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"Ay," he said, "she's my auntie Phemie, my mother's half-sister."
The man turned on Heritage.
"Where are ye for the day?"
"Auchenlochan," said Dickson hastily. He was still determined to shake the
dust of
Dalquharter from his feet.
The innkeeper sensibly brightened. "Well, ye'll have a fine walk. I must go in
and see about my own breakfast. Good day to ye, gentlemen."
"That," said Heritage as they entered the village street again, "is the first
step in camouflage, to put the enemy off his guard."
"It was an abominable lie," said Dickson crossly.
"Not at all. It was a necessary and proper ruse de guerre. It explained why we
spent the right here, and now Dobson and his friends can get about their day's
work with an easy mind. Their suspicions are temporarily allayed, and that
will make our job easier."
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"I'm not coming with you."
"I never said you were. By 'we' I refer to myself and the red-headed boy."
"Mistress, you're my auntie," Dickson informed Mrs. Morran as she set the
porridge on the table. "This gentleman has just been telling the man at the
inn that you're my Auntie Phemie."
For a second their hostess looked bewildered. Then the corners of her prim
mouth moved upwards in a slow smile.
"I see," she said. "Weel, maybe it was weel done. But if ye're my nevoy ye'll
hae to keep up my credit, for we're a bauld and siccar lot."
Half an hour later there was a furious dissension when Dickson attempted to
pay for the night's entertainment. Mrs. Morran would have none of it. "Ye're
no' awa' yet," she said tartly,
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t and the matter was complicated by Heritage's refusal to take part in the
debate. He stood aside and grinned, till Dickson in despair returned his
notecase to his pocket, murmuring darkly the "he would send it from Glasgow."
The road to Auchenlochan left the main village street at right angles by the
side of Mrs.
Morran's cottage. It was a better road than that by which they had come
yesterday, for by it twice daily the postcart travelled to the post-town. It
ran on the edge of the moor and on the lip of the Garple glen, till it crossed
that stream and, keeping near the coast, emerged after five miles into the
cultivated flats of the Lochan valley. The morning was fine, the keen air
invited to high spirits, plovers piped entrancingly over the bent and linnets
sang in the whins, there was a solid breakfast behind him, and the promise of
a cheerful road till luncheon. The stage was set for good humour, but
Dickson's heart, which should have been ascending with the larks, stuck
leadenly in his boots. He was not even relieved at putting Dalquharter behind
him. The atmosphere of that unhallowed place lay still on his soul. He hated
it, but he hated himself more. Here was one, who had hugged himself all his
days as an adventurer waiting his chance, running away at the first challenge
of adventure; a lover of Romance who fled from the earliest overture of his
goddess. He was ashamed and angry, but what else was there to do? Burglary in
the company of a queer poet and a queerer urchin? It was unthinkable.
Presently, as they tramped silently on, they came to the bridge beneath which
the peaty waters of the Garple ran in porter-coloured pools and tawny
cascades. From a clump of elders on the other side Dougal emerged. A barefoot
boy, dressed in much the same parody of a Boy Scout's uniform, but with
corduroy shorts instead of a kilt, stood before him at rigid attention. Some
command was issued, the child saluted, and trotted back past the travellers
with never a look at them. Discipline was strong among the Gorbals Die-Hards;
no Chief of Staff ever conversed with his
General under a stricter etiquette.
Dougal received the travellers with the condescension of a regular towards
civilians.
"They're off their gawrd," he announced. Thomas Yownie has been shadowin' them
since skreigh o' day, and he reports that Dobson and Lean followed ye till ye
were out o' sight o' the houses, and syne Lean got a spy-glass and watched ye
till the road turned in among the trees. That satisfied them, and they're both
away back to their jobs. Thomas Yownie's the fell yin. Ye'll no fickle Thomas
Yownie."
Dougal extricated from his pouch the fag of a cigarette, lit it, and puffed
meditatively. "I
did a reckonissince mysel' this morning. I was up at the Hoose afore it was
light, and tried the door o' the coal-hole. I doot they've gotten on our
tracks, for it was lockit--aye, and wedged from the inside."
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Dickson brightened. Was the insane venture off?
"For a wee bit I was fair beat. But I mindit that the lassie was allowed to
walk in a kind o'
a glass hoose on the side farthest away from the Garple. That was where she
was singin' yest'reen.
So I reckonissinced in that direction, and I fund a queer place." Sacred Songs
and Solos was requisitioned, and on a page of it Dougal proceeded to make
marks with the stump of a carpenter's pencil. "See here," he commanded.
"There's the glass place wi' a door into the Hoose. That door maun be open or
the lassie maun hae the key, for she comes there whenever she likes. Now' at
each end o' the place the doors are lockit, but the front that looks on the
garden is open, wi' muckle posts and flower-pots. The trouble is that that
side there' maybe twenty feet o' a wall between the pawrapet and the ground.
It's an auld wall wi' cracks and holes in it, and it wouldn't be ill to sklim.
That's why they let her gang there when she wants, for a lassie couldn't get
away without breakin' her neck."
"Could we climb it?" Heritage asked.
The boy wrinkled his brows. "I could manage it mysel'--I think--and maybe you.
I doubt if auld McCunn could get up. Ye'd have to be mighty carefu' that
nobody saw ye, for your hinder end, as ye were sklimmin', wad be a grand mark
for a gun."
"Lead on," said Heritage. "We'll try the verandah."
They both looked at Dickson, and Dickson, scarlet in the face, looked back at
them. He had suddenly found the thought of a solitary march to Auchenlochan
intolerable. Once again he was at the parting of the ways, and once more
caprice determined his decision. That the coal-hole was out of the question
had worked a change in his views, Somehow it seemed to him less burglarious to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]