anyone else, might come all alone. I do fear
+that I may have fetched you into a dangerous plight.” Her musical
+island English--and yet she must have been to a good school somewhere,
+too--was so pleasant to the ear that Logan almost neglected the warning
+in her words. “Now look here, Mr. Logan.” A quality of decision came
+into her soft voice that had some connection with that high-bridged
+nose of hers. “Do you think you could pretend--successfully, I mean--to
+be an Edinburgh man? A young bank-clerk? The British Linen Bank, shall
+we say?” Despite the girl’s childish look, in some respects she was in
+advance of her years; just now she might have been a dowager duchess.
+“You can? Then you must do precisely that. I do hope you studied
+play-acting once upon a time. I did, you know, at the convent-school.
+You’re very young, Mr. Logan--I had expected a very rich and very fat
+old man--but really, you must contrive to carry it off. Everything
+depends on it.”
+
+“Just a question or two, please,” Logan said. “I met a man named Donley
+at the other end of the island.”
+
+“Of course.” She smiled. “A great cheerful ruffian. And he said some
+things to you? They will not have caught him yet?”
+
+“I don’t believe they’ll ever catch that man, Miss MacAskival. He told
+me that matters are dangerous here in the Old House.”
+
+“He told you truly. What else did he tell you?”
+
+“He said that Dr. Jackman intends to--to have Lady MacAskival die.”
+
+Her eyebrows lifted. “O, no! Donley was mistaken. Lady MacAskival would
+not have been alive these past two months had not Dr. Jackman tended
+her with all his skill. He has been a good nurse. It’s to his own
+interest that she should live.”
+
+Logan looked her compassionately in the eyes. “And Donley hinted that
+you, too, were to die.”
+
+The girl shook her bright head impatiently. “Donley did not understand.
+Dr. Jackman does not mean to have me die--not now, and perhaps never.
+Dr. Jackman means to marry me.”
+
+Logan had cultivated a calm courtroom presence, but now he blinked.
+“You’re not joking?”
+
+Mary MacAskival smiled ever so slightly. “Do you think Dr. Jackman
+shows bad taste? Hush, now!” She sat listening intently, her head
+inclined toward the door that opened upon the body of the Old House.
+Logan could hear nothing, but of course this girl’s ears would be
+attuned to every footfall in that strange place.
+
+“Stand up, please,” she said; and then, silent on her nimble naked
+feet, she approached him. “I do hope you’ll forgive me, Mr. Logan, but
+I am about to do something rude. I’ve done it seldom, and I may do it
+badly.” There came a light tap at the door. “Hold me, if you please,”
+she whispered, and pressed that lithe body against him, flinging her
+arms about his neck. Logan heard the door creak open, but he could
+not see, for the moment, who entered; and this was because Mary
+MacAskival’s red lips were thrust upon his, and the glory of her red
+hair was all about his face. Then, as she let him go a trifle, over her
+shoulder he saw a man standing in the doorway.
+
+It was a small man, sturdy enough, but with an indescribable air
+of deformity about him--perhaps a curious thrusting forward of the
+shoulders. With his forehead, too, there was something faintly wrong.
+But the eyes were splendid: black, and piercing, piercing. The man’s
+face was one of those faces which never were young and never will be
+ancient. The face tightened, as if resisting shock, and Logan thought
+the man’s right hand strayed toward the back of his coat; but it
+returned gently to his side.
+
+The man’s voice was controlled and well modulated. “I am surprised to
+find you have a visitor, Miss MacAskival.”
+
+Mary MacAskival let go her arms from Logan’s neck and turned on her
+toes to face the man, with a wonderfully convincing air of surprise and
+embarrassment. “Oh, Dr. Jackman!” she murmured. “We must have looked
+dreadfully silly. Dr. Jackman, may I present Mr. Hugh Logan, of the
+British Linen Bank, Edinburgh? Mr. Logan and I are to be married.”
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+“Why, then,” Dr. Jackman said, “Mr. Logan is a fortunate young man.”
+The note of irony was faint. “I seem to recollect, Miss MacAskival,
+your mentioning that you met a young man at an Edinburgh party, last
+Christmas: I suppose this is he. And however did your betrothed
+contrive to come into this house, in this season?”
+
+Whatever game the girl was playing, Logan thought, he too would have
+to play it now. And possibly he might carry it off. Jackman he took
+for an Englishman. Logan had some talent for languages and dialects;
+his courtroom years had taught him dissimulation; and since the war he
+had been in several amateur performances of the Players’ Club. Now for
+his present role: he had best play the part of a rather callow, but
+ambitious, clerk from the Lothians. His speech ought to have a strong
+suggestion of Scots, but to seem an imitation of public-school English,
+and with a touch of what people called “la-de-da.” A small moustache
+might have gone well with the part; it was a pity he hadn’t been given
+time to cultivate one.
+
+So Logan stepped forward rather stiffly, offering his hand to Jackman.
+“Now the fat is in the fire, isn’t it? Rather. It’s grand to make your
+acquaintance, Dr. Jackman, but really, I must apologize for coming
+informally this way. It’s my fortnight’s holiday, and I had promised
+Mary to come for a holiday as soon as ever I could. Somehow my letters
+hadn’t reached her. The post is beastly nowadays, is it not? Some
+fishing-johnnies brought me over from North Uist, and set me ashore
+at the other end of your wee island. Now I must see Lady MacAskival
+today and ask her approval. For Mary and I do not mean to wait another
+quarter, do we, Mary, darling?”
+
+The girl had stepped forward with him; and now Logan, putting an arm
+about her waist, gave her an overdemonstrative squeeze, in keeping with
+his new character. She did not seem disconcerted. “No, Hughie,” she
+said, “we mustn’t wait a day longer than necessary.”
+
+Dr. Jackman’s thin lips contracted, but he took Logan’s hand briefly.
+“You and I will have much to discuss soon, Mr. Logan,” he said, “but
+just now, tell me this: if you came from the shore at Dalcruach, did
+you meet no one on your way?”
+
+“Indeed I did see some men hunting,” Logan replied, easily, “but
+they were away down in the glen, and their backs to me, so they did
+not see me when I waved.” He was doing well enough with his assumed
+pronunciation, he thought; he threw just a suggestion of “awa’ doon”
+into his words. “Then there were two sportsmen on the cliffs, and I
+called after them, but the mist came up and hid them. I kept to the
+cliffs, the better for finding the castle. And Mary here”--he squeezed
+her again--“had told me her rooms were at the back of the house, so I
+went round, and Mary saw me and let me in.” He felt sure that Jackman
+disliked him intensely. Who wouldn’t, in his present role? He hoped he
+was convincing as a pushing, canny, and unmannerly junior clerk.
+
+Jackman looked vexed, though not especially with him. “Mr. Logan,”
+Jackman said, “did you ever dream that you were the commander of a
+garrison, for instance, with Red Indians all about your fort; but that
+the moment you turned your back, your troops would vanish like shadows;
+and any shot that was fired at the enemy, would have to be fired by
+yourself?”
+
+“No, sir,” Logan replied, with what he trusted was a properly oafish
+perplexity, “I never did. The fact of the matter is, I never do dream.”
+
+“I should have thought of that,” Jackman observed. “No, I’m sure you
+never dream. But to return to the heart of the matter: I dream a great
+deal. And the conduct of Lady MacAskival’s servants is like a nightmare
+to me. What incompetence! Yet several of them saw service during the
+late war. If none of them spied you on the cliffs, they must be even
+duller than I thought. I suppose that Miss MacAskival has told you a
+very dangerous man is at large in the island?”
+
+“She has, sir; and I am thankful I did not meet with him on my way. An
+Irishman, she says.”
+
+“Yes, Donley: an Irishman, and a homicidal maniac. Our people have been
+seeking to arrest him for more than three days, but he always escapes
+their net. Those were not sportsmen you saw, Mr. Logan, but our people
+tracking this Donley. Neither Miss MacAskival nor anyone else in this
+house will be able to set foot outside while that man is at large,
+unless accompanied by an armed guard. I regret to say, Miss MacAskival,
+that I must forbid you to visit your garden until the man is caught.
+And please have the goodness to remember to keep back from the windows.
+The man is armed, Mr. Logan, and a crack shot. Only Ferd Caggia, our
+cook, is his peer with a gun. To be defended by a Maltese cook in one’s
+own castle! Ludicrous, isn’t it, Mr. Logan? I suppose you wonder why
+we haven’t summoned the police. But possibly Miss MacAskival has had
+time to tell you that the madman destroyed our boats, and we have been
+quite out of communication with the mainland. Presumably, however, our
+agents in Glasgow will send a launch to us in a day or two, by way of
+inquiry, and then we can call in the police. That launch, by the way,
+can give you passage back to the mainland, Mr. Logan.”
+
+“That’s very thoughtful, I’m sure, sir,” Logan said innocently, “but
+it’s my plan to stay the best part of a fortnight, if Lady MacAskival
+will permit me.”
+
+“Lady MacAskival is in no condition to make decisions of any nature.
+As for your remaining here--why, we’d best go upstairs to my study
+and discuss certain matters, Mr. Logan. Will you excuse me, Miss
+MacAskival?”
+
+That barefoot little girl stepped forward like a princess. “Dr.
+Jackman: surely you remember my Airedale, Tyke?”
+
+“Yes,” Jackman said with a frosty smile, “I do. A great pity, that
+rabbit-hunting accident.”
+
+“You took Tyke for a walk, Dr. Jackman,” Mary MacAskival went on,
+dispassionately, “and never did you bring him back. I wish you to bring
+Hugh back to me. I intend to give him tea here in my parlor, one hour
+from now.”
+
+“Of course, my dear young lady.” Jackman bowed slightly. “I shall bring
+him back safe in wind and limb: eh, Logan?” He clapped Logan lightly
+on the back. “And now, be so good as to follow me up these stairs.
+Mind the worn stone treads: they’re treacherous. No one knows how many
+generations of MacAskivals have trodden that granite through. There’s
+a legend that the ghost of Old Askival snatches at one’s ankles on
+those stairs. Eh, Miss MacAskival? I’m sure he’d snatch at yours, and
+small blame to him.” Jackman nodded at the girl with a kind of paternal
+gallantry.
+
+Mary MacAskival stood in the doorway as Logan and Jackman began to
+ascend. “I believe it was my ankles that you noticed first, wasn’t it,
+Hughie?” Though the stair was dark, Logan thought that Jackman almost
+winced. “I suppose I really ought to tell you how it was that Hugh
+and I came to meet, Dr. Jackman. You’ve already guessed that it must
+have been during that wonderful fortnight Lady MacAskival and you let
+me spend in Edinburgh in December with Anne Lindsay, who had been at
+school with me. I happened to go into the Lawnmarket office of the
+British Linen Bank to change a five-pound note; and Hugh was so very
+helpful; and we found that he knew the Lindsays of George Square;
+and....”
+
+“Quite,” said Dr. Jackman, “quite. Perhaps we had best leave the rest
+to my fertile imagination? Really, I am not in the least surprised; if
+you will pardon my saying so, Miss Mary MacAskival, the little episode
+is part and parcel with the traditional impulsiveness of ladies of your
+family. You understand what I mean. The inscription by the door of the
+old tower, for instance--we’ll show you that incised slab later, Mr.
+Logan. Just now, I’ve only one thing to say to you, Miss MacAskival. I
+advise you to go in to Lady MacAskival and tell her that a young man
+has come to call upon you. As for any mention of marriage, the shock
+might put an end to your aunt; and you know as well as I do the certain
+consequence to your own prospects. Yet you had best mention Mr. Logan’s
+coming, because old Agnes would tell her soon enough, in any event. I
+advise you to be extremely gentle and prudent in the telling. And while
+you are having your little chat with Lady MacAskival, I shall have my
+little chat with your Mr. Logan.”
+
+Mary MacAskival sent a glance from her disturbing green eyes at Hugh as
+he followed Jackman up the dark stair; and she gave him a demure wink.
+Whatever else the girl had or lacked, she had sufficient courage in
+adversity. Then she was gone, and Jackman led him round and round the
+twisting stair in the thickness of the wall, past several shut doors,
+to the topmost chamber of the tower. Upon three sides were windows,
+not so large as those of Miss MacAskival’s room, but still big and
+handsome; and on the fourth wall was an immense fireplace, perhaps
+fifteenth-century work, with a ponderous chimney-piece carved crudely
+from basalt. On one side of the mantel, and standing two feet high,
+carved almost in the round, was the effigy of a naked man holding an
+axe; and on the other, a naked woman clutching a cross to her breast.
+
+“A ponderous quaint affair, isn’t it?” Jackman observed, nodding toward
+the fireplace. “There are similar figures set into the outer wall, by
+the door of this tower: Askival and Merin, they say. The Old House is
+so well preserved only because it stood empty, but not a ruin, nearly
+the whole of the nineteenth century: the proprietors lived in the New
+House. They used the ground floors of the Old House for byres and
+rubbish-rooms. Sir Alastair MacAskival, the present old lady’s husband,
+restored the Old House--with his wife’s money. It’s far too large for
+such a household as she has now. The block that Sir Alastair added
+is all great drawing-rooms and dining-rooms and billiard-rooms and
+ball-rooms, with the kitchens below; and the present servants sleep in
+the upper rooms of that wing. Lady MacAskival has a grand bedroom hung
+with Spanish leather, in the Renaissance range; and I have rooms in
+that building. But I spend much of my time in this study. For centuries
+it was the private chamber of the chiefs of MacAskival. There’s a fine
+prospect; but I’ll show you that later, Mr. Logan. And have you noticed
+the ceiling? But I presume you’re no antiquarian.”
+
+Indeed, the ceiling was a wonder. Though the colors in which its panels
+were painted were much like those of the ceiling in Mary MacAskival’s
+parlor, here geometrical designs alternated with scores of stiff
+representations of queer men and beasties: kings, perhaps, and knights,
+and ladies, and lions, and leopards, and griffins, and water-horses,
+and unicorns, and things for which Logan knew no name--no two alike.
+“Late fifteenth century, perhaps,” Jackman said, “and almost unique in
+the islands, this ceiling.”
+
+At the center of all these painted ceiling-panels was a panel with
+a dull red background; and on it, little faded, was depicted a very
+odd creature. It had the body of a man; but there were cloven hoofs
+instead of feet, though it showed human hands; and the head was
+the narrow malign head of a goat. The face itself seemed to be a
+dismaying blend of human and animal features, in which the cunning
+slit goat-eyes dominated. “I see you are looking at the Firgower--the
+central panel,” Jackman went on. “A beast peculiar to Carnglass, it
+seems, the Firgower: half goat, half man. There’s still a ruinous
+building upon the cliffs called the Firgower’s house. I take it to
+have been the house of the last Pictish chief of Carnglass, before the
+Vikings came. There’s some remote Pict strain, as well as Norse, in
+your own Miss MacAskival, Mr. Logan. She is of the old family, true
+enough--not that she has the faintest legitimate claim to the property,
+you understand. But I suppose you have little interest in fictions like
+the Firgower. These legends sometimes have meaning, all the same. Once
+an archeologist told me that the Firgower may be some island memory
+of the last Pict chieftain himself: an ugly brute, to judge from this
+portrait. The old islanders used to say that the Firgower never died,
+but lives on from age to age. And that’s true enough, Mr. Logan, after
+a fashion--the goat strain, I mean. I don’t scruple to say that a
+goatish strain has run through the line of MacAskival, from beginning
+to end. Gallant men and handsome women; but concupiscent, Mr. Logan,
+concupiscent. You understand me? There are vessels for honor, and
+vessels for dishonor.”
+
+“I can’t say that I do understand, precisely, sir.” The two of them
+were seated in leather chairs now, and Jackman was pouring sherry from
+an eighteenth-century decanter. What with Mary MacAskival absent,
+Logan could spend his time studying this unnerving Dr. Jackman. As
+Donley had told him, the fellow was clever, immensely clever; and
+more than that, wise, perhaps; and voluble. He made Logan uneasy to a
+degree Logan never had experienced with that gunman Donley. The little
+deformed man had a commanding presence. And still Logan was unsure of
+the nature of Jackman’s deformity: it was something about the spine and
+shoulders, though not crippling or really noticeable. Yet Jackman’s
+lean face had about it just a suggestion of that look of suffering
+and humiliation which one sometimes sees on the faces of congenital
+hunchbacks. And there was something dismaying about the man’s forehead.
+Right at the middle of his brow existed a small and shallow depression,
+about the size and shape of a sixpence; and there seemed to be no bone
+behind the skin at that spot. Now and then the place seemed to stir a
+little, as if the skin lay upon the quick brain. In an unpleasant way,
+it was fascinating.
+
+“Very good old sherry, this,” Jackman was saying. “Sir Alastair kept
+an admirable cellar, and much of it still is below stairs. One has to
+watch the servants. There’s a quantity--perhaps two bins--of Jamaica
+rum of 1800 or earlier, commencing to lose its savor now, alas. Another
+drop, Mr. Logan? You’ve been looking at the hole in my head: not that
+I mean to reproach you, for you’d have to be blind to ignore it. It’s
+a souvenir of Spain. In the lines outside Teruel, a spent bullet went
+right through the bone. But there was a Russian surgeon in Teruel
+that day, luckily, and he got the bullet out, and now there’s a bit
+of plastic set into my poor skull. I call the place my third eye.
+You’ve read the Hebridean legends of third eyes, Mr. Logan? No? I
+suppose you’ve little time for general reading, what with the getting
+and spending of your vocation. For that matter, I presume you know
+next to nothing of the Spanish trouble, more than twenty years ago:
+a youthful indiscretion of mine. But possibly that’s just as well.
+Every man to his last. You will be twenty-seven years old, Mr. Logan,
+or perhaps twenty-eight? And earning seven pounds a week, like as
+not. And you aspire to marry the sole survivor of the old, old line
+of MacAskival. Not that I blame you, not in the least. In the coming
+world, Mr. Logan, there will be no rank and no class. And intellect
+will have its rewards. No, so far as social status is concerned, I
+offer no objection. ‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ as you Scots say, Mr.
+Logan. Yet I would be no friend to you if I neglected to give you some
+description of the difficulties in your way.”
+
+His face and his facility of speech had served him well, Logan
+thought: Dr. Jackman had no doubt, it appeared, that Logan was indeed
+an Edinburgh clerk; and astute though Jackman obviously was, he had
+underestimated Logan’s age by nearly a decade. The man could make
+mistakes. Logan intended that Jackman should continue to make mistakes,
+at least until he could discover more about Lady MacAskival and Mary
+MacAskival and Jackman himself. “Difficulties, Dr. Jackman?” Logan
+said, leaning forward and acting the pushing clerk, at once brash and
+smarmy. “Difficulties? Mary has told me more than once that there will
+be no financial problem, for she says she’s money to burn. And look
+at this grand house. Aye, I’ll take more sherry, and I thank you.
+Would Lady MacAskival raise difficulties, do you think, Dr. Jackman?
+Look here, sir: I ask you as a son to his dad. If Lady MacAskival’s
+incapacitated, would it be asking too much for you to give away the
+bride, sir?”
+
+That twist of the knife had been felt, Logan could tell: the skin
+twitched about the strange spot in Jackman’s forehead; but the man’s
+expression did not change, nor the tone of his voice alter. “Why,”
+Jackman said, “before you and I speak of marrying and giving in
+marriage, there is some history I must tell you, Mr. Logan. And I fear
+I have been neglecting my duties as host in Lady MacAskival’s absence.”
+He put his hand on a old-fashioned velvet bell-pull, and jerked it.
+“Among the difficulties of life in Carnglass, Mr. Logan, is the problem
+of staff. We take men where we find them, and try to be thankful for
+small mercies. Life in the remotest of the Hebrides isn’t to the taste
+of modern servants. Our butler, however, is rather a jewel; you’ll see
+him in a moment. The footman is a diamond, though rough. We may have
+to let the footman, Anderson, go; for he has involved us in all this
+trouble, doubtless with the best of intentions. It was on his urging
+that we engaged that Irish brute of a gamekeeper, Seamus Donley, who
+was some connection of Anderson’s. I could see that Donley was three
+parts savage, but in a lonely island like Carnglass, savagery may be a
+virtue in a keeper. What I failed to detect was his insanity. For a man
+of his age, Donley is astonishingly strong and quick--for a man of any
+age, so far as that goes. And quite out of his head. He concealed his
+madness with a certain Kerry wheedling wit. I must confess that I knew
+Donley had been in gaol at one time, in Belfast or Derry; but I mistook
+him for a mere simple-minded Irish rebel, relatively harmless. I’ve
+still some fellow-feeling for rebels: in my younger days I was rather
+a radical--almost an activist. I still have many acquaintances in the
+labor movement. You are not a Socialist, by any chance, Mr. Logan?”
+
+“Oh, no, sir,” Logan demurred wholeheartedly, “that never would do at
+the British Linen Bank. The manager never would allow it.”
+
+“Quite.” Dr. Jackman nodded approval, with the merest suggestion of a
+pucker about the corners of his mouth. “Quite right. Socialism is a
+snare and a delusion, at least as socialism is understood in Britain.
+Hold fast by your principles, Mr. Logan.”
+
+A tap at the door, then; and a small gray-haired man in a neat velvet
+jacket entered. He almost stumbled upon Logan, and his mouth fell
+open. “Blimey!” he cried; and then, to Jackman, “Begging your pardon,
+that is, sir.” This must be the Cockney butler Donley had mentioned,
+Sam Tompkins; and he certainly did not look like a ruffian or a
+conspirator, though there was a shiftiness about the little eyes. South
+of Mason’s and Dixon’s Line, Logan reflected, such a servant would be
+given to “totin’ victuals.” Yet, the times and the place considered, a
+very decent-looking butler.
+
+“Tompkins,” Dr. Jackman said, “this gentleman is Mr. Hugh Logan, a
+friend of Miss MacAskival. He was landed from a boat this morning.
+We shall put him in the brown room, opposite mine, and you are to
+see that everything is in order. Take his sack and stick and cape
+with you. And you’d best tell the others as they come in, for fear of
+misunderstanding. Niven is standing guard at the door just now? Very
+well. Make sure he gets nothing to drink. And tell Miss MacAskival that
+Mr. Logan will be late for tea; he and I are having a very interesting
+talk.”
+
+As Tompkins went out, Jackman smiled at Logan. “Your arrival will be
+a nine-days’ wonder below stairs. If you observe some surliness or
+fecklessness below, please accept my apologies in advance. I never
+tolerate deliberate rudeness; report anything of that sort to me.
+Whatever the deficiencies of these fellows, I suppose they make up a
+better staff than the mob of Anguses and Annies that must have slept on
+the stairs and in the kitchens of the Old House in the grand old days
+of the MacAskivals--before Donald MacAskival was sold up, I mean. Miss
+MacAskival has told you something of the history of the family? Quite
+so. And speaking of old Donald MacAskival, who died raving in the New
+House, I have a curiosity to show you.” Jackman, going to a cupboard
+set in the wall, carefully drew out a heavy box and set it on the table
+before Logan.
+
+The big box, or rather casket, seemed to be carved from a single block
+of stone, almost blue in color, but here and there shading into gray.
+The lid was of the same polished stone. “If the servants had the
+slightest notion of the value of these,” Jackman remarked, “I should
+have to put the casket under lock and key.” He lifted the lid and
+began to lift out strange stone figures, each some five inches high.
+“You play chess, Mr. Logan? I have a marble chessboard here--modern,
+I regret to say. But these chessmen are ancient, and Norse. They are
+called the Table-Men of Askival.”
+
+The little statuettes were marvellously carved by some master of the
+Viking age. Each was wrapped in cotton-wool, and Jackman put them
+deftly in place on the marble board. They were of the same blue stone
+as the casket in which they had lain; and, after a thousand years, they
+remained almost perfect, only three or four being badly chipped. “The
+chiefs of MacAskival would have slit a hundred throats rather than have
+parted with these toys,” Jackman went on. “For more than a century,
+it was thought they were lost altogether, but Sir Alastair MacAskival
+discovered them when he was restoring the family tombs by St. Merin’s
+Chapel. The casket was resting, of all places, in the stone coffin
+that is said to be Askival’s own tomb. Perhaps Donald MacAskival hid
+them there when his creditors were hard at his heels, for even in the
+eighteenth century these things would have brought a pretty price. If
+so, they are all he left to his descendants. Sir Alastair died less
+than a month after the finding of these, and Lady MacAskival has told
+no one of them, so far as I am aware; so you are looking at works of
+art never photographed or catalogued by the museum-people. Do you ever
+go to the Queen Street Museum in Edinburgh? No? A pity. There they
+have walrus-ivory chessmen from Lewis, also Norse work, and perhaps
+as old as these. And there are others in the British Museum. You have
+not visited the British Museum? Once, like Marx, I went there daily.
+But I presume it is all _l.s.d._ with you, Mr. Logan. ‘Put money in thy
+purse, and yet again, put money in thy purse.’ So the world goes. Shall
+we make a game of it as we talk?”
+
+Yes, fearfully and wonderfully made, these chessmen. The kings held
+drawn swords across their knees, and stared stonily out of bulging
+merciless eyes; the queens, with long wild faces, held daggers; the
+rooks were berserkers, biting on their shields; and all the other
+pieces, even the pawns, were modelled from the life of the age of the
+Sea-Kings. One set of men had been saturated in some reddish dye or
+paint; the other retained its natural blue hue. To play with these
+priceless and timeless things was to sink into a remote past. “They’re
+very nice, I’m sure,” Logan the bank-clerk said, with what he trusted
+was a Philistine indifference. “Aye, I’ll play you a game, sir, if
+you’ll promise me I sha’n’t miss my spot of tea with Miss Mary.”
+
+“Miss MacAskival will excuse you; and it occurs to my mind, Logan, that
+perhaps we can discuss certain delicate matters more easily in the
+progress of a match. But I warn you, Mr. Logan, that I rarely lose.
+Here: I submit to a handicap.” Jackman removed his own queen from the
+board. “No protests: I think you’ll find me an old hand at chess.”
+
+Logan advanced the pawn before his queen’s bishop. “I’ve had many a
+grand match at the West End Young Men’s Society for the Advancement of
+Chess, Dr. Jackman.”
+
+“Indeed.” Jackman made a similar move with his king’s bishop’s pawn.
+“Now the question of marriage aside, Mr. Logan, I don’t suppose you’d
+choose to live in a great rambling ill-lit place such as the Old House
+of Fear is, would you?”
+
+“Oh, never in the world, sir.” Logan moved again, and lost a pawn
+to Jackman. “No, sir, give me a nice semi-detached villa beyond
+Bruntsfield Links, any day. Even the New Town of Edinburgh is too old
+and stuffy for my taste, Dr. Jackman. I like a bit of a rockery in the
+front garden, and an Aga cooker, and a fridge, and a parlor with a pair
+of Portobello china dogs by the hearth.” He advanced his king’s knight.
+
+Jackman shot a sharp glance at him. Had he overplayed his role a
+trifle? Logan wondered. The Aga cooker and the Portobello dogs were
+spreading the butter rather thick. He smiled ingenuously at Dr.
+Jackman; and apparently the smile was fatuous enough to convince that
+alarming gentleman.
+
+“That is precisely the sort of man I took you to be, Logan: my
+congratulations. And do you think Miss MacAskival would share these
+reasonable ambitions?” He took Logan’s knight.
+
+Logan captured one of Jackman’s pawns. “I don’t see why Mary shouldn’t,
+sir; she’s a canny lass, and the day of grand houses like this one is
+long past.”
+
+Having sent a bishop on a raid deep into Logan’s territory, Jackman
+leaned back in his armchair. “Canny, Mr. Logan? Sensible? Miss
+MacAskival? Charming, certainly; beautiful, at least in many eyes; but
+canny is the last word I should apply to her. I consider her my ward
+_de facto_, you understand, and what I say now is for her good and your
+own, and is to be held in confidence.”
+
+Logan took one of Jackman’s knights. “Perhaps you’ll take the trouble
+to enlighten me, Dr. Jackman.” He hunched forward, the picture of the
+respectful and hopeful young man on the rise.
+
+Jackman frowned at the chessboard. “I take it that Miss MacAskival
+has given you to understand that she has large expectations, or
+possibly that she already has ample independent means? That she is Lady
+MacAskival’s heiress?”
+
+“Why, sir, we’ve not discussed the matter in detail, but I have assumed
+that Mary was to have her due.”
+
+“Her due, Mr. Logan? To be quite frank, Miss MacAskival is very little
+better than a waif. Her grandfather was first cousin to Sir Alastair
+MacAskival--though the closest male relative left to Sir Alastair, at
+the end of his life. But Sir Alastair and his cousin were on bad terms;
+and, in any event, Miss Mary MacAskival was born nearly a generation
+after old Sir Alastair died. This is a most tenuous family bond, you
+see, although it is true that the old line of MacAskival being almost
+extinct altogether, Mary MacAskival has a better claim than anyone else
+to be the head of her little dispersed and forgotten clan. Our Mary’s
+father was a ship’s second mate, and drowned off Naples in the late
+war. The girl, who cannot remember her father, was left with the widow
+at a village in North Uist. Had matters followed their usual course,
+probably she would have grown up knitting sweaters and milking cows,
+and have married some crofter. But then her mother died. The girl was
+left quite alone.
+
+“Lady MacAskival is an old friend of mine, but I cannot say she has
+been known for openhandedness. A minister in North Uist wrote to
+her, however; and, oddly enough, Lady MacAskival agreed to take the
+child into her own household and provide for her schooling. Perhaps
+Lady MacAskival felt she owed some debt to her husband’s name; she is
+oppressed by a sense of guilt where her husband is concerned, but I
+sha’n’t enter into that. Whatever her reason, she took the girl Mary,
+and sent her to good schools--to the convent-school at Bridge of Earn,
+most recently. I must make it clear here, Mr. Logan, that she did not
+adopt Miss MacAskival, nor make any provision for her future.”
+
+Jackman’s narration did not take his mind altogether from the
+chess-match. He played with assurance and even arrogance, while Logan
+lost three more pieces to him. Logan set his face in an expression
+meant to suggest alarm at both the account of Mary MacAskival and the
+match.
+
+“What’s in a name, Mr. Logan,” Jackman continued, “or in the
+inheritance of family traits? The scientists have been at work on these
+things for a century and better, but nothing is settled. Possibly
+you followed the course of the Lysenko affair in the Soviet Union?
+No, I didn’t suppose that was an especial interest of yours. As I
+said, these problems of hereditary traits are not settled, though for
+my part I feel confident that the Russians will give us the answers
+before 1965. Well, our Miss Mary MacAskival seems to offer some
+decided evidence that a certain type of character is conveyed from
+generation to generation within a family, whether the cause is genetic
+or environmental. Since time out of mind, the MacAskival men and
+women--the family of the chiefs, I mean--have been rash, spendthrift,
+fearless, and--why, promiscuous, shall we say. Sir Alastair was an
+exception, true, going to the contrary extreme. It has been a family
+exceedingly inbred. I think I am not venturing too far when I suggest
+that the stock is worn out. The qualities I mentioned just now were
+dominant in both Mary’s father and mother. The beauty and the daring
+may survive long after the strength and the wits are gone.”
+
+“Dr. Jackman, what are you telling me?” Logan deliberately threw a
+strong burr into his words, to simulate dismay; and his disturbance was
+not altogether feigned. But he did not neglect to take Dr. Jackman’s
+other knight.
+
+Jackman compressed his mouth, as if pained at the necessity for
+speaking out. “Lady MacAskival, while she was still in full possession
+of her faculties, gave me a detailed account of the girl’s
+conduct--sometimes she calls Mary her niece, out of kindness--from the
+age of seven upward. I have made some serious study in the realm of
+psychiatric disturbances, if I may say so, Mr. Logan. From the month
+Lady MacAskival took the child under her patronage, there was trouble
+with the girl. The reports from the schools--she changed schools a
+number of times--were disturbing. Mary was haughty, full of notions
+of her family’s importance; shy, at the same time; and sometimes what
+I must call ferocious. Compensation, perhaps; no doubt she was very
+lonely. Lady MacAskival is not a cordial woman, and, besides, Mary saw
+her ‘aunt’ very seldom; and she did not make many friends at school.
+And now I am about to tell you something that may shock you, Logan, or
+may not. Did it ever occur to your mind that sexual overindulgence,
+like drunkenness, often is a retreat into a world of fantasy, caused by
+a deep unhappiness in this real world? Our Mary has fed on fantasies of
+one sort or another, it seems, ever since she was a baby. For her, the
+legends of Carnglass, for instance, are real: real in the most literal
+sense of that word. She might happen to identify you with her legendary
+ancestor, Sigurd Askival; and herself with his bride, Merin or Marin;
+and me with--why, the monster, the man-goat, the tyrant: the Firgower,
+that pleasant creature we see overhead.”
+
+“Check,” said Logan. Jackman retrieved his situation promptly. “Aye,
+sir,” Logan said, “I know Mary is dreamy; but that’s small harm, if
+we’ve money enough for the whole of our lives.”
+
+“I scarcely think you understand how extremely and dangerously fanciful
+Miss MacAskival is, Mr. Logan; nor what consequences that sort of
+mental sickness may lead to. She may have let you think, for instance,
+that she’s a great heiress, or rich already. In plain fact, she hasn’t
+a shilling of her own, and I may have difficulty in persuading Lady
+MacAskival to leave her two or three thousand pounds. My old friend
+says she has given the girl--who is no kin of hers really--schooling
+and breeding enough to make her a governess or schoolmistress; and
+she owes her no more. What is worse, perhaps, Mary lives in her
+own irrational private world of gods and devils. And that way lies
+... why, extreme eccentricity, at the least. And then there is the
+concupiscence, which may be an inherited tendency, or at least the next
+thing to a biological characteristic.”
+
+Logan took another pawn. “Oh, surely now, Dr. Jackman, you don’t mean
+to say that my Mary’s a wild girl?”
+
+Jackman reached gently across the board and gave Logan a pat on the
+shoulder. “It’s best to know these things early, Logan. I do mean just
+that. When our Mary was scarcely thirteen, there was--well, what I
+really must call an affair with a farm laborer here in Carnglass, in
+the summer. The man was dismissed as soon as the thing was discovered;
+he could have been sent to prison, I suppose. And yet he does not seem
+to have taken the initiative. Then there was a report from school that
+the girl was found with an hotel porter. I sha’n’t say more concerning
+that. There have been two lesser incidents of the same nature--two that
+we know of. And finally, your case.”
+
+“Dr. Jackman!” Logan had half convinced himself that he really was
+a decent, ambitious bank-clerk, and threw corresponding indignation
+and bewilderment into his outcry. “Dr. Jackman! I’d never think of
+anything--anything not proper with Mary. I mean the girl to be my wife,
+Dr. Jackman.”
+
+Jackman raised his eyebrows. “Frankly, now: would you care to begin
+married life with a young woman of these tendencies? Possibly you don’t
+quite believe what I’ve told you, though I could show you letters.
+Yet you’d discover the truth after marriage, if you refused to credit
+it before. So far as your own conduct is concerned, Mr. Logan, I’m
+satisfied that you have behaved decently. But look at the matter from
+another point of view. Here is a girl who throws herself at the head
+of a young man she encounters casually in a bank, because he is bold
+enough to say he likes her ankles. She invites him to her house without
+even informing her guardians. She conducts, I suppose, some clandestine
+correspondence with him. She rushes into his arms after not having seen
+him for three months. Really, Lady MacAskival ought not to have allowed
+Mary that Christmas holiday in Edinburgh.”
+
+“Dr. Jackman,” Logan said, “I trust you, and I see you’re an educated
+man. As for me, I never attended the varsity; it was not my line. But
+cannot this be all rumor and misunderstanding about Mary?”
+
+“I don’t mean to be harsh upon the girl; after all, she is as much of
+a daughter as I possess, Logan. Oh, check again, by the way. I am not
+condemning--only explaining. I doubt if the girl can help herself.
+I suspect the concupiscence is in the blood. And her loneliness
+contributes: as I suggested, sexual promiscuity sometimes is more a
+symptom of a disorder than a disorder itself. I will be entirely blunt,
+if you will allow me, Mr. Logan: in the legal meaning of the phrase,
+and in other meanings, Mary MacAskival is not sane. She is not sane
+where men are concerned, nor in certain other matters. She suffers from
+a variety of delusions--I give you my word. She might suddenly tell
+you, for instance, that I, Edmund Jackman, desire to marry her--an
+absurdity, because it would be almost as if I were to marry my own
+granddaughter, of course. At times she has even come to me with--well,
+shall we say hints and invitations? That was when no younger man was
+available. It has been necessary to forbid her very strictly ever to
+be alone even with the servants; Mr. Royall and I take care, one or
+the other of us, to be in this house whenever she is. I’m sorry, Mr.
+Logan. But to tell you all this is the best service I can render you.”
+
+“I had no notion, sir,” Logan told him. He took Jackman’s king’s rook.
+And Logan had no difficulty in looking perplexed. Jackman was a very
+different sort of being from the charlatan or bully he had thought
+he might be. Those fine black eyes of Jackman’s looked candidly into
+Logan’s.
+
+“And I confess I am somewhat surprised, Logan,” Jackman was saying,
+“that you got yourself engaged to the girl while she is a minor.”
+
+“Oh, surely, Dr. Jackman, Mary’s old enough to choose for herself.”
+
+“I fear she already has chosen quite often, Logan; she began at a
+tender age, to put it somewhat coarsely. You do know just how old she
+is, I take it?”
+
+“Not precisely, sir; she would not tell me her birthday. She said I
+ought not to spend the money for a present. Nineteen, nearing twenty, I
+suppose?”
+
+“Then I have been unjust to you, Logan. If you had known ... Miss Mary
+MacAskival is barely fifteen. She prevaricates on that topic, as on
+many others. Of course, as any man with eyes in his head can see, Mary
+is a well-developed girl. Again, it runs in her family, I am told.
+Physically mature, yes; but emotionally and morally immature; and
+always will be.”
+
+Why this disclosure affected Logan so deeply, he hardly could explain
+to himself. It was as if he actually had turned himself into the
+fictitious bank-clerk he was impersonating. In this matter, as in
+related matters, he might have been on the verge of making a great fool
+of himself. He had begun to fancy himself in the role of Galahad--or of
+Sigurd Askival--rescuing a beautiful maiden from a wicked enchanter.
+And it seemed to be turning out that the maiden was no maid, nor right
+in the head; and that the enchanter was by no means thoroughly wicked.
+He had listened to a drunken Irish terrorist spreading scandals
+about an unknown Dr. Jackman. He had not the least proof, indeed,
+that Jackman had any real connection with J. Dowie, Commission Agent,
+or with Captain Gare of the frightened eyes; they might be someone
+else’s agents, perhaps in the pay of those London connections of Lady
+MacAskival. It remained possible, and even probable, that this Dr.
+Jackman had aspirations after some of Lady MacAskival’s money; but he
+doubted very much whether Jackman was a conspirator, or a saboteur, or
+even a charlatan. Some sort of political radical, likely enough; and a
+dabbler in odd learned subjects; but a keen and even likeable man. And
+for what had Logan been paid to come to Carnglass? Not to criticize
+Dr. Jackman’s character, or to carry off young women--or children--of
+doubtful morals, but merely to buy a piece of real estate for his
+principal. He might have made a thoroughgoing fool of himself. Indeed,
+he had done so already. He had put himself in a ridiculous light with
+Jackman by accepting the role of suitor which Mary MacAskival, in her
+madcap childish way, had thrust upon him. He had sent a silly note to
+the police in Glasgow--though that would do no real harm, since surely
+Donley had no intention of delivering it. He may have helped a murderer
+escape from the island--almost surely he had done just that. He was
+almost an accomplice, what with the Irishman’s gun hidden in a sling
+under his arm. Yes, he was a damned fool; and he might have to play the
+fool a while longer, if only to extricate himself from this folly. He
+moved at hazard on the chessboard; the glaring eyes of a berserker-rook
+confronted him. One misgiving, however, did come into his head.
+
+“Dr. Jackman,” he said, “I understand there was a factor, a Mr. Lagg.
+Where is he?”
+
+Jackman seemed taken aback at this _non sequitur_. “Surely Mary has
+told you....”
+
+“No, we had only a moment together before you came into the parlor,
+sir. She had simply mentioned a puzzle of sorts, with Mr. Lagg
+involved.”
+
+Jackman was solemn and troubled. “I am virtually certain, Mr. Logan,
+that Lagg has been murdered. We have searched every nook in the island
+for him, these three days; but not a trace. As I have pieced matters
+together, Donley drank too much and broke into Lagg’s house in search
+of money. Lagg was very much of a Scot--if you’ll pardon me, Mr.
+Logan--and the servants talked of how he hoarded five-pound notes in
+his kitchen. Perhaps Lagg returned from a visit to the farm while
+Donley was doing his mischief. From the wreckage inside the New House,
+we can only conjecture that there was a struggle. Donley, we know to
+our sorrow, was armed. He may have forced Lagg, at the point of his
+pistol, to the cliff’s edge. But we cannot find the body. Then, after
+Lagg had disappeared and we had begun to question Donley, that Irishman
+broke away and ran into the bracken. In the evening he came down and
+burnt our boats, to keep us from reaching the police or in an attempt
+to get a boat for his escape; and we have been after him ever since.
+Presumably he is short of ammunition by this time. In the fight at the
+harbor, he threw burning petrol into the boats, and one of our boatmen
+was terribly burnt, poor fellow, and probably will lose the sight of at
+least one eye; I must dress his face again tonight. But Lagg? A gone
+gosling, I am very much afraid. And an efficient factor, for years.”
+
+This account of Lagg’s end held together much better than did Donley’s.
+And Logan had told Donley he might bear witness for him at any trial!
+No whisper of this Carnglass episode, he hoped, would filter back to
+America. At this moment, Jackman took Logan’s queen. Yes, Hugh Logan
+had made a fool of himself through and through.
+
+“But to return to a topic almost equally difficult for me, Logan: I
+think you will perceive that your marrying Miss MacAskival is wholly
+out of the question. To begin with, she simply isn’t of age. Besides,
+the shock of an announcement of that sort might put an end to Lady
+MacAskival, who is very old and very sick. And for your own sake,
+Logan--and I rather like your face and your ways--don’t be rash. If
+you still care for the girl after what I’ve told you, give her time to
+reach moral womanhood, if ever she can. I don’t say you need to break
+off the affair altogether. Be gentle with her; go back to Edinburgh;
+exchange letters now and then, if you like. But marriage, for the next
+two or three years, would be a catastrophe, I assure you.”
+
+“Perhaps you’re right, Dr. Jackman,” Logan replied, still in his
+bank-clerk role.
+
+“I usually am right,” Jackman told him, smiling. “And there’s this: it
+is worth something to Lady MacAskival to have a decent young man treat
+her ward decently. My recommendations happen to carry considerable
+weight with Lady MacAskival. Mary does not need a husband or a lover,
+but she does need a friend. And I can see that you mean to move ahead
+in the world; and you deserve to, Logan. So if you can contrive to act
+as I suggest, where our Mary is concerned, I think I can guarantee that
+Lady MacAskival will give you a cheque for fifteen hundred pounds. I
+have no intention of bribing you: I know you’re above that. But you
+deserve some compensation for the disappointment you’ve had, and for my
+part, I’d not be sorry to give you a leg up in the world. Don’t feel
+insulted, Logan. I put it to you plainly: will you do us the honor of
+accepting that cheque?”
+
+What Logan might have done had he truly been the fictitious bank-clerk,
+he did not know. But as an experienced lawyer, he was disturbed by this
+offer. It was too much money for no real service. If once he had been
+inclined to mistake Dr. Jackman for a thorough scoundrel, it would
+not do now to make a model philanthropist of him. Of course he could
+not really take the money, being Hugh Logan; yet he could accept the
+cheque as the fictitious Logan and destroy it later. What he said was,
+“If you’ll allow me, sir, I’ll sleep on your offer and give you my
+answer tomorrow.”
+
+“A sound policy.” Jackman lightly tapped his shoulder again. “And
+I believe I know already what your decision will be, Logan. Ah:
+checkmate.” Jackman had won the match with the thousand-year-old
+chessmen, despite his handicap.
+
+Dr. Jackman rose. “We dine at seven, here in my study, Mr. Logan. In
+the Old House we have neither electricity nor running hot water--Lady
+MacAskival does not care for modern comfort--but old Agnes will bring
+hot water and a lamp to your room. I’ll show you there in a moment. But
+before the sun goes down, shall we enjoy the view from the battlements?
+I think the mist has lifted a trifle, though you come to us in a
+clouded month. By the way, Miss MacAskival will be at dinner with us.
+I ask you to say as little as possible to her about my observations,
+should you talk with her alone before dinner, or later--for her own
+interest, you understand, Logan. A personality as unbalanced as hers
+might be permanently affected by imprudent reproaches. I trust to your
+Scottish discretion. Just up the stair, now.”
+
+They emerged upon the lead of the roof from under the conical-capped
+turret. A narrow walk led round the gabled cap of the great tower,
+between the stone slabs of the gable itself and the machicolations
+of the battlements. Before them was Askival harbor, the sunken yacht
+black against the pier; and beyond, across the foggy ocean, the sun was
+descending in a diffused glory. Despite its climate, Carnglass was a
+beautiful island. A corncrake flew low above the tower. Far below, in
+the policies, a jungle of rhododendrons was in bloom. And five armed
+men were walking up to the gate in the Edwardian block of the Old House
+of Fear.
+
+“Mr. Royall!” Jackman called. The five looked up, and the leader,
+that “walking cadaver,” formed his thin hands into a trumpet. Even at
+this distance, his pallid face and protruding teeth were ugly in the
+extreme: a queer sort of secretary, this skeleton-like man with a rifle
+slung over his shoulder. “Mr. Royall!” Jackman cried out. “What luck?”
+The five men below stared in astonishment at Logan, beside Jackman at
+the battlements. The four hangdog faces behind Royall aroused a vague
+discomfort at the back of Logan’s mind.
+
+“Rab and Carruthers have strayed, Dr. Jackman,” Royall called back.
+“Can you see them from the tower?” Though Jackman and Logan looked to
+north and east, there was not a sign of the other two men.
+
+“Is there no trace of Donley?” Jackman shouted. Gesturing dispiritedly,
+Royall shouted back, “I’ll explain when I come up.”
+
+“I doubt whether we can give you a decent dinner, Mr. Logan,”
+Jackman said as they turned back to the turret-stair. “Our cook, you
+understand, has been out with the searching-party, and we have had to
+press the butler into service in the kitchen. Have you ever lived in a
+state of siege? A mad island, this Carnglass.”
+
+“Fish and chips would do nicely, thank you,” Logan told him. “I’ve not
+had a bite these twenty hours.” He still was the bank-clerk; it might
+be difficult to abandon this play-acting.
+
+“Really, I scarcely think Miss MacAskival would care for fish and chips
+week in and week out, Logan.” Dr. Jackman said it drily. The man, after
+all, was doing no more than his duty in sheltering his friend’s ward
+from an unpromising suitor. Suppose, Logan thought, I were to tell
+him what I really am: how would he act then? Yet an impulse cautioned
+Logan to play this little deception according to its rules until he had
+talked with Miss Mary MacAskival, the girl of fifteen with the green
+eyes, the red hair, and the spotted past.
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+On those cold and dark stairs, Miss Mary MacAskival met them, her quick
+and rounded little body, her rosy cheeks and lively eyes defying the
+barbarous spell of the old tower. She sent Logan a darting, inquiring
+glance, but it was to Jackman she spoke. “I heard the men outside,” she
+said. “Really, you ought to let me lead the search. I know every bush
+and cranny of Carnglass, but they’re stupid townfolk.”
+
+Jackman frowned. “I may have to lead them myself, Miss MacAskival:
+Rab and Carruthers seem to have lost their way. I’ll have a word
+with Royall. Will you be good enough to take Mr. Logan to see Lady
+MacAskival for a moment? And then bring him to the study for dinner.
+Don’t be long.” He sent out a hand as if to touch her lightly
+on the shoulder, but the girl drew back cleverly, almost as if
+unintentionally, against the curving stair-wall, and Jackman passed by
+her, ignoring the repulse. “Don’t forget the advice I gave you, Mr.
+Logan,” he said softly, disappearing down the spiral of the stair.
+
+At that instant, a most unpleasant recollection came into Logan’s head.
+An hour earlier, in the painted study, he had given his rucksack to
+Tompkins to be carried to his room. And in that pack were his passport
+and other papers. That man Tompkins, by the look of him, would pry
+into everything, even had he been only butler in a normal country
+house; and this was no normal place. The moment Jackman talked with
+Tompkins, Logan’s real identity would be known; and then there would be
+trouble--though just what sort of trouble, Logan was not quite sure.
+His dismay showed in his face.
+
+Mary MacAskival was looking at him in concern. “What is it, Hugh?” (So
+it was “Hugh” even in private now, Logan thought, and on very short
+acquaintance, which seemed to confirm Dr. Jackman’s account of this
+odd little girl’s very forward ways with men.) Whatever else she was,
+she had a quick mind, though; for she added, after a moment’s pause,
+“Are you thinking of your rucksack? You needn’t. I met Tompkins on the
+stair and took it from him before he had any chance of a look into it.
+And I took your papers and put them into a hidie-hole--the Old House is
+mostly hidie-holes--where only I could possibly find them again. Then I
+put the rest of your things into your room. Do you mind? I can get the
+papers for you whenever you like, but we mustn’t let Dr. Jackman know
+you’re from America. You’d not be safe then. You’re not particularly
+safe even now. I’m sorry.” Those mobile red lips framed the “sorry”
+with a pathetic beauty. Indeed, it was a pity that Mary MacAskival was
+what she was.
+
+“Thank you, Miss MacAskival,” Logan said. “Probably I’ll need the
+papers after dinner. Shall we go down to Lady MacAskival now?” His
+voice sounded cold even to himself. He needed a little time to think.
+The girl’s charm--her glamour, literally--was too near to him on this
+clammy sepulchral stair. How did those rosy little feet of hers endure
+the damp, attractively bare as they were? But he must get his mind off
+the girl: she was only fifteen, and bad medicine.
+
+“Hugh!” Mary MacAskival spoke his name reproachfully, and now a little
+haughtily. “Hugh! It’s not only your papers you’re thinking of. What is
+it? This is a house of secrets, but you and I mustn’t have secrets from
+each other. You weren’t sent to me to keep secrets from me. What is
+it?” Logan hesitated, and the girl’s mind leaped swiftly to the usual
+conclusion any woman reaches when two men have been talking seriously
+in her absence. “What is it? Were you and Dr. Jackman talking of me?”
+In this instance, the woman’s instinct spoke truly.
+
+Logan looked her full in the face. “Yes, we were.”
+
+Over the girl’s delicious heart-shaped face, with its high cheek-bones
+and rather deep-set green eyes, spread a crimson flush, suffusing all
+the delicate white skin. It would have been a beautiful thing to watch,
+Logan thought, if it had not been a mark of guilt. The finely-moulded
+nose and chin went up. “Then you heard nothing good,” said Mary
+MacAskival, deliberately. She turned, as if to avert her telltale young
+face, and led the way down the stairs. “Dr. Jackman is the father of
+lies. But now I will take you to my aunt.”
+
+A doorway in the immense thickness of the medieval tower-wall led into
+the Renaissance range of the Old House. Here the plaster ceiling of a
+great book-lined corridor was moulded into baroque shells and swags and
+Lord knows what fantastic designs. An odor of damp and musty leather
+came from the shelves; this library could have been used little since
+Sir Alastair’s time. The little barefoot beauty walked beside him,
+still a trifle flushed and defiant, but apparently not hopeless of
+winning him over; Logan thought for a moment she actually meant to
+take his hand; but if she did have that impulse, she thought better
+of it. “After dinner,” she murmured, “if we can be alone, there are
+things that must be told you. Not here: there’s not enough time, and we
+could be overheard.” She noticed his glance at her exquisitely narrow
+bare feet, which here trod upon Oriental carpet, in utter silence; she
+smiled a trifle coquettishly, and said, “I was reared barefoot, and
+don’t like shoes and stockings in the house. Besides, when I’m this
+way, I can scamper all over the house, and _they_ don’t know where I
+am--nor when I’m listening to them. Do you mind? I know it’s not the
+way to receive foreign guests; but you are our first foreign guest,
+and I don’t think you stand on ceremony. Here’s my aunt’s bedroom; she
+never leaves it now. Only Agnes will be with her.” The girl pushed open
+a heavy carven door, and they entered an immense gloomy room.
+
+There the walls were hung from cornice to floor with square panels of
+leather, stamped in gold leaf with some intricate pattern of dancing
+figures; Logan thought he made out the figure of a capering goat
+in this design, but could not be sure in the twilight of the room.
+These hangings must have been long neglected, for splotches of white
+water-stain showed here and there, and some of the panels had pulled
+almost loose from the stitching that held them one to another, so that
+the stone of the walls showed through the gaps. Nearly in the middle
+of the room stood a vast ancient canopied bed, the curtains drawn
+back. Beside it, huddled on a stool, an old serving-woman looked with
+lacklustre eyes at Logan, cringing aside to let him approach the bed:
+this would be Agnes, the shawlie. Certainly she was timid--could she be
+trembling, or was it a slight palsy? Then he made out the shape under
+the rich covers upon the bed.
+
+Lady MacAskival lay with closed eyes, and she was very nearly a corpse:
+almost bloodless, and her face and hands grotesquely wrinkled. Could
+this pallid immobile thing once have been a beautiful woman of fashion,
+no better than she should have been--like little Mary MacAskival,
+perhaps? At their best, Logan suspected, the features must have been
+slightly vulgar. Mary MacAskival slid between him and the bed-rail.
+“Aunt!” she whispered, very low. “Aunt, Mr. Logan has come.”
+
+The wrinkled eyelids slid back, snakelike. The fingers of the
+desiccated left hand stirred slightly. The withered lips writhed,
+almost as if the ancient creature would have burst into a scream, but
+no sound came forth.
+
+“Aunt,” said Mary MacAskival, “he may be trusted.”
+
+Those purblind eyes of the failing woman flickered, for a moment or
+two, with intelligence. But Logan could not have meant much to her;
+possibly he was but a dream within a dream, drifting through limbo,
+less unpleasant than the terrors that often clustered round the
+bedstead. For either this old woman was drugged, Logan thought, or
+else she existed, tortoise-like and impotent, in a realm of perpetual
+terror. In those weary eyes was frozen fright, fright grown so familiar
+that it was almost identical with consciousness. What kept her alive?
+Surely she would have been happy to escape from this terror--unless she
+fancied that worse horrors lay in wait for her beyond the grave.
+
+Now her lips moved, and very faint sounds came forth. “Not Alastair,”
+Lady MacAskival whispered. “Not Alastair. Good. Go--go with him, Mary.
+When I am done. He is not the goat, no. Is he Askival? Is he flesh?
+In Carnglass it is all mist.” The lids slid back again; the left hand
+ceased to claw at the covers; one would have thought the woman dead,
+had not nostrils and chest stirred ever so slightly with her labored
+breathing. Mary MacAskival drew Logan through the still room to the
+door.
+
+They were back in the book-lined corridor. “Is she under drugs?” Logan
+asked.
+
+“No,” said the girl, calmly enough, “only hypnotism--and terror. If
+you had seen the chairs rise up of themselves in this house, and eyes
+glowing in the dark where no living thing could be, and heard the
+footsteps in this hall, and if you were very old--why, I think even
+you would lie there like my aunt, Hugh.”
+
+“Who did these things?”
+
+“Dr. Jackman and Mr. Royall--who else? They have come near to putting
+me out of my wits. And now and then they put Dr. Jackman himself out of
+his wits. He believes, in part at least, though Mr. Royall does not, I
+think. Dr. Jackman has said he will call old Sir Alastair from under
+the stone by St. Merin’s Chapel. He has said he has made Sir Alastair
+walk down this very passage where you and I stand.”
+
+Logan looked involuntarily over his shoulder: but of course there was
+nothing but mouldy books and hangings and family portraits. In this
+strange place, minds might scamper after any vagary. “Does your aunt
+wish to see her dead husband?”
+
+“Not she. She feared him while he lived, and she feared him more once
+he died; and things lie heavy on her conscience. She will give Dr.
+Jackman anything he wants, so long as he keeps Sir Alastair this side
+of her bedroom door.” The girl was almost conversational about it all:
+surely she was either quite mad, or had a grip upon her nerves stronger
+than that of any woman Logan had known. What lay at her heart, Logan
+could not even guess; what could be seen was delectable enough, but
+Logan put no trust in her. Yet, trollop though she might be, Logan
+resolved to play his masquerade a little while yet, so far as Jackman
+was concerned, for her sake and his own.
+
+“Now tell me this, Miss MacAskival,” said Logan, “just how old....”
+Then he heard something in the passage, toward the tower; and so
+did the girl; and they turned simultaneously. Logan felt tempted to
+reach for the little gun under his tweed jacket, but refrained. And,
+after all, it was only that shifty butler. “Dinner is served. Miss
+MacAskival,” Tompkins murmured, quite deferentially, and withdrew back
+toward the tower.
+
+“Later,” Mary MacAskival said, very low, as they followed Tompkins.
+“Later I’ll tell you everything that can be told. Now you must meet
+Mr. Royall.” They went up the ancient stairs again, and passed into
+the study. It was dark now, but the study was cheerful enough. Many
+candles, in eighteenth-century silver candlesticks, had been lit; a
+square table was laid with a cloth and good china; there was soup being
+kept warm by a paraffin lamp on a sideboard. Tompkins had gone down
+somewhere to the kitchen, assisted by a footman whose grumbling voice
+Logan could hear below--Anderson, perhaps; and Jackman and Royall were
+not yet in the room: doubtless the two of them were discussing Hugh
+Logan thoroughly. Mary MacAskival, leaning gracefully against the piano
+which occupied a corner, pointed a little finger toward the painted
+ceiling.
+
+“Do you know what _that_ is?” She meant the painted monster called
+the Firgower, only dimly visible by the candlelight, away up there in
+the shadows. “Oh, Dr. Jackman told you? He should: for he _is_ the
+Firgower, you know. Why do you look at me so queerly? Of course Dr.
+Jackman is the Firgower; he’d tell you so himself, if he were candid.
+He has told me so. You saw the hole in his forehead: that’s his third
+eye. He sees Sir Alastair MacAskival with his third eye, and tells my
+aunt.” She took a candlestick from the table, and, standing on tiptoe,
+lifted it as high toward the ceiling as her little body could reach.
+“Now come here, Hugh Logan, and look close.”
+
+The painted horrid goat-face of the Firgower stared down at Logan; it
+seemed to smirk and leer and scowl all at once. “Its forehead--look,”
+the girl went on.
+
+Now Logan could make out that in the middle of that painted forehead,
+with horns sprouting above it, was a third eye, faintly visible. It
+was much less distinct than the two normal goat-slit eyes, but it
+was very like them. “I don’t know whether it was painted so,” Mary
+MacAskival murmured in Logan’s ear, leaning a pretty hand on his
+shoulder, “or whether that nasty third eye wore on the nerves of Sir
+Alastair or someone else, so that perhaps someone put a trifle of
+white paint over it. It’s no less an eye than Dr. Jackman’s. Do you
+understand? That’s Dr. Jackman’s portrait, so to speak. I’m ever so
+glad _you_ do not have a third eye.”
+
+Logan turned his head to look at this queer little lovely creature. Was
+she lunatic, coquette, or infinitely subtle? They two stood so close
+together that his nose touched hers. His right arm almost went round
+her, as she stood there on tiptoe; but just then boots sounded on the
+stair, and Miss MacAskival drew away. “My poor bare feet!” she said.
+“I’m forgetting my manners. Whatever would they say at the convent?
+They never let young ladies dine there barefoot, you know. I leave you
+to Dr. Jackman and his secretary, but I’ll be back before the soup has
+gone quite cold.” With a little swirl of her skirt, she sprang, rather
+than stepped, through the heavy doorway, and was gone.
+
+She must have passed Jackman and Royall on the stair, for they came in
+immediately. “Mr. Logan,” Jackman said, “Mr. Royall, my secretary.”
+The death’s-head secretary nodded curtly. Once the man began to speak,
+Logan perceived with relief that he was an Englishman, like Jackman,
+though probably from Yorkshire; had he been a Scot, he might have seen
+through Logan’s masquerade. Logan would talk as little as possible to
+the Scots among the servants, lest he give himself away.
+
+Royall made some perfunctory observations about the hunt for Donley,
+the weather, and all that. A cold fish, but a keen one, Logan hazarded.
+He was well educated, surely; Logan suspected that he might once have
+been a fairly high-ranking civil servant; somehow there was the
+mark of Winchester school upon him. Yet now he was secretary to this
+pseudo-doctor, in an island at the back of beyond. Why? Had Royall been
+dismissed from some civil post--for unreliability of sorts? The man was
+sick; the signs of a gnawing illness were plain upon his pallid face;
+and yet Logan guessed--though perhaps he was becoming fanciful, in this
+house of shadows--that the real cause of his trouble was some sickness
+not of the body, but of the spirit. Could one trust Royall? If one were
+of the same faith, undoubtedly; on the man’s grim features was set
+fanaticism, not simple criminality.
+
+“Do you have a taste for letters, Mr. Logan?” Royall inquired abruptly,
+in his hoarse voice. Jackman had said very little, but stood back in
+the shadows, watching, as if he had agreed to let his secretary do the
+prying this night. Tompkins came round with a tray of sherry-glasses,
+and Logan sipped before he replied.
+
+“Why, now, Mr. Royall,” Logan said, “I must admit I am fond of Rabbie
+Burns. Burns, sir, is the poet of the Scottish nation. No nonsense for
+Rabbie Burns. I don’t mind saying, Mr. Royall, that at the British
+Linen Bank, Lawnmarket Branch, we know an honest man’s the noblest work
+of God. How does Burns express it, sir? ‘The rank is but the guinea’s
+stamp....’”
+
+Here Mary MacAskival returned, with neat shoes on her feet, and cotton
+stockings. Jackman and Royall bowed to her slightly, and the four of
+them sat down to dinner, Tompkins putting the soup before them. Without
+bothering to taste his soup, Royall pursued the topic.
+
+“I suppose you know, Mr. Logan, that Burns is perhaps the most popular
+English writer in the Soviet Union today.” Royall’s sunken eyes seemed
+to expect some significant response to this.
+
+“Indeed, sir?” Logan said, ingenuously. “Why, now, I would have
+thought there would be difficulties in doing Rabbie Burns into the
+Russian tongue.”
+
+“The Soviet Russians, Mr. Logan, are masters of translation. Yes, they
+appreciate Burns. At a conference in the Crimea, not so very long ago,
+I had the honor to be asked to read Burns aloud, in English, to a group
+of intellectuals. I found they especially enjoyed the final stanza of
+‘For a’ That and a’ That.’ How does it go--
+
+  ‘For a’ that, and a’ that,
+     It’s comin’ yet, for a’ that,
+   That man to man, the warld o’er,
+     Shall brothers be for a’ that.’
+
+Do I have it quite right, Mr. Logan?” Royall gave him another long
+stare.
+
+“Aye, as I mind it, it goes so, Mr. Royall. Very sound
+sentiments--brothers the world o’er.” Logan smiled at him.
+
+Royall hesitated; then, “Would you care to give me a gloss on those
+lines, Mr. Logan?”
+
+Logan looked puzzled, as indeed he was. “A gloss, sir? Now how do you
+mean? A commentary?”
+
+“Mr. Royall thought some remarks might occur to your mind, Mr. Logan,”
+Jackman put in. “Concerning international brotherhood, perhaps.”
+
+“Why, no, Dr. Jackman, I do not believe I could add anything.” Logan
+turned, simpering, to Mary MacAskival. “Do you think of a proper
+commentary, Mary, darling?” The girl shook her head slowly; her eyes,
+their lids half lowered, moved uneasily from Jackman to Royall.
+“Nevertheless, gentlemen,” Logan went on, still very much the Edinburgh
+clerk, “we’ve had many a serious discussion of Rabbie Burns in the West
+End Young Men’s Discussion Club. There’s profound meaning in Rabbie
+Burns. Profound.”
+
+Royall’s eyes never had ceased to stare at Logan. Now Royall said, “An
+acquaintance of mine who sometimes visits Edinburgh is an admirer of
+Burns. Possibly you have met him: a Captain Gare.”
+
+Logan’s training as a lawyer served him well at that moment, for his
+fatuous smile did not fade, nor did he start. “No, sir,” he told
+Royall, “I don’t believe I’ve had the honor of making the gentleman’s
+acquaintance.”
+
+“And then,” said Royall, “I think of a commission agent in Glasgow,
+a man of the people, who often has Burns on the tip of his tongue.
+Perhaps you have encountered him. His name is Dowie, Jim Dowie.”
+
+“Dowie? I know a solicitor’s clerk of that name in Dalkeith; but he
+reads only American thrillers, sir.”
+
+“So, Royall,” Dr. Jackman interjected, “it seems that our Mr. Logan
+here is not a member, after all, of the little circle you had in mind.
+You were quite mistaken, I fear; I told you he wouldn’t be. Mr. Logan
+is a very honest and industrious rising young bank-clerk, I’m sure. But
+speaking of your national poet Burns, I call to mind a verse you might
+take to heart--
+
+  ‘My love she’s but a lassie yet,
+   My love she’s but a lassie yet,
+   We’ll let her stand a year or twa,
+   She’ll no be half sae saucy yet.’
+
+Apropos, Mr. Logan?”
+
+The butler brought the main course, boiled mutton and potatoes, before
+Logan had to reply. Logan noticed, as Tompkins served, that Mary
+MacAskival’s face had gone crimson at Jackman’s quotation, and then
+white again.
+
+“Tompkins,” Jackman said as the butler served him, “I take it that
+Carruthers and Rab have returned by this time?”
+
+“No, Dr. Jackman.” Logan saw that Tompkins’ hands trembled slightly.
+“Neither of them, sir. Not hide nor hair.”
+
+Jackman bit his lip. “Royall, where do you suppose they’ve got to? It
+has been quite dark for more than an hour.”
+
+“Ah, well, sir,” Royall answered, “so long as the pair of them hang
+together, no harm can come to them. They’re both armed with good
+rifles, and they weren’t reared in ladies’ boudoirs. Rab knows rough
+country well enough, and something of this island. I suppose they may
+have been hot on Donley’s scent when the sun set, and bedded down in
+one of the farmhouses or keepers’ cottages. I last saw them toward St.
+Merin’s Chapel. No doubt they’ll report in the morning.” But Royall
+seemed to have no appetite for his mutton.
+
+Jackman shrugged. “No doubt, no doubt.” That unpleasant patch on his
+forehead twitched, almost as if he were trying to lift the lid of the
+third eye. He turned toward Logan. “As you were about to say...?”
+
+“Why, Dr. Jackman”--but Logan smiled toward Mary MacAskival--“I had
+thought of another verse from Rabbie Burns, that I like better than
+yours; and it is this, sir--
+
+  ‘Gaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;
+   Thou’rt to Love and Heaven sae dear,
+   Nocht of ill may come thee near,
+     My bonnie dearie.’”
+
+“I think that’s very pretty, Hugh,” Mary MacAskival told him. She
+looked toward Dr. Jackman: “‘Gaist nor bogle....’ A good phrase for the
+Old House, is it not, Dr. Jackman? But whatever can have become of Rab
+and Carruthers?”
+
+Jackman looked blacker still. “Leave that to us, if you please, my
+dear.” He seemed about to add something when Mary MacAskival rose and
+walked to the piano.
+
+“How very slow Tompkins is in bringing the sweet tonight! May I play
+until he comes? Hugh, will you sing with me?”
+
+“You know I’ve no voice, Mary, darling,” Logan said, also rising, “but
+I’ll play to your singing.” He did, indeed, play the piano reasonably
+well. Miss MacAskival behaved as if she had always known it: wondrously
+clever, that girl, for fifteen years.
+
+“I’ll set you the tune, Hugh,” she told him, seating herself at the
+piano, “and then you can take my place here, and I’ll sing you a song
+from Burns, if you like. Dr. Jackman, can you endure it? Mr. Royall?”
+
+“Of course,” Jackman told her, somewhat absently. He ran his lean hand
+slowly over his forehead. Royall said nothing: he had stalked to a
+window, opened it, and was staring uneasily into the night below.
+
+Miss MacAskival played pleasantly--an air Logan knew well, “Charlie
+He’s My Darling.” Logan took her place at the piano then, and she stood
+and began to sing. Her young voice was full and tolerably trained, and
+very sweet.
+
+  “An’ Charlie he’s my darling,
+   My darling, my darling,
+   Charlie he’s my darling,
+     The young Chevalier.”
+
+The night air of Carnglass crept into the ancient room through Royall’s
+open window. There came the cry of some night bird, winging past the
+Old House, and the heavy beat of the sea upon the pier of Askival
+harbor. Mary’s voice swelled up:
+
+  “Sae light’s he jimped up the stair,
+     And tirled at the pin;
+   And wha sae ready as hersel,
+     To let the laddie in.”
+
+Then, above the noise of the ocean, there came an unnatural sound,
+echoing perhaps from the other side of the Old House. It was a burst
+of horrid laughter, or so it seemed, ending in a desperate sob; then
+silence; then the high dreadful cackle again. “The devil!” cried
+Jackman, and leaped to join Royall at the window. Mary MacAskival
+shivered, but sang the last verse:
+
+  “It’s up yon hethery mountain,
+     And down yon scroggy glen,
+   We daur na gang a milking,
+     For Charlie and his men.”
+
+To Logan, the girl’s relative composure was as strange as the dreadful
+yelling outside, but he played loyally on until “Charlie and his men”
+died away. Then Mary swept from the piano to the window, and Logan was
+right behind her. The laughter, if laughter it was, had ceased; and
+nothing at all was to be seen through the mist. But in a moment, a shot
+was fired; and then three more shots, in quick succession, seemingly
+not far outside the Old House. Jackman and Royall ran for the stairs,
+and Mary and Logan after them.
+
+Through that great chill hodgepodge old house, past Lady MacAskival’s
+room, through an interior courtyard that had been roofed over, into
+the enormous Victorian block they ran, stumbling through passages and
+down flights of stairs, until at last the four of them burst into a big
+Victorian entrance-hall. About the closed door were clustered Tompkins
+and Ferd and Anderson and a fourth man whom Logan took to be Niven.
+They all had rifles at the ready, but no one had ventured to open the
+door. Jackman dashed among them and flung back the bolts: “See what
+it is, you fools.” None of the four seemed eager to investigate, but
+they followed Jackman and Royall a little way into the dark, and Mary
+MacAskival and Logan tagged after. A massive knob of the great rock on
+which the Old House stood jutted up close by the door, and Logan urged
+the girl toward it.
+
+“If anyone fires from out there,” he whispered to her, “we’ll be so
+many sitting ducks.”
+
+“No one will fire at us,” the girl said; but, obediently, she crouched
+behind the rock, peering round in the direction the men were looking.
+
+There came one more screech of hysterical laughter, and then a figure
+came into view, reeling, stumbling, slipping, but still holding a
+rifle. Only a few yards from the Old House, the man swung round to
+face the darkness from which he had emerged, brought his gun to his
+shoulder, and fired three more shots, wildly, toward nothing visible.
+There was as much chance of his hitting the moon, with the aim he took,
+as of winging any living thing in Carnglass. Then the man dropped his
+rifle altogether and came lurching on toward the entrance of the Old
+House, falling at last in a heap right at Jackman’s feet, giggling,
+moaning, choking.
+
+“Rab!” cried Jackman. “What the devil, Rab?” It was a very young man,
+thick-set and heavy-featured, with a great shock of hair. He was
+covered with little cuts, and his clothes were in rags. To judge by his
+gasping and gulping, he had run for miles. And he was quite out of his
+head. He squirmed at Jackman’s feet, and mumbled obscenities, and then
+burst once more into his screaming and terrified laugh.
+
+“Something has run him like a hare,” Royall said. “The wits are gone
+out of the man.” The four servants, hard cases though they looked,
+bunched together like so many rabbits. Stooping, Jackman took Rab by
+the shoulders and shook him mercilessly.
+
+“Rab!” Jackman hissed. “Rab! Speak, man, or I’ll give you worse than
+you’ve had already.” But Rab only sobbed for breath. “Pick up his
+rifle, Mr. Royall,” Jackman said, prodding Rab with his foot. Logan
+suspected that he gave the order to Royall for fear that none of the
+servants would obey it. Stooping, Royall slipped into the heather,
+groped for the gun, found it, and hurried back, glancing over his lean
+shoulder.
+
+“Anderson and Ferd, lift this lump,” Jackman called out, “and drag
+him inside.” The whole party retreated through the wide doorway into
+the Victorian courtyard, and then back into the formal entrance-hall,
+barring the gates behind them; Anderson was left as sentry inside the
+great door. “Now you, Niven and Ferd, hold up this thing before me.”
+They supported the muttering Rab between them. Jackman slapped Rab’s
+bleeding face with his open palm, terribly hard. The young man ceased
+to moan; his eyes rolled. “Rab,” said Jackman, slowly and distinctly,
+“where the devil is Carruthers?”
+
+“O, it took him, it took him!” cried Rab, and lapsed into incoherence.
+
+“I’ll have the heart out of you, Rab, if you don’t speak up. What took
+Carruthers?” Jackman slapped him again.
+
+Rab’s dull eyes widened. “It took Carruthers! Lagg took him, auld, wet
+Lagg! Lagg it was!” With that, Rab sank into a kind of fit, and Ferd
+and Niven pushed him down upon the floor.
+
+Dr. Jackman stood rigid. “No,” he said, perhaps to Royall, perhaps
+to himself. “No. Not Lagg.” Then he looked round, his face stiff and
+white, upon the little ring of men, and upon Logan and Mary MacAskival
+beyond them. “Get this creature to bed,” he said to Niven and Ferd.
+“Tie him in, if you must. Ignore his ravings. The fellow’s lost his
+nerve; Donley must have been after him. Royall, post someone atop the
+tower, and tell him to fire at anything that moves. Miss MacAskival,
+this is no scene for you. See if your aunt has been disturbed, and then
+get to your room. Logan, Tompkins will show you up. Stay in your rooms
+until I have you called for breakfast.” Then Jackman went out into the
+courtyard again, calling to Anderson.
+
+Tompkins, carrying a petrol lantern, led the girl and Logan through
+the passages toward the Renaissance block. Outside Lady MacAskival’s
+room, Mary paused. “I’d best look in here, Hugh,” she said, “so I tell
+you good-night now.” Tompkins moved discreetly a few feet further down
+the passage, but Logan only pressed the girl’s hand. She contrived to
+smile at him. “Do you recollect that last stanza I sang?” she asked:
+
+  “‘It’s up yon hethery mountain,
+      And down yon scroggy glen,
+    We daur na gang a milking,
+      For Charlie and his men.’
+
+Take care this night, Hugh.” Then she was gone into the bedroom hung
+with Spanish leather.
+
+Tompkins led him to a decent smallish chamber on the floor above Lady
+MacAskival’s room, wished Logan a civil good-night, and slid away.
+There was no key in the lock upon the door, and no bolt. To shove
+furniture against the door, Logan felt, might seem unduly suspicious
+to Dr. Jackman; but he did it, all the same, jamming a chair-back
+under the doorknob, and reinforcing it by a small chest. He looked out
+his two windows; they were high and small, and almost impossible for
+anyone to reach even with very long ladders, for the rock fell sheer
+away below this portion of the Old House. The bed, if rather damp, was
+tolerable. He slid his pistol Meg under the pillow, and was dozing off
+in short order, with only the wind at the panes to break the stillness,
+and the distant growl of the combers. Logan was too tired to think of
+Rab, or Lagg, or Jackman, or Royall, or even of the green-eyed girl--to
+whom, in a fit of sympathy at the dinner-table, he had promised that
+she need fear neither ghost nor bogle while he was near. It was an
+unsecured pledge of questionable validity to an insecure girl of
+questionable antecedents.
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+Much later--it must have been past three in the morning--Logan was
+waked from his troubled sleep by a curious sound. His nerves on
+edge, he sat up in bed, scarcely knowing where he was, and befuddled
+by finding himself tangled in an old-fangled nightshirt, until he
+remembered that Tompkins had laid out for him this antique garment.
+The only source of light in the room was the extinguished candle, of
+course; and Logan reached for the candlestick, but thought better of
+it, and listened.
+
+The noise was the sound of slow sliding. Blinking, he looked toward the
+door. So far as he could see anything at all, it seemed to him that
+the door was very slightly ajar. And then he knew the source of the
+sliding-sound: someone must have dislodged slightly the chair he had
+used as barrier, must have got a hand round the edge of the door, and
+must be quietly shoving chair and reinforcing chest inward, so that
+whoever was outside might squeeze within.
+
+Logan snatched his pistol from under the pillow. It wouldn’t do to use
+the gun except in the last extremity, though. He slid silently out of
+bed to the floor, and rolled under the bedstead. If someone meant to
+cut his throat, there in the blackness, whoever it was would stab an
+empty bed.
+
+That sliding-noise had ceased now; what had wanted to enter presumably
+had glided in. To Logan, taut on the floor under the bed, came the
+thought of Old Askival, who was supposed to walk the narrow passages
+of the Old House, and had driven the wastrel Donald to the New House.
+Whatever had entered surely made no noise at all: a thrill ran through
+Logan’s body. Holding his breath and straining his sight, after
+what seemed like a quarter of an hour--really some five seconds,
+probably--he made out the dimmest of dim shapes bending over the bed,
+its legs right before Logan’s nose. Gripping the pistol in his left
+hand, Logan seized an ankle of the intruder and gave a mighty tug.
+
+A stifled cry, and the thing was on the floor beside him, and Logan
+flung himself upon it in a tangle of arms and legs, thrusting the
+pistol against the thing’s head. The shape made very little resistance.
+Shape? The body under Logan was not a man’s shape. And most certainly
+it was not Lady MacAskival or old Agnes. “You’ve hurt my head,” the
+shape murmured, resentful and panting. In the faintest of whispers--
+“Really! Are men always so violent when they’re waked in the middle of
+the night?”
+
+It had been a near thing; that little pistol, thrust against the girl’s
+temple, might have gone off. “Oh!” said Logan, shocked and embarrassed.
+“Did I cut you?” He ran his hand through the mass of her hair,
+searching for a wound.
+
+“I think not,” the girl said, brushing aside his hand. “You were good
+enough merely to stun me. Now do you mind sitting somewhere else than
+on me? I’m rather out of breath. Sit on the bed. How queer you look in
+that nightgown! It must have been one of Sir Alastair’s, who was twice
+your size; I wonder it hangs together still. And keep your voice low,
+for Dr. Jackman walks the passages at all hours, like a wraith, and
+he _would_ put an end to Hugh Logan if he found me with you. I’m ever
+so sorry to put you in danger--or more danger--and to wake you from
+a sound sleep, and to invade your bedroom; but you and I must talk
+tonight. There, that’s much better! You do look silly, perched in that
+old nightgown on that old bed, but it can’t be helped. Oh, you have a
+little gun? That’s clever of you. I wish I had one of my own. I have
+keys--although Dr. Jackman doesn’t know it--to nearly every room in
+the house except the gunroom, and the cellars where they keep those
+explosives: Dr. Jackman put new locks on those. Do you mind if I sit on
+the other end of the bed? The floor’s rather hard. Thank you: now we
+can make matters clear.”
+
+The minx--Logan’s eyes, adjusted to the dark, could make her out
+vaguely--was fully dressed, except that she was barefoot, as usual.
+Either she was an idiot, which he doubted, or else she was the bravest
+woman he ever had come upon. “Miss MacAskival,” he said, “what is
+outside this house? What drove Rab out of his mind? It may be, I
+suppose, that Donley was forced back to land, after he took my boat;
+but he was a tired man when I saw him last, and I can’t imagine him
+knocking Carruthers on the head and chasing Rab right up to the door.”
+
+“Now that you have knocked _me_ on the head,” said Mary MacAskival,
+“and have sat on me, you may as well commence calling me Mary, Hugh
+Logan. We’ve not time, just now, to talk of what may be outside; for
+I must tell you of what’s within. You have no faith in me, have you?
+You’ve been talking with Dr. Jackman. What did he tell you of me?”
+
+He had no faith in anyone in the Old House, Logan thought; indeed, he
+had begun to doubt his own sanity. But he would be blunt with this
+girl, and see if she could make a case for herself. “He told me, Mary
+MacAskival,” Logan said, “that you were eccentric.”
+
+There in the dark, the girl laughed softly; she was a cool one.
+“Why, that’s true enough, Hugh Logan: all the MacAskivals have their
+oddities. I fancy that old Mr. Duncan MacAskival, who sent you to me,
+has his peculiarities.”
+
+“That he has. But he’s no girl of fifteen.”
+
+“Fifteen?” She sounded startled. “Whatever do you mean?”
+
+“You are fifteen, aren’t you?”
+
+“Fifteen!” She stifled her merriment. “I’m past twenty, Hugh Logan,
+though it’s little I am. Whatever possessed Dr. Jackman to tell you
+such a thing?” Her voice rang true.
+
+“And he said you were too fond of men.”
+
+“Fond of men? I’m not fond of Dr. Jackman, I can tell you. I never
+see any men to be fond of, here in Carnglass, Dr. Jackman’s crew
+are half afraid of me--particularly Niven the tinker, who knows I
+am a witch--and I’m thoroughly afraid of them, although I never let
+them guess it. With whom am I supposed to be infatuated?” A tone of
+suppressed anger had come into her voice.
+
+“When you were thirteen, Jackman said, you--why, you loved a gardener
+here in Carnglass.”
+
+At first Logan thought she had begun to sob; but then he realized she
+was choking in an endeavor to keep from breaking into imprudent shrieks
+of laughter. “Malcolm Mor MacAskival,” she managed, at last. “Malcolm
+Mor! Of course I loved him. I do still. He carried messages for me and
+contrived to get them posted in Loch Boisdale, and so they discharged
+him. And he worships the ground I tread, because I am The MacAskival.
+He has a great white beard, and is upward of seventy. Are you jealous
+of him?”
+
+It was impossible not to believe her: Jackman was plausible, but Mary
+MacAskival was all candor. “What a consummate liar Jackman is!” Logan
+played with Donley’s little gun.
+
+“To be sure he is; didn’t I tell you so, Hugh? He lives by lies. But
+into nearly every lie he works a tiny grain of truth, for the sake
+of appearances. Well, then: what other mischief have I been working,
+according to your friend Dr. Jackman?”
+
+“He implied, Mary MacAskival, that you suffer from delusions of
+grandeur. He said you must have told me--by ‘me’ he means our
+fictitious bank-clerk, of course--that you were to inherit Carnglass
+and all the rest from your aunt, while in truth you are a pauper.”
+
+“Would it matter to you if I were a pauper?” She was serious now; he
+thought her firm chin went up.
+
+“Not in the least.”
+
+“Well, then, as a matter of fact, Hugh Logan, I have more money than
+has Lady MacAskival. She never has loved me, but she has no one else
+who signifies; and so, more than five years ago, she gifted Carnglass
+to me, and more than half her securities. She told me that would
+baffle the Exchequer; for in this country, you know, one can escape
+death-duties by giving away one’s property, so long as one does it
+five years before one’s death. Five years ago my aunt still had her
+wits about her--enough to make a lawful will, at any rate; and she put
+Carnglass and the rest into trust for me; and six months from now, when
+I am twenty-one, I can do what I like with my own.”
+
+This revelation reminded Logan of his proper business in Carnglass,
+which the troubles of the past few days had almost driven out of his
+head. “Then Lady MacAskival couldn’t sell Carnglass to my principal
+even if she chose? It’s yours? And will you sell?”
+
+“Hugh Logan! Here we sit whispering, with a gang of murderers and
+conspirators in the house, and The MacAskival honoring you with a
+call at four in the morning in your bedchamber, and you talk of
+title-deeds! You _are_ a man of law. But no, I wouldn’t sell: Carnglass
+is my world. Yet Duncan MacAskival being an old man, and a kinsman,
+and having his heart set on the matter, I might arrange for him a
+life-tenure of the Old House. And I, and any husband I might choose to
+have, could live at the New House. When I wrote Duncan MacAskival that
+last letter--the note that brought you here, Hugh--I made up my mind
+that I would not bring him here upon a wild-goose chase altogether. If
+a lease of the Old House will satisfy him, he shall have it. But Dr.
+Jackman will be a nasty tenant for us to evict, Hugh Logan.”
+
+And then, in part volunteering the story and in part prompted by
+Logan’s questions, the girl gave him her account of Dr. Edmund
+Jackman. Three years before, when Mary still had been at school,
+old Lady MacAskival had gone to London for a month, in winter. For
+half a century, Lady MacAskival had been very odd; and now whatever
+rationality remained to her was giving way. On her infrequent London
+visits, she had tended more and more to surround herself with peculiar
+company: Indian pseudo-mystics, and fortune-tellers with pretensions to
+decent manners, and mediums of various sorts. Lady MacAskival detested
+anything resembling orthodox religion, but rejoiced in any oddity which
+flirted with faces that glowered up from the abyss; and she believed,
+or half believed. She was ignorant, superstitious, vain, and rich--and
+she had a bad conscience. Moreover, she was extremely lonely. To her,
+in time, was presented a Dr. Edmund Jackman, “a scholar, my dear, and
+a progressive politician, and a diplomat, and a man who knows _all_
+about the occult. He has just come back from a trip to Roumania.” Dr.
+Edmund Jackman spent a great deal of time in Lady MacAskival’s London
+drawing-room, that winter three years gone. In the spring, he was
+invited to Carnglass, and came for a visit of two months. And then
+there was another visit, lengthier; and another.
+
+By the end of the year of lengthy visits, Edmund Jackman was wholly
+master of Lady MacAskival’s mind, or what remained of it; and master,
+too, of her money, and of Carnglass. Dr. Jackman was useful in many
+ways. He kept her avaricious London kinsfolk from troubling her. He
+took her affairs out of the hands of her ineffectual solicitors, and
+gave them his personal attention. Gradually he dismissed her feckless
+Island servants, even the farmhands, and reduced household costs, and
+brought in some hard-featured, but doubtless dependable, men from
+London and Glasgow, until only old Agnes remained of the former staff.
+He spent much of her income, too, on “schemes for political education.”
+
+This Mary MacAskival had learnt from the mumbling lips of her old aunt,
+in that darkened room hung with Spanish leather, listening to the
+ramblings of that stricken brain, convinced sometimes that she was near
+to madness herself. This she whispered to Hugh Logan, curled at the
+other end of the bed. And she had learnt other things from Dr. Jackman
+himself, and from Royall, and from scraps of servants’ conversation
+overheard in the passages.
+
+Her solitary years with Lady MacAskival had given the girl an insight
+into the old woman’s mind and soul, Logan perceived, so complete
+that she could speak almost for, rather than of, her dying aunt. She
+understood, and nearly shared, the terrors of that room hung with
+Spanish leather. And she knew what talents gave Jackman his power over
+the old woman.
+
+More than all his other services, what made Dr. Jackman indispensable
+to Lady MacAskival was this: he kept Sir Alastair away from the door
+of her room. Lady MacAskival always had suspected that Alastair was
+lurking outside that door, even though she had buried him under the
+great stone in St. Merin’s Chapel so many years ago. Every day she
+sent the footman with a message for Alastair to be placed in the tomb
+at St. Merin’s Chapel, imploring Alastair to forgive her, and to stay
+up there at the top of Carnglass where he belonged. Yet twice she had
+glimpsed Alastair, unrelenting, in the narrow passages. He _would_ come
+back, and gobble at her bedroom door on windy nights, and she lay in
+dread that one night he might cross the threshold.
+
+Dr. Jackman had saved her from that: he had bound Sir Alastair by a
+mystical chain, he told Lady MacAskival, and so long as she possessed
+the loyalty of Dr. Jackman, no tall stern old man, who ought to be
+in his tomb, would cross the threshold. Of course it was essential
+to retain the wholehearted loyalty of Dr. Jackman, and that could
+be secured by agreeing with him in all things. Once or twice, when
+she had demurred from some plan of his, Dr. Jackman had come to her
+bedside, with Mr. Royall beside him, and had described in awful detail
+what would be the consequences if Sir Alastair made his way in. She
+had fallen into a fit, and old Agnes had been too terrified to speak.
+At all costs, Dr. Edmund Jackman must be kept in a good humor; and
+sometimes the costs ran very high. It was a great pity that willful
+girl Mary did not take to Dr. Jackman.
+
+For months now, Dr. Jackman and Mr. Royall had lived at the Old House
+all the time, except for brief cruises about the islands. Dr. Jackman
+demonstrated to Lady MacAskival his control over the risen dead by
+certain seances in her room. Tables rose, and chairs fell over, and
+horrid white shapes loomed up--but never, Dr. Jackman promised, the
+shape of Alastair. And presently Dr. Jackman revealed to her that he
+always had been in Carnglass; and had been there infinitely long before
+she, as Miss Ann Robertson, had been married to Colonel Sir Alastair
+MacAskival. For Dr. Jackman was not simply human. He was a part of
+Carnglass, and its master from time out of mind. He had been there
+before the Viking rovers came. He was the Firgower, the Goat-Man.
+And he saw all things, past, present, and future, through his Third
+Eye, which quivered in the middle of his forehead. By watching Lady
+MacAskival with his Third Eye, he could relieve her of all pain, and
+put her to sleep at will.
+
+Yet it did not seem quite right that Dr. Jackman should marry her
+niece. He had told Lady MacAskival many times that he must do so; that
+the thing was ordered by the Presences under the rocks of Carnglass;
+that thus Carnglass would be his in the eyes of the puny law of men,
+as well as by the decree of nature. Still, it did not seem right. Mary
+belonged to the living, not to be a being beyond good and evil. Lady
+MacAskival dared not deny Dr. Jackman, however; she said only, in great
+fear and pain, “Then you must ask Mary herself.”
+
+Dr. Jackman did not neglect Miss Mary MacAskival. Upon her he bestowed
+much valuable time, endeavoring to instruct her in progressive social
+views and in a proper understanding of occult lore. He had compelled
+her to come to him in his study at least an hour a day, to listen to
+his peculiar talk. Almost always he had been quite civil; but once or
+twice he had threatened her, and then he had been ghastly. He talked
+politics and necromancy to her, a queer mixture. The one, she thought,
+was as mad as the other, or perhaps the politics was a little the
+madder.
+
+“If I had known the least little bit about politics and economics and
+all that,” she said to Hugh, “Dr. Jackman would have converted me.
+But I was utterly ignorant, so he could make no impression. I was
+altogether too stupid.” The politics, so far as Logan could determine
+from Mary’s imperfect exposition, were Marxist, or a variant thereof.
+“He has been so eager to have me serve the Party,” she said. “But the
+Party, so far as I could make out, meant to destroy a great many
+people to bring about peace everywhere, and meant to make everybody
+precisely alike so everyone could be perfectly happy, forever and ever.
+That’s nonsense. You’re a solicitor--or is it a barrister, Hugh?--and
+you know. I don’t at all want to be like Dr. Jackman, or like Niven the
+tinker; and I don’t want them to be like me. So after a time I simply
+stared at Dr. Jackman, and said ‘Indeed?’ now and then, and he grew
+discouraged. My tactics worked like a bomb.”
+
+“Like a bomb?” asked Hugh Logan, startled.
+
+“Oh, you know--that’s one of the things we said at school, ‘like a
+bomb.’ Everything good or successful is like a bomb. You know, don’t
+you?” Sometimes this astounding girl seemed old as the hills, and at
+other times younger than the fifteen years Jackman had assigned to her.
+She was a hoyden of sorts, but quite innocent. “Don’t you ever say
+‘like a bomb,’ Hugh? But then, I suppose you never attended a girls’
+school.”
+
+So Jackman had abandoned his endeavor to enlist Miss MacAskival in
+The Cause. Yet he had persisted in his instruction in the occult.
+“He really believes in it all, Hugh. Mr. Royall doesn’t believe, or
+believes only a little; but Dr. Jackman is stranger than my old aunt.
+He was shot in the head in Spain--oh, did he tell you that?--and I
+think that he has been more clever and more dangerous in various ways
+since he came from the hospital; but also he sees things that no one
+else sees, and hears sounds that no one else hears. And he has become
+a part of Carnglass. I mean that. He has read everything that may be
+read concerning Carnglass; and all the old tales have got into his
+brain the way romances got into Don Quixote’s head: but so evilly,
+Hugh. He did not say he was the Firgower simply to frighten my aunt;
+he believes it. He frightens even Mr. Royall. And then, of a sudden,
+he will drop that weird talk and begin discussing politics. Or he may
+become quite sensible, and make plans to scout round the islands, and
+to keep in touch with people on the mainland, and to send messages to
+the Continent, and to set off gelignite when he’s ready.”
+
+“Explosives?”
+
+“Oh, yes, he has a crypt full of it; but I’ll tell you of that
+presently. He didn’t mean me to hear about the explosives, but there
+are places in my Old House where I can eavesdrop, if I must.” She
+seemed to take a schoolgirl satisfaction in that art.
+
+Royall, to judge by Mary MacAskival’s description, was what someone
+once called “the humanitarian with the guillotine.” Wholly devoted
+to Jackman, he was forever talking of the sufferings of the working
+classes. But he spoke of the men who served him and Jackman, and
+sometimes of people in general, as “that scum.” Systematic and
+humorless, once upon a time he had been a successful civil servant.
+Then, however, political fanaticism had swallowed him, and there
+remained of the man only an emaciated body and a hatred of life, which
+he disguised from himself as hatred of the “expropriating classes.”
+Mary MacAskival thought that Royall would have snuffed out her life,
+if it had served his interest--or the Party’s interest--with no more
+scruple than as if she had been a mouse.
+
+Edmund Jackman was more subtle and interesting. Possibly, Logan thought
+as he listened to the girl, Jackman once had known the good and had
+deliberately chosen the evil--and ever after had been haunted by that
+memory. “Evil, be thou my good.” Fearless and very clever, somewhere
+early in life he must have taken the sinister track. And never had he
+contrived to turn back.
+
+“When the horror is upon Dr. Jackman,” Mary was whispering, “I think I
+would faint, only that he reminds me of Rumpelstiltskin in the fairy
+tale, and that makes me laugh inside, even though the rest of me is
+shaking.” The horror came upon him once or twice nearly every day, and
+then he looked like a damned soul. “I think he is remembering things
+he has done. Once, when he meant to break my will, he hinted at what
+he had to do in Spain. I think he killed patients in hospitals with
+doses of poison, so that they would not tell tales. Perhaps, in the
+beginning, the people who gave him his orders saw the streak of good
+in him, and so they hardened him by ordering him to do all the worst
+things that could be done.” The girl shivered.
+
+After the civil war in Spain, it seemed, Jackman had vanished into
+eastern Europe; and had reappeared in England for a time during the
+second World War; and next had turned up in Roumania. There, somehow,
+he had fallen into disfavor with the people who gave him his orders.
+Possibly he had gone too far in his measures, having come to love
+terror for its own sake. Or perhaps he had been chosen as a scapegoat,
+during a period when there were official pretences of moderation. In
+any event, he had fled out of Roumania, four years ago, returning to
+London; and then he had come to Carnglass. Royall, it seemed, had been
+with Jackman in Roumania, and the two of them had done things there of
+which they preferred not to speak even to each other. “Royall is like a
+ghost: I mean that he has no conscience left. But Jackman, I think, has
+memories of the difference between wrong and right, and so the horror
+comes upon him.”
+
+Suddenly the girl leaned closer to Logan, who had been about to speak,
+and put her little hand upon his mouth. “Hush!”--this scarcely more
+than a hiss. Her ears, attuned to the creaks and echoes of the place,
+had detected something his had not. Yes: now there were stealthy
+footfalls in the passage. Someone moved outside the door of the room;
+seemed to hesitate there; passed on. The girl’s fingers were gripping
+Logan’s shoulder, and his hand shook as he held his pistol ready. But
+whatever had been outside was gone elsewhere in the labyrinth of the
+Old House.
+
+How ever had Mary MacAskival endured, in her solitude, the dread strain
+of this perilous ordeal, month on month? “I say,” she asked him,
+abruptly, as if she had read his mind, “do you think I’m mad myself?”
+He squeezed her little hand for answer. “Sometimes I wonder if I am,”
+she went on, “for it seems like one unending nightmare: until you came,
+that is.”
+
+Once Jackman had said to her, “Miss MacAskival, I felicitate you on
+your strength of mind.” Considering what the man was, he had been
+almost gentle with her; probably his admiration was genuine. He
+tolerated no rudeness toward her from any of his rough men.
+
+“I don’t think he is interested in women as most men are,” Mary
+MacAskival went on. Did she blush in the darkness? “He is in love
+with power and terror. He wants me only because with me he could have
+Carnglass a while longer, and because I have money. And, I suppose,
+because he enjoys crushing other people’s minds. He has tried to crush
+mine. Had he not been so busy with other things, I believe he would
+have defeated me long ago.”
+
+So long as her aunt continued to live, Jackman had no urgent motive to
+compel the girl to marry him: his ascendancy over Lady MacAskival gave
+him Carnglass and enough money. But as Lady MacAskival sank, now rarely
+rising from her bed, the day grew near when Jackman must marry the
+girl, or else run the danger of exposure and ruin.
+
+“Once I was rash,” Mary said. “I told him and Royall that I had
+tolerated them only because they held my aunt’s life as security. I
+said that when she was gone, I’d tell everything I knew to the police.
+
+“Dr. Jackman smiled a horrid smile. ‘Who would believe a mad girl?’
+was what he said. And then he told me that if he should fail to
+persuade me to remain loyal to him, he and Royall might do things to
+me--‘painful measures, Miss MacAskival, painful for all of us’--that
+would make me into a different person, so that I could never be the
+same again. There were ‘special mental disciplines,’ he told me, and
+‘certain shock treatments.’ It would be ever so much pleasanter if I
+simply did as he told me to. And he could be sure that I would do as he
+wished if I were to marry him. That was once when the horror came upon
+him.”
+
+Here, at last, the girl burst into suppressed sobs. Logan’s arm went
+round her shoulders. “Sometimes I have thought,” she mumbled, “that I
+ought to give way. So much easier! But I suppose I was too proud.”
+
+The fierce old blood of the chieftains of MacAskival, Logan thought,
+was strong in her; she was a sport in more ways than one. It would be
+a pleasure for him, if ever he got the chance--which, at the moment,
+seemed slim--to settle accounts on her behalf with Edmund Jackman.
+
+Why, until she wrote to Duncan MacAskival, had she made no attempt
+to expose Jackman, or to escape? Because it was only gradually she
+had come to understand what Jackman and Royall were after; and she
+had known, too, that her aunt’s life was in their hands, and that
+they would not hesitate to snuff it out if they were pushed. From the
+moment Jackman established himself in the Old House, it had become
+increasingly difficult to send any message out of the island; a
+fortnight ago, it had become virtually impossible; and since Donley’s
+flight, she had not been permitted even to leave the house.
+
+And there was another reason: that room in the cellars full of
+explosives. She thought that Jackman was eager to use them, if there
+were any chance for it, to destroy certain mysterious things that the
+government was building in the Outer Isles; but Royall was trying to
+restrain him. “Dr. Jackman,” she had overheard him say once, “you know
+what exceeding instructions has brought us already. Until word comes
+from Bruhl....” Royall was willing, she suspected, to rest content with
+gathering what information they could about those mysterious projects,
+and transmitting it to someone in London. But in Jackman there was
+some terrible compulsion to blow everything apart. “If he could, I do
+believe, he would explode all the world into little bits.”
+
+So there was this: if Jackman were brought to bay, and had the
+opportunity, very probably he would set off the gelignite in the crypt.
+The Old House would go, and everyone in it; and for Mary MacAskival,
+the Old House and Carnglass were the center of the universe. “I know
+nothing about politics,” she told Logan, rather apologetically. “I
+suppose Jackman and Royall are traitors, and might do terrible harm
+to the country. But Carnglass is my country. I think of the Old House
+first.” Jackman would destroy himself and everyone in the Old House,
+almost certainly, if he despaired. “What was it the old Greek said:
+‘When I am dead, let earth be mixed with fire’? I learnt that at
+school. Well, that is how Dr. Jackman thinks.”
+
+She had lived with the terror, hoping vaguely that Jackman’s plans
+might alter and he and his men go away; that the authorities in London
+or Glasgow might discover the scheme and descend before Jackman could
+act. It was only as her aunt had sunk toward her end that the girl had
+been roused to some plan of action, what with her own imminent danger.
+And so she had got off the note to Duncan MacAskival, a schoolgirl’s
+design; yet it had succeeded so far as to bring Logan to her. “Until
+you came, I had no one at all to talk with.” Her sobbing broke out
+again.
+
+Jackman and Royall, she was convinced, had no notion of what she had
+done or of Logan’s real identity. Once Logan had told her of his
+encounters with Dowie and Gare, she said that Duncan MacAskival’s
+cablegrams could not have reached Carnglass. The storms, and the
+fortunate burning of the boats, had prevented that. There was a
+wireless in the Old House, and Jackman sometimes used it, cautiously,
+in sending messages in code to people on the mainland; but some ten
+days before Lagg and Donley disappeared, part of the wireless set had
+slipped out of sight. “They thought Lagg, who was acting strangely,
+must have stolen it,” she said. “He didn’t. I did.” This girl was a
+paragon. “I do believe that if they knew who you are,” she went on,
+“they would make away with you, just as they did with Mr. Lagg”--for
+Logan had told her, hurriedly, what Donley had said of Lagg’s end.
+
+In a very little while, Logan realized of a sudden, it would be dawn;
+and Mary MacAskival must be gone from his room before then. “Mary,” he
+said, “what is this about Lagg? Could he be alive? Could that fellow
+Rab really have seen him? Who is outside this house? Is it Donley, or
+is it only these fellows’ imagination?”
+
+She hesitated. “I do not know,” she said. Was she concealing something?
+“Perhaps I ought to--but there isn’t time now. Listen: someone’s
+stirring already, somewhere below. There’s so much more to tell you,
+but it must wait. Jackman will keep us apart if he can, but perhaps
+he’ll be out with the men today, hunting for Donley. Now I must run.”
+There were, indeed, the first faint flushes of the Hebridean spring
+dawn visible through the windows. She leaned toward Logan. “You may
+kiss my cheek, if you like, for being a brave man.” Logan did that,
+but he said, “You seemed to be friendlier yesterday.” She sprang up,
+averting her face, and went to the door, and pressed an ear against
+it; then she opened it a crack, and peered out; then waved a little
+hand, and slipped through, and was gone. With this sudden vanishing,
+Logan almost doubted that the strange little creature ever had crouched
+sobbing beside him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Logan lay awake on his bed after that, as the sun came up, full of
+dreads--more, perhaps, for the girl than for himself, but sufficiently
+concerned for Number One. About seven, there was a rap at his door, and
+Tompkins, that pillar of varnished iniquity, brought him morning tea.
+Logan would not have been surprised to be knifed as he took the tray,
+but Tompkins said only, “Foggy again today, sir,” and closed the door
+behind him. Leaving the tea untasted, Logan shaved with the hot water
+Tompkins had brought, hurriedly dressed, and found his way downstairs
+to the book-lined corridor, where for a few minutes he idled about,
+with a feeling of complete helplessness. Then Royall appeared from
+somewhere, glancing at him suspiciously; but Royall was civil enough,
+in his deathly way, and told him that he could breakfast in the study
+in the tower.
+
+He breakfasted alone. Of Mary, there was no sign; and Tompkins told
+him that “Dr. Jackman and Mr. Royall and some of the men have gone
+out, sir, hunting that Donley person.” The breakfast was meagre,
+porridge and a scrambled egg of sorts--powdered egg, Logan thought. In
+a besieged house, supplies soon ran low. Outside the small windows,
+the mist clung to the gray stone. He would have liked to pry into the
+drawers of desk and table, but Tompkins or someone else might enter at
+any moment. His pistol was invisible under his heavy tweed jacket; that
+was something. How would it all end? He was a pawn in this deep game,
+and presently some one would sweep him off the board, unless Donley had
+got to the mainland and delivered his note to the police. And even if a
+police-launch should put in at Askival harbor, could that devil Jackman
+be prevented from sending everyone in the house up in smoke? To ponder
+these things, in a deceptive calm, really was the strangest part of the
+nightmare into which he had got himself.
+
+About half-past eight, Mary MacAskival ran into the study--shod, for a
+change, and her face glowing with excitement. The nerves that girl must
+have! Logan put down his pipe, not knowing whether he was expected to
+shake hands or to kiss her; but she gave him time for neither. “Hugh,”
+she said, “Hugh Logan, I saw them from my window! Jackman and Royall
+and the others: they’re bringing something up from the shore, dragging
+it. Come down with me, and we’ll go out to meet them.”
+
+Through that immense house they ran, out into the enclosed courtyard
+of the Victorian block. By the big door, or rather gate, three of the
+men were standing: Tompkins, and Anderson the footman (who looked
+unpleasantly like his Gallowgate brother), and a dark grinning man,
+supple and compact, who must be Ferd Caggia, the cook. A rifle lay at
+an angle against the wall by the door, back of Anderson. Caggia had
+just passed an odd green bottle--was it the old rum?--to Anderson,
+who took a swig from it. The three men stared at Logan and the girl,
+Anderson leering as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
+
+Mary MacAskival marched straight up to the door, Logan by her side,
+she quite ignoring the men until she stood right before Anderson, who
+barred the way. Yes, it was rum Anderson smelt of. “Open the door,” she
+said, calmly. “Mr. Logan and I are going out to meet Dr. Jackman.”
+
+“What’ll ye gie me if I do?” Anderson’s words came thickly; the man was
+drunk. Anderson winked at Tompkins and Ferd for approval.
+
+“Be good enough to open it.” Mary MacAskival’s green eyes glittered.
+
+“Not for a young hizzie, not me.” Anderson laughed harshly, leaning
+against the door. Mary MacAskival reached past him and pulled at the
+bolt; it slid back.
+
+Then Anderson took her round the waist, staring defiantly at Logan.
+“Ye’ll gie me something, whether I let ye oot or no, ma fine leddie.”
+With one raw fist, he pulled at the girl’s jacket. Logan took a step
+forward and gave Anderson the back of his hand.
+
+Caught off balance, Anderson crashed against the door. His big head
+jerked back, his arm flew away from the girl, and he fell.
+
+The next second, Anderson was up from the flagstones, and everything
+happened at once. “Davie, you know what Dr....” Tompkins began, in
+mild remonstrance. Ferd Caggia glided to one side, still grinning, as
+if he were a spectator at a match for his especial amusement. And tall
+Davie Anderson, rising, had grasped the rifle; already its muzzle was
+swinging upward, toward Logan, and there was killing in Anderson’s
+tipsy eyes.
+
+Logan’s reaction was instinctive and the product of his army years, not
+prudential. Very swiftly, he sent his hand into his armpit and flashed
+out the little pistol. “Anderson,” he said, distinctly, “don’t move.
+Don’t move at all.” The girl stood fixed by the unbolted door, her eyes
+wide, very pale.
+
+Anderson’s mouth opened; the rifle in his grip sank toward the ground.
+Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw Caggia glide smoothly toward
+his back, and saw Caggia’s hands slip down toward something protruding
+just above his belt; but still Caggia smiled. “Caggia,” said Logan,
+“bide where you are, man.” Tompkins quivered.
+
+Then, behind Anderson, the big door opened, and Dr. Jackman stepped
+softly in, his eyes sweeping across the little tableau. Without
+hesitation, Jackman snatched the rifle from Anderson’s hands and dealt
+the footman a terrible blow in the jaw with the butt of it. The man
+fell, stunned, and a tooth flew out of his mouth as he struck the
+flagstones. Behind Jackman, Royall entered; and after him, two more
+men, dragging something, and staring at the tableau as they came.
+
+Jackman kicked Anderson in the face. “I told you, you ape, to mind
+your manners. Caggia, get this fellow to his quarters. Powert, relieve
+Anderson on duty at the door”--this to one of the men behind him. “Mr.
+Logan, I was not aware that junior bank-clerks carried revolvers on
+their social calls.” Jackman’s words were smooth, but his face was
+twisted cruelly. Rumpelstiltskin, Logan thought. “Mr. Logan,” Jackman
+went on, even more suavely, “now that I have disposed of Anderson, you
+have no more need for that pistol. Be good enough to give it to me.”
+Jackman held out his hand.
+
+Royall was beside Jackman now, carrying a rifle; and Caggia was out of
+Logan’s line of vision, probably right at his unprotected back; and the
+girl, surrounded by men, was exposed to any shooting; and the odds were
+too great. Logan extended his palm, with the little pistol lying upon
+it, toward Jackman.
+
+Then Royall drew in his breath. “Dr. Jackman,” he said, hoarsely, “see
+what gun that is!”
+
+Plucking the pistol deftly out of Logan’s hand, Jackman examined it.
+“Quite right, Royall,” he observed. “It’s Donley’s gun Meg, isn’t it?
+Mr. Logan, my apologies: I was quite deceived by you--an excellent
+performance on your part. You are a young man of talents. After you
+took the gun from Donley, did you shoot him or drown him?”
+
+Only then did Logan see what the men had dragged into the courtyard.
+It was the battered dead body of Donley, still streaming with water.
+“Don’t look, my dear,” said Jackman to Mary, considerately. “A bit of
+flotsam, washed up near the pier.”
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+Two more men had come into the courtyard, and stood staring. “Simmons,”
+said Dr. Jackman to one of them, “help Niven to get this body into the
+cellars, for the time being. Miss MacAskival, be so good as to go to
+your rooms and remain there until I send word. Well, Rab! Up and about?
+I take it that Donley here wasn’t on your heels last night? No, of
+course not. We haven’t yet found your friend Carruthers, but I trust
+that we will. Caggia, _do_ get Anderson to his bed, for he’s sprinkling
+blood all over the flags, and there’s a lady present.”
+
+The sight of blood seemed to put Edmund Jackman into excellent form.
+Shock-headed Rab gazed at him vacantly, as if still dazed by his last
+evening’s encounter with shadowy pursuers. “Well,” Jackman went on
+cheerfully, “poor Till--he’s lost the sight of one eye forever, I’m
+sure--is quits with Seamus Donley now. Go up and tell him the news,
+Tompkins.”
+
+Mary, in the midst of this hard crew, was looking at Logan with dismay
+in her eyes. “Hugh,” she said, “Hugh ...” and stretched out a hand
+toward him. Jackman shot a malign glance at her.
+
+“You’d best go, Mary,” Logan told her, with what assurance he could
+summon up. She turned and fled into the Old House.
+
+Logan could conjecture the fate of Donley. Tired and wounded, the old
+terrorist must have been flung on the skerries by that cruel sea; the
+boat would have broken up; and his body, beaten against the rocks,
+had washed round to the harbor at the other end of Carnglass. In this
+grim moment, Logan had little time to pity Donley. It could not have
+been Donley, then, returned, who hunted Rab and Carruthers through the
+night. Rab might have fired only at imaginary stalkers, in this eerie
+island. But then what had become of Carruthers? Lagg had taken him, Rab
+had screamed in his hysteria last night. Was it possible that, after
+all, Lagg had not been killed? But if he had not, how could he have
+existed alone and invisible these several days; and how could a sly fat
+Galloway factor have made away with one seasoned ruffian and driven
+another out of his wits?
+
+Except for Powert, standing sentry at the gate, Logan now was left
+alone in the courtyard with Jackman and Royall. “Well, Mr. Logan,”
+Jackman was saying to him, “there are few things in this vale of tears
+more interesting than an accomplished adversary. I prize you.” He was
+playing with that little pistol Meg. “Royall, we’ll take Mr. Logan
+up to my study, and there he’ll supply us with valuable information,
+I’m sure. He should be able to tell us, for instance, who disposed of
+Carruthers. He has done us one service already, in evening our score
+with the late lamented Seamus Donley; now we’ll discover just who sent
+Mr. Logan to us, and why.”
+
+It might be folly to go on pretending he was an Edinburgh bank-clerk,
+Logan thought: Meg had given him away. Under the circumstances, and
+considering the habits of Jackman’s gang, naturally Dr. Jackman assumed
+that Logan had disposed of Donley. But what new role could Logan play?
+To have lapsed into his American speech would have suggested to the
+quick mind of Jackman that this young fellow had been sent to manage
+the purchase of Carnglass. And, having learnt too much about Jackman
+and Company, Logan then would be a candidate for extinction.
+
+He dared not pretend to be an Englishman, for his mastery of English
+accents was not up to it, and Jackman would have detected him at once.
+Their French, too, might be better than his own. There seemed to be
+nothing for it but to keep speaking in a genteel Scots, though he
+might expand his vocabulary beyond the usual range of a fictitious
+junior clerk. “Well, Dr. Jackman,” Logan said--he made the word almost
+“weel”--“I confess I do find myself in a predicament.”
+
+“Really,” said Jackman, “really now, my dear fellow, you needn’t
+continue to talk as a Lothians counter-jumper would. You didn’t ring
+quite true in that role, but yours was a valiant try. You’re a cut or
+two above that sort of thing, eh? I doubt whether you’re a Scot at all.
+An Englishman, possibly? Or even a German? A university man, probably.
+Just walk on the other side of our Mr. Logan, if you will be so good,
+Royall. We shall have Mr. Logan resident in Carnglass for some time
+now: permanently, perhaps, depending on his degree of co-operation with
+us. Among the many things about you which puzzle me, Logan, is how you
+contrived to become acquainted with Miss Mary MacAskival. We shall have
+to interrogate the young lady on that point, eh, Royall--unless Mr.
+Logan is so gallant as to save us the trouble? I hadn’t guessed that
+Miss MacAskival numbered among her friends any person formidable enough
+to do in Seamus Donley, late I.R.A. Well, up to my study, if you don’t
+mind. On the stair, Mr. Royall, pray walk directly behind Mr. Logan,
+with your gun at the ready. We mustn’t underestimate his talents a
+second time.”
+
+For all the gravity of this situation, Hugh Logan felt more confidence
+in himself than he had known since he landed in Carnglass. He had begun
+to understand matters, and to struggle against the tide of events;
+his ineffectuality of an hour ago had given way to action of a sort.
+And time was running out for Jackman. A few more days of silence from
+Carnglass, at most, and someone--the police, or a passing ship or
+plane--would suspect that things were amiss in the island, and there
+would be investigations highly embarrassing to Jackman. They would not
+be so embarrassing, however--sobering thought--if Hugh Logan somehow
+should have vanished from Carnglass before any official inquiries
+might be made. It was some comfort to reflect that Duncan MacAskival,
+if no one else, soon would begin to wonder where he was; and there
+was the faint possibility that the Glasgow police, desiring him for a
+witness in the affair of Mutto’s Wynd, might commence to look for him.
+Everything, conceivably, would depend upon how the next few minutes
+with Dr. Jackman happened to go.
+
+In the study, Jackman indicated that, as on the first occasion, Logan
+was to sit at the chess-table. “I don’t think you’ll be needed,
+Royall,” Jackman said to that cadaverous secretary, “but you might
+look in within the hour. We have a very clever guest here: devilish
+clever. It’s as well I have Donley’s pistol in _my_ pocket now.” Royall
+hesitated, as if to offer some objection; but, at a dark glance from
+Jackman, went out.
+
+Once again Jackman poured sherry for Logan, and set out the Table-Men
+of Askival. “Really, Logan, I think you were pulling my leg at our
+last game of chess, as you were in so many other matters. I’ll not
+accept any handicap in this match. It’s rather pleasant to play during
+a casual discussion like ours, don’t you think? We never may have an
+opportunity for another match. That depends upon you, of course,
+Logan.” Jackman showed every sign of being in good spirits, as if he
+enjoyed this contest with an able adversary; but well below his urbane
+surface, Logan suspected, a gnawing disquietude was at work in Jackman.
+He knew the man much better after Mary’s account of him.
+
+As for Logan, he made his first move in the match with seeming
+indifference, smiling at Jackman. The only thing that could suffice to
+save him, Logan felt, was to dismay Jackman by a show of complacency
+and mysterious assurance. He had this sole advantage, that Jackman had
+not the faintest glimmer as to who Logan really was. “Oh, no, sir,” he
+said to Jackman, still with his assumed Scottish burr, “I fancy that
+the question of our future encounters, Dr. Jackman, already is settled
+by people from beyond Carnglass.”
+
+Jackman scowled. “I told you you needn’t play at little games with me,
+Logan, or whatever your name is. It’s pointless now for you to talk
+like a smarmy bank-clerk that never existed. Why not out with it all?
+Who are you?” He advanced a rook.
+
+“That, Dr. Jackman, you’ll learn in the fullness of time. Lest you grow
+rash, let me remind you of one thing: you may be sure that I’d not have
+come to Carnglass, knowing you and your men were here, without having
+taken precautions. There are a dozen people who know precisely where I
+am, and why, and who will come looking for me if I don’t return when I
+ought.” He let that observation sink in as he meditated his next move.
+He wished there were any truth in it; but Jackman could not know its
+hollowness.
+
+“As for that, Logan”--here Jackman castled--“it would be entirely
+possible for you to be lost, accidentally, in these wild waters.
+No witnesses would swear to your having met with any harm in
+quiet old Carnglass. Not one. You might, for instance, have gone
+mackerel-fishing in a small boat with Lagg and Donley; and the three
+of you might have been caught in a squall--there are mishaps enough
+in these waters--and drowned; and two of the bodies might have been
+recovered, Donley’s and yours. A death by drowning is quite natural. A
+quarter of a mile off the western shore of Carnglass is a ragged reef
+that would offer a wholly convincing explanation.”
+
+Logan extricated a bishop from a tight corner. “But suppose, Dr.
+Jackman, that my friends ashore are not the sort to be satisfied by
+the formalities of a coroner’s jury, or, indeed, by Scottish courts of
+law? Suppose they might hold you privately accountable, and presume you
+guilty until proved innocent?”
+
+Jackman stared at him. “Logan, I put it to you bluntly now. Royall was
+sounding you out last night, of course, with his bits from Burns, and
+our other signals. You evaded him. Now tell me out and out, for I’ve no
+time to waste: are you one of us? If you are, why cannot you say so and
+have done with it, and transmit your instructions to me, if you’ve any
+to give? Perhaps you’re from London; perhaps from Paris; perhaps from
+further East. I’ve been expecting some such inquiry, of course. Why
+this cat-and-mouse rubbish, if you are one of us?”
+
+Jackman’s nerves were wearing thin. To assume the new role of a member
+of Jackman’s conspiratorial circle would be much the safest dodge
+for him just now, of course--if only Logan knew how to play it. But,
+lacking knowledge of the ring, all he could undertake was to cast out
+dark hints from time to time. “Why, I’ll tell you merely this, Dr.
+Jackman: I am not authorized to make any regular communication to you
+until certain events have taken place, and until a certain time has
+elapsed. Until then, consider me simply as your casual guest.” He took
+a rook of Jackman’s.
+
+“You _are_ a cool chap, Logan. I needn’t tell you I have ways of
+extracting a statement from you. I know all the ways, Logan.”
+
+“Of course you know them. But suppose I am the sort of person I may be:
+if you did me any hurt, it might be awkward for you afterward, eh? I
+have a long memory, Jackman.”
+
+Jackman bit his lip, and lost another pawn. “There are other ways
+of getting round you, Logan. Have you ever heard a lady scream? A
+full-throated scream, from exquisite agony, I mean. It’s rather
+distressing for a gentleman who happens to like the lady in question.
+And it is the ladies, the gently-bred, soft-skinned ladies, who scream
+loudest, Logan, and talk soonest and most. Imagine a young lady
+accustomed all her life to deference, who hadn’t had a hand laid upon
+her in anger since she was a naughty small child; and then think of
+her, to her surprise and chagrin, abruptly treated to the worst that
+the human body can stand. How she would scream, Logan, and babble all
+she knew, and beg to be let off; and you would have the interesting
+experience of watching the process, though unable to intervene. Suppose
+Miss Mary MacAskival were the young lady? I’m sure she could tell us
+a great deal about you.” Jackman’s marvellous eyes glinted. “Torment
+is the great leveller, Logan: in torment, the colonel’s lady and Judy
+O’Grady are sisters under the skin. There are no class distinctions
+in agony; our Miss MacAskival would behave like the lowest trull from
+Piccadilly, except that she would scream louder and talk sooner.”
+
+It required a considerable effort, but Logan kept a smiling
+countenance. If he protested, or showed any sign of weakness, Jackman
+would take precisely this course; he was being sounded. Indifference on
+his part, just now, was the chief hope for Mary.
+
+“Ah, well, Dr. Jackman, you and I are playing for higher stakes than
+a slip of a girl, aren’t we? If you must, you must; but I may as well
+tell you that you’d be wasting the time of both of us. Miss MacAskival
+knows only just what I found necessary to tell her, which is precious
+little. As for my being racked vicariously by her discomforts--why, you
+and I got past that a good time ago, didn’t we, Jackman? ‘O had ye been
+where I ha’ been, and seen wha’ I ha’ seen....’ When fellows like us
+have supped long on horrors, another squeal or two doesn’t much matter.
+Besides, I doubt whether you have much taste for twisting ladies’ arms,
+Jackman. I know you did your share of the disagreeable business, that
+very sort of business, in Barcelona and Bucharest--oh, I know all about
+you, Jackman”--here Jackman grimaced, taken aback--“but really, though
+you make such operations sound jolly, they aren’t very good fun, are
+they, now? One never quite grows accustomed to them; they stick in the
+craw; and what’s worse, they stick at the back of the brain, don’t
+they? Even our friend Royall, I suspect, doesn’t relish that business
+as he should.”
+
+“Even so, Logan, I wouldn’t have to turn my own hands to the work, you
+know. Those strapping fellows downstairs would jump at the chance.
+They’ve been somewhat inhibited from their accustomed earthy pleasures
+here in Carnglass, poor chaps, and some haven’t had their way with a
+woman for months. Your recent little _contretemps_ with Anderson, for
+instance--I’m certain Anderson would perform the task with enthusiasm.
+They’re a trifle coarse-fibred, my men, and to apply the _peine fort et
+dure_ to a young lady would be quite their cup of tea.”
+
+“No doubt, no doubt, old chap.” Here Logan took a knight from Jackman.
+“I have limitless confidence in their aptitude for such work, if for no
+other. But the powers that be still would tend to hold you personally
+responsible, wouldn’t they, now? And suppose the interrogation should
+all be in vain--why, however could you explain? Nothing does a
+diligent man’s reputation more serious damage than an unauthorized and
+unnecessary atrocity. _You_ ought to know that by this time, Jackman.”
+
+“The things I did, others told me to do, Logan.” Jackman’s lips worked.
+He lost another pawn.
+
+“Quite. But you went rather beyond specific instructions, didn’t you? I
+don’t advise you to exceed instructions here in Carnglass.”
+
+Jackman ran a hand lightly across his forehead, distractedly touching
+the little round soft patch in the middle with a forefinger. He
+ventured out a rook too far, and lost it to Logan. Then he looked,
+silent, into Logan’s eyes. The gaze of those great glowing pupils of
+Jackman’s was hard to bear. Into Logan’s mind came the sentence, “And
+if thy light be darkness, how great shall be that darkness.” It was
+just possible that he might prove a match of Edmund Jackman now, though
+the odds were against him. The man’s brain must be damaged, and under
+Jackman’s outward imperiousness, Logan suspected, vacillation was
+gnawing away. Logan thought also that had he encountered Jackman at the
+height of the man’s powers, Mary would have had a sorry knight-errant.
+But now the merciless energy and talent which had been Jackman’s were
+flickering in the socket, like enough, and Logan had to deal only with
+the remnant of a bad man. In Jackman’s ears sounded the wings of the
+Furies, and his mind sank further into doubt and dread. Or so Logan
+surmised, looking into those splendid, troubling eyes. It was just
+barely conceivable that Logan might defeat this failing master of
+deceit.
+
+Logan started, and shook his head to rouse his consciousness. Had
+Jackman been attempting to mesmerize him? If so, the attempted
+paralysis of will had not succeeded, what with Logan’s own mind
+being full of plots and stratagems. Yet Jackman might have come near
+successful hypnosis; Logan had a feeling that the man had been asking
+him questions, in a low, almost friendly voice, to which Logan had
+given no answers as yet.
+
+Just now Jackman was saying, ever so softly, “Who _are_ your friends
+outside the Old House, out there in the wet and the dark?”
+
+“Friends?” Logan spoke shrilly, alarmed at his own near-slip into
+reverie or trance. “Friends? Whose friends? If anyone’s outside,
+they’re no people of mine.” Logan regretted this admission as soon as
+he had made it; it would have done no harm to keep Jackman wondering
+whether he had an accomplice or two hidden in the bracken. Indeed,
+perhaps Jackman had begun to extract the truth from him by hypnosis,
+and Logan had escaped from the domination of those black eyes only in
+the nick of time.
+
+But Jackman shook his head slowly, in disbelief; and his eyes went to
+the window of that room high in the tower, almost as if he feared to
+see some face pressed against the pane, far above the living rock of
+the Old House’s foundation. It was borne in upon Logan that Jackman’s
+unease was greater than his own fears.
+
+Jackman licked his thin lips. “Why, Logan, who do you expect me to
+believe they are?” If the mystery back there behind the bracken had
+shaken Jackman this much, the panic must be worse among the men below
+stairs, with Rab’s hysteria to work upon them. “If they were police
+or intelligence people,” Jackman said, almost as if he expected to be
+overheard by some presence in that dusky painted chamber, “they would
+have swooped upon us long ago; they wouldn’t skulk about, picking off
+first one man and then another.”
+
+“Rab told you that it was Tam Lagg: old Lagg, Dr. Jackman, that you
+sent over the cliffs a thousand feet down to the rocks and the sea,
+while he screamed of his wife and his bairns.”
+
+Jackman looked at Logan astonished. “You, Logan--were you watching
+then? But no, you’ll have had that from Donley, before you finished
+with him. Lagg? What are you talking of? I saw him strike a crag half
+way down, and bounce off like a ball, and then fall to the sea. Such a
+thing doesn’t walk again.”
+
+“Not alive,” Logan replied. “No, not alive.” Jackman’s eyes dilated.
+Yes, he could sound this note, Logan decided: the black beast was upon
+Jackman’s shoulders, and the conjuror was bewitched. If ever a man
+was haunted, it was Jackman, stalked by Spanish victims and Roumanian
+spectres, and now with the wraith of Lagg at his heels. “See here,
+Jackman: you raise sham bogles to frighten old women, and you laugh
+up your sleeve. But when you play with things from the abyss, you
+run risks. In this dead island of Carnglass, all round us things are
+ready to stir, if they’re called. I felt them in Dalcruach clachan. In
+Carnglass the dead are more than the living. And why shouldn’t Tam Lagg
+rise? You gave him the death that he feared most to die. If ever you
+set a spirit to walk the night, it was when you tossed that screaming
+man from the headland at the back of St. Merin’s Chapel.”
+
+As Logan spoke, a nasty change came over Jackman. His face went a sick
+white, and his eyes closed, and he slumped in his chair. The horror
+must be on him. His breath came hard. Logan began to think of closing
+with him as he sat motionless across the table. But after a moment,
+Jackman gasped, blinked, and fumbled for the pistol in his pocket; he
+drew the gun and laid it before him, beside the chessboard.
+
+“Then you feel it, too,” Jackman muttered, very low. “All about us, eh?
+Oh, this is a damned house, a place of dreams, horrid dreams. Listen:
+last night I walked the passages, for I didn’t dare to sleep, until I
+was worn out. In the end, I lay on my bed, not closing my eyes. And
+then it was not a bed, but a long, close tunnel or cave, and I was
+stumbling along it. Away at the end, I could see something standing.
+And it came to me that I myself was standing there, even though I
+walked toward the thing. The Edmund Jackman at the end of the cave was
+the Edmund Jackman that I might have been, if--if I had taken another
+turn at the beginning. And as I came up to myself, wanting to see the
+face, and the beauty of what I might have been, the thing turned, and
+looked at me. Its face was the face of a goat. Ah, the slit eyes! And I
+became one with it, and woke, and the horror still was on me.”
+
+Infected by the man’s loathing of himself, and his fright, Logan also
+lowered his voice to a whisper. “Would you rather have died in the cave
+than have become one with the goat?”
+
+“Yes,” said Jackman, “yes. It would be better to lie dead, dead like
+Lagg. I thought then of the gelignite, and I think of it every day and
+every night.” At this, Jackman shuddered, seemed to collect his wits,
+scowled at Logan, and glanced dully at the Table-Men of Askival on the
+board before him.
+
+“Your move,” Logan reminded him. Edmund Jackman moved almost at random.
+“So!” Logan shifted his queen. “Checkmate, Dr. Jackman.”
+
+“Hell!” cried Jackman, reaching out his hand as if to sweep the pieces
+to the floor.
+
+“Easy!” Logan said, intercepting Jackman’s hand with his own. “There’s
+but this one set in the world, you know.”
+
+Once more their eyes met in a long, strange stare; then Jackman, to
+Logan’s surprise, glanced down at the table. “Logan, or whatever
+you are,” he said, almost pleadingly, “I don’t know whether you can
+understand me. You’re a Party intellectual, I think, and the Party
+believes it knows all things. Yet in some matters the Party is blind.
+Just now I said ‘Hell.’ In Carnglass, I have learned that Hell is real.
+That’s heresy in the Party; but I have looked on Hell. There is no
+Heaven, but there is Hell.”
+
+Jackman’s eyes were vacant now; he seemed to have forgotten to whom he
+spoke. “Hell endures,” he went on. “I have been in Hell always. This
+Carnglass is Hell. Don’t you know you were here in Carnglass before,
+infinitely long ago? We fought here then--and I lost. In Carnglass
+there is no time. Eternity is real here, and change is the delusion.
+I know this in the nights, when I walk the corridors. It is only in
+the day I can pretend that I am alive, or that what things I do can
+possibly save me from the torment. In the nights it is Hell that is
+real, and the Party is a sham. Do you understand that? And I know that
+you came here to send me to the torment, as you did before.”
+
+Many times, Logan had heard the phrase “possessed of a devil.” But
+not until this moment, as he sat opposite Jackman with the chessmen
+between them, had he perceived the full and dreadful meaning of the
+words. The dark powers had claimed Edmund Jackman long since, and what
+sat opposite him was only the husk of a human being. Even the husk
+was crumbling now. Yet out of that desiccated scrap of mortality, dry
+and empty as the armor of last summer’s locust, there echoed now and
+again cries of anguish, the vain contrition of the damned. Whatever
+traditionary spectres might throng round the Old House of Fear, here
+right before Logan sat the ghost of what once might have been a vessel
+for honor.
+
+Again Jackman’s eyes had closed, and the man or devil did not stir in
+the chair. What visions came and went behind those fallen eyelids,
+Logan preferred not to think. Jackman had drifted somewhere beyond this
+world of sense, for the moment. In the middle of that pallid forehead,
+the nasty round spot, the Third Eye, seemed to pulsate faintly, as if
+keeping night watch upon Logan.
+
+Hugh Logan fought clear of the contagion of madness. Minutes, precious
+minutes, were slipping away. By a heap of chessmen lay the little
+pistol. Should he make a try for it? Or was this some sort of trap
+that Jackman had set? No, the damned man’s trance was genuine. If he
+chose, Logan could leap up, snatch the pistol, and make for the stairs.
+But that gang of murderers was below. And where might Mary and he run
+to? Well, let him get his hands on a rifle, and he might hold the old
+tower against them for a time. It might be possible to keep Jackman a
+hostage. The scheme was fantastic, but the only probable alternative
+was torture and death for Mary MacAskival and himself. Rising silent
+from his chair, Logan stretched out a hand toward the gun.
+
+“As you were!” It was Royall’s harsh voice, at Logan’s back. A
+revolver-muzzle pressed into his spine. Royall’s long, almost skeletal
+arm reached past him and snatched up the little pistol by the chessmen.
+“Over to the wall,” Royall said, “and stand there till I tell you to
+turn round. I’ve been behind the screen these ten minutes past, Logan.”
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+It would have been a lunatic try anyhow, Logan thought as he faced the
+wall. Behind him, Royall was ministering to Dr. Jackman, but Logan felt
+sure that if he swung round, Royall would not miss.
+
+“Here, a little brandy,” Royall was saying, rather in the tone of a
+nurse. “Come round now, Dr. Jackman. It’s no time for fancies.” There
+was a sound as if Royall were gently slapping Jackman’s cheeks. “That’s
+it, sir: are you quite awake now, Dr. Jackman?”
+
+Jackman’s voice came choked and faint, but grew in power after the
+first few words. “Askival,” Jackman was saying. “Askival--where is he?
+And Lagg?”
+
+“Take hold of yourself, Dr. Jackman. We’ve this fellow Logan to deal
+with. Very well, Logan: come over here and sit down.”
+
+For the present, Royall had assumed command. With his revolver
+he gestured toward the chair in which Logan had sat during the
+chess-match, and Logan took it without protest. Royall continued to
+stand. On the other side of the table, Jackman seemed in possession of
+his faculties again.
+
+“We’d best search this man,” Royall said. He slipped a hand inside
+Logan’s jacket, still standing at Logan’s back, and found his wallet.
+Logan did not move: Jackman was watching him keenly, his hand on the
+pistol. They would find no identification in the wallet, for Logan
+had put his passport and anything else with his name on it into the
+knapsack.
+
+“No, sir, there’s nothing with a name, worse luck,” Royall murmured.
+“Stand up and take off your jacket, Logan.” Logan did as he was told.
+In a moment Royall thrust the jacket back to him. “And no labels, Dr.
+Jackman. The man must be an old hand at his game.”
+
+“Tompkins searched his room this morning?” Jackman asked.
+
+“Yes; and he found nothing but a razor and the like. No papers--and not
+even the canvas sack this man brought with him. I suppose he burnt it
+in the fireplace, or else flung it out of the window and down the cliff
+to the sea.”
+
+“Have a man look along the rocks at low tide,” Jackman said. “Yes, our
+friend Logan undoubtedly has had experience as an agent of some sort.”
+
+“You needn’t bother to have a man risk his bones on those weedy
+ledges,” Logan told them. “I burnt the sack on the coals, last night.”
+He trusted that Mary had tucked away the pack in some really secure
+hidie-hole.
+
+“For your circumstances, Logan,” Royall muttered, “you seem
+unreasonably cheerful. I shouldn’t care to find myself in your present
+situation.” Royall ran his hands carefully along Logan’s trousers and
+into his pockets. “No, Dr. Jackman--no knife, and no papers stitched
+into the linings.”
+
+“Why,” said Logan, “I suppose a man might as well laugh as cry. And
+then, don’t you know, it’s not I who need to fash--as we true-born
+Scots say. It’s you gentlemen who will have to make your peace, if you
+can, with the men that will be here all too soon for your comfort.”
+
+“Sit down again, Logan,” Royall ordered. “You needn’t sing that tune
+for us. If you had any people at your back, we’d have seen them before
+this.”
+
+“Oh?” Logan answered, amicably. “And who do you suppose took
+Carruthers? Donley was dead hours before you missed Carruthers,
+remember.”
+
+Jackman and Royall stared at each other, silent. In that moment, Logan
+almost felt a touch of pity for them. Both must have been reared and
+educated well enough--very well, indeed. What flaws of character
+or intellectual false turnings had brought them into this ruthless
+business, he could not tell. They might have commenced, like others,
+full of humanitarian sentimentality. And then, perhaps, demon ideology,
+with its imperatives and its inexorable dogmas, its sobersided
+caricature of religion, had swept them on to horrors. Ideological
+fanaticism had made of Jackman the goat-man, mastered by lust: but not
+the lust for women’s bodies. Jackman’s was the _libido dominandi_, the
+tormented seeking after power that ceases not until death. And in the
+flame of that lust for power, Jackman and Royall would be burnt up,
+today or next week or next month: they were at the end of their devil’s
+bargain, and the fiend would claim his own.
+
+Now, in this oppressive silent moment, the conviction came to Logan
+that these two artists of disintegration were more frightened than
+he. He felt surprised to find himself thinking clearly enough, almost
+ruminating, in this tension that made electric the ancient room with
+the painted ceiling. Because frightened, Jackman and Royall were the
+more dangerous; but also their brains were stagnant with dread.
+
+Fear, it crossed Logan’s mind, is the normal condition of man, after
+all. Quiet ages and safe lands are the rare exceptions in history.
+Nowadays the tides of disorder were gnawing at whatever security and
+justice still stood in the world, quite as the swell round Carnglass
+sought to bring down that heap of gray stones to the mindless anonymity
+of the ocean. With growing speed, the brooding spectre of terror,
+almost palpable in Carnglass, was enveloping the world. This island was
+the microcosm of modern existence.
+
+And here in the haunted stronghold of the Old House of Fear, Jackman
+and Royall and their gang found themselves caught in their own snare.
+Even the dull criminals below stairs, huddled tipsily by the kitchen
+fire, were unmanned by a dim sense of catastrophe, caught up in a
+horror of the empty island, where mist and silence seemed to have made
+away with time, so that Glasgow and Liverpool and London were fancies
+out of an illusory past.
+
+Jackman himself, with his distraught imagination, his ruined talents
+once near to genius, fancied himself snared here by destiny, condemned
+to give reality to a myth. And was he wrong? In the Old House, Logan
+doubted where the realm of spirit ended and the realm of flesh began.
+
+In this dead island, all Jackman’s cleverness lay frustrated, and the
+strange chance or power that had brought Logan to Carnglass on this day
+seemed to fill the close air in that forgotten tower-room. For Edmund
+Jackman, Logan might be something not quite canny, at once a man and
+an occult agent. Even for Royall, Hugh Logan must seem a retributive
+figure, from Party or police, mercilessly calm with the knowledge that
+others were not far behind him.
+
+For all their effort to behave as if they still were masters of the
+island, a tautness almost hysterical had crept into Jackman and Royall,
+and their voices were strained. What for years they had dealt out to
+others, now waited for them; and they had forgotten the meaning of
+mercy. There was no justice to which they could appeal. By fear they
+had lived; and now the fear which they and their sort had carried
+throughout the world was claiming them also. Having murdered order,
+these two at last were cast into the outer darkness.
+
+Jackman was speaking. Had something like a quaver crept into that
+urbane and sardonic voice? “Well, Royall,” he was saying, “what will we
+do with this Logan?”
+
+Royall shifted uncertainly behind Logan’s chair. This man, it occurred
+to Logan, saw the growing madness in his leader, and yet was loyal--his
+last link with old-fangled human affections.
+
+“Dr. Jackman,” Royall said, “I have a theory concerning our friend
+Logan. I believe he’s one of Vlanarov’s people.”
+
+Jackman now spoke with his old decisiveness, as if another spirit had
+entered into that sinister body, and as if what had happened during the
+preceding half hour had quite washed away from his memory. “Possibly,”
+Jackman commented. “Quite possibly. The thought had crossed my mind,
+too. If he should be, perhaps we can arrive at satisfactory terms.
+Well, Logan?”
+
+Logan devoutly wished, at this juncture, that he had studied more
+attentively the recent history of Eastern Europe. If he had fought in
+Europe, rather than in the Pacific, that might have been of some help;
+or had he been in intelligence, rather than the infantry. As it was,
+the name Vlanarov told him a little, but not enough. If memory served
+him aright, Vlanarov was such a one as Jackman, but a much bigger
+fish. Logan rather thought that Vlanarov had been at Bela Kun’s side
+in Hungary, a generation ago, and in Madrid during the Civil War,
+and after 1945 a terror in Poland. Through all the vicissitudes of
+Party feuds and all the eddies of ideology in the buffer states, the
+shadowy but formidable figure of Vlanarov had glided scatheless. No
+one ever saw a photograph of the man. It had been his peculiar talent
+to anticipate the triumph of particular factions within the Soviet
+states, and to shift masterfully in precisely the proper moment from
+one interpretation of Marxist doctrine to the corrected version.
+Whenever a vanquished clique fell to its ruin, Vlanarov sorted through
+the wreck for such survivors as might still do mischief to the new
+Party orthodoxy, and clipped their claws and their wings for them--or
+something worse. Certain Trotskyites called Vlanarov “The Vulture.”
+
+This much, Logan recalled. And he could see that conceivably the pose
+of being one of Vlanarov’s people, at watch upon Jackman’s schemes,
+might save his neck. But the great difficulty was that he knew far
+too little of Party intrigues to play this role to the full. For that
+matter, he was not precisely sure that Vlanarov still was alive: Royall
+might be setting a trap for him.
+
+“Yes,” Royall was saying, “I fancy that he’s a Vlanarovite, sent over
+by Bruhl from Brussels, to report on our work. Only one of that sort
+could have made away with Donley so efficiently.”
+
+Jackman, now tense and erect in his chair, nodded. “Logan,” he said,
+“if you come from Bruhl or Vlanarov, with instructions for us or
+perhaps for a survey--why, tell me now. After all, you can’t expect to
+remain anonymous much longer, because tomorrow or next day I should
+receive word from Glasgow, and perhaps from Paris.”
+
+“No, Jackman, I don’t think you will.” Logan had resolved to sound as
+much like a Vlanarovite as possible, without being expected to furnish
+proof positive. “You’ve contrived to get your boats burnt for you by a
+stupid old Irishman. You’ve had part of your wireless stolen”--Jackman
+started at this--“and you’ve no way of sending word to shore. And you
+saddled yourself with the clumsiest set of agents that ever I set
+eyes upon. Gare, that drunken incompetent; Dowie, who’s fit only for
+filching sixpences from slum boys; Jock Anderson, all swagger and no
+nerve. We gobbled the lot of them.” Logan opened his right hand wide
+and closed it hard, as if crushing something within. “They’re awa’
+doon the water, Jackman. An old hand like you! One would think you had
+turned to drink. But you’ve turned to old wives’ tales, instead.”
+
+Jackman bit his lip. “Do you mean--do you mean they’ve been taken?”
+
+“Liquidated is our word, Dr. Jackman. They were, after all, depreciated
+assets. And were I you, Jackman, I’d look sharp. What have you
+accomplished here in Carnglass? The rags and tags of information you’ve
+collected in foraging round the islands are next to worthless. We have
+better ways of mapping those missile sites. And playing with gelignite,
+like a boy with firecrackers! You’d never get the stuff past the guards
+at the installations, if you seriously tried: these hangdog fellows
+you’ve collected here in Carnglass haven’t the heart or the mind for
+it. You drove out your only experienced man, Donley, so that he had to
+be liquidated for fear he’d talk. Unauthorized enthusiasm! It will be
+your ruin, Jackman.”
+
+“But after all,” Royall put in eagerly, “Bruhl himself gave his consent
+to this project.”
+
+“Tentative consent is one thing,” Logan said; “approval of blunders in
+operation is another.”
+
+Jackman ran his fingers across his forehead in his old gesture
+of incertitude. “Logan,” he said, “I believe you really are from
+Vlanarov’s people. You’re a Party intellectual: you’ve the look and
+tone of it. In short, you’re a man we can talk with. You must know as
+well as we do what has gone wrong with this scheme. The people in the
+Continent want action from me, but they’ll take no risks nor spend any
+money. For that matter, they’ll give me no men. I am expected to extort
+the funds from old women, conscript a set of criminals and hold them
+together by blackmail and intimidation, and pay the penalty by myself,
+with my own neck, if everything falls in pieces.
+
+“For years those people have used Royall and me in this way. Edmund
+Jackman, who ought to be forming policy at the upper levels, set to
+leading a gang of banditti at the back of beyond! It’s enough to craze
+a man. As one intellectual to another, do you see any justice in that?
+Bureaucracy on the one hand, fanatic ideological rigidity on the other;
+and the best minds in the Party, like yours and mine, fallen between
+the stools. In my situation, what would you have done differently?” He
+was almost wheedling.
+
+“I’m not authorized to offer any opinion on that subject, as yet,”
+Logan said, with what he hoped was an enigmatic smile.
+
+“Perhaps I had better make it clear, Logan,” Royall put in, “that Dr.
+Jackman’s association with Beria arose solely from necessity, and from
+his obedience to Party discipline. We regret as much as anyone does
+what happened to Vlanarov’s father.”
+
+“Do you have a cigarette?” said Logan. “I suppose lunch will be ready
+soon.”
+
+“Logan,” Jackman demanded, intensely, “are you here to supplant me?
+If you are, why this shilly-shallying? Can’t you have the decency to
+present your instructions?”
+
+“Why, I’m in no position as yet to give definite orders, Jackman. The
+decisions must be yours; I decline any responsibility. But this I will
+suggest: disarm your men, lock up the guns, and give me the keys to the
+gunroom and the cellars where you keep the gelignite. Send all the men
+down to the New House except Tompkins and Royall. Light a beacon, or
+send up flares, and put Carnglass in communication with the mainland
+through ordinary channels. Leave me in charge of the Old House. Then
+wait the turn of events. If you do this, I’ll put in my good word for
+you with my superiors.”
+
+This was spreading it perilously thick, Logan thought, but one might as
+well be taken for a tiger as for an alley-cat.
+
+Jackman sucked in his breath. “You ask too much, Logan, whoever
+or whatever you are. Is this some plan to make Royall and me the
+scapegoats? To hand us over to the police or intelligence, possibly, by
+way of covering some one else’s blunders? I’ve been treated that way
+before, Logan, and I’ll not endure it again. Sooner than that--sooner
+than the gaol or the gallows--I’d walk into the cellars and detonate
+the gelignite. I’d rather blow Carnglass into pebbles than be the dupe
+once more.”
+
+“You asked for suggestions, Jackman. I told you I’d assume no
+responsibilities.” Logan had not dared to hope that Jackman actually
+would fall into his impromptu snare; but at least it served to bewilder
+Jackman and Royall.
+
+“And if we did disarm the men,” Royall volunteered, “who would keep
+off your friends outside? The ones that made away with Carruthers,
+and sent Rab mad? What’s your scheme, Logan--to liquidate all of us
+in Carnglass? To send us to join Gare and Dowie and Jock Anderson
+and Donley? To make sure that no one here ever has an opportunity to
+furnish evidence to the government?”
+
+Inadvertently, he might have carried the game too far, Logan saw: he
+might get himself drowned for a commissar instead of a police-agent.
+
+“Damn it,” Jackman almost shouted, the patch in the middle of his
+forehead twitching, “are you really from Vlanarov? Do you have another
+name?”
+
+“I’ll tell you when there’s need for it,” was all Logan answered him.
+For Jackman was losing control of himself, and it was conceivable that
+he might shoot Logan where he stood.
+
+“Now, now, Dr. Jackman,” Royall murmured, “if he _is_ from Vlanarov,
+we’d best not....”
+
+“No!” Jackman cried, his air of power returning to him. “No, you’ll
+tell me soon enough. If you’re sent by that mutual-admiration circle
+in the Continent, I’ll have that news out of you, and make you pay
+for it. And if you’re something worse, I’ll twist that truth from you.
+I know your medicine, Logan. You’re going into the Whiskey Bottle;
+there’s no man who can endure that place long. You’ll talk with me, and
+thank me for the chance.”
+
+“Dr. Jackman, I really do think ...” Royall began, uneasily. But
+Jackman cut him off.
+
+“Mr. Royall, get Anderson and Caggia. We’ll put our friend Logan away
+below stairs. The responsibility is mine. And while I’m at the Whiskey
+Bottle, you make the rounds of the house, Royall, and make sure all the
+men have ammunition enough.”
+
+It never would do to let Jackman see any sign of weakness in him, for
+the man subsisted on others’ dread, and was most merciless, Logan
+guessed, when they were most piteous. Deliberately Logan gathered up
+the Table-Men and set them in their casket. “I thought you had a taste
+for sherry, Jackman,” he said, “but you seem to have whiskey in mind
+for me.” Jackman answered nothing. Then Anderson and Ferd entered.
+Anderson’s jaw was bound up in a bloody handkerchief, and the man
+looked murder at Logan.
+
+In silence, Jackman and Anderson and Ferd Caggia took Logan down the
+worn stair in the thickness of the wall. They took him to the ground
+floor of the old tower, where first he had met Mary MacAskival only
+yesterday about this hour, though it seemed an age ago. And they shoved
+him toward one corner of that great vaulted empty room. In that corner,
+flush with the flagstones, a small stair twisted downward, below the
+level of the rock on which the Old House stood. Anderson thrust him
+forward with a curse, so that Logan staggered down the short flight,
+the three men behind him.
+
+The place below was wholly dark. Caggia carried a petrol lantern, and
+he lit it and swung it round. This crypt, hollowed from the rock,
+apparently contained nothing but what looked like a broken windlass in
+a far corner, and what seemed to be a coil or heap of rope in a near
+corner. And in the middle of the floor was a circular lid or cover of
+stone, with an iron ring set into it. Caggia and Anderson commenced to
+drag back this lid.
+
+This being, perhaps, his last appearance above ground, Logan thought
+he ought to improve the shining hour. “I do hope, Anderson,” he said,
+“that your jaw doesn’t pain you.” Anderson responded with an obscenity.
+“I am acquainted with your brother Jock in the Gallowgate,” Logan went
+on. “A lively man, Jock. He kicked me in the jaw not long ago.”
+
+“Gude for Jock,” growled Anderson. “I’ll soon gie ye anither.”
+
+“But we caught him, Davie Anderson,” Logan continued, “and put him
+where he’ll kick no more. We caught Jim Dowie and his wife Jeanie,
+too, and the others. And now all the world knows of the criminals of
+Carnglass.”
+
+“Enough of that, Logan,” Jackman put in. Anderson and Ferd were
+standing by the open mouth of a pit or cistern, staring attentively at
+Logan. Jackman pressed the muzzle of the little pistol into Logan’s
+back and urged him toward the gulf. This must be the pit, for dead
+herring or dead men, described in Balmullo’s account of the Old House.
+
+“Dr. Jackman,” Logan said in some haste, “I do trust that when,
+tomorrow or the next day, you decide in despair to blow up the Old
+House, yourself, and everyone round about, you will allow these two
+fine fellows to join me in this well of yours. It will probably be the
+safest place for some miles round. I doubt whether Anderson and Caggia
+are so ready to die as you are.”
+
+Ferd Caggia’s perpetual grin diminished. He glanced appraisingly at Dr.
+Jackman. “Ferd,” said Logan, “presumably you will be brought to trial
+for treason, at the least, even if you escape Dr. Jackman’s gelignite.
+They tell me that you are an excellent shot. If I were you, I should
+endeavor to persuade Dr. Jackman to remain a comfortable distance from
+the crypt where he keeps the explosives.”
+
+“Logan,” Jackman muttered in his ear, “do you want a bullet in your
+spine?”
+
+“By no means, Dr. Jackman. And try not to forget that there will be
+people asking after me, very soon.” Would they try to throw him into
+the pit that stood open right by his feet?
+
+“Kneel down,” Jackman told him, “and you may have a glimpse of the
+Whiskey Bottle. Do you know the Mamertine prison in Rome? This is very
+like, Logan, but deeper.”
+
+Caggia had tied a long cord to the lantern, which now he lowered into
+the hole and swung in a circle, slowly, so as to show the interior of
+the place. Kneeling reluctantly, Logan made out an immense dry depth.
+The pit was shaped roughly like a bottle, narrow at the mouth and
+gradually widening, and going down, down. It was irregular, however,
+with bulges and depressions here and there in its sides, as if more
+the work of nature than of man. From the mouth, one could not get a
+clear view of the whole interior. The lantern sank lower and lower
+into the abyss, and still Logan could not perceive the bottom; then
+Caggia hauled it up. In this place, according to Balmullo’s history of
+Carnglass, had been found the deformed skeleton that the crofters had
+called the Firgower. If ever the pit had been filled with salt herring,
+it must have enabled the Old House to withstand a siege of months,
+supposing there was fresh water enough to drink.
+
+Logan stood firm upon the lip of the Whiskey Bottle. Nothing but
+audacity, he felt, would discourage Jackman from indulging in a new
+atrocity at this moment. “Look sharp that our friend Dr. Jackman
+doesn’t put you, too, down this well, Caggia,” he remarked. “It must
+tell on one’s nerves to have a lunatic bent upon self-destruction for
+an employer.”
+
+“There you’ll stay, Logan, until you feel inclined to talk with us,”
+Jackman said, rolling the words thickly. “If I don’t forget you. You’ll
+not eat or drink until we let you out--if we do. I won’t say when we’ll
+come back to inquire after you: it may be hours, or it may be days. A
+man does not stay sane very long in the Whiskey Bottle. If you come out
+in time, there’s no harm done. Scream when you wish to come out, and
+perhaps we will hear you. Better men than you have gone down and not
+come up alive. Down with you, now.”
+
+Anderson had dragged from the corner a long rope ladder. He made it
+fast to two iron rings sunk in the floor of the crypt, and let the rope
+fall into the pit. “There you go,” said Jackman. “Goodnight to you, Mr.
+Logan.”
+
+“I think I’ll not go,” Logan told them. They scarcely could carry him
+down the swaying rope ladder.
+
+“In that event,” Jackman remarked--and Anderson sniggered--“we would
+have to pitch you in, and it’s nearly fifty feet to the bottom, so you
+would be broken. Or we would have to lower you in at a rope’s end, head
+first, with risk to your skull. I advise you to choose the ladder.”
+
+There was nothing else for it. Logan set his feet and hands on the
+swaying ladder, and began to descend. As he went down, the feet of the
+three men disappeared from view, and presently he was in blackness.
+After what seemed eternity, swinging and twisting about on the ropes,
+he felt no rung-slat under his foot, and halted, twirling back and
+forth like a top in space. Did they mean him to fall and break his legs
+or back? “It doesn’t reach,” he called up. The echo was melancholy.
+
+“Jump for it,” Jackman’s voice sounded ever so faintly above.
+
+“I’ll be damned if I do,” Logan roared back.
+
+“You’ll be damned if you don’t,” called Jackman, “for we’ll loose the
+ladder at this end, and you’ll fall anyhow, and there’ll be no way
+back.”
+
+Waiting was no comfort. Logan relinquished his hold on the ladder,
+expecting his end. But he fell only six or seven feet, bruising his
+back on the jagged stone floor, which was quite dry. He could hear
+the rustle of the ladder being hauled up. The light of the lantern
+glimmered at the top of the Bottle, and a head was thrust over the
+mouth of the shaft, silhouetted against the petrol glare.
+
+“Should auld acquaintance be forgot,” Jackman said, “shriek when you
+care for our company.” He laughed. Then he said something else, more
+faintly; but Logan thought it was, “Once you put me here, Askival.”
+There came a scraping sound from above, and the lid was dragged back
+over the Bottle’s mouth, cutting off Logan from the world. He was shut
+into the tomb now, as in his dream on the second night in Carnglass.
+As if the stone cover had not been coffin-lid enough, an iron door had
+stood ajar, Logan remembered, at the entrance to the crypt, a big key
+in the lock. No doubt they would turn the key. Goodbye, Mary MacAskival.
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+In the Whiskey Bottle, it would not do to brood more than a man might
+help, for that way lay despair: especially when one thought of what
+might be done to Mary MacAskival, high above. So Logan busied himself,
+at first, in creeping round the circumference of the Bottle’s floor,
+feeling everywhere. There was nothing to feel but lumpy naked rock,
+everywhere gouged by ancient chisels.
+
+The batter of the circular sides made it impossible for him even to
+think of climbing, fly-like, toward the mouth. These pleasures soon
+were exhausted. His watch had not worked well since he splashed ashore
+in Carnglass, and perhaps that was to the good. Already he was hungry
+and thirsty; but this last must be chiefly a psychological oppression,
+as the damp air of Carnglass made it unnecessary for a man to drink
+much water a day.
+
+Although he had been in the place but a quarter of an hour, probably,
+the problem of fresh air began to worry Logan. It was silly to think
+about it so soon, of course: the immense cubic capacity of the Bottle
+would give him oxygen enough for a long time, and conceivably enough to
+support life leaked beneath the rude stone at the mouth, anyway. But
+one thought about such things in the Bottle, for lack of aught else to
+do.
+
+In all that dead island, the Whiskey Bottle was the deadest place. Not
+even an insect could live here; and the place was so dry that, perhaps,
+not even a lichen could cling to the sloping walls. One could think
+only of dead things: of the deformed skeleton found on this floor, and
+the presences that drifted through Jackman’s guilty brain. It wouldn’t
+do for a man to think such thoughts: not for a man who meant to keep
+his wits about him. If ever they let him out of the Bottle, he would
+need all the wits and all the strength he could muster. The best thing
+to do, then, was to sleep. Luckily, Logan was very tired from the
+strain of the past several days, and from having had so little sleep
+last night, what with his colloquy with Mary MacAskival. And sleep
+never had come hard to him, in the worst of times and places. He groped
+about the rough floor until he found a tolerable area upon which to
+stretch himself, and there he lay down, his head on his arm, and soon
+drifted off. Dreams came, hideous dreams; but afterward they were all a
+blur to him. Now and then he tossed and woke imperfectly; then, like a
+sick man, he sank back into the sanctuary of the unconscious.
+
+How many hours later it was that a noise woke him, he could not say.
+What could make a noise in the Bottle? Nothing living. It was a faint
+dragging noise. Then high overhead, he could perceive the faintest
+half-moon of light. Someone was dragging back the stone lid of the
+Bottle, slowly.
+
+Would Jackman and Royall pull him out and put him to more direct
+torture? If they had tormented the truth about him out of Mary
+MacAskival, the odds were that they would put him into the sea, as a
+man who knew too much of them, and whose death might be explained with
+tolerable ease. It might be easier for him to refuse to come up, and
+hope that aid might come from the mainland in time. They could descend,
+of course, and tie him, and haul him to the top; but that would mean a
+fight. If they shot him, that would be evidence of foul play, supposing
+his body ever were washed up.
+
+Now something scraped and rustled, and barely brushed the top of his
+head: it must be the rope ladder. Reaching up, he grasped the thin
+strip of wood that was the bottom rung. Still Jackman, if he were
+above, said nothing. But a light probed downward toward Logan; someone
+up there held an electric torch. He had might as well take this
+dubious chance. Although it had been long since Logan had gone in for
+gymnastics, he had strong arms, and so contrived to pull his chin up to
+the level of the bottom rung, get a fresh grip, and bring up his legs.
+And then he commenced the swaying climb toward the Bottle’s mouth.
+
+As he neared the top, the torch dazzled him. Then a hand caught his,
+helping him over the edge to the floor of the crypt. No sooner had
+Logan got to his feet than a pair of arms was flung around his neck,
+and a small body hung for a moment upon his, in fright and delight.
+“They’ve broken no bone of you, Hugh?” said Mary MacAskival. Before he
+could reply, she kissed him, and then flashed the electric torch the
+length of his body, as if to be sure he were all there. “Don’t speak
+above a wee whisper,” she murmured in his ear, “and come over here, for
+we must be off.” Taking his hand, she led him through the dark toward a
+corner of the crypt.
+
+“One glimpse of you, anyway,” said Hugh. Taking the torch, he sent the
+beam over and behind her. She was barefoot, but with a pair of little
+walking-shoes slung round her neck. On her back she had Logan’s own
+rucksack, looking as if it were crammed with things. Her back was to
+what seemed to be the low circular coping of a well, with a derelict
+windlass above it.
+
+“We daren’t talk now,” the girl said, “for we’ll have but a quarter
+of an hour, at best, before Niven gives the alarm. He’s sentry at the
+garden door on the floor above. I told him I was taking you food and
+water, which you’re not supposed to have, and he let me pass, for he
+knows I am a red-haired witch. Jackman will thrash the poor fellow
+within an inch of his life when he finds we’re gone. Niven never
+thought I could get out with you, of course. If he’d known that, even I
+couldn’t have seduced him.”
+
+“Seduced him?”
+
+She chuckled. “Oh, don’t be silly. Has Dr. Jackman been telling you
+more lies about me? I mean, subverted his loyalty to Jackman. I gave
+Niven five pounds and nearly a full bottle of rum. All right now, Hugh:
+take off your trousers.”
+
+He was bemused. “Whatever for?”
+
+“Why, silly, we’re going down the cistern, and there’s water in it, and
+you might catch your death of cold outside, with wet trousers. I think
+you may keep your shirt on; we sha’n’t go so deep, I hope. Here, take
+the pack, and carry it, and stuff your trousers in it. I can kilt up my
+skirt once we’re at the level of the water, but you could hardly slip
+off your trousers in the middle of the shaft. You’d best take off your
+shoes and stockings, and sling them round your neck, the way I have,
+too. You needn’t be shy: I’ll go down first, and I’ll point the torch
+the other way.”
+
+Logan stared into the cistern. In the beam of the torch, he could see
+rusted iron rungs set into the masonry, leading downward; but they
+ended in still water. “If we’re to drown, Mary,” he said, “it had might
+as well be in the sea.”
+
+“What with the gutters of the tower being half clogged,” she went on,
+“the water level down there is very low nowadays--twelve or fifteen
+feet, at best--and I feared they might find the arch, but they haven’t.
+It’s perfectly feasible: Malcolm Mor and I did it four years ago,
+like a bomb. Why, it’s a lark, Hugh; come along. The last one down
+is an old maid.” Hiking her skirt halfway up her white thighs, Mary
+MacAskival stepped over the well-coping, swung round, and began to
+descend the slimy iron rungs. “I locked the crypt door on the inside,
+for I have keys, you know,” she whispered up, “but Niven may be
+pounding on it any second, so be quick with you.”
+
+There was nothing for it but to obey this madcap. Down Logan went into
+the cistern; he hoped the old rungs would hold. Once his foot caught
+the girl’s fingers, and she suppressed a cry. He heard a faint splash
+of water below, and turned the torch downward, looking between his
+bare legs. Mary MacAskival, her skirt held up almost to her shoulders,
+was more than waist-high in the black water. “There is nothing in the
+world,” she volunteered, “quite like a cold tub. Now do as I do, and
+mind your head, for from floor to ceiling is scarcely more than four
+feet.” She vanished.
+
+Dismayed, Hugh Logan descended to his waist in the cold water. Then,
+on his left, he saw the arch of which Mary had spoken: a round-headed
+masonry arch, very old. The cistern water came to within two feet of
+the crown of it. Gingerly, Logan stretched out a leg, found the floor
+of a passage under the arch, gripped Mary’s outstretched hand thrust
+back from the passage, and swung himself from the iron rungs to a low
+tunnel nearly filled with water; he had to stoop so that his face
+cleared the surface by only a few inches, and his little pack, strapped
+to his back, scraped against the roof.
+
+Squeezing his hand, Mary MacAskival pulled him along the black passage,
+the torch-beam gleaming on the water. She had her skirt twisted round
+her neck. “One thing’s certain,” she panted, “they’ll not hear us here.
+In the old days, this place was flooded altogether, except when The
+MacAskival let water out of the cistern so that men could enter the
+passage. Malcolm Mor--he was the old gardener, remember?--told me
+that his father’s father’s father’s uncle knew of this place, though
+no living man had seen it for a hundred years and more. Malcolm and I
+found it out together. We had grand larks.”
+
+After six yards or so, the floor began to slope upward, fairly sharply;
+and after a dozen yards, they were free of the water. “No trousers
+for you yet, modest Hugh,” Mary said, though she had let her skirt
+fall into place. “There is water still to come.” A moment later, they
+entered a small square rock chamber, beyond which loomed another narrow
+passage. “The Picts made this, as they made the Whiskey Bottle, Hugh.
+Look there.” She pointed the torch toward one wall, and by it Hugh
+made out a faint band of carving on the wall: little hooded and caped
+figures, faceless, some riding on queer little ponies. “This was a
+chapel, I think, or a tomb; but we haven’t a moment to spare just now.”
+She led the way into the further passage, the floor of which sloped
+downward again. “We’re far beyond the Old House now, Hugh.”
+
+The passage shot abruptly downward, and then ended in a solid barrier
+of living rock. Did the girl mean them to crouch here indefinitely, on
+the chance that help might come from the mainland before they starved?
+“I think the Picts dug all this for a temple,” she was saying, “or a
+king’s tomb; but the MacAskivals used it as a sortie-port in time of
+siege, or a way of escape if worst came to worst. Oh, I’m not strong
+enough. Tug at it, Hugh!” She was kneeling on the rough floor. Handing
+the torch back to her, Hugh Logan felt under his hands a thick stone
+slab, roughly rectangular. He tugged. It could be slid to one side, far
+enough to allow them to squeeze through to whatever lay beneath. And
+beneath was more water. But this water splashed and sucked, and the
+strong stench of seaweed came up from it; and from beyond came the roar
+of the wild Carnglass tide.
+
+“We’re to go into that, Mary?” But Mary MacAskival already had swung
+her handsome bare legs through the gap. The water just below snarled
+and surged in the cave, as if full of murderous desire. “It’s past
+midnight, Hugh, and the tide has ebbed.” She jumped down.
+
+After all, Logan found when he followed her, the water came only
+to their knees. At high tide, the passage would be impossible. He
+scratched a foot on some sharp submerged stone. Roof and floor of the
+cave now angled downward, and the water deepened; but by the time they
+reached the entrance, it was no higher than their waists. “In the old
+days,” Mary said, “little coracles came into this at low tide. There
+is another cave like this on the northern shore, but larger, and far
+harder to reach from the land.” She plucked a bit of seaweed from a
+rock. “This is the carrageen. In a better time, I will make you a
+pudding of it.” Then she ducked through the low mouth of the cave, Hugh
+Logan behind her, and they were in the night, by the ocean, a cliff at
+their backs, a splendid moon overhead.
+
+For the first time in many days, the mist and drizzle had lifted from
+Carnglass altogether; and for these islands, the sea was calm. But the
+clear beauty of the night was small comfort to these two fugitives:
+Jackman and his gang might hunt them down by that round moon. Mary
+splashed through a rock pool toward the relatively low cliff of gray
+stone that met the ocean at this point. “I think, Hugh, that by this
+time they will have searched the Old House for us, and Jackman will
+know we have got out. But they will not know the way that we have gone,
+and perhaps Jackman cannot make the men follow him out of the house
+this night, for they are afraid of every shadow now. Here we’re too
+close to the Old House for safety. We’ll pass between Cailleach and the
+sea-cliffs, and so up to St. Merin’s Chapel; that’s best.” When the two
+of them had got to the foot of a faint path that seemed to wind up the
+cliff, Mary put on shoes and stockings. “Now, Mr. Barrister Logan, you
+pillar of respectability, you may wear trousers again.”
+
+They climbed; they scrambled; they trotted; when they could, they
+ran. From the cliffs they descended into the glen that twisted
+round the hill of Cailleach, and hurried through heaps of stones
+along a forgotten trail; here, once, had been a village, and Duncan
+MacAskival’s people had lived under the thatch of one of these ruins.
+The girl was agile as a deer; it was all Logan could do to keep up with
+her, for his rucksack was curiously heavy. The moonlight helped them
+to make speed, but also it would leave them naked unto their enemies,
+should Jackman and the rest come this way. For more than an hour they
+hurried, until they had crossed a valley and saw before them the steep
+way up to the highest point of Carnglass, the headland on which stood
+St. Merin’s Chapel, with the graveyard round it. Then Mary flung
+herself exhausted on the heather, and Logan sank down panting beside
+her. Two or three strange white shapes scurried away from them; Logan
+started. “Are those things deer or goats?”
+
+The tired girl laughed at him. “Carnglass sheep, like no other sheep
+on earth. Long legs and long necks, and great leapers, and altogether
+wild.” Everything in this forgotten island, it seemed, defied the tooth
+of time.
+
+But it was no hour for philosophical observations. So soon as they had
+got a little strength back, they must be away to the top of the island.
+And what they could hope for there, aside from a brief respite, was
+more than Logan could see. Unarmed, they would be much easier game
+than Donley had been. Jackman and the rest would have their blood
+up. This girl, it might be, had destroyed herself by trying to save
+him. “Here, Hugh,” Mary said, “you’ll want this.” She took from the
+rucksack a paper in which were wrapped some scraps of meat, two boiled
+potatoes, and a piece of bread, all this salvaged furtively from Lady
+MacAskival’s dinner-tray. Logan, indeed, was ravenous, and he ate the
+lot, Mary insisting that she had got down a late supper. As he ate, she
+told him what had passed since he went down the Whiskey Bottle.
+
+When Jackman and Royall had taken Logan to the study at gun-point, Mary
+MacAskival had run to her room and locked herself in. It was only much
+later in the day, when Jackman and most of the men were searching for
+Carruthers, that she had bullied out of Niven the fact that Logan was
+shut in the Whiskey Bottle. In her room, she had taken out of a chest
+the only weapon she had, the ancient dirk that was said to have been
+Askival’s, and had sat with it in her lap, expecting all the time to
+have Jackman and Royall turn upon her next. But Jackman had only tried
+her door; and, not being able to enter, had called out that he would
+deal with her later. And then he had gone out to comb the island for
+Carruthers, whom they did not find; nor did they find anyone else. The
+men returned after sunset, Jackman and Royall going back to the study,
+where they sat talking for hours. The girl had crept to the study door
+and had caught fragments of their argument.
+
+No, they had not found Carruthers; but they had turned up something
+else. When Donley’s body was searched in the cellar, one of the men
+discovered in a pocket a water-soaked note. It was nearly illegible;
+but they could make out Logan’s signature, and that it was addressed to
+the police. On this evidence, Jackman and Royall abandoned their notion
+that Logan was an agent of Vlanarov; they now took him for a detective.
+The question remained as to what they ought to do with the man in the
+Whiskey Bottle. Royall thought it best to hold him there until they
+could get some boat, and then to run for it, abandoning their whole
+project. But Jackman was for death: Logan knew too much, and must go
+over the cliff. The two exhausted fanatics still were debating when the
+girl slipped away, but she believed they would dispose of Logan in the
+morning, if not sooner.
+
+So she took Logan’s pack, with what food she could get her hands upon,
+and a pint bottle of paraffin, and Askival’s dirk; and she bullied
+and wheedled Niven, on guard in the old tower; and to her immense
+satisfaction, she had got Logan clean away. Jackman and his people had
+no notion of the existence of that passage out of the cistern; Lady
+MacAskival herself had not known of it. When she ran, Mary knew that
+she left her aunt in danger, but Jackman’s fanatic voice behind the
+study door convinced her she dared not delay; Jackman would act before
+his time ran out altogether. And here she was, lying beside Hugh Logan
+on the heather.
+
+Behind them hulked the northern heights where St. Merin’s Chapel stood.
+They could hear a little waterfall tumbling, in that still night, from
+the cliff-tops. The burn ran through the heather and bracken close
+by them, lower down joining a stream that entered the sea by Askival
+harbor. Now they must climb to their last forlorn refuge. First they
+drank from the peaty burn; then Logan shouldered the rucksack, and up
+they started. They hardly spoke in the course of that hard nocturnal
+climb.
+
+From the summit, nearly an hour later, most of Carnglass was dimly
+visible to them in the moonlight. They could make out specks of light
+away to the southwest: lamps burning in the Old House. “Hugh,” Mary
+said, laying a hand on his arm, “Carnglass is the oldest place in the
+world, and the loveliest. Do you hate it? You’ve seen only fright and
+death here. But it was Dr. Jackman that brought the terror. If--if we
+live, Hugh, I’ll show you Carnglass as you ought to see it. Can you
+forgive me for having drawn you into this terror?”
+
+“One crowded hour of glorious life,” Logan told her, “really is worth
+an age without a name. And if I’d not come, I’d never have met Miss
+Mary MacAskival, would I?”
+
+“No,” she said, with a little sob, “no. But we can’t loiter here.” She
+took Askival’s dirk from the rucksack. “Hugh, take this, and cut some
+branches off the trees around the chapel, as quickly as you can; and
+I’ll scrape together some dead sticks and bits of dry heather; I made
+a little pile of them here weeks ago, on the chance that I might need
+to light them one day. We can burn the rucksack, too, and my jacket.
+They’ll make no grand beacon, but we can do no more. The paraffin I
+brought will start them blazing.”
+
+Logan stared at her. “Who’d see the fire, except Jackman’s boys?”
+
+“There’s a chance, Hugh. The night is clear. Besides, what other scheme
+is there? And my people will come. They may not come soon enough, but
+they will come.”
+
+“Your people?” The girl must be sunk in a Carnglass fantasy.
+
+“Hurry, Hugh,” was all she said. “It won’t be long before dawn.”
+
+They built their poor futile beacon, with what fuel they had on that
+hilltop, and they poured the paraffin upon it, and they set it alight
+with one of Logan’s matches, and they added to it the rucksack and
+Mary’s tweed jacket and Hugh’s coat. It flared somewhat better than
+Hugh had expected. But what possibility existed of this being seen by
+any vessel passing in the night, or of being acted upon? And it was
+almost certain that it would guide Jackman.
+
+“We’re only targets here,” Logan said. “At the chapel, we’d have some
+shelter.” They climbed still higher on that cliff-plateau, until
+they came to a low drystone dyke. Beyond it were tombstones, white
+in the moonlight. This was Carnglass graveyard; and in the middle
+of the graveyard stood a long, low medieval building, St. Merin’s
+Chapel, battered by five centuries. Away to their right, a tall ruin,
+infinitely older than the chapel, round, nearly forty feet high,
+windowless and roofless, loomed at the brink of the cliff.
+
+On its rough stones flickered the light of their little impromptu
+beacon. “They call that the Pict’s House,” said Mary, “or sometimes
+the Firgower’s House.” The tower’s circular wall slanted slightly
+inward, all round, for some twenty feet of its height; then it shot
+perpendicularly to its summit. It was what was called a broch, a strong
+place, Pictish work beyond question. “I do not think that really
+the Pictish chief lived here,” Mary went on, “for that room and the
+passages under the Old House have the look of his palace. The Picts
+lived underground, you know. This was a watchtower, and a place of
+refuge.”
+
+She turned toward the chapel. The firelight was reflected, between them
+and the medieval building, upon a great Celtic cross, perhaps fifteen
+feet high, carved with grotesques and convoluted interlacing bands;
+and it leant heavily to one side. This was the Cross of Carnglass,
+set up by the missionaries of St. Columba in the dim Irish age, St.
+Merin’s Cross. Mary led Logan toward it; and, as they came close up,
+she pulled from one of the stunted rowan trees which brooded over that
+windswept graveyard a little twig, on which the first leaves of spring
+had opened. She thrust it into the topmost buttonhole of Logan’s shirt.
+“The rowan keeps off wraiths and evil spirits, Hugh,” she said, “and
+St. Merin’s kirkyard is famous for them. Niven thinks I am the chief of
+them. Look at me: am I a witch?”
+
+Mary MacAskival stood before the Cross of Carnglass, her red hair
+brushing the white stone, her haughty nose and firm chin marking her as
+the last of an old, old, fierce line: perhaps, truly, the descendant
+of the Merin whose bones lay beneath one of these grass-grown grave
+mounds. “If anyone could call spirits from the vasty deep, you could,
+Mary,” Hugh told her.
+
+She smiled queerly. “It may be I will do just that, Hugh Logan.
+But here, I’ll show you the chapel.” She took him through a Gothic
+doorway--the wooden door, ajar, sagged on its hinges--and flashed
+the torch-beam over the tombs within. A grotesque stone face, rudely
+carved, stared at them from a niche. Directly before them stood up an
+ornate modern tomb of marble. “Sir Alastair is beneath that. And here’s
+his postbox.” She pointed to a slot in the marble, surrounded by a
+carved funerary wreath; and she slid her hand into the opening. “Oh,
+there’s nothing within now!” she said, as if really disappointed. “For
+years, you know, my aunt used to send letters by the butler or footman
+to Sir Alastair in his tomb. And I used to post my letters here, too,
+when I wasn’t watched.”
+
+Post her letters there! Mary must have read the amazement on his face,
+for she added, as if to reassure him of her sanity, “Oh, yes. The
+letter I sent Duncan MacAskival, that brought you here, was posted
+here in Sir Alastair’s postbox.” Was this some macabre witticism of
+the uncanny little beauty, or a delusion grown out of dreams and
+isolation? “But we daren’t linger here, Hugh. If Dr. Jackman sees our
+fire, he’ll come up the cliff straight away.” She pointed to the old
+dirk, which Hugh Logan had thrust into his belt. “That was Askival’s.
+You must be my Askival, Hugh. I am Merin, you know: Merin of Carnglass,
+who’s haunted this place since time began.” She was half playful, half
+in earnest. The dirk, Logan thought, might be small use against the
+guns of Jackman’s men, but it was some comfort. Then he followed Mary
+MacAskival out of the silent chapel, and toward the towering broch by
+the precipice. Their fire still leaped against the night sky of lonely
+Carnglass, but in a few minutes only embers would remain.
+
+“The Pict’s House,” Mary was saying, “is the best place we can hide.
+By the sea, away below these cliffs, is a great cave; but even I could
+not lead you down the path to it in darkness; and besides, the tide is
+coming in now, and the cave will be full almost to the top. It must be
+the Pict’s House for us. One still can climb the stair to the top of
+it.” She was quite calm, as if, having done all that she could do, she
+abandoned herself to fate and fortune. “And from the Pict’s House, we
+can see nearly all of Carnglass, once the sun is up.”
+
+They entered the tower through a square doorway ten feet above the
+ground; a worn timber, sea-drift, propped against the wall just below
+the door, made this scramble possible. The doorway was capped, by way
+of lintel, by a great stone slab; the Picts had not known the arch.
+Empty and roofless, the round interior cavern of the broch was before
+them, but Mary turned into the wall itself: a circling stair led
+upward, its steps vast rude slabs. By it they came to the crumbling
+summit of the broch, and Logan observed, while they climbed, that no
+mortar lay between the cunningly-placed stones of the tower; this was
+the work of men in the dawn of history, and beside it the Old House
+across the island was a thing of yesterday.
+
+Round the top of the broch ran a stone platform. “Stoop down behind
+the parapet, Hugh,” the girl told him, “so Jackman won’t see us, if he
+comes this way.” The earliest hint of a spring dawn glimmered in the
+east; a corncrake fluttered up from the parapet. Right below them, the
+tremendous cliffs, the cliffs over which Lagg had gone, fell sheer away
+to the ocean. From this point, the last Pict chieftain may have watched
+the long ships of the Vikings as they swept inexorably out of the
+sea-mist to the north. On that sea, nothing was visible this morning
+but whitecaps breaking on a submerged reef.
+
+“No, there’s nothing, no sail,” Mary MacAskival said anxiously, almost
+as if she had expected one. “Do you know the tale of the fairy boat,
+Hugh, that sails through the mists? If a girl glimpses it, she vanishes
+before nightfall. I wish one could carry me off--and you. Now you see
+my Carnglass, Hugh Logan.”
+
+He looked landward. Far to the west-southwest, beyond Cailleach, the
+Old House stood grim on its rock; lower down, the New House, among its
+plantations. Between them and the Old House stretched glen and hill,
+heather and bracken, boulder and peat-bog, waterfall and burn. On this
+lovely morning, the mists were quite gone, and there was revealed
+to him the unearthly beauty of the forgotten island. The girl took
+his arm. “Hugh, were it yours, would you live here always--or almost
+always?”
+
+“That I would, Mary MacAskival.” Carnglass, for good or evil, set its
+mark on men.
+
+She faced him squarely, putting her hands on his shoulders. “We may be
+under that sea tonight, Hugh Logan. But if we are not, why shouldn’t
+Carnglass be yours? I’ve known you but thirty-six hours, Hugh. You’re
+all the man I need to know. Do you fear me? Some men do, though I’m so
+little.” She kissed him then, and said, “Hugh Logan, I have kissed you
+more times than I have kissed all other men in all my life. Do you mean
+to ask me to marry you?”
+
+Torn between love and doubt, in that high place, Logan looked long
+into her green eyes. “They would say, Mary, that I took advantage of a
+lonely girl who had barely met me, for the sake of her money.”
+
+She tossed her bright hair at that. “Don’t be so canny, Hugh! Do you
+know the MacAskival motto, over the door of the old tower? ‘They have
+said and they will say; let them be saying.’ The MacAskivals, man or
+woman, have no concern for what they say in Glasgow or Edinburgh or
+London or all the wide world.” Then a look of fright came into her
+flashing eyes. “Is it that you are married already, Hugh?”
+
+“No,” he said, “but I will be, if we get alive out of this.” And as the
+sun rose, he took her in his arms. Rash, proud, and strange that girl
+was, perhaps a little mad; but in that moment he loved her more than
+all the kingdoms of the earth.
+
+She clung to him, sobbing and laughing softly in her moment of triumph
+and surrender. But abruptly he thrust her back, and pulled her below
+the level of the parapet. “Mary, Mary! They’ve come!” For three armed
+men were climbing the slope toward the chapel, and Jackman was the
+first of them. Logan thought that they two had not been seen. No shots
+were fired, at least.
+
+His arm around the girl’s waist, he ventured a second glance between
+two heavy stones that teetered precariously on the parapet’s brink.
+Yes, Jackman and Anderson and Powert. The men got over a low wall that
+ran round the graveyard, close by the remnants of the burned-out futile
+beacon. Then they entered the chapel.
+
+“Mary, girl,” he whispered, “they’ll be on us in three or four minutes,
+I think.” She did not cry, but kissed him once more, and then composed
+her young face, as if the MacAskival ought to meet enemies without
+flinching.
+
+“Hugh,” she said, “every second we can delay may help us.” He did not
+see why, but she gave him no time to dissent. “Back down the stair,
+Hugh, and if they try to come in, we’ll cast down the timber by the
+door.” Yes, they could do that, though without guns they could do no
+more than delay Jackman briefly. Back down the stair they went, and
+crouched by the empty archaic doorway. It wouldn’t do to push away the
+timber-gangplank that led up from the ground unless they must, for the
+noise of its fall would bring Jackman and his men.
+
+Now they heard Jackman’s voice; he was coming right round the broch
+from the chapel. Anderson’s sullen Gallowgate mutter replied to
+Jackman. And in a moment the hunters stood just below the broch’s door,
+though Logan dared not look out. “All right, Powert,” Jackman said,
+“up with you.” At that, Logan and Mary MacAskival shoved against
+the timber with all their strength. It slid sideways and fell to the
+ground. They showed themselves for an instant as they pushed, and
+someone fired, but the bullet passed over their heads into the broch.
+
+“Ah, well,” came Jackman’s voice from below, “you _did_ lead us a
+chase, didn’t you? Anderson, Powert, take hold there.” The timber was
+heaved back into place; Logan could not risk rising again to push it
+off, for Jackman would have a gun trained on the doorway. “Powert, Mr.
+Logan is not armed,” said Jackman. “Quick, now!” A man sprang up the
+timber and through the door.
+
+Thrusting at him with the dirk, Logan got home to Powert’s upper arm,
+and the man cried out and grappled with him. Before he could slash
+Powert again, Jackman was up, and poked the little pistol Meg right
+into Logan’s face. “Gallant, Logan, very gallant; but drop that.” Logan
+flung down the dirk. Mary MacAskival was struggling in Anderson’s arms.
+“A pleasant morning, eh, Logan?” Jackman said. “You’ll not see another.”
+
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+They took Hugh Logan and Mary MacAskival out of the Pict’s House.
+Anderson tied Logan’s wrists together, behind his back, with a length
+of heavy cord, pulling the knots savagely tight. Jackman held the
+girl by the arm meanwhile; and when Anderson had finished with Logan,
+under Jackman’s instructions he tied a cord to Mary’s right wrist, and
+retained the other end of the cord in his hand while Jackman removed
+Powert’s jacket and bandaged the flesh-wound with a strip torn from the
+tail of Powert’s shirt. This done, Jackman had Anderson tie the other
+end of Mary’s cord to Jackman’s own left wrist.
+
+“There!” Jackman said, contentedly, “a brisk morning’s run, and no harm
+done. Anderson, Powert and I will take this charming couple to the Old
+House while you trot down the brae and call back Ferd and Niven; I
+think they should be near the sheiling this side of Cailleach.”
+
+Anderson glowered at Logan. “Ye said I wud hae the thrashin’ o’ that
+clot, Doctor.”
+
+“That you shall, Anderson, my man, that you shall--once we’re at the
+Old House. I do believe Anderson will learn all we need to know from
+you, Logan, in short order. Our treatment of you, Miss MacAskival, will
+need to be rather more laborious: the washing of the brain, as our
+Chinese friends say. But it will all come out in the wash, won’t it?
+And Powert, too, will be given his fair turn at you, Logan: fair shares
+for all, eh?” Jackman ran his tongue over his thin lips. “In one thing,
+at least, you seem to have told me the truth, Logan: you’ve no people
+in Carnglass, for you’d not have been cowering in that ruin if there
+were any. There’s Carruthers to be accounted for; but I suppose he may
+have missed his footing in the dark and have gone over the cliffs. I
+must confess that my estimate of your abilities has diminished, Logan.
+Whatever possessed you to light that fire here by the chapel? You might
+have eluded us four or five hours longer if you hadn’t done that. Well,
+drive him along, Powert.”
+
+With his unwounded arm, Powert gave Logan a fierce shove in the back,
+setting him stumbling in the direction of the Old House; and Jackman
+tugged on Mary’s cord, pulling her with him behind Logan and Powert.
+The girl’s face was quite drained of color, but very haughty. “My
+dear,” Jackman said to her, casually, “how changed you are going to be
+within a few days! How very changed!”
+
+Then, from somewhere below in the nearer valley, there came to them the
+crack of a rifle-shot. It was answered by another, apparently from a
+different gun. Next was a burst of firing, and then a faint cry.
+
+Jackman’s satisfied smile altered horribly; he was Rumpelstiltskin
+again. “Logan,” he muttered, “is there a man of yours in Carnglass,
+after all? Or is that only Niven’s or Caggia’s nerves playing them
+tricks? Anderson, you and I must go down to see. Powert, we’ll leave
+you with Logan; he can’t do you harm. The girl will come with me. We’ll
+send back a man to help you get Logan to the Old House, Powert.”
+
+Powert most obviously did not relish the plan. “Coom, Dr. Jackman, I’ve
+a bad arm, and this cove’s a queer one.”
+
+“Nonsense,” Jackman said, “we’ll bind his feet, too, until we send
+Anderson or someone else for you.” Away below, there was only silence,
+but Jackman ran his hand across his forehead uneasily. “Here: we’ll put
+him inside the chapel with you, and you can watch the door, with your
+back to the wall: that’s safe enough.” Powert scowled, but shoved Logan
+toward the door of St. Merin’s Chapel. Jackman herded the four of them
+inside.
+
+Now that the dawn came through the broken tracery of the chapel’s
+pointed windows, Logan could see that the single room contained seven
+or eight tombs raised above the floor, some of them very old; and a
+number of the flagstones, deeply incised by some rude stonecarver,
+apparently covered other graves. “Wha’ in hell’s yon!” cried Anderson,
+abruptly, pointing.
+
+Near the northeast corner of the room, one of the flagstones had
+been raised, and now was leant against the wall. Where it had lain,
+a little mound of earth, freshly dug, protruded above the floor; and
+in the earth was thrust a curiously primitive wooden spade. The mound
+was about six feet long. They all crowded close to it. An earthenware
+dish had been set atop the mound, and the dish was filled with, of all
+things, nails and what looked like salt. Across the dish lay a branch
+from a rowan tree. “That,” Mary MacAskival said softly to Dr. Jackman,
+“is how the spirits of the newly dead are laid in these islands.”
+
+“Wha’ fule’s been diggin’ graves?” Anderson growled, looking back over
+his shoulder toward the empty doorway.
+
+Jackman stood rigid; then, “I think Carruthers must be under that clay.
+Anderson, take the spade and uncover him.” Mary MacAskival shivered
+slightly.
+
+Anderson cursed, but under Jackman’s hard eye he began to shovel. The
+grave was very shallow. In a minute or two, a heavy shape could be made
+out, wrapped in a big piece of tarred canvas. “That will be the head
+at the far end,” Jackman whispered. “Powert, draw the canvas from the
+face.”
+
+Mary had turned away, but Logan, dreadfully fascinated, saw clearly
+the smashed and fallen face of a man he never had looked upon before.
+And Jackman screamed: he screamed twice, and so terribly that his men
+shook, for the screams were worse than the ruined face in the grave.
+“Lagg! It’s Lagg!”
+
+Quivering, Anderson dropped the spade. “Aye,” he said, “Tam Lagg, that
+we pit ower the cliff into the sea. For the love o’ God, Powert, cover
+his mug.”
+
+Powert, his teeth chattering, let the canvas drop back over the corpse.
+
+“Logan,” shrieked Jackman, turning a frantic face on him, “Logan, what
+are you? What are you? Do you make dead men rise from the sea? Was
+it you that put this thing here?” He had the pistol in his hand, and
+thrust it against Logan’s middle.
+
+He will fire now, Logan thought, for he’s quite out of his head.
+There was the sound of a shot. But I’m not hit, Logan realized; I
+feel nothing. Jackman sprang away and looked out the doorway; the
+shot, after all, had come from outside, though in his tension Logan
+had thought, for an instant, that Jackman had pulled the trigger. Yet
+surely a gun had gone off fairly close at hand.
+
+“Anderson, watch this door,” Jackman ordered; he had a measure of
+control over himself. “Powert, give me that rope.” He forced Logan
+to sit, and tied his ankles together. “We’ll return for you in a few
+minutes, Powert.”
+
+“Me? I’ll not sit here by the dead man.” Powert scarcely could hold his
+rifle.
+
+Jackman sent him a deadly look from those glowering black eyes of his.
+“You’ll be another dead man yourself, Powert, if I hear another word
+from you. Now, Anderson, we’ll look into this. Miss MacAskival, if you
+cry out, I’ll be forced to put a bullet through your head.” He shoved
+her through the doorway.
+
+“Hugh,” Mary called back, reckless of Jackman, “Hugh, I love you!” Then
+she and Jackman and Anderson were out of sight.
+
+Powert, left with Logan and the corpse, still shook; and he cursed
+Logan and Jackman and Carnglass while he made his preparations as if
+for siege. He pushed the helpless Logan roughly against Sir Alastair’s
+tomb, facing away from the doorway, and parallel with the open grave
+and the awful thing under the canvas. Then he pulled shut the sagging
+door of the chapel, so that some force would be required to budge
+it; and he himself leaned against a tombstone that came up to his
+shoulders, with his face toward the door, and his rifle in his hands,
+the barrel resting upon the head of another tombstone. So situated,
+Powert could watch the door, keep an eye on Logan and the sheeted
+thing, and have the comforting feel of stone at his back.
+
+Logan himself, after the repeated shocks of that fair morning, was in
+little better state than Powert. Silent, he lay motionless against
+the tomb of Sir Alastair MacAskival, his brain dull, dull, dull.
+There were no more shots outside: only the rustle of a breeze in the
+rowan trees. The stillness was a trying thing. Powert was mumbling to
+himself: obscenities, blasphemies, scraps of nearly-forgotten prayer.
+The sunlight was pouring into the chapel through the unglazed Gothic
+windows. Five or six minutes passed thus.
+
+Then a faint sound came. Was something stirring in the high graveyard
+grass, just outside the closed door? Did the door itself creak, as if
+very gently tried? “Anderson,” Powert cried out, choking, “is it you,
+man? Dr. Jackman?” Nothing answered. Did the door creak again, ever
+so slightly, or was it the breeze? “Sing out,” Powert shouted, glaring
+wild-eyed at the flimsy door, “or I’ll shoot!”
+
+High in the wall behind Powert was one of the pointed windows, its
+stone tracery for the most part broken away. It must be at least eight
+feet above the level of the graveyard. Though Logan could see this
+window, Powert, intent on the doorway, could not. And as something rose
+cautiously above the windowsill, from outside, Logan bit his lip to
+keep back a cry.
+
+It was a man’s head that cut off the morning light: a lean man,
+keen-eyed; and there was a long white beard on his chin; and there was
+a little black knife between his teeth. His eyes took in the room.
+Steadying himself by clutching the broken tracery with his left hand,
+stealthily he rose until his shoulders came above the window-ledge. In
+his brown right hand he held a large stone.
+
+As if someone had thrust tentatively against it, the rotten door
+creaked shrilly. “Damn you,” Powert was crying, “speak up, or I’ll
+shoot.” The white-bearded man outside the window drew back his arm and
+flung the stone with great force, as if letting fly at a rabbit. The
+rock caught Powert at the back of his head; he fell to his knees, the
+rifle clattering on the flagstones. At that the door burst open, and
+two men tumbled into the room, and were upon Powert before he could
+recover. A boy followed them, and, kneeling by Logan, looked shyly into
+his face. These were the two men and the boy, MacAskivals from Daldour,
+that Logan had seen in Loch Boisdale, four days before.
+
+Then there strode through the doorway a very tall old man, erect and
+vigorous and bearded to his chest, with a shotgun in his hand. He
+was worth looking at; but another man, hard on his heels, was still
+stranger. This was a burly, broad-shouldered fellow, with a heavy,
+jolly face, and mild eyes that were exceedingly odd, though it would
+have been difficult to say why. Something in the look of his face was
+queer enough. Yet it was his clothing that made him conspicuous. The
+other men wore the caps and canvas cloaks and rough homespun tweeds
+of the crofters and fishermen in the remoter Isles. This burly man,
+in strong contrast, was dressed in what seemed to be the garments
+of a laird or prosperous farmer: green tweed jacket, green corduroy
+breeches and long stockings, good heavy shoes. Under the open jacket
+was a soiled yellow waistcoat; and on his head was a battered porkpie
+hat. These clothes were in wretched repair, with dark stains here and
+there upon them. The breeches, seemingly split at the seams, were
+held together by pins. One sleeve of the jacket was ripped open from
+shoulder to wrist. And although the clothes had been got on, they did
+not fit the man who wore them.
+
+Resting a hand on the boy’s shoulder, the tall old man bent over Logan
+and spoke in Gaelic. Logan shook his head: “I know only English.”
+Frowning, the old man muttered through his splendid beard to the boy
+beside him.
+
+The boy stammered a little, as if overwhelmed with shyness; but there
+was no fear in him. He spoke to Logan in good, if careful, English.
+“Malcolm Mor MacAskival of Daldour asks what is your name, and what do
+you do in Carnglass.” The pirate-like old man looked hard at Logan.
+
+These, then, were Mary MacAskival’s people! She had not been
+woolgathering when she spoke of them. How she had summoned them, Hugh
+Logan did not know; but the five of them--two had gagged Powert, and
+were sitting on the man--were staring at Logan intently. This was no
+time for long explanations. “Untie me,” Logan said. “I am Hugh Logan,
+and I am to marry Miss Mary MacAskival.”
+
+There was a murmur from the men, and all five MacAskivals of Daldour
+took off their caps deferentially, and then put them back on again.
+With a fisherman’s deftness, old Malcolm Mor undid the cords about
+Logan’s wrists and ankles, and the two men who looked like twins
+promptly bound Powert with them. As he released Logan, Malcolm Mor
+said, in decent English, “Then I am your man, sir, and so are my sons
+and my grandson, and my nephew Angus, and my nephew Kenneth who is not
+here. We saw the man with the third eye lead the lady away. Will we
+go after her?” Malcolm Mor tapped his shotgun. Malcolm Mor’s two sons
+had old rifles; the boy and Angus, the queer burly man in the queerer
+clothes, were unarmed. One of the sons, almost bowing, handed Powert’s
+rifle to Logan as he stood up and tried to get the blood to circulate
+in his tingling wrists and ankles.
+
+Hugh Logan surveyed his little army. “Yes, we will,” he said, “if they
+don’t come after us first. Just now they’re down in the valley hunting
+someone; but some of them will come back to the chapel.” These men,
+he thought, would be good shots; and to live in Daldour, they must be
+hardy and probably courageous, though he doubted whether they had much
+experience at man-killing.
+
+“It is my nephew Kenneth that they are hunting,” Malcolm Mor observed.
+“I sent him to watch them from the bracken. It was Kenneth who shot his
+gun to lead them away from the chapel. They will not find him. We have
+watched them for a week, but we did not understand what they did, and
+there was no gentleman to lead us. We would have shot the man with the
+third eye when he took the lady away, but we were afraid that she might
+be hurt. Is it so that they are robbers and murderers?”
+
+“That they are,” Logan said, emphatically.
+
+“Then,” Malcolm Mor went on, in the slow, gentle Island English, “it
+would be lawful for us to hunt them?” Logan suspected that the people
+of Daldour were extremely shy of the law.
+
+“It would,” Logan told him. “I am a lawyer, and I give you my
+authority.”
+
+Malcolm Mor MacAskival’s old eyes lit up, and he smiled as some Norse
+rover might have smiled. “Then, sir,” he said, “we will go after the
+lady, and take the Old House of Fear.” He seemed to have no doubt
+whatsoever of the success of this undertaking by five or six men and a
+boy. “There are three more able-bodied men in Daldour, but we have no
+time to fetch them. Kenneth, my nephew, will come to us soon. Will we
+go down into the valley now, Mr. Logan?”
+
+“Let’s have a look about,” Logan said. The men followed him through the
+chapel doorway. When Logan had thrown his rucksack on the fire, he had
+stuffed his binoculars into a trouser-pocket; and now he pulled them
+out and stared through them in the direction of the Old House; but,
+what with hills, rocks, and clumps of trees and thickets of bracken, he
+could see no one moving.
+
+Then, a hundred yards away, and ascending toward the chapel, Anderson
+came into view. Logan dropped the binoculars and snatched up his rifle,
+but Anderson had seen them before he could get the gun to his shoulder.
+For a second, Anderson stared aghast; then, flinging himself around,
+he leaped downhill, vanishing into bracken, reappearing on a knoll,
+slipping, almost rolling down a talus-slope, merging with the blur of
+gray rock and purple heather and green bracken. Logan fired twice, but
+could not have hit him. At that, Malcolm Mor and his two sons brought
+up their guns and fired also. They did not really take aim, and Logan
+thought they meant to frighten, rather than to wound; but also he
+thought that they could be brought to shoot to kill if they must.
+
+“We can catch him,” Malcolm Mor said, like a dog eager for the word
+from his master. “He is a town man, and we are faster.”
+
+“No,” Logan decided, shaking his head, “no, there’ll be three others
+down there, and they have Miss MacAskival with them, on a rope. We’ll
+go down and after them, but together; and no one must shoot if the lady
+might be hurt.” This deliberation was agony to Logan himself, but he
+had been an officer, and he knew something of tactics.
+
+The MacAskivals nodded. “My nephew Kenneth will be watching them from
+the bracken,” Malcolm Mor said. “We will go down, and he will join us;
+and if they take the lady to the Old House, then we will follow them
+into the house.”
+
+Malcolm Mor’s nephew Angus, the burly man in the dirty yellow
+waistcoat, was nodding and smiling at every word his old uncle uttered.
+“Do you have a gun?” Logan said to him. The man opened his mouth, but
+words did not come out: only mouthed grunts, rather horrid. Malcolm Mor
+seemed somewhat embarrassed.
+
+“He can not speak,” the boy--Malcolm Gille was his name--said
+apologetically. “He is called”--here the boy seemed to seek the English
+equivalent of a Gaelic term, and emerged triumphantly--“he is called
+Dumb Angus.” Dumb Angus nodded enthusiastically at the mention of his
+name. “And,” the boy went on, “he is simple. Dumb Angus is simple, and
+does not have a gun, but he is very strong, and he is honest, and he
+makes many jokes.” Dumb Angus bowed and smiled, and tapped himself on
+the head to prove that he knew he was simple. “He cannot speak,” the
+boy said, “but he makes jokes in other ways.”
+
+Logan checked Powert’s rifle, and reloaded; one of Malcolm’s
+sons--their names, it turned out, were John and Robert--brought him
+a cartridge-pouch that Powert had worn. What ought they to do with
+Powert? Malcolm Mor, now assured that the majesty of the law sheltered
+the persecuted sept of MacAskival, speculatively fingered the little
+black knife in his belt. “No,” said Logan, “we’ll bring them all to
+trial, if we can.”
+
+“There is one already taken and locked away,” Malcolm Mor offered. “His
+name, I think, is Carruthers. We took him the night before last night,
+and carried him to Daldour, and locked him in a byre, and he is afraid,
+for he thinks that we will eat him. Dumb Angus made him think so; that
+is one of the jokes of Dumb Angus. It is pleasant to have Dumb Angus
+in Daldour. We could carry this man, too, to Daldour, but there is not
+time.”
+
+Dumb Angus was gesturing and beckoning, and pointing upward. At the
+east end of the chapel, behind the altar, ran a kind of low loft or
+gallery, of wood, probably built when the chapel was re-roofed by Sir
+Alastair MacAskival. “Yes,” said Logan, “that will do. Put Powert
+there, at the back, and no one is likely to notice him until we need
+him.” The sons of Malcolm carried Powert up the short flight of wooden
+steps, and tightened the cords and his gag. Dumb Angus might be simple,
+but he had eyes in his head.
+
+And now they could start in pursuit of Jackman, for Mary MacAskival’s
+sake. Anderson probably would have warned Jackman and the others by
+this time; but the warning might do no mischief, for those four guns
+going off at his heels must have sounded to Anderson as if half the
+constabulary of Scotland were after him. They could not catch Jackman
+and the rest before they reached the Old House, the odds were, nor
+would it have been safe to fire at the retreating gang with Mary
+MacAskival in their midst. But by night, Logan was resolved, he and
+the Daldour people would make their try. “Well, gentlemen,” he said to
+Malcolm Mor and the others, “if you’re ready, I am.” And they started
+down the brae.
+
+As they trotted and scrambled toward the valley, the boy running by
+Logan’s side, Logan said to Malcolm Gille, “Why does Dumb Angus wear
+such clothes?”
+
+“Those clothes were not his.” The boy smiled broadly. “It is one of the
+jokes of Dumb Angus. They are the clothes of Mr. Lagg, the factor, that
+we found broken below the cliffs and buried in the chapel of St. Merin.
+For Dumb Angus, it is always Hallowe’en.”
+
+The humor of Daldour, Logan took it, had its grisly side. Dumb Angus it
+must have been that Rab had encountered two nights before. If even the
+simpletons of Daldour--and the whole band of Daldour MacAskivals was
+a remarkably odd-looking lot--were this resourceful, it might be just
+possible for Logan to get Mary alive out of the Old House.
+
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+On the flank of Cailleach, a little ferret-like man rose out of the
+heather to join Logan and the MacAskivals: Kenneth MacAskival. Like the
+rest of his family, he really understood English, when he chose, and
+could speak it tolerably well when he had to. On learning from Malcolm
+Mor that this gentleman was the betrothed of The MacAskival, Kenneth
+gave Logan his report.
+
+After firing twice that morning to draw Jackman away from the chapel,
+Kenneth MacAskival had contented himself with creeping through the
+bracken and spying on the retreating party. The lady, Kenneth said,
+never spoke, so far as he could hear; though the men thrust her roughly
+along when, led on a cord as she was, she stumbled. They would be at
+the Old House within a few minutes, the man with the third eye and the
+rest, and could not be intercepted.
+
+Logan and his men did not move toward the Old House so fast as they
+could have. For Jackman might have laid an ambush, which had to be
+watched for among the rocks and dens of rugged Carnglass. Once, through
+his binoculars, Logan caught a glimpse of a hurrying figure, very close
+to the Old House; then it was hidden again by a low intervening ridge.
+
+Either of two courses he might take, Logan thought. He might send
+the MacAskivals in their lobster boat to Loch Boisdale or whatever
+other port they could reach that had a police station, and ask for
+prompt help. But this would take hours, many hours, and meanwhile
+Jackman would have Mary MacAskival in the Old House. And Jackman would
+be thinking of the ruin of his scheme, and of the gelignite in the
+cellars. Besides, would any police constable believe such a story, from
+such a crew as the MacAskivals, without telegraphing to Glasgow or
+Edinburgh for orders, which would mean delays? No, that plan wouldn’t
+do.
+
+So there remained to Logan only the storming of the Old House. Briefly,
+he thought of trying to enter through the passage in the rock by which
+Mary and he had escaped; but that was no go, since one of Jackman’s
+riflemen at the cistern-mouth could kill anyone who tried to ascend.
+They would have to rush the place from outside.
+
+The thing could not be tried until evening, for Jackman had more men
+within the Old House than Logan had without, and Jackman’s men were
+desperate, well armed, and probably experienced in killing. By day,
+it would have been mad. The oldest tower, with its little windows and
+iron bars, would have been impossible to take even if defended by only
+one or two riflemen, unless the attackers had mortars. The Renaissance
+block was nearly as strong. But the Victorian addition was another
+matter. The gate was stout, and the ground-floor windows were small,
+covered by iron grills, and shuttered within. The plate-glass windows
+of the first floor, however, were immense and undefended, and could be
+reached with a long ladder--after dark. Even supposing Logan and his
+men got inside the Old House, they still would be outnumbered. Their
+hope was that before they should make their rush, they might be able
+to demolish the morale of Jackman’s people, already badly shaken.
+
+To help Mary, Logan would have taken any risk: if getting himself shot
+would have saved her, he would have rushed the Old House that hour.
+But the best chance for saving her, it seemed to him, lay in keeping
+Jackman’s people very much on edge, and busy--and in praying that
+Jackman himself might not go mad altogether. And this meant that some
+eight hours, eight intolerable hours for Logan, must pass before he
+could act.
+
+But meanwhile he could prepare. Giving the Old House a wide berth, he
+led the MacAskivals to the farm steading nearest the castle. Before
+the troubles had begun, Simmons had kept the steading in some order,
+though there were only two animals about the place: two shaggy and
+ill-tempered little Barra horses, grazing in a small field. Having
+caught the horses, the MacAskivals harnessed them to a farm cart.
+This they loaded with straw, and with what loose lumber they could
+find; also they put two gallon tins of paraffin, discovered in the
+farmhouse, into the cart. In a shed they came upon a long ladder, which
+they piled atop straw and lumber. Then, keeping out of range of fire
+from the Old House, Dumb Angus and Malcolm Gille took the horses and
+cart circuitously round to the wooded policies of the New House, which
+was as close to the Victorian wing of the Old House as they could get
+without being fired upon.
+
+While this operation was going forward, Logan sent Kenneth and John
+MacAskival to the rocky and bracken-covered hillsides that were barely
+within extreme firing range of the Old House. And there the two
+veteran poachers commenced a desultory fire against the windows of the
+Old House. Logan gave Powert’s rifle to Kenneth, as the best weapon
+available, taking Kenneth’s shotgun for himself. Concealed as they were
+by dense bracken, and shifting position after every shot, there was
+little danger of the MacAskivals being hit by retaliatory fire from
+the Old House. For their part, the MacAskivals were instructed not
+really to attempt to hit anyone, but to spend their time shattering
+panes and nerves. The windows of Mary’s room in the old tower they
+left untouched. Lady MacAskival’s room was on the seaward side of the
+Old House, and so safe. For that matter, the whole garrison of the Old
+House could retreat to the seaward rooms and temporary security, except
+for what luckless sentinels Dr. Jackman might leave to guard against a
+sudden rush. By early afternoon, every pane on the eastern side of the
+Old House had been shattered, except those in Mary MacAskival’s windows.
+
+For the first hour of this, three or four marksmen replied from the
+Old House. But they could have seen almost nothing to shoot at, and
+their risk of being struck by flying windowglass, if not by bullets,
+was considerable. The return fire slackened perceptibly in the second
+hour, and after that there came only infrequent shots from a single
+rifle on the second floor, as if to demonstrate that the defenders were
+still awake. Another rifleman on the roof of the old tower was driven
+below early in the game. What all this did to the nerves of Jackman’s
+men--this sniping by an unknown body of enemies, who had not even made
+a formal demand for the surrender of the Old House--Logan could only
+surmise. The loss of Powert, too, coming on the heels of Carruthers’
+disappearance and the discovery of Lagg’s body, must have made an
+impression.
+
+Logan sent Robert MacAskival round to keep an eye on the back of the
+old tower, to make sure no one slipped out by the garden gate; the
+man hid himself behind an outcrop of rock and bided his time, leaving
+the shooting to the others. Accompanied by Malcolm Mor, Logan himself
+watched the main entrance from the plantation that stretched from the
+New House nearly to the rock of the Old House. And from Malcolm Mor, as
+they lay on their bellies under cover, that warm and fatal spring day,
+Logan pieced together a good deal more of the history of the recent
+troubles in Carnglass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Poaching in Carnglass the shy twilight folk of Daldour took for a
+natural right. The older people of the Daldour MacAskivals, like
+Malcolm Mor, had been born in Carnglass and looked upon it as Eden;
+several of them, from time to time, right down to the coming of Dr.
+Jackman as Lady MacAskivals guest and master, had been servants at the
+Old House or on the two farms. Life in that windswept peat-bog Daldour
+was precarious at best, and the dwindling race of the MacAskival
+crofters and fisherfolk had considered the killing of a sheep or a
+deer in Carnglass as no more than getting back a bit of their lost
+patrimony. That the sheep and the deer nominally belonged to old Lady
+MacAskival was little to them: she was a mere Lowlander, a MacAskival
+only by marriage--a bad marriage at that--and their enemy.
+
+So whenever they dared--especially in the early morning or the evening,
+when the gamekeepers might be in their cottages--the Daldour men, for
+years, had landed in Carnglass under cover of darkness or fog, most
+commonly mooring their lobster-boats in a great cave under the headland
+on which St. Merin’s Chapel stood. The cave was known to very few;
+and though the ascent was precarious even for MacAskivals, still the
+descent was so risky as to daunt even the boldest hired gamekeeper,
+most of the time.
+
+And it seemed that the taking ways of the Daldour MacAskivals, in
+recent years, had been winked at by The MacAskival herself, Miss Mary.
+For she had been a little girl on a barren island croft, and knew the
+rigors of the Daldour life. Besides, she was adored by, and adored, old
+Malcolm Mor, the chief man in Daldour, who for some years turned from
+fishing and poaching to being the gardener at the Old House, until Lagg
+gave him the sack. Malcolm Mor told her tales of the vanished glories
+of the MacAskivals, and of the witcheries of Carnglass, and showed the
+schoolgirl, during her Carnglass summers, the secrets of the Old House
+and of the Carnglass caves. What Malcolm Mor’s kith and kin did, Mary
+MacAskival overlooked when overlooking was discreet. Now and again,
+on lonely rambles to the further reaches of the deserted island, Mary
+would meet with the furtive deer-stalkers and sheep-stealers from
+Daldour, who blended with gorse and heather and bracken when anyone
+else showed his face; and they would tip their caps, and offer the girl
+strange things washed up from the sea, such as “Mary’s Nut,” a Molucca
+bean, come by the Gulf Stream all the way from the Caribbean--for it
+brought good fortune, if worn on a chain round the neck.
+
+As for Malcolm Mor, even after canny and tight-fisted Tam Lagg
+discharged the old pirate, Mary MacAskival kept in touch with him by a
+sepulchral line of communications. Their system was this: on her walks,
+Mary would slip a note into the receptacle in Sir Alastair’s tomb at
+the chapel, and Malcolm would pick it up when next he climbed over the
+cliff-head from his boat moored in the cave far below. Malcolm Mor,
+though he was ashamed of the accomplishment as a decadent concession
+to modern civilization, could write a primitive English, and he
+would scrawl in his crabbed hand brief and respectful replies to The
+MacAskival’s communications, giving news of his family to the lonely
+girl, and of how the fishing had gone. So long as she was permitted to
+ramble at will in Carnglass, Mary MacAskival could send letters to the
+outer world through this tomb postbox, for old Duncan would post them
+in Loch Boisdale on the few occasions when the lobster boat crossed the
+rough waters to South Uist. Thus she had contrived to send her last
+message, the unsigned note, crumpled and water-stained, which reached
+Duncan MacAskival in Michigan. After that she had been too closely
+watched by Jackman and his men to make the attempt, and toward the end
+she had not been able to leave the Old House at all.
+
+Before the coming of Jackman, and while Lady MacAskival retained some
+vigor and Lagg had the management of the island in his hands, two or
+three reasonably zealous gamekeepers made the poaching by the Daldour
+men a career of danger and daring, which they dared not attempt more
+than once a month, at best. The keepers’ shotguns had wounded two or
+three of old Malcolm’s sons and grandsons, and once the keepers almost
+had seized the boat moored in the cave.
+
+But after Jackman’s men replaced the old servants, the people at
+the Old House scarcely visited the hinterland of Carnglass. Donley,
+nominally the new keeper, ordinarily stuck fairly close to his cottage
+near the Old House, and the regions round Dalcruach and St. Merin’s
+Chapel, especially, became safe ground for the poachers. More and
+more of the queer, long-legged, long-necked, soft-fleeced sheep of
+Carnglass, and now and then a deer, were borne off triumphantly in the
+lobster boat to hungry Daldour.
+
+Only one aspect of the new regime in Carnglass troubled the Daldour
+MacAskivals: Dr. Jackman and his ways. They spied upon him from the
+bracken, and sometimes crept close enough to perceive the curious
+spot in his forehead--which, among these misty folk who told legends
+over their peat fires and never saw the penny press and never heard
+a wireless, was at once recognized as the supernatural Third Eye of
+a Carnglass warlock. They saw the rough crew of town toughs he had
+gathered round him, too, and their suspicions grew. And Mary MacAskival
+rarely came forth from the Old House; at last she did not come at all,
+though they could glimpse her sometimes at the summit of the tower
+or in the little walled garden. For the people of Daldour, Miss Mary
+MacAskival was the symbol of their identity, and the hope of their
+salvation: for she had told old Malcolm, more than once that, when she
+was mistress in the island, she would bring back the MacAskivals to
+the farms and the crofts from which her aunt had expelled the last of
+them in 1914. The man with the third eye, they told one another, meant
+Mary MacAskival no good. They continued to watch. None of them were
+cowards, but they were shy of the law, for the law had expelled them
+from Carnglass; and besides, they were poachers, and in Daldour secret
+distillers of whiskey on which they paid no duty.
+
+There were not many of them in Daldour, and few of the men were
+young. Of the men who should have been in their thirties, several had
+died during the war as naval or merchant seamen; and nearly all the
+rest, acquiring new tastes during their military service or unable to
+find places for themselves in the island, had gone off to Glasgow or
+America. The old and middle-aged MacAskival men in Daldour, for lack of
+young blood, withdrew more and more from the modern world, so far as
+modernity ever had touched them at all. They were shy of the law, shy
+of people from the mainland, shy of townsfolk, shy even of crofters and
+fishermen from the other islands.
+
+A week ago, four MacAskivals, Malcolm Mor leading them, had put out in
+their boat, cloaked by fog and the setting of the sun, to land again at
+the foot of the cliffs below St. Merin’s Chapel. Only the MacAskivals
+of Daldour could sail those treacherous waters in such weather. As
+they had been about to moor the boat in the cave under the cliff, Dumb
+Angus had taken Malcolm by the shoulder and pointed excitedly. Caught
+between two rocks near the cave’s mouth, and awash in the ebbing tide,
+was the body of a man. They drew the corpse into their boat. It was Tam
+Lagg, who had been factor of Carnglass, and his corpse was terribly
+battered; he must have fallen from the cliffs. His hat they found a
+little later, lodged in a clump of ferns a few yards up the cliff.
+
+“The sea casts its dead upon Carnglass,” a proverb of the Islands runs.
+Many men have drowned on the reefs in those waters, or have been caught
+in the currents and hurled against the cliffs in their boats; but it
+is a strange truth that the whirlpools and eddies in that merciless
+sea seem to bring up drowned men from miles round, and lodge what is
+left of them among the rocks or on the narrow beaches of the island
+called the Heap of Stones. The four men in the Daldour lobster boat
+had looked often upon drowned corpses; and they never failed to give
+those derelicts decent burial, that they themselves might one day need
+in their turn. The graveyard round the chapel in Carnglass, and the
+smaller graveyard by the bare beach in Daldour, were dotted with little
+wooden crosses marking the graves of seamen and soldiers from torpedoed
+transports that had gone down between Uist and Carnglass.
+
+Bury Tam Lagg, then, the MacAskivals must. But they were afraid of
+the man with the third eye, at the Old House of Fear, who might lay
+the blame of this strange death upon them, since they had enjoyed an
+old vendetta with the factor of Carnglass; so they made no attempt to
+report the discovery of the body to the people in the Old House. They
+thought it best not to bury Lagg in Daldour, lest the body be found by
+strangers there and the MacAskivals be accused of foul play. So they
+wrapped Lagg in an old piece of canvas and, with great difficulty, got
+the body to the top of the cliffs, where they buried it in St. Merin’s
+Chapel. On the grave they left a saucer of salt and nails, with a
+rowan twig atop it, to keep Lagg’s wraith from wandering, should it be
+restless; for they thought it strange that a man so long familiar with
+Carnglass should fall to his death.
+
+They were not sorry that Lagg was dead: they had detested him. And Dumb
+Angus, who dug the grave, took Lagg’s clothes by way of compensation,
+and put them on, so that he looked for all the world like a stout
+scarecrow in those torn and stained garments. Malcolm Mor feared that
+this act might bring ill luck, but did not interfere, for they were
+accustomed to let poor Angus have his way in all reasonable things. And
+besides, Angus looked wonderfully comic in Lagg’s clothes, and made the
+MacAskivals laugh, and so was happy. Many of the jokes of Dumb Angus
+were no stranger than this.
+
+Logan learned these matters from Malcolm Mor there on the edge of the
+New House plantation of firs and aspens, while every ten minutes or
+so a rifle went off on the landward side of the Old House; Kenneth
+and John firing at the windows. Logan’s men had no great supply of
+ammunition, but it was necessary to keep Jackman’s people in constant
+uneasiness, so that the final rush on the Old House might have some
+chance for success. As Logan and Malcolm lay talking, Dumb Angus
+crawled up to join them, having finished his work of loading the farm
+cart and getting it into the New House plantations.
+
+“Dumb Angus is simple,” Malcolm Mor said, smiling at the burly man,
+“but also he is clever. He made the joke better by a doing all his own.
+Show Mr. Logan what it was you made, Angus.”
+
+Very cheerfully, Angus took off the injured green porkpie hat he had
+inherited from Thomas Lagg. Then he reached into a little leather bag
+that hung suspended from one of his shoulders, and drew out a thing
+seemingly shapeless. He pulled the thing all the way over his head,
+as if it had been a rubber mask, and clapped his hat back on. Then,
+gobbling unintelligibly, he looked Logan full in the face.
+
+The effect was the more horrid because at first Logan could not
+recognize the origin of this dreadful mask Dumb Angus had assumed. It
+was not human, and yet had a semblance of humanity. It hung loosely on
+the head. It had nostrils, but no true nose, and a drooping dreadful
+mouth, and holes where its eye-sockets should be, with Dumb Angus’s
+eyes glowing behind them. Angus wriggled with happiness at the effect
+he produced upon Logan. It was the face of one of the peculiar sheep of
+Carnglass, painstakingly skinned from the whole skull of the beast and
+made a loathsome mask by Angus MacAskival.
+
+If this was what Rab had seen in the gloaming, with the dead Lagg’s
+clothing on the heavy body below it, it was no wonder that dull-witted
+Rab had gone frantic with dread. “Poor Angus makes this on every
+Hallowe’en,” Malcolm Mor was saying, “but this time he made it in the
+spring, because he had taken Mr. Lagg’s clothes, and wished to make us
+laugh.”
+
+On the same evening that the MacAskivals buried Lagg, they had caught
+a glimpse of Donley skulking among boulders near Dalcruach, and they
+had hurried back to their boat and returned to Daldour, thinking that
+Donley might have seen them as well. But they had found they could
+not restrain their curiosity, and so sailed to Carnglass early the
+following morning, and from the bracken had seen Donley pursued by
+men from the Old House. They had debated among themselves whether
+they ought to reveal themselves to Donley and carry him off safely to
+Daldour; but they did not know the right and wrong of the feud between
+Donley and his pursuers, and also they had an ancient grudge against
+all gamekeepers; so they let the chase continue, only watching it from
+a fairly safe distance. Two or three times both Donley and the men
+from the Old House seemed to suspect that they were being tracked and
+watched, and to be correspondingly nervous. This tickled the fancy
+of the MacAskivals, especially Dumb Angus, and, without showing
+themselves distinctly, they dogged the Carnglass men like bogles.
+
+These MacAskivals had seen Donley and Logan together on the shore, the
+night Donley had taken the dinghy. They had watched Logan for a part
+of the way as he followed the line of cliffs to the Old House. They
+had lingered near the searching parties that went out of the Old House
+in pursuit of Donley while Logan had been inside. And on one of these
+occasions, three of the MacAskivals--Robert, John, and Dumb Angus--had
+been imprudent. Carruthers and Rab, cautiously poking through the
+bracken near the ruined farmhouse where Lagg had been caught, had
+stumbled upon the Daldour men. Carruthers, in the lead a few yards,
+had found himself right in the midst of the three MacAskivals, and
+had shouted in astonishment to Rab. Instantly, Malcolm’s two sons had
+dragged him down and begun to bind him, snatching away his gun; they
+were old hands at such fights with keepers. Rab had come running up,
+and Dumb Angus, wearing his sheep-mask and Lagg’s clothes, had risen
+out of the bracken to confront him. Turning tail, the shocked and
+screaming Rab had run all the way back to the Old House, now and then
+firing into the bracken, but never hitting the delighted Angus, who had
+followed at a prudent distance. Logan knew the rest.
+
+By this time, Malcolm Mor had become convinced that something was
+gravely wrong at the Old House, and was bent on helping Mary MacAskival
+if only he could determine what to do. He and the others took
+Carruthers back to Daldour in their boat, at the risk of a prosecution
+for kidnapping, and locked him in a byre, where they fed him well and
+asked him questions quite civilly; but the man was so terror-stricken
+that they could get nothing sensible from him. The day after the
+capture, the MacAskivals spent in Daldour asking these fruitless
+questions of their prisoner. Three hours before dawn on the present
+day, they had sailed once more toward Carnglass, with the intention of
+going straight up to the Old House, if necessary, and demanding to see
+Miss MacAskival.
+
+Then, when almost under the northern headland of Carnglass, the
+MacAskivals had seen flaming against the night sky the fire which Logan
+and the girl had kindled. That beacon must be close by St. Merin’s
+Chapel; and at the chapel Malcolm Mor had collected Mary MacAskival’s
+letters, and the Cross of Carnglass had been the point of rendezvous
+when Malcolm, now and then, had met with the girl face to face. The
+odds were that this fire was a sign from Mary herself. Mooring the
+boat, the MacAskivals went warily up the cliff, reaching the summit
+just after dawn.
+
+All the time, then, Logan realized, the girl must have entertained hope
+of the MacAskivals’ coming. Why she had given him only hints, never
+speaking out, he could not say. In part, perhaps, she had hesitated to
+speak because she feared that, after all, nothing would come of this.
+And in part, likely enough, her pride as The MacAskival had prompted
+her to make the decision herself, without consulting even the man she
+loved. But most of all, Logan suspected, a certain lingering schoolgirl
+love of secrets had been at work. From the time Carruthers was missed
+and Rab ran shrieking into the Old House, Mary MacAskival must have
+been sure that the MacAskivals of Daldour were in the island. Her only
+chance of finding them hurriedly if they were in the island the next
+night, or of attracting their attention away in Daldour or out at sea,
+was to light the beacon, whatever the risk of attracting Jackman’s
+notice. That act had saved Logan, but not yet Mary herself.
+
+Well, Malcolm Mor and the others had got their heads over the summit
+of the sea-cliff just as Logan had been fighting with Jackman and his
+men at the door of the broch. The men of Daldour had crouched behind
+the tumbling drystone wall at the brink of the cliff, unnoticed by
+Jackman’s gang during the scuffle. In that moment, Malcolm had sent
+his nephew Kenneth scurrying stealthily round the kirkyard wall and
+down the brae, to create a diversion. And Kenneth, seeing two more of
+Jackman’s men in the valley below, had fired on them to draw Jackman’s
+party off at the time Logan and Mary MacAskival were held prisoners
+in the graveyard and the chapel. When Malcolm had watched the girl
+led away on a rope, he was ready to fight, law or no law. So he and
+the others had surrounded St. Merin’s Chapel, stunned Powert, and
+discovered, to their astonishment, the betrothed of Mary MacAskival.
+
+“Mr. Logan,” said old Malcolm Mor, apparently quite confident of the
+issue of the fight that was coming, “when Carnglass is the lady’s and
+yours to do with as you will, Dumb Angus would be a good gardener for
+you. It is a keeper that I myself would rather be. Dumb Angus is wise
+with animals and plants”--here he patted Angus approvingly on a burly
+shoulder--“and he would keep you always laughing.”
+
+Dumb Angus had put the animal-mask back into his bag. He also had
+slung over his shoulder, on a strap, the wooden spade that Logan had
+seen thrust into the earth in the chapel; Angus had forgotten it there
+when he dug Lagg’s grave, but now had retrieved it as the only weapon
+ready to his hand. The wearing of such masks, Malcolm had remarked,
+was common among the few remaining MacAskival children, in Daldour and
+formerly in Carnglass, about Hallowe’en. Covered by that dead animal
+face, Angus had looked mightily like the picture of the Firgower on the
+ceiling of Jackman’s study in the old tower. Whether this custom was
+some dim survival of a practice older than the Christian rites at the
+Cross of Carnglass, Logan could not tell. It might have been that the
+dead Pictish chiefs of Carnglass had worn such masks in heathen times,
+at ceremonies in the chamber within the rock beneath the Old House, or
+by the great broch on the cliff, the Pict’s House. Be this as it might,
+the horrid false face that was Angus’s delight, like so much else in
+Carnglass and Daldour, came as the last faint echo of an old Gaelic
+song.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All that long afternoon Logan lay in wait hidden by the fir trees,
+outwardly calm to hearten the MacAskivals, inwardly in torment at Mary
+MacAskival’s danger within the Old House. As the sun began to set, he
+dispatched the boy to Kenneth and John, still sniping on the landward
+side of the Old House, with the word that they were to join him under
+the trees close to the gate of the Victorian block, the moment it was
+fairly dark.
+
+When the light was almost gone, Malcolm and Angus harnessed the
+Barra horses--which had been tethered behind the New House--to the
+straw-loaded farm cart. The long ladder was carried to the edge of the
+plantation; the run with it to the first-story windows of the Victorian
+wing would be very risky, even if Logan’s whole plan went smoothly, but
+the thing was possible. Climbing up the straw, the boy poured the tins
+of paraffin over the loaded cart. Angus crept under the cart, to urge
+on the horses so far as they dared use them. Kenneth, John, and Robert
+were to be stationed behind the cart. When the cart had been drawn to
+the edge of the trees, the horses must be cut out of their harness, and
+the men, keeping their heads down, must push the cart the remaining
+distance across naked rock to the gate of the Old House.
+
+Malcolm Mor, Malcolm Gille, and Logan himself took position at the
+edge of the trees, prone, with guns ready to fire into the windows
+above the gate. These movements seem to have attracted attention from
+whomever was on duty at those windows, for one shot was fired from the
+Old House. But Logan’s men did not reply, and as the dark descended,
+the great gray bulk of the castle of the MacAskivals lay still and
+ominous, with not one light showing. Now, Mary, Hugh Logan thought,
+I’ll go to you. The MacAskivals beside him knew what they had to do,
+and none of them had shown much sign of fear.
+
+The cart would be set afire against the gate, and Logan and the two
+Malcolms would blaze away at the adjacent windows, as if the assault
+were to come there. That was, after all, a venerable Highland and
+Island military device, especially beloved by Rob Roy; and though if
+the cart burned well it might char through the gate, there was no
+danger of the great house, which was all stone, catching fire. But
+Logan did not intend really to rush the gate. The true attack would be
+on the flank, around the corner: while the attention of the defenders
+was concentrated on the gate, Logan and his men would carry the ladder
+to the windows of the landward side and break in, if they could. And
+then, presumably, there would be shooting within the house; and the
+odds were not in Logan’s favor. But this was the best he could do. It
+was all he could do for Mary MacAskival, and it might be too late.
+
+Now the cart had been pulled by the horses to the edge of the trees.
+Someone inside the house must have heard the jingle of harness and the
+whinnying of horses, for a shot fired at a venture passed through the
+branches above their heads. “Now, Kenneth MacAskival, Angus!” Logan
+said. They cut the horses out of the harness, and four men commenced,
+shoving with all their strength, to run with the cart across the little
+plateau of rock to the door of the Old House. As yet, the straw was not
+alight, for they would need the advantage of darkness so long as they
+could keep it.
+
+Into the quiet night came a hoarse shout of alarm from the house:
+Royall’s voice, Logan thought in that instant. Two rifles fired at the
+cart, and then a third. Logan and his companions fired as fast as they
+could into the windows above the gate, and Logan heard a man scream.
+Still the cart ran on, and then crashed into the gate itself. The
+riflemen in the house were firing straight down into the cart now, and
+three of the MacAskivals ran out from behind it, leaping and rolling
+for the shelter of the trees; Logan and the Malcolms covered them with
+the best barrage they could contrive. That left Dumb Angus under the
+cart.
+
+Logan had given Angus careful instructions, through Malcolm Mor. Angus
+had been handed a length of charred rope, and a supply of matches.
+Crouching under the cart, he was to light the frayed rope, throw it
+into the straw, and run for it. For Angus was very quick of body. Now
+Logan saw a tiny flame spring up beneath the cart; it grew; still Angus
+lingered. Next a flaming coil was flung upon the dry straw, which
+caught. Two or three minutes passed, the firing from the house--were
+there only two rifles now?--sporadic. Then a mass of flame roared up
+from the cart, kindling the lumber among the straw also, and the light
+from it shown fiercely across the empty windows of the façade. Angus
+scooted from under the cart and down across the rock, Logan and the
+others firing to cover him; but there was no answer from the windows by
+the gate.
+
+Now for the worst part. John MacAskival was useless, shot in one arm,
+and dazed with shock; Logan flung his gun to the boy, telling him to
+fire at will, for three minutes, into the windows by the gate; the boy
+was utterly delighted. The rest of them, seizing the ladder, swung out
+of the plantation toward the right, veered round the corner of the
+Victorian block, and set the ladder against a first-story window,
+Angus holding it firm at the bottom. Someone fired a shot from above
+them, but no one seemed to be hit.
+
+Logan leaped up, the others behind him, and in two seconds was smashing
+out of the window-frame the shattered remnants of the plate glass,
+using his gun-butt, and expecting any moment to get a bullet in his
+chest. But the room within was silent. He flung himself into that room,
+and the four MacAskivals were at his heels. And now, indeed, there were
+gunshots; but they came from deep within the house, and no one opposed
+Logan as they burst into the corridor.
+
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+Someone yelled in the corridor as Logan entered. But it was only a
+little paper-white man, dragging a rifle feebly as if it were a ball
+and chain: Tompkins. At sight of Logan, the butler dropped the rifle
+altogether, falling to his knees, and cried, “O Gawd! Mr. Logan, sir,
+don’t ’urt me, don’t! I’m your slaive, Mr. Logan! O Gawd, Jackman’s
+mad, and they’re murderin’ heach hother below stairs.”
+
+Clutching at Logan’s legs, Tompkins babbled on as to how he was only
+an honest butler and part-time burglar, unaccustomed to killing. Logan
+jerked him to his feet and forced him in the direction of the gunfire
+within the house. “In the billiard room, Mr. Logan, sir!”
+
+Urging Tompkins before them, Logan and the MacAskivals ran to the end
+of the passage, rounded the corner to the left, and came to the door
+of the billiard room. Dead or dying, Royall lay face down across the
+threshold. Reckless, Logan strode over him. The big room, with its
+long windows looking toward the harbor, had three more men in it. One
+was Anderson, shot through the belly, writhing with his back against a
+leg of the billiard table. One was Rab, sprawled in the middle of the
+red Victorian carpet, a bullet hole between his eyes. The third was a
+man Logan had not seen before, lying on a sofa, his eyes bandaged,
+sightless, moaning in fear--Till, of course, the burned boatman. Where
+was Jackman? Two or three more shots, in quick succession, sounded
+within the house, somewhere below.
+
+“Tompkins, tell me where Jackman’s gone, or I’ll finish you,” Logan
+said. The butler, stammering and choking, could only point toward the
+cellars below. Malcolm Mor ran in.
+
+“In the room above the gate,” Malcolm said--he slipped here into
+Gaelic, and with difficulty found his English again--“there is a
+man with long hair, like a gypsy, and he has been shot through the
+shoulder, and can do no harm.” That would be Niven; and that left
+Jackman and Simmons and Ferd Caggia. And Mary, Mary.
+
+“Tompkins,” Logan said, taking the man by the throat, “show me where
+the crypt with the explosives is.” The butler reeled in Logan’s grip
+along the passage, and down a flight of stairs, and then pointed to an
+open doorway, from which stone steps led into shadows. Angus was behind
+Logan; the other MacAskivals were poking into the rooms.
+
+Releasing Tompkins, Logan went down those steps to a little landing,
+and started to turn to the remaining flight that would take him to the
+crypt. A rifle cracked, and the bullet ricocheted from the wall. Logan
+flung himself back, nearly upsetting Angus.
+
+“Jackman,” Logan called down, “drop your gun and come up, and I’ll
+promise you a trial. Otherwise we’ll promise nothing.”
+
+But it was not Jackman that answered from the crypt. “Ah! Meester
+Logan, that is you?” The voice was rather faint.
+
+“Who’s there?”
+
+“Fernando Caggia, your fren’. Meester Logan, you owe me a pardon for
+what I do.”
+
+“Drop your gun, Caggia, and come up.”
+
+A rifle was flung to the foot of the stairs. “Meester Logan, I can not
+come up, for Dr. Jackman, he shoot me twice. But I save you.”
+
+Logan leaped down those stairs. A barricade of boxes and chairs stood
+before a little iron door, and between door and barricade lay Caggia,
+covered with blood. “In this room,” Caggia said, trying to grin, “is
+the gelignite. Dr. Jackman, he try to reach it, but I, Fernando Caggia,
+do not let him. He shoot, I shoot, he shoot. I hit him once.”
+
+“Where is he?”
+
+Caggia gave a weak shrug. “One minute ago, he runs.”
+
+Leaving Angus to watch the iron door, Logan dashed back up the stairs,
+and at the top Malcolm met him. “We can not find that man,” Malcolm
+said. “Will he be in the old tower?”
+
+“Mary?”
+
+“The door of the room of Lady MacAskival is locked, but there are
+people inside.”
+
+Now the boy had joined them, and as they ran into the Renaissance
+building, Kenneth and Robert came out of a passage and followed. They
+were at the door of the room which was hung with Spanish leather. Logan
+tried the knob fiercely; it would not turn. He smashed at the door with
+his rifle-butt, using all the strength that was in him, and it burst
+inward. Someone leaped for him. “Hugh, Hugh!” Before them all, Mary
+MacAskival covered him with kisses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later, from Mary and Tompkins and Till, Logan got an understanding of
+what had passed within the Old House since morning. Wild with fury and
+bewilderment, Jackman had dragged her back to the Old House from the
+chapel, the three men with him as much afraid of their master as of the
+shadowy armed men whom Anderson had seen before the chapel. According
+to Anderson, there were twelve or fifteen of them, armed to the teeth.
+At the moment of his triumph, of his taking of Logan, suddenly Jackman
+had been undone. There was no way out.
+
+Like a man in the grip of nightmare, Jackman scarcely could speak.
+For a few moments, just after they had got back within the shelter
+of the Old House, a flash of his old power returned to him. Seeing
+Jackman bemused, Anderson and Rab and Caggia and Simmons made for the
+girl: they would beat out of her the truth about those armed men by
+the chapel. But turning on them, “like Rumpelstiltskin again,” Jackman
+broke that mutiny, and hurried Mary MacAskival through the passages to
+her aunt’s room. Thrusting her inside, he gave her a long look. “Well,”
+Jackman said, passing his hand across his forehead, “I wish I had known
+you long ago. Now you are going to die. We all are about to die.” He
+went out, locking the door behind him.
+
+All that day, Mary knelt praying in the room hung with Spanish leather.
+Lady MacAskival, wasted beyond belief, lay motionless in her big bed,
+not seeming to hear the bullets striking the walls in the rooms across
+the gallery. Old Agnes sobbed in a corner. From the windows of this
+room, Mary could see only the harbor, with the burned yacht, and the
+empty sea beyond. And she prayed for Hugh Logan and for Carnglass.
+
+It was Tompkins who told Logan much of what followed. Jackman,
+uncertain in movements and speech, as if half paralyzed, stationed
+Anderson, Rab, and Caggia in rooms on the landward side of the Old
+House, to reply to the sniping from the bracken. Simmons he put into
+the study, guarding the door of the old tower. He ordered Niven and
+Tompkins to duty in the rooms above the gate. For a time he went
+himself to the roof of the old tower and fired at the riflemen slinking
+among the distant rocks and heather and bracken; but all this was
+done as if he were sleep-walking. Then he went down to the billiard
+room, which was safe from gunfire, and sat at a table with his head
+in his hands. Royall tried to talk with him, but Jackman would not
+reply. Thereafter Royall conducted the defense, so far as there was any
+organized resistance.
+
+Caggia, who had gone below stairs to get the men food, did not
+reappear. Rab and Anderson, driven from the landward rooms by the
+sniping, got at the rum. They drank it in the billiard room where
+Jackman sat, and cursed at Jackman, and Jackman did not answer. And the
+hours passed.
+
+Royall, left alone in the landward rooms, had his cheek laid open by
+a splinter of glass, but he kept on firing. When the sniping ceased
+on that side, he went to the billiard room and again tried to rouse
+Jackman. At gun-point, Royall ordered Rab up to the room over the
+gate, to reinforce Niven and Tompkins. Anderson went below stairs,
+and Tompkins heard him crying defiantly to Royall--something about
+explosives.
+
+When the attack on the gate came, and the cart was burning under the
+windows, Niven was hit by a bullet. In panic, Rab fled to the billiard
+room, screaming out, “The hoose! They’re burnin’ a’ the hoose!” Royall
+and Anderson hurried in. This was told to Logan by the blinded boatman
+Till, who had lain helpless during the billiard-room fight.
+
+“O aye, we’re done!” Anderson roared. “Gie it ower, Jackman, we’ve had
+it!”
+
+Then Jackman rose from his chair. “Royall,” Jackman said, “keep the men
+here.”
+
+“Gude God,” Till heard Anderson say, “the auld de’il’s for the
+explosives! Jackman, damn ye, dinna open that door.”
+
+“Rab,” cried Royall, “drop your gun.” Shooting began then, Till
+cowering on the sofa. There must have been four or five shots, and
+after them running steps. Till could hear Anderson groaning and
+cursing. After that, Logan and his men came.
+
+Edmund Jackman had made for the cellars and the gelignite. Down there,
+Ferd Caggia crouched behind a little barricade in front of the iron
+door; for Ferd had remembered Logan’s words about Jackman’s madness,
+and he, cat-like, had been watching Jackman. “Dr. Jackman,” Caggia had
+said, “you don’ blow me to hell.” Jackman had fired at him promptly,
+and had hit him, but Caggia had fired back. After a minute’s exchange
+of shots, the Maltese, wounded, still gripped his rifle behind the
+boxes and chairs. Jackman had leaped back up the stairs and was gone
+through the passages. Even his try for annihilation had failed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Simmons they found still in the study in the old tower, and took him
+without difficulty. But Dr. Edmund Jackman they did not find. The door
+to the garden was open, and Simmons said that from the window he had
+seen Jackman go over the garden wall, favoring one side as if he were
+slightly wounded.
+
+“I think, Mr. Logan,” Malcolm Mor said, “that because he is a clever
+man, he will have gone to look for our boat below the chapel.”
+
+Yes, he would have, Logan thought. In the course of the fight, Jackman
+must have recognized some of the attackers, perhaps old Malcolm; and,
+having seen them that morning near the chapel, he would guess that the
+boat was below those cliffs. That the wounded man could find his way
+down, Logan doubted. Yet so long as Jackman was at large, no one in
+Carnglass could be safe. The hound had become the fox now.
+
+“Mary,” Hugh Logan said, “I must be after him.” She had an arm around
+him.
+
+“I know the island best,” she told him, “and from this night I am going
+to stay with you always, Hugh.”
+
+He looked down at her. “And who would guard the Old House, then, and do
+something for the men who’ve been shot, and put out the embers at the
+gate, and give the MacAskivals something to eat?”
+
+Knowing that this was no moment for argument if Jackman were bound
+for the boat, Mary MacAskival looked proudly into Logan’s eyes. “Then
+take Malcolm Mor,” she said, “for he will know where to search, and I
+will send other men so soon as I can.” The MacAskivals, having locked
+Simmons and Tompkins in a cellar, crowded round her deferentially for
+instructions. “Dr. Jackman shot my dog, Hugh, to hurt me. But do you
+come back to me, forever.”
+
+One last kiss, and then he left her in her strength and beauty, as the
+tears were starting down her cheeks. “Before sunrise, Mary girl, I’ll
+be with you.” Logan and Malcolm Mor went through the garden--for the
+great gate still was a charred and smoking hulk--and over the garden
+dyke below the old tower, the way that Jackman had gone, and they
+strode toward St. Merin’s Chapel. Now and then Logan stumbled: he had
+been without sleep for twenty-four hours.
+
+“If he can go down the cliffs,” Malcolm Mor panted, “then the man with
+the third eye is more than man.” Malcolm was a wonder: he had been on
+his feet nearly as long as Logan, and he was past seventy.
+
+Beyond Cailleach, they flung themselves down for a brief rest. Their
+rifles seemed immensely heavy. Carnglass, in its nocturnal beauty, was
+at peace. The bleating of sheep, disturbed by the men, echoed from the
+heights where the chapel stood. “Malcolm Mor,” Logan said, “I believe
+you think Jackman really is something not human.”
+
+“It would be well to have silver bullets for our guns.” The old man
+muttered something in Gaelic. “But devil or not, he will have climbed
+up there.” Malcolm Mor gestured toward the headland. They took up their
+guns again, and in less than an hour made out the shape of St. Merin’s
+Chapel, and of the Pict’s House, the Firgower’s House, beyond it.
+
+“If he has tried the path here,” Malcolm said very low, “he will
+not reach the shore alive, not knowing the way, and having a bullet
+in him.” Both Logan and Malcolm Mor moved slowly now; Logan doubted
+whether even Malcolm, while so weary, could descend this precipice, and
+he was certain that he himself could not. They climbed over the ruinous
+drystone wall close by the broch; from the dyke to the crumbling
+cliff-edge was less than a yard. A thousand feet and more below, the
+ocean heaved northward to the pole.
+
+Then something rose from behind the dyke. Malcolm Mor tried to bring
+up his rifle, but a bullet struck the stock and sent the gun spinning
+from his hand. Logan had his rifle over his shoulder. He pulled at it
+desperately. And Jackman shot Hugh Logan.
+
+Logan fell backward, and his head struck nothing at all, for he lay
+right on the cliff’s edge, with only infinite space at the back of his
+head. There was a fierce pain in his right thigh, where the bullet
+from the little pistol had caught him. Edmund Jackman stepped over
+the broken dyke and stood only seven or eight feet distant from them,
+his left arm pressed hard against his side. The moonlight was full on
+Jackman’s face, and the eyes were slits, and the face was that of a man
+lost in a nightmare. Malcolm Mor stood fixed by the spot where Logan
+lay.
+
+“Young Askival and Old Askival,” Jackman said. “I have the two of you.”
+He pointed the pistol at Malcolm. “Put him over the edge, Old Askival.”
+
+Malcolm Mor bent slowly over Logan. He took Logan by the shoulders, and
+drew him back from that terrible cliff-lip, and propped him against
+a stone fallen from the dyke. Silent, Malcolm stared at Jackman. I am
+done, Logan thought, but if I can catch his ankle, Jackman may go over
+the edge with me, and Mary will be safe.
+
+“Both of you at once, then,” Jackman said dismally. “Old Askival and
+Young Askival.” He took aim at Malcolm. Hugh Logan tried to hurl
+himself forward, but his smashed thighbone failed him.
+
+There came, at that instant, a kind of gurgling cry, and a sound
+of running, of something hurrying right along the cliff’s edge, at
+Jackman’s back. Edmund Jackman turned his head. Malcolm and Logan and
+Jackman saw all at once the thing that was coming.
+
+It was a burly man in tattered corduroy breeches, a long green jacket,
+and a yellow waistcoat, with a porkpie hat on his head, his arms
+flapping as he ran. He mouthed as he came, but what noise he uttered
+was not speech. And his face was a dead mask, and not human. The thing
+made straight for Jackman.
+
+Mary had sent Angus after Logan. And, with the heroism of children and
+simpletons, Angus sought to put his body between Logan and his enemy.
+
+But what Edmund Jackman saw in that dreadful masked figure, Logan knew:
+the shape of his victim, and the face of his nightmare horror. With a
+moan, Jackman turned to run. He took one bound in that high place, and
+upon the brink the heather gave beneath him; and where Lagg had gone
+down, there Jackman fell.
+
+Though they say that the ocean yields up all its dead upon the skerries
+of Carnglass, no man found Jackman after. As from the cliff-head at
+Gadara, the unclean spirit was cast into the sea. And Logan, with
+Malcolm Mor kneeling beside him and Dumb Angus shivering with fright
+against the dyke, heard no sound from below but the suck of the tide
+upon the weary stones.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
+
+
+  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
+
+  Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
+
+  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
+
+  New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
+    public domain.
+
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77800 ***