Chapter IV: Part 4

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?”