Mr. Standfast
German spy I would have been out for his blood, and it was no good
explaining that he had given me grounds for suspicion. He was as touchy
about his blessed principles as an old maid about her age. I was
feeling rather extra buckish myself and that didn’t improve matters.
His face was like a gargoyle as we went down to the beach to bathe, so
I held my tongue. He was chewing the cud of his wounded pride.
But the salt water cleared out the dregs of his distemper. You couldn’t
be peevish swimming in that jolly, shining sea. We raced each other
away beyond the inlet to the outer water, which a brisk morning breeze
was curling. Then back to a promontory of heather, where the first
beams of the sun coming over the Coolin dried our skins. He sat hunched
up staring at the mountains while I prospected the rocks at the edge.
Out in the Minch two destroyers were hurrying southward, and I wondered
where in that waste of blue was the craft which had come here in the
night watches.
I found the spoor of the man from the sea quite fresh on a patch of
gravel above the tide-mark.
“There’s our friend of the night,” I said.
“I believe the whole thing was a whimsy,” said Wake, his eyes on the
chimneys of Sgurr Dearg. “They were only two natives—poachers, perhaps,
or tinkers.”
“They don’t speak German in these parts.”
“It was Gaelic probably.”
“What do you make of this, then?” and I quoted the stuff about birds
with which they had greeted each other.
Wake looked interested. “That’s _Uber allen Gipfeln_. Have you ever
read Goethe?”
“Never a word. And what do you make of that?” I pointed to a flat rock
below tide-mark covered with a tangle of seaweed. It was of a softer
stone than the hard stuff in the hills and somebody had scraped off
half the seaweed and a slice of the side. “That wasn’t done yesterday
morning, for I had my bath here.”
Wake got up and examined the place. He nosed about in the crannies of
the rocks lining the inlet, and got into the water again to explore
better. When he joined me he was smiling. “I apologise for my
scepticism,” he said. “There’s been some petrol-driven craft here in
the night. I can smell it, for I’ve a nose like a retriever. I daresay
you’re on the right track. Anyhow, though you seem to know a bit about
German, you could scarcely invent immortal poetry.”
We took our belongings to a green crook of the burn, and made a very
good breakfast. Wake had nothing in his pack but plasmon biscuits and
raisins, for that, he said, was his mountaineering provender, but he
was not averse to sampling my tinned stuff. He was a different-sized
fellow out in the hills from the anaemic intellectual of Biggleswick.
He had forgotten his beastly self-consciousness, and spoke of his hobby
with a serious passion. It seemed he had scrambled about everywhere in
Europe, from the Caucasus to the Pyrenees. I could see he must be good
at the job, for he didn’t brag of his exploits. It was the mountains
that he loved, not wriggling his body up hard places. The Coolin, he
said, were his favourites, for on some of them you could get two
thousand feet of good rock. We got our glasses on the face of Sgurr
Alasdair, and he sketched out for me various ways of getting to its
grim summit. The Coolin and the Dolomites for him, for he had grown
tired of the Chamonix _aiguilles_. I remember he described with
tremendous gusto the joys of early dawn in Tyrol, when you ascended
through acres of flowery meadows to a tooth of clean white limestone
against a clean blue sky. He spoke, too, of the little wild hills in
the Bavarian Wettersteingebirge, and of a guide he had picked up there
and trained to the job.
“They called him Sebastian Buchwieser. He was the jolliest boy you ever
saw, and as clever on crags as a chamois. He is probably dead by now,
dead in a filthy jaeger battalion. That’s you and your accursed war.”
“Well, we’ve got to get busy and end it in the right way,” I said. “And
you’ve got to help, my lad.”
He was a good draughtsman, and with his assistance I drew a rough map
of the crevice where we had roosted for the night, giving its bearings
carefully in relation to the burn and the sea. Then I wrote down all
the details about Gresson and the Portuguese Jew, and described the
latter in minute detail. I described, too, most precisely the cache
where it had been arranged that the messages should be placed. That
finished my stock of paper, and I left the record of the oddments
overheard of the conversation for a later time. I put the thing in an
old leather cigarette-case I possessed, and handed it to Wake.
“You’ve got to go straight off to the Kyle and not waste any time on
the way. Nobody suspects you, so you can travel any road you please.
When you get there you ask for Mr Andrew Amos, who has some Government
job in the neighbourhood. Give him that paper from me. He’ll know what
to do with it all right. Tell him I’ll get somehow to the Kyle before
midday the day after tomorrow. I must cover my tracks a bit, so I can’t
come with you, and I want that thing in his hands just as fast as your
legs will take you. If anyone tries to steal it from you, for God’s
sake eat it. You can see for yourself that it’s devilish important.”
“I shall be back in England in three days,” he said. “Any message for
your other friends?”
“Forget all about me. You never saw me here. I’m still Brand, the
amiable colonial studying social movements. If you meet Ivery, say you
heard of me on the Clyde, deep in sedition. But if you see Miss
Lamington you can tell her I’m past the Hill Difficulty. I’m coming
back as soon as God will let me, and I’m going to drop right into the
Biggleswick push. Only this time I’ll be a little more advanced in my
views.... You needn’t get cross. I’m not saying anything against your
principles. The main point is that we both hate dirty treason.”
He put the case in his waistcoat pocket. “I’ll go round Garsbheinn,” he
said, “and over by Camasunary. I’ll be at the Kyle long before evening.
I meant anyhow to sleep at Broadford tonight.... Goodbye, Brand, for
I’ve forgotten your proper name. You’re not a bad fellow, but you’ve
landed me in melodrama for the first time in my sober existence. I have
a grudge against you for mixing up the Coolin with a shilling shocker.
You’ve spoiled their sanctity.”
“You’ve the wrong notion of romance,” I said. “Why, man, last night for
an hour you were in the front line—the place where the enemy forces
touch our own. You were over the top—you were in No-man’s-land.”
He laughed. “That is one way to look at it’; and then he stalked off
and I watched his lean figure till it was round the turn of the hill.
All that morning I smoked peacefully by the burn, and let my thoughts
wander over the whole business. I had got precisely what Blenkiron
wanted, a post office for the enemy. It would need careful handling,
but I could see the juiciest lies passing that way to the _Grosses
Hauptquartier_. Yet I had an ugly feeling at the back of my head that
it had been all too easy, and that Ivery was not the man to be duped in
this way for long. That set me thinking about the queer talk on the
crevice. The poetry stuff I dismissed as the ordinary password,
probably changed every time. But who were _Chelius_ and _Bommaerts_,
and what in the name of goodness were the Wild Birds and the Cage
Birds? Twice in the past three years I had had two such riddles to
solve—Scudder’s scribble in his pocket-book, and Harry Bullivant’s
three words. I remembered how it had only been by constant chewing at
them that I had got a sort of meaning, and I wondered if fate would
some day expound this puzzle also.
Meantime I had to get back to London as inconspicuously as I had come.
It might take some doing, for the police who had been active in Morvern
might be still on the track, and it was essential that I should keep
out of trouble and give no hint to Gresson and his friends that I had
been so far north. However, that was for Amos to advise me on, and
about noon I picked up my waterproof with its bursting pockets and set
off on a long detour up the coast. All that blessed day I scarcely met
a soul. I passed a distillery which seemed to have quit business, and
in the evening came to a little town on the sea where I had a bed and
supper in a superior kind of public-house.
Next day I struck southward along the coast, and had two experiences of
interest. I had a good look at Ranna, and observed that the _Tobermory_
was no longer there. Gresson had only waited to get his job finished;
he could probably twist the old captain any way he wanted. The second
was that at the door of a village smithy I saw the back of the
Portuguese Jew. He was talking Gaelic this time—good Gaelic it sounded,
and in that knot of idlers he would have passed for the ordinariest
kind of gillie.
He did not see me, and I had no desire to give him the chance, for I
had an odd feeling that the day might come when it would be good for us
to meet as strangers.
That night I put up boldly in the inn at Broadford, where they fed me
nobly on fresh sea-trout and I first tasted an excellent liqueur made
of honey and whisky. Next morning I was early afoot, and well before
midday was in sight of the narrows of the Kyle, and the two little
stone clachans which face each other across the strip of sea.
About two miles from the place at a turn of the road I came upon a
farmer’s gig, drawn up by the wayside, with the horse cropping the
moorland grass. A man sat on the bank smoking, with his left arm hooked
in the reins. He was an oldish man, with a short, square figure, and a
woollen comforter enveloped his throat.
CHAPTER VIII
The Adventures of a Bagman
“Ye’re punctual to time, Mr Brand,” said the voice of Amos. “But losh!
man, what have ye done to your breeks! And your buits? Ye’re no just
very respectable in your appearance.”
I wasn’t. The confounded rocks of the Coolin had left their mark on my
shoes, which moreover had not been cleaned for a week, and the same
hills had rent my jacket at the shoulders, and torn my trousers above
the right knee, and stained every part of my apparel with peat and
lichen.
I cast myself on the bank beside Amos and lit my pipe. “Did you get my
message?” I asked.
“Ay. It’s gone on by a sure hand to the destination we ken of. Ye’ve
managed well, Mr Brand, but I wish ye were back in London.” He sucked
at his pipe, and the shaggy brows were pulled so low as to hide the
wary eyes. Then he proceeded to think aloud.
“Ye canna go back by Mallaig. I don’t just understand why, but they’re
lookin’ for you down that line. It’s a vexatious business when your
friends, meanin’ the polis, are doing their best to upset your plans
and you no able to enlighten them. I could send word to the Chief
Constable and get ye through to London without a stop like a load of
fish from Aiberdeen, but that would be spoilin’ the fine character
ye’ve been at such pains to construct. Na, na! Ye maun take the risk
and travel by Muirtown without ony creedentials.”
“It can’t be a very big risk,” I interpolated.
“I’m no so sure. Gresson’s left the _Tobermory_. He went by here
yesterday, on the Mallaig boat, and there was a wee blackavised man
with him that got out at the Kyle. He’s there still, stoppin’ at the
hotel. They ca’ him Linklater and he travels in whisky. I don’t like
the looks of him.”
“But Gresson does not suspect me?”
“Maybe no. But ye wouldna like him to see ye hereaways. Yon gentry
don’t leave muckle to chance. Be very certain that every man in
Gresson’s lot kens all about ye, and has your description down to the
mole on your chin.”
“Then they’ve got it wrong,” I replied.
“I was speakin’ feeguratively,” said Amos. “I was considerin’ your case