Chapter I: Part 1

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.