Chapter V: Part 5

Yes, fearfully and wonderfully made, these chessmen. The kings held drawn swords across their knees, and stared stonily out of bulging merciless eyes; the queens, with long wild faces, held daggers; the rooks were berserkers, biting on their shields; and all the other pieces, even the pawns, were modelled from the life of the age of the Sea-Kings. One set of men had been saturated in some reddish dye or paint; the other retained its natural blue hue. To play with these priceless and timeless things was to sink into a remote past. “They’re very nice, I’m sure,” Logan the bank-clerk said, with what he trusted was a Philistine indifference. “Aye, I’ll play you a game, sir, if you’ll promise me I sha’n’t miss my spot of tea with Miss Mary.”

“Miss MacAskival will excuse you; and it occurs to my mind, Logan, that perhaps we can discuss certain delicate matters more easily in the progress of a match. But I warn you, Mr. Logan, that I rarely lose. Here: I submit to a handicap.” Jackman removed his own queen from the board. “No protests: I think you’ll find me an old hand at chess.”

Logan advanced the pawn before his queen’s bishop. “I’ve had many a grand match at the West End Young Men’s Society for the Advancement of Chess, Dr. Jackman.”

“Indeed.” Jackman made a similar move with his king’s bishop’s pawn. “Now the question of marriage aside, Mr. Logan, I don’t suppose you’d choose to live in a great rambling ill-lit place such as the Old House of Fear is, would you?”

“Oh, never in the world, sir.” Logan moved again, and lost a pawn to Jackman. “No, sir, give me a nice semi-detached villa beyond Bruntsfield Links, any day. Even the New Town of Edinburgh is too old and stuffy for my taste, Dr. Jackman. I like a bit of a rockery in the front garden, and an Aga cooker, and a fridge, and a parlor with a pair of Portobello china dogs by the hearth.” He advanced his king’s knight.

Jackman shot a sharp glance at him. Had he overplayed his role a trifle? Logan wondered. The Aga cooker and the Portobello dogs were spreading the butter rather thick. He smiled ingenuously at Dr. Jackman; and apparently the smile was fatuous enough to convince that alarming gentleman.

“That is precisely the sort of man I took you to be, Logan: my congratulations. And do you think Miss MacAskival would share these reasonable ambitions?” He took Logan’s knight.

Logan captured one of Jackman’s pawns. “I don’t see why Mary shouldn’t, sir; she’s a canny lass, and the day of grand houses like this one is long past.”

Having sent a bishop on a raid deep into Logan’s territory, Jackman leaned back in his armchair. “Canny, Mr. Logan? Sensible? Miss MacAskival? Charming, certainly; beautiful, at least in many eyes; but canny is the last word I should apply to her. I consider her my ward _de facto_, you understand, and what I say now is for her good and your own, and is to be held in confidence.”

Logan took one of Jackman’s knights. “Perhaps you’ll take the trouble to enlighten me, Dr. Jackman.” He hunched forward, the picture of the respectful and hopeful young man on the rise.

Jackman frowned at the chessboard. “I take it that Miss MacAskival has given you to understand that she has large expectations, or possibly that she already has ample independent means? That she is Lady MacAskival’s heiress?”

“Why, sir, we’ve not discussed the matter in detail, but I have assumed that Mary was to have her due.”

“Her due, Mr. Logan? To be quite frank, Miss MacAskival is very little better than a waif. Her grandfather was first cousin to Sir Alastair MacAskival--though the closest male relative left to Sir Alastair, at the end of his life. But Sir Alastair and his cousin were on bad terms; and, in any event, Miss Mary MacAskival was born nearly a generation after old Sir Alastair died. This is a most tenuous family bond, you see, although it is true that the old line of MacAskival being almost extinct altogether, Mary MacAskival has a better claim than anyone else to be the head of her little dispersed and forgotten clan. Our Mary’s father was a ship’s second mate, and drowned off Naples in the late war. The girl, who cannot remember her father, was left with the widow at a village in North Uist. Had matters followed their usual course, probably she would have grown up knitting sweaters and milking cows, and have married some crofter. But then her mother died. The girl was left quite alone.

“Lady MacAskival is an old friend of mine, but I cannot say she has been known for openhandedness. A minister in North Uist wrote to her, however; and, oddly enough, Lady MacAskival agreed to take the child into her own household and provide for her schooling. Perhaps Lady MacAskival felt she owed some debt to her husband’s name; she is oppressed by a sense of guilt where her husband is concerned, but I sha’n’t enter into that. Whatever her reason, she took the girl Mary, and sent her to good schools--to the convent-school at Bridge of Earn, most recently. I must make it clear here, Mr. Logan, that she did not adopt Miss MacAskival, nor make any provision for her future.”

Jackman’s narration did not take his mind altogether from the chess-match. He played with assurance and even arrogance, while Logan lost three more pieces to him. Logan set his face in an expression meant to suggest alarm at both the account of Mary MacAskival and the match.

“What’s in a name, Mr. Logan,” Jackman continued, “or in the inheritance of family traits? The scientists have been at work on these things for a century and better, but nothing is settled. Possibly you followed the course of the Lysenko affair in the Soviet Union? No, I didn’t suppose that was an especial interest of yours. As I said, these problems of hereditary traits are not settled, though for my part I feel confident that the Russians will give us the answers before 1965. Well, our Miss Mary MacAskival seems to offer some decided evidence that a certain type of character is conveyed from generation to generation within a family, whether the cause is genetic or environmental. Since time out of mind, the MacAskival men and women--the family of the chiefs, I mean--have been rash, spendthrift, fearless, and--why, promiscuous, shall we say. Sir Alastair was an exception, true, going to the contrary extreme. It has been a family exceedingly inbred. I think I am not venturing too far when I suggest that the stock is worn out. The qualities I mentioned just now were dominant in both Mary’s father and mother. The beauty and the daring may survive long after the strength and the wits are gone.”

“Dr. Jackman, what are you telling me?” Logan deliberately threw a strong burr into his words, to simulate dismay; and his disturbance was not altogether feigned. But he did not neglect to take Dr. Jackman’s other knight.

Jackman compressed his mouth, as if pained at the necessity for speaking out. “Lady MacAskival, while she was still in full possession of her faculties, gave me a detailed account of the girl’s conduct--sometimes she calls Mary her niece, out of kindness--from the age of seven upward. I have made some serious study in the realm of psychiatric disturbances, if I may say so, Mr. Logan. From the month Lady MacAskival took the child under her patronage, there was trouble with the girl. The reports from the schools--she changed schools a number of times--were disturbing. Mary was haughty, full of notions of her family’s importance; shy, at the same time; and sometimes what I must call ferocious. Compensation, perhaps; no doubt she was very lonely. Lady MacAskival is not a cordial woman, and, besides, Mary saw her ‘aunt’ very seldom; and she did not make many friends at school. And now I am about to tell you something that may shock you, Logan, or may not. Did it ever occur to your mind that sexual overindulgence, like drunkenness, often is a retreat into a world of fantasy, caused by a deep unhappiness in this real world? Our Mary has fed on fantasies of one sort or another, it seems, ever since she was a baby. For her, the legends of Carnglass, for instance, are real: real in the most literal sense of that word. She might happen to identify you with her legendary ancestor, Sigurd Askival; and herself with his bride, Merin or Marin; and me with--why, the monster, the man-goat, the tyrant: the Firgower, that pleasant creature we see overhead.”

“Check,” said Logan. Jackman retrieved his situation promptly. “Aye, sir,” Logan said, “I know Mary is dreamy; but that’s small harm, if we’ve money enough for the whole of our lives.”

“I scarcely think you understand how extremely and dangerously fanciful Miss MacAskival is, Mr. Logan; nor what consequences that sort of mental sickness may lead to. She may have let you think, for instance, that she’s a great heiress, or rich already. In plain fact, she hasn’t a shilling of her own, and I may have difficulty in persuading Lady MacAskival to leave her two or three thousand pounds. My old friend says she has given the girl--who is no kin of hers really--schooling and breeding enough to make her a governess or schoolmistress; and she owes her no more. What is worse, perhaps, Mary lives in her own irrational private world of gods and devils. And that way lies ... why, extreme eccentricity, at the least. And then there is the concupiscence, which may be an inherited tendency, or at least the next thing to a biological characteristic.”

Logan took another pawn. “Oh, surely now, Dr. Jackman, you don’t mean to say that my Mary’s a wild girl?”

Jackman reached gently across the board and gave Logan a pat on the shoulder. “It’s best to know these things early, Logan. I do mean just that. When our Mary was scarcely thirteen, there was--well, what I really must call an affair with a farm laborer here in Carnglass, in the summer. The man was dismissed as soon as the thing was discovered; he could have been sent to prison, I suppose. And yet he does not seem to have taken the initiative. Then there was a report from school that the girl was found with an hotel porter. I sha’n’t say more concerning that. There have been two lesser incidents of the same nature--two that we know of. And finally, your case.”

“Dr. Jackman!” Logan had half convinced himself that he really was a decent, ambitious bank-clerk, and threw corresponding indignation and bewilderment into his outcry. “Dr. Jackman! I’d never think of anything--anything not proper with Mary. I mean the girl to be my wife, Dr. Jackman.”

Jackman raised his eyebrows. “Frankly, now: would you care to begin married life with a young woman of these tendencies? Possibly you don’t quite believe what I’ve told you, though I could show you letters. Yet you’d discover the truth after marriage, if you refused to credit it before. So far as your own conduct is concerned, Mr. Logan, I’m satisfied that you have behaved decently. But look at the matter from another point of view. Here is a girl who throws herself at the head of a young man she encounters casually in a bank, because he is bold enough to say he likes her ankles. She invites him to her house without even informing her guardians. She conducts, I suppose, some clandestine correspondence with him. She rushes into his arms after not having seen him for three months. Really, Lady MacAskival ought not to have allowed Mary that Christmas holiday in Edinburgh.”

“Dr. Jackman,” Logan said, “I trust you, and I see you’re an educated man. As for me, I never attended the varsity; it was not my line. But cannot this be all rumor and misunderstanding about Mary?”

“I don’t mean to be harsh upon the girl; after all, she is as much of a daughter as I possess, Logan. Oh, check again, by the way. I am not condemning--only explaining. I doubt if the girl can help herself. I suspect the concupiscence is in the blood. And her loneliness contributes: as I suggested, sexual promiscuity sometimes is more a symptom of a disorder than a disorder itself. I will be entirely blunt, if you will allow me, Mr. Logan: in the legal meaning of the phrase, and in other meanings, Mary MacAskival is not sane. She is not sane where men are concerned, nor in certain other matters. She suffers from a variety of delusions--I give you my word. She might suddenly tell you, for instance, that I, Edmund Jackman, desire to marry her--an absurdity, because it would be almost as if I were to marry my own granddaughter, of course. At times she has even come to me with--well, shall we say hints and invitations? That was when no younger man was available. It has been necessary to forbid her very strictly ever to be alone even with the servants; Mr. Royall and I take care, one or the other of us, to be in this house whenever she is. I’m sorry, Mr. Logan. But to tell you all this is the best service I can render you.”

“I had no notion, sir,” Logan told him. He took Jackman’s king’s rook. And Logan had no difficulty in looking perplexed. Jackman was a very different sort of being from the charlatan or bully he had thought he might be. Those fine black eyes of Jackman’s looked candidly into Logan’s.

“And I confess I am somewhat surprised, Logan,” Jackman was saying, “that you got yourself engaged to the girl while she is a minor.”

“Oh, surely, Dr. Jackman, Mary’s old enough to choose for herself.”

“I fear she already has chosen quite often, Logan; she began at a tender age, to put it somewhat coarsely. You do know just how old she is, I take it?”

“Not precisely, sir; she would not tell me her birthday. She said I ought not to spend the money for a present. Nineteen, nearing twenty, I suppose?”

“Then I have been unjust to you, Logan. If you had known ... Miss Mary MacAskival is barely fifteen. She prevaricates on that topic, as on many others. Of course, as any man with eyes in his head can see, Mary is a well-developed girl. Again, it runs in her family, I am told. Physically mature, yes; but emotionally and morally immature; and always will be.”

Why this disclosure affected Logan so deeply, he hardly could explain to himself. It was as if he actually had turned himself into the fictitious bank-clerk he was impersonating. In this matter, as in related matters, he might have been on the verge of making a great fool of himself. He had begun to fancy himself in the role of Galahad--or of Sigurd Askival--rescuing a beautiful maiden from a wicked enchanter. And it seemed to be turning out that the maiden was no maid, nor right in the head; and that the enchanter was by no means thoroughly wicked. He had listened to a drunken Irish terrorist spreading scandals about an unknown Dr. Jackman. He had not the least proof, indeed, that Jackman had any real connection with J. Dowie, Commission Agent, or with Captain Gare of the frightened eyes; they might be someone else’s agents, perhaps in the pay of those London connections of Lady MacAskival. It remained possible, and even probable, that this Dr. Jackman had aspirations after some of Lady MacAskival’s money; but he doubted very much whether Jackman was a conspirator, or a saboteur, or even a charlatan. Some sort of political radical, likely enough; and a dabbler in odd learned subjects; but a keen and even likeable man. And for what had Logan been paid to come to Carnglass? Not to criticize Dr. Jackman’s character, or to carry off young women--or children--of doubtful morals, but merely to buy a piece of real estate for his principal. He might have made a thoroughgoing fool of himself. Indeed, he had done so already. He had put himself in a ridiculous light with Jackman by accepting the role of suitor which Mary MacAskival, in her madcap childish way, had thrust upon him. He had sent a silly note to the police in Glasgow--though that would do no real harm, since surely Donley had no intention of delivering it. He may have helped a murderer escape from the island--almost surely he had done just that. He was almost an accomplice, what with the Irishman’s gun hidden in a sling under his arm. Yes, he was a damned fool; and he might have to play the fool a while longer, if only to extricate himself from this folly. He moved at hazard on the chessboard; the glaring eyes of a berserker-rook confronted him. One misgiving, however, did come into his head.

“Dr. Jackman,” he said, “I understand there was a factor, a Mr. Lagg. Where is he?”

Jackman seemed taken aback at this _non sequitur_. “Surely Mary has told you....”

“No, we had only a moment together before you came into the parlor, sir. She had simply mentioned a puzzle of sorts, with Mr. Lagg involved.”

Jackman was solemn and troubled. “I am virtually certain, Mr. Logan, that Lagg has been murdered. We have searched every nook in the island for him, these three days; but not a trace. As I have pieced matters together, Donley drank too much and broke into Lagg’s house in search of money. Lagg was very much of a Scot--if you’ll pardon me, Mr. Logan--and the servants talked of how he hoarded five-pound notes in his kitchen. Perhaps Lagg returned from a visit to the farm while Donley was doing his mischief. From the wreckage inside the New House, we can only conjecture that there was a struggle. Donley, we know to our sorrow, was armed. He may have forced Lagg, at the point of his pistol, to the cliff’s edge. But we cannot find the body. Then, after Lagg had disappeared and we had begun to question Donley, that Irishman broke away and ran into the bracken. In the evening he came down and burnt our boats, to keep us from reaching the police or in an attempt to get a boat for his escape; and we have been after him ever since. Presumably he is short of ammunition by this time. In the fight at the harbor, he threw burning petrol into the boats, and one of our boatmen was terribly burnt, poor fellow, and probably will lose the sight of at least one eye; I must dress his face again tonight. But Lagg? A gone gosling, I am very much afraid. And an efficient factor, for years.”

This account of Lagg’s end held together much better than did Donley’s. And Logan had told Donley he might bear witness for him at any trial! No whisper of this Carnglass episode, he hoped, would filter back to America. At this moment, Jackman took Logan’s queen. Yes, Hugh Logan had made a fool of himself through and through.

“But to return to a topic almost equally difficult for me, Logan: I think you will perceive that your marrying Miss MacAskival is wholly out of the question. To begin with, she simply isn’t of age. Besides, the shock of an announcement of that sort might put an end to Lady MacAskival, who is very old and very sick. And for your own sake, Logan--and I rather like your face and your ways--don’t be rash. If you still care for the girl after what I’ve told you, give her time to reach moral womanhood, if ever she can. I don’t say you need to break off the affair altogether. Be gentle with her; go back to Edinburgh; exchange letters now and then, if you like. But marriage, for the next two or three years, would be a catastrophe, I assure you.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Dr. Jackman,” Logan replied, still in his bank-clerk role.

“I usually am right,” Jackman told him, smiling. “And there’s this: it is worth something to Lady MacAskival to have a decent young man treat her ward decently. My recommendations happen to carry considerable weight with Lady MacAskival. Mary does not need a husband or a lover, but she does need a friend. And I can see that you mean to move ahead in the world; and you deserve to, Logan. So if you can contrive to act as I suggest, where our Mary is concerned, I think I can guarantee that Lady MacAskival will give you a cheque for fifteen hundred pounds. I have no intention of bribing you: I know you’re above that. But you deserve some compensation for the disappointment you’ve had, and for my part, I’d not be sorry to give you a leg up in the world. Don’t feel insulted, Logan. I put it to you plainly: will you do us the honor of accepting that cheque?”

What Logan might have done had he truly been the fictitious bank-clerk, he did not know. But as an experienced lawyer, he was disturbed by this offer. It was too much money for no real service. If once he had been inclined to mistake Dr. Jackman for a thorough scoundrel, it would not do now to make a model philanthropist of him. Of course he could not really take the money, being Hugh Logan; yet he could accept the cheque as the fictitious Logan and destroy it later. What he said was, “If you’ll allow me, sir, I’ll sleep on your offer and give you my answer tomorrow.”

“A sound policy.” Jackman lightly tapped his shoulder again. “And I believe I know already what your decision will be, Logan. Ah: checkmate.” Jackman had won the match with the thousand-year-old chessmen, despite his handicap.

Dr. Jackman rose. “We dine at seven, here in my study, Mr. Logan. In the Old House we have neither electricity nor running hot water--Lady MacAskival does not care for modern comfort--but old Agnes will bring hot water and a lamp to your room. I’ll show you there in a moment. But before the sun goes down, shall we enjoy the view from the battlements? I think the mist has lifted a trifle, though you come to us in a clouded month. By the way, Miss MacAskival will be at dinner with us. I ask you to say as little as possible to her about my observations, should you talk with her alone before dinner, or later--for her own interest, you understand, Logan. A personality as unbalanced as hers might be permanently affected by imprudent reproaches. I trust to your Scottish discretion. Just up the stair, now.”

They emerged upon the lead of the roof from under the conical-capped turret. A narrow walk led round the gabled cap of the great tower, between the stone slabs of the gable itself and the machicolations of the battlements. Before them was Askival harbor, the sunken yacht black against the pier; and beyond, across the foggy ocean, the sun was descending in a diffused glory. Despite its climate, Carnglass was a beautiful island. A corncrake flew low above the tower. Far below, in the policies, a jungle of rhododendrons was in bloom. And five armed men were walking up to the gate in the Edwardian block of the Old House of Fear.

“Mr. Royall!” Jackman called. The five looked up, and the leader, that “walking cadaver,” formed his thin hands into a trumpet. Even at this distance, his pallid face and protruding teeth were ugly in the extreme: a queer sort of secretary, this skeleton-like man with a rifle slung over his shoulder. “Mr. Royall!” Jackman cried out. “What luck?” The five men below stared in astonishment at Logan, beside Jackman at the battlements. The four hangdog faces behind Royall aroused a vague discomfort at the back of Logan’s mind.

“Rab and Carruthers have strayed, Dr. Jackman,” Royall called back. “Can you see them from the tower?” Though Jackman and Logan looked to north and east, there was not a sign of the other two men.

“Is there no trace of Donley?” Jackman shouted. Gesturing dispiritedly, Royall shouted back, “I’ll explain when I come up.”

“I doubt whether we can give you a decent dinner, Mr. Logan,” Jackman said as they turned back to the turret-stair. “Our cook, you understand, has been out with the searching-party, and we have had to press the butler into service in the kitchen. Have you ever lived in a state of siege? A mad island, this Carnglass.”

“Fish and chips would do nicely, thank you,” Logan told him. “I’ve not had a bite these twenty hours.” He still was the bank-clerk; it might be difficult to abandon this play-acting.

“Really, I scarcely think Miss MacAskival would care for fish and chips week in and week out, Logan.” Dr. Jackman said it drily. The man, after all, was doing no more than his duty in sheltering his friend’s ward from an unpromising suitor. Suppose, Logan thought, I were to tell him what I really am: how would he act then? Yet an impulse cautioned Logan to play this little deception according to its rules until he had talked with Miss Mary MacAskival, the girl of fifteen with the green eyes, the red hair, and the spotted past.

8

On those cold and dark stairs, Miss Mary MacAskival met them, her quick and rounded little body, her rosy cheeks and lively eyes defying the barbarous spell of the old tower. She sent Logan a darting, inquiring glance, but it was to Jackman she spoke. “I heard the men outside,” she said. “Really, you ought to let me lead the search. I know every bush and cranny of Carnglass, but they’re stupid townfolk.”

Jackman frowned. “I may have to lead them myself, Miss MacAskival: Rab and Carruthers seem to have lost their way. I’ll have a word with Royall. Will you be good enough to take Mr. Logan to see Lady MacAskival for a moment? And then bring him to the study for dinner. Don’t be long.” He sent out a hand as if to touch her lightly on the shoulder, but the girl drew back cleverly, almost as if unintentionally, against the curving stair-wall, and Jackman passed by her, ignoring the repulse. “Don’t forget the advice I gave you, Mr. Logan,” he said softly, disappearing down the spiral of the stair.

At that instant, a most unpleasant recollection came into Logan’s head. An hour earlier, in the painted study, he had given his rucksack to Tompkins to be carried to his room. And in that pack were his passport and other papers. That man Tompkins, by the look of him, would pry into everything, even had he been only butler in a normal country house; and this was no normal place. The moment Jackman talked with Tompkins, Logan’s real identity would be known; and then there would be trouble--though just what sort of trouble, Logan was not quite sure. His dismay showed in his face.

Mary MacAskival was looking at him in concern. “What is it, Hugh?” (So it was “Hugh” even in private now, Logan thought, and on very short acquaintance, which seemed to confirm Dr. Jackman’s account of this odd little girl’s very forward ways with men.) Whatever else she was, she had a quick mind, though; for she added, after a moment’s pause, “Are you thinking of your rucksack? You needn’t. I met Tompkins on the stair and took it from him before he had any chance of a look into it. And I took your papers and put them into a hidie-hole--the Old House is mostly hidie-holes--where only I could possibly find them again. Then I put the rest of your things into your room. Do you mind? I can get the papers for you whenever you like, but we mustn’t let Dr. Jackman know you’re from America. You’d not be safe then. You’re not particularly safe even now. I’m sorry.” Those mobile red lips framed the “sorry” with a pathetic beauty. Indeed, it was a pity that Mary MacAskival was what she was.

“Thank you, Miss MacAskival,” Logan said. “Probably I’ll need the papers after dinner. Shall we go down to Lady MacAskival now?” His voice sounded cold even to himself. He needed a little time to think. The girl’s charm--her glamour, literally--was too near to him on this clammy sepulchral stair. How did those rosy little feet of hers endure the damp, attractively bare as they were? But he must get his mind off the girl: she was only fifteen, and bad medicine.

“Hugh!” Mary MacAskival spoke his name reproachfully, and now a little haughtily. “Hugh! It’s not only your papers you’re thinking of. What is it? This is a house of secrets, but you and I mustn’t have secrets from each other. You weren’t sent to me to keep secrets from me. What is it?” Logan hesitated, and the girl’s mind leaped swiftly to the usual conclusion any woman reaches when two men have been talking seriously in her absence. “What is it? Were you and Dr. Jackman talking of me?” In this instance, the woman’s instinct spoke truly.

Logan looked her full in the face. “Yes, we were.”

Over the girl’s delicious heart-shaped face, with its high cheek-bones and rather deep-set green eyes, spread a crimson flush, suffusing all the delicate white skin. It would have been a beautiful thing to watch, Logan thought, if it had not been a mark of guilt. The finely-moulded nose and chin went up. “Then you heard nothing good,” said Mary MacAskival, deliberately. She turned, as if to avert her telltale young face, and led the way down the stairs. “Dr. Jackman is the father of lies. But now I will take you to my aunt.”

A doorway in the immense thickness of the medieval tower-wall led into the Renaissance range of the Old House. Here the plaster ceiling of a great book-lined corridor was moulded into baroque shells and swags and Lord knows what fantastic designs. An odor of damp and musty leather came from the shelves; this library could have been used little since Sir Alastair’s time. The little barefoot beauty walked beside him, still a trifle flushed and defiant, but apparently not hopeless of winning him over; Logan thought for a moment she actually meant to take his hand; but if she did have that impulse, she thought better of it. “After dinner,” she murmured, “if we can be alone, there are things that must be told you. Not here: there’s not enough time, and we could be overheard.” She noticed his glance at her exquisitely narrow bare feet, which here trod upon Oriental carpet, in utter silence; she smiled a trifle coquettishly, and said, “I was reared barefoot, and don’t like shoes and stockings in the house. Besides, when I’m this way, I can scamper all over the house, and _they_ don’t know where I am--nor when I’m listening to them. Do you mind? I know it’s not the way to receive foreign guests; but you are our first foreign guest, and I don’t think you stand on ceremony. Here’s my aunt’s bedroom; she never leaves it now. Only Agnes will be with her.” The girl pushed open a heavy carven door, and they entered an immense gloomy room.

There the walls were hung from cornice to floor with square panels of leather, stamped in gold leaf with some intricate pattern of dancing figures; Logan thought he made out the figure of a capering goat in this design, but could not be sure in the twilight of the room. These hangings must have been long neglected, for splotches of white water-stain showed here and there, and some of the panels had pulled almost loose from the stitching that held them one to another, so that the stone of the walls showed through the gaps. Nearly in the middle of the room stood a vast ancient canopied bed, the curtains drawn back. Beside it, huddled on a stool, an old serving-woman looked with lacklustre eyes at Logan, cringing aside to let him approach the bed: this would be Agnes, the shawlie. Certainly she was timid--could she be trembling, or was it a slight palsy? Then he made out the shape under the rich covers upon the bed.

Lady MacAskival lay with closed eyes, and she was very nearly a corpse: almost bloodless, and her face and hands grotesquely wrinkled. Could this pallid immobile thing once have been a beautiful woman of fashion, no better than she should have been--like little Mary MacAskival, perhaps? At their best, Logan suspected, the features must have been slightly vulgar. Mary MacAskival slid between him and the bed-rail. “Aunt!” she whispered, very low. “Aunt, Mr. Logan has come.”

The wrinkled eyelids slid back, snakelike. The fingers of the desiccated left hand stirred slightly. The withered lips writhed, almost as if the ancient creature would have burst into a scream, but no sound came forth.

“Aunt,” said Mary MacAskival, “he may be trusted.”

Those purblind eyes of the failing woman flickered, for a moment or two, with intelligence. But Logan could not have meant much to her; possibly he was but a dream within a dream, drifting through limbo, less unpleasant than the terrors that often clustered round the bedstead. For either this old woman was drugged, Logan thought, or else she existed, tortoise-like and impotent, in a realm of perpetual terror. In those weary eyes was frozen fright, fright grown so familiar that it was almost identical with consciousness. What kept her alive? Surely she would have been happy to escape from this terror--unless she fancied that worse horrors lay in wait for her beyond the grave.

Now her lips moved, and very faint sounds came forth. “Not Alastair,” Lady MacAskival whispered. “Not Alastair. Good. Go--go with him, Mary. When I am done. He is not the goat, no. Is he Askival? Is he flesh? In Carnglass it is all mist.” The lids slid back again; the left hand ceased to claw at the covers; one would have thought the woman dead, had not nostrils and chest stirred ever so slightly with her labored breathing. Mary MacAskival drew Logan through the still room to the door.

They were back in the book-lined corridor. “Is she under drugs?” Logan asked.

“No,” said the girl, calmly enough, “only hypnotism--and terror. If you had seen the chairs rise up of themselves in this house, and eyes glowing in the dark where no living thing could be, and heard the footsteps in this hall, and if you were very old--why, I think even you would lie there like my aunt, Hugh.”

“Who did these things?”

“Dr. Jackman and Mr. Royall--who else? They have come near to putting me out of my wits. And now and then they put Dr. Jackman himself out of his wits. He believes, in part at least, though Mr. Royall does not, I think. Dr. Jackman has said he will call old Sir Alastair from under the stone by St. Merin’s Chapel. He has said he has made Sir Alastair walk down this very passage where you and I stand.”

Logan looked involuntarily over his shoulder: but of course there was nothing but mouldy books and hangings and family portraits. In this strange place, minds might scamper after any vagary. “Does your aunt wish to see her dead husband?”

“Not she. She feared him while he lived, and she feared him more once he died; and things lie heavy on her conscience. She will give Dr. Jackman anything he wants, so long as he keeps Sir Alastair this side of her bedroom door.” The girl was almost conversational about it all: surely she was either quite mad, or had a grip upon her nerves stronger than that of any woman Logan had known. What lay at her heart, Logan could not even guess; what could be seen was delectable enough, but Logan put no trust in her. Yet, trollop though she might be, Logan resolved to play his masquerade a little while yet, so far as Jackman was concerned, for her sake and his own.

“Now tell me this, Miss MacAskival,” said Logan, “just how old....” Then he heard something in the passage, toward the tower; and so did the girl; and they turned simultaneously. Logan felt tempted to reach for the little gun under his tweed jacket, but refrained. And, after all, it was only that shifty butler. “Dinner is served. Miss MacAskival,” Tompkins murmured, quite deferentially, and withdrew back toward the tower.

“Later,” Mary MacAskival said, very low, as they followed Tompkins. “Later I’ll tell you everything that can be told. Now you must meet Mr. Royall.” They went up the ancient stairs again, and passed into the study. It was dark now, but the study was cheerful enough. Many candles, in eighteenth-century silver candlesticks, had been lit; a square table was laid with a cloth and good china; there was soup being kept warm by a paraffin lamp on a sideboard. Tompkins had gone down somewhere to the kitchen, assisted by a footman whose grumbling voice Logan could hear below--Anderson, perhaps; and Jackman and Royall were not yet in the room: doubtless the two of them were discussing Hugh Logan thoroughly. Mary MacAskival, leaning gracefully against the piano which occupied a corner, pointed a little finger toward the painted ceiling.

“Do you know what _that_ is?” She meant the painted monster called the Firgower, only dimly visible by the candlelight, away up there in the shadows. “Oh, Dr. Jackman told you? He should: for he _is_ the Firgower, you know. Why do you look at me so queerly? Of course Dr. Jackman is the Firgower; he’d tell you so himself, if he were candid. He has told me so. You saw the hole in his forehead: that’s his third eye. He sees Sir Alastair MacAskival with his third eye, and tells my aunt.” She took a candlestick from the table, and, standing on tiptoe, lifted it as high toward the ceiling as her little body could reach. “Now come here, Hugh Logan, and look close.”

The painted horrid goat-face of the Firgower stared down at Logan; it seemed to smirk and leer and scowl all at once. “Its forehead--look,” the girl went on.

Now Logan could make out that in the middle of that painted forehead, with horns sprouting above it, was a third eye, faintly visible. It was much less distinct than the two normal goat-slit eyes, but it was very like them. “I don’t know whether it was painted so,” Mary MacAskival murmured in Logan’s ear, leaning a pretty hand on his shoulder, “or whether that nasty third eye wore on the nerves of Sir Alastair or someone else, so that perhaps someone put a trifle of white paint over it. It’s no less an eye than Dr. Jackman’s. Do you understand? That’s Dr. Jackman’s portrait, so to speak. I’m ever so glad _you_ do not have a third eye.”

Logan turned his head to look at this queer little lovely creature. Was she lunatic, coquette, or infinitely subtle? They two stood so close together that his nose touched hers. His right arm almost went round her, as she stood there on tiptoe; but just then boots sounded on the stair, and Miss MacAskival drew away. “My poor bare feet!” she said. “I’m forgetting my manners. Whatever would they say at the convent? They never let young ladies dine there barefoot, you know. I leave you to Dr. Jackman and his secretary, but I’ll be back before the soup has gone quite cold.” With a little swirl of her skirt, she sprang, rather than stepped, through the heavy doorway, and was gone.

She must have passed Jackman and Royall on the stair, for they came in immediately. “Mr. Logan,” Jackman said, “Mr. Royall, my secretary.” The death’s-head secretary nodded curtly. Once the man began to speak, Logan perceived with relief that he was an Englishman, like Jackman, though probably from Yorkshire; had he been a Scot, he might have seen through Logan’s masquerade. Logan would talk as little as possible to the Scots among the servants, lest he give himself away.

Royall made some perfunctory observations about the hunt for Donley, the weather, and all that. A cold fish, but a keen one, Logan hazarded. He was well educated, surely; Logan suspected that he might once have been a fairly high-ranking civil servant; somehow there was the mark of Winchester school upon him. Yet now he was secretary to this pseudo-doctor, in an island at the back of beyond. Why? Had Royall been dismissed from some civil post--for unreliability of sorts? The man was sick; the signs of a gnawing illness were plain upon his pallid face; and yet Logan guessed--though perhaps he was becoming fanciful, in this house of shadows--that the real cause of his trouble was some sickness not of the body, but of the spirit. Could one trust Royall? If one were of the same faith, undoubtedly; on the man’s grim features was set fanaticism, not simple criminality.

“Do you have a taste for letters, Mr. Logan?” Royall inquired abruptly, in his hoarse voice. Jackman had said very little, but stood back in the shadows, watching, as if he had agreed to let his secretary do the prying this night. Tompkins came round with a tray of sherry-glasses, and Logan sipped before he replied.

“Why, now, Mr. Royall,” Logan said, “I must admit I am fond of Rabbie Burns. Burns, sir, is the poet of the Scottish nation. No nonsense for Rabbie Burns. I don’t mind saying, Mr. Royall, that at the British Linen Bank, Lawnmarket Branch, we know an honest man’s the noblest work of God. How does Burns express it, sir? ‘The rank is but the guinea’s stamp....’”

Here Mary MacAskival returned, with neat shoes on her feet, and cotton stockings. Jackman and Royall bowed to her slightly, and the four of them sat down to dinner, Tompkins putting the soup before them. Without bothering to taste his soup, Royall pursued the topic.

“I suppose you know, Mr. Logan, that Burns is perhaps the most popular English writer in the Soviet Union today.” Royall’s sunken eyes seemed to expect some significant response to this.

“Indeed, sir?” Logan said, ingenuously. “Why, now, I would have thought there would be difficulties in doing Rabbie Burns into the Russian tongue.”

“The Soviet Russians, Mr. Logan, are masters of translation. Yes, they appreciate Burns. At a conference in the Crimea, not so very long ago, I had the honor to be asked to read Burns aloud, in English, to a group of intellectuals. I found they especially enjoyed the final stanza of ‘For a’ That and a’ That.’ How does it go--

‘For a’ that, and a’ that,
It’s comin’ yet, for a’ that,
That man to man, the warld o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.’

Do I have it quite right, Mr. Logan?” Royall gave him another long stare.

“Aye, as I mind it, it goes so, Mr. Royall. Very sound sentiments--brothers the world o’er.” Logan smiled at him.

Royall hesitated; then, “Would you care to give me a gloss on those lines, Mr. Logan?”

Logan looked puzzled, as indeed he was. “A gloss, sir? Now how do you mean? A commentary?”

“Mr. Royall thought some remarks might occur to your mind, Mr. Logan,” Jackman put in. “Concerning international brotherhood, perhaps.”

“Why, no, Dr. Jackman, I do not believe I could add anything.” Logan turned, simpering, to Mary MacAskival. “Do you think of a proper commentary, Mary, darling?” The girl shook her head slowly; her eyes, their lids half lowered, moved uneasily from Jackman to Royall. “Nevertheless, gentlemen,” Logan went on, still very much the Edinburgh clerk, “we’ve had many a serious discussion of Rabbie Burns in the West End Young Men’s Discussion Club. There’s profound meaning in Rabbie Burns. Profound.”

Royall’s eyes never had ceased to stare at Logan. Now Royall said, “An acquaintance of mine who sometimes visits Edinburgh is an admirer of Burns. Possibly you have met him: a Captain Gare.”

Logan’s training as a lawyer served him well at that moment, for his fatuous smile did not fade, nor did he start. “No, sir,” he told Royall, “I don’t believe I’ve had the honor of making the gentleman’s acquaintance.”

“And then,” said Royall, “I think of a commission agent in Glasgow, a man of the people, who often has Burns on the tip of his tongue. Perhaps you have encountered him. His name is Dowie, Jim Dowie.”

“Dowie? I know a solicitor’s clerk of that name in Dalkeith; but he reads only American thrillers, sir.”

“So, Royall,” Dr. Jackman interjected, “it seems that our Mr. Logan here is not a member, after all, of the little circle you had in mind. You were quite mistaken, I fear; I told you he wouldn’t be. Mr. Logan is a very honest and industrious rising young bank-clerk, I’m sure. But speaking of your national poet Burns, I call to mind a verse you might take to heart--

‘My love she’s but a lassie yet,
My love she’s but a lassie yet,
We’ll let her stand a year or twa,
She’ll no be half sae saucy yet.’

Apropos, Mr. Logan?”

The butler brought the main course, boiled mutton and potatoes, before Logan had to reply. Logan noticed, as Tompkins served, that Mary MacAskival’s face had gone crimson at Jackman’s quotation, and then white again.

“Tompkins,” Jackman said as the butler served him, “I take it that Carruthers and Rab have returned by this time?”

“No, Dr. Jackman.” Logan saw that Tompkins’ hands trembled slightly. “Neither of them, sir. Not hide nor hair.”

Jackman bit his lip. “Royall, where do you suppose they’ve got to? It has been quite dark for more than an hour.”

“Ah, well, sir,” Royall answered, “so long as the pair of them hang together, no harm can come to them. They’re both armed with good rifles, and they weren’t reared in ladies’ boudoirs. Rab knows rough country well enough, and something of this island. I suppose they may have been hot on Donley’s scent when the sun set, and bedded down in one of the farmhouses or keepers’ cottages. I last saw them toward St. Merin’s Chapel. No doubt they’ll report in the morning.” But Royall seemed to have no appetite for his mutton.

Jackman shrugged. “No doubt, no doubt.” That unpleasant patch on his forehead twitched, almost as if he were trying to lift the lid of the third eye. He turned toward Logan. “As you were about to say...?”

“Why, Dr. Jackman”--but Logan smiled toward Mary MacAskival--“I had thought of another verse from Rabbie Burns, that I like better than yours; and it is this, sir--

‘Gaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;
Thou’rt to Love and Heaven sae dear,
Nocht of ill may come thee near,
My bonnie dearie.’”

“I think that’s very pretty, Hugh,” Mary MacAskival told him. She looked toward Dr. Jackman: “‘Gaist nor bogle....’ A good phrase for the Old House, is it not, Dr. Jackman? But whatever can have become of Rab and Carruthers?”

Jackman looked blacker still. “Leave that to us, if you please, my dear.” He seemed about to add something when Mary MacAskival rose and walked to the piano.

“How very slow Tompkins is in bringing the sweet tonight! May I play until he comes? Hugh, will you sing with me?”

“You know I’ve no voice, Mary, darling,” Logan said, also rising, “but I’ll play to your singing.” He did, indeed, play the piano reasonably well. Miss MacAskival behaved as if she had always known it: wondrously clever, that girl, for fifteen years.

“I’ll set you the tune, Hugh,” she told him, seating herself at the piano, “and then you can take my place here, and I’ll sing you a song from Burns, if you like. Dr. Jackman, can you endure it? Mr. Royall?”

“Of course,” Jackman told her, somewhat absently. He ran his lean hand slowly over his forehead. Royall said nothing: he had stalked to a window, opened it, and was staring uneasily into the night below.

Miss MacAskival played pleasantly--an air Logan knew well, “Charlie He’s My Darling.” Logan took her place at the piano then, and she stood and began to sing. Her young voice was full and tolerably trained, and very sweet.

“An’ Charlie he’s my darling,
My darling, my darling,
Charlie he’s my darling,
The young Chevalier.”

The night air of Carnglass crept into the ancient room through Royall’s open window. There came the cry of some night bird, winging past the Old House, and the heavy beat of the sea upon the pier of Askival harbor. Mary’s voice swelled up:

“Sae light’s he jimped up the stair,
And tirled at the pin;
And wha sae ready as hersel,
To let the laddie in.”

Then, above the noise of the ocean, there came an unnatural sound, echoing perhaps from the other side of the Old House. It was a burst of horrid laughter, or so it seemed, ending in a desperate sob; then silence; then the high dreadful cackle again. “The devil!” cried Jackman, and leaped to join Royall at the window. Mary MacAskival shivered, but sang the last verse:

“It’s up yon hethery mountain,
And down yon scroggy glen,
We daur na gang a milking,
For Charlie and his men.”

To Logan, the girl’s relative composure was as strange as the dreadful yelling outside, but he played loyally on until “Charlie and his men” died away. Then Mary swept from the piano to the window, and Logan was right behind her. The laughter, if laughter it was, had ceased; and nothing at all was to be seen through the mist. But in a moment, a shot was fired; and then three more shots, in quick succession, seemingly not far outside the Old House. Jackman and Royall ran for the stairs, and Mary and Logan after them.

Through that great chill hodgepodge old house, past Lady MacAskival’s room, through an interior courtyard that had been roofed over, into the enormous Victorian block they ran, stumbling through passages and down flights of stairs, until at last the four of them burst into a big Victorian entrance-hall. About the closed door were clustered Tompkins and Ferd and Anderson and a fourth man whom Logan took to be Niven. They all had rifles at the ready, but no one had ventured to open the door. Jackman dashed among them and flung back the bolts: “See what it is, you fools.” None of the four seemed eager to investigate, but they followed Jackman and Royall a little way into the dark, and Mary MacAskival and Logan tagged after. A massive knob of the great rock on which the Old House stood jutted up close by the door, and Logan urged the girl toward it.

“If anyone fires from out there,” he whispered to her, “we’ll be so many sitting ducks.”

“No one will fire at us,” the girl said; but, obediently, she crouched behind the rock, peering round in the direction the men were looking.

There came one more screech of hysterical laughter, and then a figure came into view, reeling, stumbling, slipping, but still holding a rifle. Only a few yards from the Old House, the man swung round to face the darkness from which he had emerged, brought his gun to his shoulder, and fired three more shots, wildly, toward nothing visible. There was as much chance of his hitting the moon, with the aim he took, as of winging any living thing in Carnglass. Then the man dropped his rifle altogether and came lurching on toward the entrance of the Old House, falling at last in a heap right at Jackman’s feet, giggling, moaning, choking.

“Rab!” cried Jackman. “What the devil, Rab?” It was a very young man, thick-set and heavy-featured, with a great shock of hair. He was covered with little cuts, and his clothes were in rags. To judge by his gasping and gulping, he had run for miles. And he was quite out of his head. He squirmed at Jackman’s feet, and mumbled obscenities, and then burst once more into his screaming and terrified laugh.

“Something has run him like a hare,” Royall said. “The wits are gone out of the man.” The four servants, hard cases though they looked, bunched together like so many rabbits. Stooping, Jackman took Rab by the shoulders and shook him mercilessly.

“Rab!” Jackman hissed. “Rab! Speak, man, or I’ll give you worse than you’ve had already.” But Rab only sobbed for breath. “Pick up his rifle, Mr. Royall,” Jackman said, prodding Rab with his foot. Logan suspected that he gave the order to Royall for fear that none of the servants would obey it. Stooping, Royall slipped into the heather, groped for the gun, found it, and hurried back, glancing over his lean shoulder.