The House of Four Winds

John Buchan

Prologue

Great events, says the philosophic historian, spring only from great causes, though the immediate occasion may be small; but I think his law must have exceptions. Of the not inconsiderable events which I am about to chronicle, the occasion was trivial, and I find it hard to detect the majestic agency behind them. What world-force, for example, ordained that Mr Dickson McCunn should slip into the Tod's Hole in his little salmon-river on a bleak night in April; and, without changing his clothes, should thereafter make a tour of inspection of his young lambs? His action was the proximate cause of this tale, but I can see no profounder explanation of it than the inherent perversity of man.

The performance had immediate consequences for Mr McCunn. He awoke next morning with a stiff neck, an aching left shoulder, and a pain in the small of his back—he who never in his life before had had a touch of rheumatism. A vigorous rubbing with embrocation failed to relieve him, and, since he was accustomed to robust health, he found it intolerable to hobble about with a thing like a toothache in several parts of his body. Dr Murdoch was sent for from Auchenlochan, and for a fortnight Mr McCunn had to endure mustard plasters and mustard baths, to swallow various medicines, and to submit to a rigorous diet. The pains declined, but he found himself to his disgust in a low state of general health, easily tired, liable to sudden cramps, and with a poor appetite for his meals. After three weeks of this condition he lost his temper. Summer was beginning, and he reflected that, being now sixty-three years of age, he had only a limited number of summers left to him. His gorge rose at the thought of dragging his wing through the coming delectable months—long-lighted June, the hot July noons with the corncrakes busy in the hay, the days on August hills, red with heather and musical with bees. He curbed his distaste for medical science, and departed to Edinburgh to consult a specialist.

That specialist gave him a purifying time. He tested his blood and his blood pressure, kneaded every part of his frame, and for the better part of a week kept him under observation. At the end he professed himself clear in the general but perplexed in the particular.

"You've never been ill in your life?" he said. "Well, that is just your trouble. You're an uncommonly strong man—heart, lungs, circulation, digestion, all in first-class order. But it stands to reason that you must have secreted poisons in your body, and you have never got them out. The best prescription for a fit old age is a bad illness in middle life, or, better still, a major operation. It drains off some of the middle-age humours. Well, you haven't had that luck, so you've been a powder magazine with some nasty explosives waiting for the spark. Your tom-fool escapade in the Stinchar provided the spark, and here you are—a healthy man mysteriously gone sick. You've got to be pretty careful, Mr McCunn. It depends on how you behave in the next few months whether you will be able to fish for salmon on your eightieth birthday, or be doddering round with two sticks and a shawl on your seventieth."

Mr McCunn was scared, penitent and utterly docile. He professed himself ready for the extremest measures, including the drawing of every tooth in his head.

The specialist smiled. "I don't recommend anything so drastic. What you want first of all is an exact diagnosis. I can assess your general condition, but I can't put my finger on the precise mischief. That needs a technique which we haven't developed sufficiently in this country. Next, you must have treatment, but treatment is a comparatively simple affair if you first get the right diagnosis. So I am going to send you to Germany."

Mr McCunn wailed. Banishment from his beloved Blaweary was a bitter pill.

"Yes, to Germany. To quite a pretty place called Rosensee, in Saxon Switzerland. There's a kurhaus there run by a man called Christoph. You never heard his name, of course—few people have—but he is a therapeutic genius of the first order. You can take my word for that. I've known him again and again pull people out of their graves. His main subject is nerves, but he is good for everything that is difficult and mysterious, for in my opinion he is the greatest diagnoser in the world… . By the way, you live in Carrick? Well, I sent one of your neighbours to Rosensee last year—Sir Archibald Roylance—he was having trouble with a damaged leg—and now he walks nearly as well as you and me. It seems there was a misplaced sinew which everybody else had overlooked… . Dr Christoph will see you three times a day, stare at you like an owl, ask you a thousand questions and make no comment for at least a fortnight. Then he will deliver judgment, and you may take it that it will be right. After that the treatment is a simple matter. In a week or two you will be got up in green shorts and a Tyrolese hat and an alpenstock and a rope round your middle, climbing the little rocks of those parts… . Yes, I think I can promise you that you'll be fit and ready for the autumn salmon."

Mr McCunn, trained to know a competent man when he saw him, accepted the consultant's prescription, and rooms were taken for him at the Rosensee kurhaus. His wife did not accompany him for three reasons: first, she had a profound distaste for foreign countries and regarded Germany as still a hostile State; second, she could not believe that rheumatism, which was an hereditary ailment in her own family, need be taken seriously, so she felt no real anxiety about his health; third, he forbade her. She proposed to stay at Blaweary till the end of June, and then to await her husband's return at a Rothesay hydropathic. So early in the month Mr McCunn a little disconsolately left these shores. He took with him as body-servant and companion one Peter Wappit, who at Blaweary was game-keeper, forester and general handy-man. Peter, having fought in France with the Scots Fusiliers, and having been two years a prisoner in Germany, was believed by his master to be an adept at foreign tongues.

 

Nor was there any profound reason in the nature of things why Lord Rhynns, a well-preserved gentleman of sixty-seven, should have tumbled into a ditch that spring at Vallescure and broken his left leg. He was an active man and a careful, but his mind had been busy with the Newmarket entries, so that he missed a step, rolled some yards down a steep slope of rock and bracken, and came to rest with a leg doubled unpleasantly under him. The limb was well set, but neuritis followed, with disastrous consequences to the Rhynns ménage. For his wife, whose profession was a gentle invalidism, found herself compelled to see to household affairs, and as a result was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The family moved from watering-place to watering-place, seeking a cure for his lordship's affliction, till at the mountain village of Unnutz Lady Rhynns could bear it no longer. A telegram was despatched to their only child requiring her instant attendance upon distressed parents.

This was a serious blow to Miss Alison Westwater, who had been making very different plans for the summer. She was then in London, living with her Aunt Harriet, who two years before had espoused Mr Thomas Carlyle Craw, the newspaper magnate. It was the Craws' purpose to go north after Ascot to the Westwater house, Castle Gay, in the Canonry, of which Mr Craw had a long lease, and Alison, for whom a very little of London sufficed, had exulted in the prospect. Now she saw before her some dismal weeks—or months—in an alien land, in the company of a valetudinarian mother and a presumably irascible father. Her dreams of Scotland, to which she was passionately attached, of salmon in the Callowa and trout in the hill lochs and bright days among the heather, had to be replaced by a dreary vista of baking foreign roads, garish foreign hotels, tarnished pine-woods, tidy clothes and all the things which her soul abominated.

There was perhaps more of a cosmic motive in the determination that summer of the doings of Mr Dougal Crombie and Sir Archibald Roylance, for in their cases we touch the fringe of high politics. Dougal was now a force, almost the force, in the Craw Press. The general manager, Mr Archibald Bamff, was growing old, he had taken to himself a wife, and his fancy toyed pleasantly with retirement to some country hermitage. So in the past year Dougal had been gradually taking over his work, and, since he had the complete confidence of Mr Craw, and the esteem of Mr Craw's masterful wife, he found himself in his early twenties charged with much weighty and troublesome business. He was a power behind the throne, and the more potent because few suspected his presence. Only one or two people—a Cabinet minister, an occasional financial magnate, a few highly placed Government officials—realised the authority that was wielded by this sombre and downright young man. Early in June he set out on an extensive Continental trip, the avowed purpose of which was to look into certain paper-making concerns which Mr Craw had acquired after the war. But his main object was not disclosed, for it was deeply secret. Mr Craw had long interested himself in the republic of Evallonia, his sympathies being with those who sought to restore the ancient monarchy. Now it appeared that the affairs of that country were approaching a crisis, and it was Dougal's mission to spy out the land.

As for Sir Archibald Roylance, he had been saddled with an honourable but distasteful duty. He had been the better part of two years in the House of Commons, and had already made a modest mark. He spoke infrequently and always on matters which he knew something about—the air, agriculture, foreign affairs—and his concise and well-informed speeches were welcomed amid the common verbiage of debate. He had become parliamentary private secretary to the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who had been at school with him. That summer the usual Disarmament Conference was dragging its slow length along; it became necessary for Mr Despenser, the Under-Secretary, to go to Geneva, and Sir Archie was ordered to accompany him. He received the mandate with little pleasure. The session that summer would end early, and he wanted to get to Crask, for he had been defrauded of his Easter holiday in the Highlands. Geneva he believed might last for months and he detested the place, which, as Lord Lamancha had once said, was full of the ghosts of mouldy old jurisconsults, and the living presence of cosmopolitan bores. But his spirits had improved when he discovered that he might take Janet with him.

"We'll find a chance of slipping away," he told his wife. "One merit of these beastly conferences is that they are always adjourning. We'll hop it into eastern Europe or some other fruity place. Hang it all, now that I've got the use of both legs, I don't see why we shouldn't climb a mountain or two. Dick Hannay's yarns have made me rather keen to try that game."

Certain of these transmigrations played havoc with the plans of Mr John Galt, of St. Mark's College, Cambridge, who, having just attained a second class in his Tripos and having so concluded his university career, felt himself entitled to an adequate holiday. He had intended to make his headquarters at Blaweary, which was the only home he had ever known, and thence to invade the Canonry, fishing its lochs and sleeping in its heather. But Blaweary would presently be shut up in Mr McCunn's absence, and if Alison Westwater was not at Castle Gay, the Canonry lost all its charm. Still, he must have some air and exercise. The summer term had been busy and stuffy, and to a Rugby player there were few attractions in punts among lilied backwaters. He would probably have to go alone to the Canonry, but his fancy had begun to toy with another scheme—a walking-tour in southeastern France or among the Jura foothills, where new sights and smells and sounds would relieve his loneliness. It was characteristic of him that he never thought of finding a male companion; for the last two years Alison had been for him the only companion in the world.

On the 13th of June he was still undecided, but that night his thoughts were narrowed to a happy orbit. For Alison was dining with him before her journey abroad, and together they were going on to a party which the Lamanchas were giving to the delegates to an international conference then in session in London. For one evening at least the world was about to give him all he desired.

It was a warm night, but the great room at Maurice's was cool with fans and sunblinds, though every table was occupied. From their corner, at the foot of the shallow staircase which is the main entrance, they had an excellent view of the company. There seemed to be a great many uniforms about, and a dazzling array of orders, no doubt in view of the Lamancha function. It was easy to talk, for at Maurice's there is no band till supper-time.

"You shouldn't have brought me here, Jaikie," said Alison. "It's too extravagant. And you're giving me far too good a dinner."

"It's a celebration," was the answer. "I've done with Cambridge."

"Are you sorry?"

"No. I liked it, for I like most things, but I don't want to linger over them."

The girl laughed merrily, and a smile slowly crept into Jaikie's face.

"You're quite right," he said. "That was a priggish thing to say, but it's true, all the same."

"I know. I never met anyone who wasted so little time in regrets. I wish I were like you, for I want anything I like to go on for ever. Cambridge must have slipped off you like water off a duck's back. What did you get out of it?"

"Peace to grow up. I've very nearly grown up now. I have discovered most of the things I can do and the things I can't. I know the things I like and the things I don't."

Alison knitted her brows. "That's not much good. So do I. The thing to find out is, what you can do best and what you like most. You told me a year ago that that was what you were after. Have you decided?"

"No," was the glum answer. "I think I have collected the material, so to speak, but I haven't sorted it out. I was looking to you to help me this summer in the Canonry, and now you're bolting to Italy or somewhere."

"Not Italy, my dear. A spot called Unnutz in the Tirol. You're not very good at geography."

"Mayn't I come too?"

"No, you mayn't. You'd simply loath it. A landscape like a picture postcard. Tennis and bumble-puppy golf and promenades, all in smart clothes. Infinite boring evenings when I have to play picquet with Papa or talk hotel French to Mamma's friends. Besides, my family wouldn't understand you. You haven't been properly presented to them, and Unnutz is not the place for that. You wouldn't be at your best there."

Two people passed on the way to their table, a tall young man with a lean ruddy face, and a pretty young woman, whose hair was nearly as bright a thing as Alison's. The young woman stopped.

"My dear Allie," she cried, "I haven't seen you for ages. Archie, it's Cousin Allie. They tell me you're being dragged abroad, the same as us. What's your penitentiary? Ours is Geneva."

"Mine's a place in the Tirol. Any chance of our meeting?"

"There might be. Archie has a notion of dashing about, for apparently an international conference is mostly adjournments. He's so spry on his legs since Dr Christoph took him in hand that he rather fancies himself as a mountaineer. What's your address?"

The lady scribbled it down in a notebook which she took from her bag, nodded gaily, and followed her husband and a waiter to their own table. Alison looked after them.

"That's the nicest couple on earth. She was Janet Raden, a sort of cousin of mine. Her husband, Archie Roylance … "

Jaikie interrupted.

"Great Scot! Is that Sir Archibald Roylance? I once knew him pretty well—for one day. I've told you about the Gorbals Diehards and Huntingtower. He was the ally we enlisted—lived at a place called the Mains of Garple. Ask Mr McCunn about him. I've often wondered when I should see him again, for I felt pretty certain I would—some day. He hasn't changed much."

"He can't change. Sir Archie is the most imperishable thing God ever created. He'll be a wild boy till he's ninety. Even with Janet to steady him I consider him dangerous, especially now that he has no longer a game leg… . Hullo, Jaikie. We're digging into the past to-night. Look who's over there."

She nodded towards a very brilliant table where some twenty people were dining, most of them in uniform. Among them was a fair young man in ordinary evening dress, without any decorations. He suddenly turned his face, recognised Alison, and, with a word of apology to the others, left his seat and came towards her. When she rose and curtsied, Jaikie had a sudden recollection.

"It is Miss Westwater, is it not?" said the young man, bowing over her hand. "My adorable preserver! I have not forgotten Prince Charlie and the Solway sands."

He turned to Jaikie.

"And the Moltke of the campaign, too! What is the name? Wait a minute. I have it—Jaikie. What fun to see you again! Are you two by any happy chance espoused?"

"Not yet," said Alison. "What are you doing in England, sir?"

"Holidaying. I cannot think why all the world does not holiday in England. It is the only really peaceful and pleasant place."

"How true, sir! I have to go abroad to-morrow, and I feel like an exile."

"Then why do you go?"

"I am summoned by neglected parents. To Unnutz, in the Tirol."

The young man's pleasant face grew suddenly grave.

"Unnutz. Above the Waldersee, in the Firnthal?"

"The same. Do you know it, sir?"

"I know it. I do not think it a very good place for a holiday—not this summer. But if it becomes unpleasant you can return home, for you English are always free to travel. But I should be careful in Unnutz, my dear Miss Westwater, and I should take Mr Jaikie with you as a protector."

He shook hands and departed smiling, but he left on the two the impression of an unexpected solemnity.

"What do you suppose is worrying Prince John?" Alison asked.

"The affairs of Evallonia. You remember at Castle Gay we thought the Republic would blow up any moment and that a month or two would see Prince John on the throne. That's two years ago and nothing has happened. Dougal is out there now looking into the situation. He may ginger them up."

"What makes him so solemn about Unnutz? By all accounts it's the ordinary gimcrack little foreign watering-place. He talked of it as if it were a sort of Chicago slum."

"He is a wise man, for he said you should take me with you."

They had reached the stage of coffee and cigarettes, and were now more free to watch their neighbours. It was a decorous assembly, in accordance with the tradition of Maurice's, and the only gaiety seemed to be among the womenkind of Prince John's party. The Prince's own face was very clear in the light of an overhanging lamp, and both Alison and Jaikie found themselves watching it—its slight heaviness in repose, its quick vivacity when interested, the smile which drew half its charm from a most attractive wrinkling around the eyes.

"It is the face of a prince," said Alison, "but not of a king—at any rate, not the kind of king that wins a throne. There's no dynamite in it."

"What sort of face do you give makers of revolutions?" Jaikie asked.

The girl swung round and regarded him steadily.

"Your sort," she said. "You look so meek and good that everybody loves you. And wise, wise like an old terrier. And yet, in the two years I have known you, you have filled up your time with the craziest things. First"—she counted on her fingers—"you went off to Baffin Island to trade old rifles for walrus ivory."

Jaikie grinned. "I made seventy-three pounds clear: I call that a success."

"Then you walked from Cambridge to Oxford within a day and a night."

"That was a failure. I was lame for a fortnight and couldn't play in the Welsh match."

"You went twice as a deck hand on a Grimsby trawler—first to Bear Island and then to the Whales' Back. I don't know where these places are, but they sound beastly."

"They were. I was sick most of the time."

"Last and worst, it was only your exams and my prayers that kept you from trying to circumnavigate Britain in a sailing canoe, when you would certainly have been drowned. What do you mean by it, Jaikie? It looks as if you were as neurotic as a Bloomsbury intellectual, though in a different way. Why this restlessness?"

"I wasn't restless. I did it all quite calmly, on purpose." Into Jaikie's small face there had come an innocent seriousness.

"You see," he went on, "when I was a small boy I was rather a hardy citizen. I've told you about that. Then Mr McCunn civilised me, which I badly needed. But I didn't want it to soften me. We are living in a roughish world to-day, and it is going to get rougher, and I don't want to think that there is any experience to which I can't face up. I've been trying to keep myself tough. You see what I mean, Alison?"

"I see. It's rather like painting the lily, you know. I wish I were going to the Canonry, for there's a lot of things I want to have out with you. Promise to keep quiet till I come back."

The Lamanchas' party was so large and crowded that Alison and Jaikie found it easy to compass solitude. Once out of the current that sucked through the drawing-rooms towards the supper-room there were quiet nooks to be discovered in the big house. One such they found in an alcove, where the upper staircase ascended from the first floor, and where, at a safe distance, they could watch the procession of guests. Alison pointed out various celebrities to the interested Jaikie, and a number of relations with whom she had no desire to have closer contact. But on one of the latter she condescended to details. He was a very tall man, whose clothes, even in that well-dressed assembly, were conspicuous for their elegance. He had a neatly trimmed blond beard, and hair worn a little longer than the fashion and as wavy as a smart woman's coiffure. They only saw his profile as he ascended the stairs, and his back as he disappeared into the main drawing-room.

"There's another cousin of mine," said the girl, "the queerest in all our queer clan. His name is Randal Glynde, and he has been everything in his time from cow-puncher to film star, not to mention diplomat, and various sorts of soldier, and somebody's private secretary. The family doesn't approve of him, for they never know what he'll do next, but he was very nice to me when I was a little girl, and I used to have a tremendous culte for him."

Jaikie was not listening, for he felt very depressed. This was his last hour with Alison for months, and the light had suddenly gone out of his landscape. He had never been lonely in his life before he met her, having at the worst found good company in himself; but now he longed for a companion, and out of the many millions of the world's inhabitants there was only one that he wanted.

"I can't go to Scotland," he said. "Blaweary is impossible, and if I went into the Canonry with you not there I'd howl."

"Poor Jaikie!" Alison laid a hand upon his. "But it's only another bit of the toughening you're so fond of. I promise to write to you a great deal, and it won't be long till the autumn. You won't be half as lonely as I."

"I wish I thought that," said Jaikie, brightening a little. "I like being alone, but I don't like being lonely. I think I'll go abroad too."

"Why don't you join Mr McCunn?"

"He won't let me. He's doing a cure and is forbidden company."

"Or Dougal?"

"He wouldn't have me either. He thinks he's on some silly kind of secret service, and he's as mysterious about it as a sick owl. But I might go for a tramp somewhere. My finances will just run to it."

"Hullo, here's Ran," said Alison. The tall man with the fair beard had drifted towards them, and was now looking down on the girl. On a closer view he appeared to be nearer forty than thirty. Jaikie noticed that he had Alison's piercing blue eyes, with the same dancing light in them. There and then, being accustomed to rapid judgments, he felt well disposed towards the tall stranger.

"Alison dear." Mr Glynde put his hand on the girl's head. "I hear that your father has at last achieved gout."

"No. It's neuritis, which makes him much angrier. He would accept gout as a family legacy, but he dislikes unexpected visitations. I go out to him to-morrow."

"Unnutz, isn't it? A dreary little place. I fear you won't enjoy it, my dear."

"Where have you come from, Ran? We last heard of you in Russia."

"I have been in many places since Russia." Mr Glynde's voice had an odd quality in it, as if he were gently communing with himself. "After a time in deep water I come up to breathe, and then go down again."

"You've chosen very smart clothes to breathe in."

"I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous."

"Have you been writing any more poetry?"

"Not a word in English, but I have written some rather charming things in mediæval Latin. I'll send you them. It is the best tongue for a vagabond."

Alison introduced Jaikie.

"Here's another of your totem, Cousin Ran. You can't corrupt him, for he is quite as mad as you."

Mr Glynde smiled pleasantly as he shook hands, and Jaikie had an impression that his eyes were the most intelligent that he had ever seen, eyes which took in everything, and saw very deep, and had a mind behind them that did not forget. He felt too that something in his own face pleased the other, for there was friendliness behind the inquisition.

"He has just finished Cambridge, and finds himself at a loose end. He is hesitating between Scotland and a tramp on the Continent. What do you advise?"

"When you are young these decisions may be fateful things. I have always trusted to the spin of a coin. I carry with me a Greek stater which has made most of my decisions for me. What about tossing for it?"

He took from the pocket of his white waistcoat a small gold coin and handed it to Jaikie.

"It's a lucky coin," he said. "At least it has brought me infinite amusement. Try it."

Jaikie had a sudden queer feeling that the occasion had become rather solemn, almost sacramental. "Heads Scotland, tails abroad," he said and tossed. It fell tails.

"Behold," said Mr Glynde, "your mind is made up for you. You will wander along in the white dust and drink country wine and doze in the woods, knowing that the unseen Powers are with you. Where, by the way, did you think of going? You have no preference? You have been very little abroad? How fortunate to have all Europe spread out for your choice. But I should not go too far east, Mr Galt. Keep to the comfortable west if you want peace. If you go too far east this summer, you may find that the spin of my little stater has been rather too fateful."

As Jaikie put Alison into a taxi, he observed Mr Glynde leaving the house on foot with a companion. He had a glimpse of that companion's face, and saw that it was Prince John of Evallonia.

Chapter 1 THE MAN WITH THE ELEPHANT

The inn at Kremisch, the Stag with the Two Heads, has an upper room so bowed with age that it leans drunkenly over the village street. It is a bare place, which must be chilly in winter, for the old casement has many chinks in it, and the china stove does not look efficient, and the rough beechen table, marked by many beer mugs, and the seats of beechwood and hide are scarcely luxurious. But on this summer night to one who had been tramping all day on roads deep in white dust under a merciless sun it seemed a haven of ease. Jaikie had eaten an admirable supper on a corner of the table, a supper of cold ham, an omelet, hot toasted rye-cakes and a seductive cheese. He had drunk wine tapped from a barrel and cold as water from a mountain spring, and had concluded with coffee and cream in a blue cup as large as a basin. Now he could light his pipe and watch the green dusk deepen behind the onion spire of the village church.

The milestones in his journey had been the wines. Jaikie was no connoisseur, and indeed as a rule preferred beer, but the vintage of a place seemed to give him the place's flavour and wines made a diary of his pilgrimage. His legs bore him from valley to valley, but he drank himself from atmosphere to atmosphere. He had begun among strong burgundies which needed water to make a thirst-quenching drink, and continued through the thin wines of the hills to the coarse red stuff of south Germany and a dozen forgotten little local products. In one upland place he had found a drink like the grey wine of Anjou, in another a sweet thing like Madeira, and in another a fiery sherry. Each night at the end of his tramp he concocted a long drink, and he stuck manfully to the juice of the grape; so, having a delicate palate and a good memory, he had now behind him a map of his track picked out in honest liquors.

Each was associated with some vision of sun-drenched landscape. He had been a month on the tramp, but he seemed to have walked through continents. As he half dozed at the open window, it was pleasant to let his fancy run back along the road. It had led him through vineyards grey at the fringes with dust, through baking beet-fields and drowsy cornlands and solemn forests; up into wooded hills and flowery meadows, and once or twice almost into the jaws of the great mountains; through every kind of human settlement, from hamlets which were only larger farms to brisk burghs clustered round opulent town-houses or castles as old as Charlemagne; by every kind of stream—unfordable great rivers, and milky mountain-torrents, and reedy lowland waters, and clear brooks slipping through mint and water-cress. He had walked and walked, seeking to travel and not to arrive, and making no plans except that his face was always to the sunrise. He was very dimly aware at any moment of his whereabouts, for his sole map was a sketchy thing out of a Continental Bradshaw.

But he had walked himself into contentment. At the start he had been restless and lonely. He wished that he could have brought Woolworth, now languishing at Blaweary, but he could not condemn that long-suffering terrier to months of quarantine. He wrote disconsolate letters to Alison in his vile handwriting, and received from her at various postes-restantes replies which revealed the dullness of her own life at Unnutz. She had nothing to write about, and it was never her habit to spoil good paper with trivial reflections. There was a time at the start when Jaikie's mind had been filled with exasperating little cares, so that he turned a blank face to the world he was traversing. His future—what was he to do now that he was done with Cambridge? Alison—his need of her grew more desperate every day, but what could he offer her worthy of her acceptance? Only his small dingy self, he concluded, with nothing to his credit except a second-class degree, some repute at Rugby football, and the slenderest of bank balances. It seemed the most preposterous affair of a moth and a star.

But youth and the sun and wide spaces played their old healing part. He began to rise whistling from his bed in a pinewood or in a cheap country inn, with a sense that the earth was very spacious and curious. The strong aromatic sunlight drugged him into cheerfulness. The humours of the road were spread before him. He had learned to talk French fairly well, but his German was scanty; nevertheless, he had the British soldier's gift of establishing friendship on a meagre linguistic basis, and he slipped inside the life of sundry little communities. His passion for new landscapes made every day's march a romance, and, having a love of the human comedy, he found each night's lodging an entertainment. He understood that he was looking at things in a new perspective. What had seemed a dull track between high walls was now expanding into open country.

Especially he thought happily about Alison. He did not think of her as a bored young woman with peevish parents in a dull health resort, but as he knew her in the Canonry, an audacious ally in any venture, staunch as the hills, kind as a west wind. So far as she was concerned, prudential thoughts about the future were an insult. She was there waiting for him as soon as he could climb to her high level. He encountered no delicacy of scene or weather but he longed to have her beside him to enjoy it. He treasured up scraps of wayside humour for her amusement, and even some shy meditations which some day he would confide to her. They did not go into his letters, which became daily scrappier—but these letters now concluded with what for Jaikie were almost the messages of a lover.

He was in a calmer mood, too, about himself. Had he been more worldly-wise he might have reflected that some day he must be a rich man. Dickson McCunn had no chick nor child nor near relation, and he and Dougal were virtually his adopted sons. Dougal was already on the road to wealth and fame, and Dickson would see that Jaikie was well provided for. But characteristically he never thought of that probability. He had his own way to make with no man's aid, and he was only waiting to discover the proper starting-point. But a pleasing lethargy possessed him. This delectable summer world was not the place for making plans. So far he was content with what he had done. Dickson had drawn him out of the depths into the normal light of day, and it had been his business to accustom his eyes to it. He was aware that, without Cambridge, he would have always been a little shy and suspicious of the life of a class into which he had not been born; now he knew it for what it was worth, and could look at it without prejudice but also without glamour. "Brother to a beggar, and fellow to a king"—what was Dougal's phrase? Jaikie was no theorist, but he had a working philosophy, with the notion at the back of his head that human nature was much the same everywhere, and that one might dig out of the unlikeliest places surprising virtues. He considered that he had been lucky enough to have the right kind of education for the practice of this creed.

But it was no philosopher who sat with his knees hunched on the window-seat, but a drowsy and rather excited boy. His travels had given him more than content, for in these last days a faint but delicious excitement had been creeping into his mind. He was not very certain of his exact whereabouts on the map, but he knew that he had crossed the border of the humdrum world and was in a land of enchantments. There was nothing in the ritual of his days to justify this; his legs like compasses were measuring out the same number of miles; the environment was the same, the slow kindly peasants, the wheel of country life, the same bright mornings and cool evenings, the same plain meals voraciously eaten, and hard beds in which he fell instantly asleep. He could speak little of the language, and he did not know one soul within a hundred miles. He was the humblest of pilgrims, and the lowness of his funds would presently compel his return. Nevertheless, he was ridiculously expectant. He laughed at himself, but he could not banish the mood. He was awaiting something—or something was awaiting him.

The apple-green twilight deepened into emerald, and then into a velvet darkness, for the moon would rise late, and a haze obscured the stars. Long ago the last child had been hunted from the street into bed. Long ago the last villagers had left the seat under the vine trellis where they had been having their evening sederunt. Long ago the oxen had been brought into the byres and the goats driven in from the hillside. A wood-wagon had broken down by the bridge, and the blacksmith had been hammering at its axle, but his job was finished, and a spark of a lamp beaconed the derelict cart. Otherwise there was no light in earth or heaven, and no sound except the far-away drone of a waterfall in the high woods and an occasional stirring of beasts in byre or stable. Kremisch was in the deep sleep of those who labour hard, bed early, and rise with the dawn. Jaikie grew drowsy. He shook out his pipe, drew a long breath of the cool night air, and rose to take the lamp from the table and ascend to his bedroom.

Suddenly a voice spoke. It came from the outer air at about the level of the window. And it asked in German for a match.

Balaam was not more startled by the sudden loquacity of his ass than was Jaikie by this aerial summons. It shook him out of his sleepiness and made him nearly drop the lamp. "God bless my soul," he said—his chief ejaculation, which he had acquired from Mr McCunn.

"He will," said the voice, "if you'll give me a light for my cigarette."

The spirit apparently spoke English, and Jaikie, reassured, held the lamp to the darkness of the open casement. There was a face there, suspended in the air, a face with cheeks the colour of a dry beech leaf and a ragged yellow beard. It was a friendly face, and in the mouth was an unlit cigarette.

"What are you standing on?" Jaikie asked, for it occurred to him that this must be a man on stilts. He had heard of these as a custom in malarial foreign places.

"To be accurate, I am sitting," was the answer. "Sitting on an elephant, if you must know. An agreeable female whom I call Aurunculeia. Out of Catullus, you remember. Almost his best poem."

Jaikie lit a match, but the speaker waved it aside. "I think, if you don't mind," he said, "I'll come in and join you for a minute. One doesn't often meet an Englishman in these parts, and Aurunculeia has no vulgar passion for haste. As you have no doubt guessed, she and I are part of a circus—an integral and vital part—what you might call the primum mobile. But we were detained by a little accident. I was asleep, and we strayed from the road and did havoc in a field of marrows, which made some unpleasantness. So our lovely companions have faded and gone ahead to savour the fleshpots of Tarta, while we follow at our leisure. You have never ridden on an elephant? If you go slow enough, believe me it is the very poetry of motion, for you are part, as it were, of a cosmic process. How does it go? 'Moved round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks and stones and trees.'"

A word was spoken in a lower tone, there was the sound of the shuffling of heavy feet, and a man stepped lightly on to the window-sill and through the casement. His first act was to turn up the wick of the lamp on the table, and light his cigarette at its funnel.

Jaikie found himself gazing at a figure which might have been the Pied Piper. It was very tall and very ragged. It wore an old tunic of horizon-blue from which most of the buttons had gone, a scarlet cummerbund, and flapping cotton trousers which had once been white. It had no hat, and besides its clothes, its only other belonging was a long silver-mounted porcupine quill, which may have been used for the encouragement of Aurunculeia.

The scarecrow looked at Jaikie and saw something there which amused him, for he set his arms akimbo and laughed heartily. "How nature creeps up to art!" he cried. "Had this been an episode in a novel, it would have been condemned for its manifest improbability. There was an impish propulsive power about my little gold stater."

He took a small coin from his pocket and regarded it affectionately. Then he asked a question which brought Jaikie out of his chair. "Have you any news of Cousin Alison, Mr Galt?"

Slowly, to Jaikie's startled sight, the features of the scarecrow became the lineaments of the exquisite Mr Randal Glynde. The neat hair was now shaggy and very dusty, the beard was untrimmed, and every semblance of respectability had gone from his garments. But the long lean wrists were the same, the long slim fingers, and the penetrating blue eyes.

Mr Glynde replaced the stater in some corner of his person, and beamed upon Jaikie. He stretched an arm and grasped the jug of wine of which Jaikie had drunk about half, took a long pull at it, and set it down with a wry face.

"Vinegar," he said. "I had forgotten that the Flosgebirge wine sours in an hour. Do not trouble yourself, Mr Galt, for I have long ago supped. We were talking about Cousin Alison, for whom I understand you have a kindness. So have I. So gracious is my memory of her that I have been reciting verses in her honour in the only tongue in which a goddess should be hymned.

 

Alison, bella puella candida,

Quae bene superas lac et lilium

Album, quae simul rosam rubidam

Aut expolitum ebur Indicum,

Pande, puella, pande capillulos

Flavos, lucentes ut aurum nitidum.

 

What puzzles me is whether that is partly my own or wholly John the Silentiar's. I had been reading John the Silentiar, but the book was stolen from me, so I cannot verify… . No, I will not sleep here. I must sleep at Tarta, though it will be broad daylight before I shut my eyes. Tatius, my manager, is a worthy man, but he is to Meleager my clown as acid to a raw wound, and without me to calm them they will be presently rubbing each other's noses in the mud."

"Are you a circus proprietor?" Jaikie asked.

Mr Glynde nodded pleasantly.

"In me you see the sole proprietor of the epochal, the encyclopædic, the grandiose Cirque Doré of Aristide Lebrun. The epithets are not mine, but those of the late Aristide, who these three years has been reposing in full evening dress in the cemetery of Montléry. I purchased the thing from his widow, stock-in-trade, good-will and all—even the gentle Aurunculeia. I have travelled with it from the Pyrenees to the Carpathians and from the Harz to the Apennines. Some day, who knows, I will widen these limits and go from the Sierra-Nevada to the Urals, and from the Jotunheim to Parnassus. Geography has always intoxicated me."

"I understand the fun of travelling," said Jaikie, "but isn't a circus rather heavy baggage to lug after you?"

"Ah, no. You do not realise the power of him who carries with him a little world of merriment, which can be linked to that substratum of merriment which is found in every human species. No fumbling for him—he finds the common touch at once. He must suit himself of course to various tastes. Clowning in one place, horse-tricks in a second, the sweet Aurunculeia in a third. The hills have different fancies from the valleys, and the valleys from the plains. The Cirque Doré is small, but I flatter myself it is select. We have as fine white barbs as ever came out of Africa, and Meleager my clown has the common denominator of comedy at which all Europe can laugh. No women. Too temperamental and troublesome. My people quarrel in every known tongue, but, being males, it is summer lightning… . Ah, Mr Galt, I cannot explain to you the intoxication of shifting camp weekly, not from town to town, but from one little human cosmos to another. I have the key which unlocks all doors, and can steal into the world at the back of men's minds, about which they do not speak to their politicians and scarcely even to their priests.

"I have power, too," Mr Glynde went on; "for I appeal to something old and deep in man's nature. Before this I have wrecked a promising insurrection through the superior charm of my circus over an émeute in a market-place. I have protected mayors and burgomasters from broken heads, and maybe from cut throats, by my mild distractions. And I have learned many things that are hidden from diplomats and eager journalists. I, the entertainer, the fils de joie, I am becoming an expert, if I may say so modestly, on the public opinion of Europe—or rather on that incoherent soul which is greater than opinion."

"Well, and what do you make of it?" Jaikie asked. He was fascinated by his visitor, the more so as he was a link with Alison, but sleep was descending upon him like an armed man, and he asked the conventional question without any great desire to hear the answer.

"Bad," said Mr Glynde. "Or, since a moral judgment is unnecessary, shall I say odd? We are now in the midst of the retarded liquidation of the war. I do not mean debts and currencies and economic fabrics, but something much more vital—the thoughts of men. The democracies have lost confidence. So long as they believed in themselves they could make shift with constitutions and parliaments and dull republics. But once let them lose confidence, and they are like children in the dark, reaching out for the grasp of a strong hand. That way lies the dictator. It might be the monarch if we bred the right kind of king… . Also there is something more dangerous still, a stirring of youth, disappointed, aggrieved youth, which has never known the discipline of war. Imaginative and incalculable youth, which clamours for the moon and may not be content till it has damaged most of the street lamps.

"But you nod," said Mr Glynde rising. "I weary you. You must to bed and I to Tarta. I must not presume upon the celestial patience of Aurunculeia."

Jaikie rose too and found the tall man's hand on his shoulder. He observed sleepily that his visitor's face, now clear in the lamplight, had changed, the smile had gone from it, and the eyes were cool and rather grave. Also the slight artifice of his speech, which recalled an affected Cambridge don of his acquaintance, was suddenly dropped.

"I gave you certain advice," said Mr Glynde, "when you spun my stater in London. I told you that if you wanted peace you should stick to the west. You are pretty far east, Mr Galt, so I assume that a quiet life is not your first object. You have been walking blindly and happily for weeks waiting for what the days brought forth. Have you any very clear notion where you have got to?"

"I'm rather vague, for I have a rotten map. But I know that I've come to the end of my money. To-morrow I must turn about and make for home. I mean to get to Munich and travel back by the cheapest way."

"Three and a quarter miles from Kremisch the road to Tarta drops into a defile among pine-trees. At the top there are two block-houses, one on each side of the highway. If you walked that way armed guards would emerge from the huts and demand your passport. Also they would make an inquisition into your baggage more peremptory than most customs-officers. That is the frontier of Evallonia."

Jaikie's sleepiness left him. "Evallonia!" he cried. "I had no notion I was so near it."

"You have read of Evallonia in the English press?"

"Yes, and I have heard a lot about it. I've met Evallonians too—all sorts." He counted on his fingers. "Nine—ten, including Prince John."

"Prince John! Ah, you saw him at Lady Lamancha's party."

"I saw him two years before that in Scotland, and had a good deal to do with him. With the others, too. I can tell you who they were, for I'm not likely to forget them. There were six Republicans—Mastrovin, Dedekind, Rosenbaum, Ricci, Calaman, and one whose name I never knew—a round-faced fellow in spectacles. There were three Monarchists—Count Casimir Muresco, Doctor Jagon and Prince Odalchini."

The tall man carefully closed the window, and sat down again. When he spoke it was in a low voice.

"You know some very celebrated people. I think I can place you, Mr Galt. You are called Jaikie, are you not, by your friends? Two years ago you performed a very notable exploit, which resulted in the saving of several honest men and the confounding of some who were not so honest. That story is famous in certain circles. I have laughed over it often, not dreaming that one day I should meet the hero."

Jaikie shifted nervously, for praise made him unhappy. "Oh, I didn't do anything much. It was principally Alison. But what has gone wrong with Evallonia? I've been expecting ever since to hear that the Monarchists had kicked out Mastrovin and his lot, but the whole thing seems to have fizzled."

Mr Glynde was regarding him with steady eyes, which even in the dim light seemed very bright.

"It has not fizzled, but Evallonia at this moment is in a critical state. It is no place for a quiet life, but then I do not think that is what you like… . Mr Galt, will you forgive me if I ask you a personal question? Have you any duty which requires your immediate return home?"

"None. But I've finished my money. I have just about enough to get me back."

"Money is nothing—that can be arranged. I would ask another question. Have you any strong interest in Evallonian affairs?"

"No. But some of my friends have—Mr Craw, the newspaper man, for example, and Dougal Crombie, his chief manager."

Mr Glynde brooded. "You know Mr Craw and Mr Crombie? Of course you would. But you have no prepossession in the matter? Except an inclination to back your friends' view?"

"Yes. I thought Prince John a decent fellow, and I liked the queer old Monarchist chaps. Also I greatly disliked Mastrovin and his crowd. They tried to bully me."

The other smiled. "That I am sure was a bad blunder on their part." He was silent for a minute, and then he laid a hand on Jaikie's knee. "Mr Galt," he said solemnly, "if you continued your walking-tour to-morrow eastward down the wooded glen, and passed the frontier—I presume your passport is in order?—you would enter a strange country. How strange I have no time to tell you, but I will say this—it is at the crisis of its destiny and any hour may see a triumph or a tragedy. I believe that you might be of some use in averting tragedy. You are a young man, and, I fancy, not indisposed to adventure. If you go home you will be out of danger in that happy cosseted world of England. If you go on, you will certainly find danger, but you may also find wonderful things for which danger is a cheap price. How do you feel about it?"

Jaikie felt many things. Now he knew why all day he had had that curious sense of expectation. There was a queer little flutter at his heart.

"I don't know," he said. "It's all rather sudden. I should want to hear more about it."

"You shall. You shall hear everything before you take any step which is irrevocable. If you will make one day's march into Evallonia, I will arrange that the whole situation is put honestly before you… . But no! I have a conscience. I can foretell what you will decide, and I have no right even to bring you within the possibility of that decision, for it will mean danger—it may even mean death. You are too young to gamble with."

"I think," said Jaikie, "I should like to put my nose inside Evallonia just to say I'd been there. You say I can come back if I don't like it. Where's that little coin of yours? It sent me out here, and it may as well decide what I do next."

"Sportsman," said Mr Glynde. He produced the stater and handed it to Jaikie, who spun it—"Heads go on, tails go home." But owing to the dim light, or perhaps to sleepy eyes, he missed his catch, and the coin rolled on the floor. He took the lamp to look for it, and behold it was wedged upright in a crack in the board—neither heads nor tails.

Mr Glynde laughed merrily. "Apparently the immortal Gods will have no part in this affair. I don't blame them, for Evallonia is a nasty handful. The omens on the whole point to home. Good night, Mr Galt. We shall no doubt meet in England."

"I'll sleep on it," said Jaikie. "If I decide to go on a little farther, what do I do?"

"You will reach Tarta by midday, and just beyond the bridge you will see a gipsy-looking fellow, short but very square, with whiskers and earrings and a white hat with 'Cirque Doré' embroidered on it in scarlet. That is Luigi, my chief fiddler. You will ask him the way to the Cirque, and he will reply in French, which I think you understand, that he knows a better restaurant. After that you will be in his charge. Only I beg of you to keep your mind unbiased by what I have said, and let sleep give you your decision. Like Cromwell I am a believer in Providences, and since that wretched stater won't play the game, you must wait for some other celestial guidance."

He opened the casement, spoke a word in an unknown tongue, and a heavy body stirred in the dust below. Then he stepped lightly into the velvet darkness, and there followed a heaving and shuffling which presently died away. When a minute later the moon topped the hill, the little street was an empty silver alley.

Chapter 2 THE HOUSE OF THE FOUR WINDS

The night brought no inspiration to Jaikie, for his head was no sooner on his chaff-filled pillow than he seemed to be awake in broad daylight. But the morning decided him. There had been an early shower, the dust was laid in the streets, and every cobble of the side-walk glistened. From the hills blew a light wind, bearing a rooty fragrance of pine and moss and bracken. A delicious smell of hot coffee and new bread ascended from below; cats were taking their early airing; the vintner opposite, who had a face like a sun, was having a slow argument with the shoemaker; a pretty girl with a basket on her arm was making eyes at a young forester in velveteen breeches and buckskin leggings; a promising dog-fight was in progress near the bridge, watched by several excited boys; the sky above had the soft haze which promises a broiling day.

Jaikie felt hungry both for food and enterprise. The morning's freshness was like a draught of spring water, and every sense was quick and perceptive. He craned his head out of the window, and looked back along the way he had come the night before. It showed a dull straight vista between trees. He looked eastward, and there, beyond the end of the village, the world dropped away, and he was looking at the blue heavens and a most appetising crook in the road, which seemed to hesitate, like a timid swimmer, before plunging downwards. There could be no question about it. On this divinest of mornings he refused dully to retrace his steps. He would descend for one day into Evallonia.

He breakfasted on fried eggs and brook trout, paid a diminutive bill, buckled on his knapsack, and before ten o'clock had left Kremisch behind him. The road was all that it had promised. It wound through an upland meadow with a strong blue-grey stream to keep it company, and every now and then afforded delectable glimpses of remote and shining plains. The hills shouldered it friendlily, hills with wide green rides among the firs and sometimes a bald nose of granite. Jaikie had started out with his mind chiefly on Randal Glynde, that suddenly-discovered link with Alison. Evallonia and its affairs did not interest him, or Mr Glynde's mysterious summons to adventure. His meditations during recent weeks had been so much on his own land and the opportunities which it might offer to a deserving young man that he was not greatly concerned with the doings of foreigners, even though some of them were his acquaintances. But he was strongly interested in Mr Glynde. He had never met anybody quite like him, so cheerful and secure in his absurdities. The meeting with him had rolled from Jaikie's back many of the cares of life. The solemnity with which he had proposed a visit to Evallonia seemed in the retrospect to be out of the picture and therefore negligible. Mr Glynde was an apostle of fantasy and his seriousness was itself a comedy. The memory of him harmonised perfectly with this morning world, which with every hundred yards was unveiling a new pageant of delight.

Presently he forgot even Mr Glynde in the drama of the roadside. There was a pool in the stream, ultramarine over silver sand, with a very big trout in it—not less than three pounds in weight. There was a bird which looked like a dipper, but was not a dipper. There was a hawk in the sky, a long-winged falcon of a kind he had never seen before. And on a boulder was perched—rarity of rarities—an unmistakable black redstart… . And then the glen seemed to lurch forward and become a defile, down which the stream dropped in a necklace of white cascades. At the edge was a group of low buildings, and out of them came two men carrying rifles.

Jaikie looked with respect at the first Evallonians he had seen on their native heath. They were small men with a great breadth of shoulder, and broad good-humoured countenances—a typical compound, he thought, of Slav and Teuton. But their manner belied their faces, for they were almost truculent, as if they had been soured by heavy and unwelcome duties. They examined everything in his pack and his pockets, they studied his passport with profound suspicion, and they interrogated him closely in German, which he followed with difficulty. Several times they withdrew to consult together; once they retired into the block-house, apparently to look up some book of regulations. It was the better part of an hour before they allowed him to pass. Then something ingenuous in Jaikie's face made them repent of their doubts. They grimaced and shook hands with him, and shouted Grüss Gott till he had turned a corner.

"Evallonia is a nervous country," thought Jaikie. "Lucky I had nothing contraband on me, or I should be bankrupt."

After that the defile opened into a horseshoe valley, with a few miles ahead the spires of a little town. He saw the loop of a river, of which the stream he had followed must be a tributary. On the north side was something which he took for a hill, but which closer inspection revealed to be a dwelling. It stood high and menacing, with the town huddled up to it, built of some dark stone which borrowed no colour from the bright morning. On three sides it seemed to be bounded by an immense park, for he saw great spaces of turf and woodland which contrasted with the chessboard tillage of other parts of the plain.

A peasant was carrying hay from a roadside meadow. Jaikie pointed to the place and asked its name.

The man nodded. "Yes, Tarta."

"And the castle?"

At first the man puzzled; then he smiled. He pronounced a string of uncouth vocables. Then in halting German: "It is the great Schloss. I have given you its name. It means the House of the Four Winds."

As Jaikie drew nearer the town he saw the reason why it was so called. Tarta stood in the mouth of a horseshoe and three glens debouched upon it, his own from the west and two other sword-cuts from the north and south. It was clear that the castle must be a very temple of Aeolus. From three points of the compass the winds would whistle down the mountain gullies, and on the east there was no shelter from the devilments bred in the Asian steppes.

Before noon he was close to the confines of the little town. His stream had ceased to be a mountain torrent, and had expanded into broad lagoons, and just ahead was its junction with the river. Over the latter there was a high-backed bridge flanked by guard-houses, and beyond a jumble of masonry which promised narrow old-world streets. The castle, seen at closer range, was more impressive than ever. It hung over the town like a thundercloud, but a thundercloud from which the lightnings had fled, for it had a sad air of desolation. No flag flew from its turrets, no smoke issued from its many chimneys, the few windows in the great black sides which rose above the streets were like blind eyes. Yet its lifelessness made a strong appeal to Jaikie's fancy. This bustling little burgh under the shadow of a mediæval relic was like a living thing tied to a corpse. But was it really a corpse? He guessed at its vast bulk stretching northward into its wild park. It might have turned a cold shoulder on Tarta and yet within its secret demesne be furiously alive. Meantime it belied its name, for not a breath of wind stirred in the sultry noon. Somewhere beyond the bridge must be Luigi, the chief fiddler of the Cirque Doré. He hoped that Luigi would take him where he could get a long drink.

He was to get the drink, but not from Luigi's hands. On the side of the bridge farthest from the town the road passed through a piece of rough parkland, perhaps the common pasturage of the mediæval township. Here a considerable crowd had gathered, and Jaikie pressed forward to discover the reason of it. Down the road from Tarta a company of young men was marching, with the obvious intention of making camp in the park; indeed, certain forerunners had already set up a grove of little shelter-tents. They were remarkable young men, for they carried themselves with disciplined shoulders, and yet with the free swing from the hips of the mountaineer. Few of them were tall, but their leanness gave the impression of a good average height, and they certainly looked amazingly hard and fit. Jaikie, accustomed to judge physique on the Rugby field, was impressed by their light-foot walk and their easy carriage. They were not in the least like the Wandervögel whom he had met on many German roads, comfortable sunburnt folk out for a holiday. These lads were in serious training, and they had some purpose other than amusement.

As they passed, the men in the crowd saluted by raising the left hand and the women waved their handkerchiefs. In the rear rode a young man, a splendid figure on a well-bred flea-bitten roan. The rank-and-file wore shorts and green shirts open at the neck, but the horseman had breeches and boots and a belted green tunic, while a long hunting-knife swung at his middle. He was a tall fellow with thick fair hair, a square face and dark eyebrows—a face with which Jaikie was familiar in very different surroundings.

Jaikie, in the front row of the crowd, was so overcome with amazement that his left hand remained unraised and he could only stare. The horseman caught sight of him, and he too registered surprise, from which he instantly recovered. He spoke a word to the ranks; a man fell out, and beckoned Jaikie to follow. The other spectators fell back from him as from a leper, and he and his warder followed the horse's tail into the open space, where the rest were drawing up in front of the tents.

Then the horseman turned to him.

"Salute," he said. Jaikie's arm shot up obediently.

The leader cast an eye over the ranks, and bade them stand easy and then fall out. He dismounted, flinging his bridle to an orderly. "Follow me," he said to Jaikie in English, and led him to a spot on the river-bank, where a larger tent had been set up. Two lads were busy there with kit and these he dismissed. Then he turned to Jaikie with a broad grin. "What on earth are you doing here?" he asked.

"Give me a drink first, Ashie," was the answer.

The young man dived into the tent and produced a bottle of white wine, a bottle of a local mineral water, and two tumblers. The two clinked glasses. Then he gave Jaikie a cigarette. "Now," he said, "what's your story?"

"I have been across half Europe," said Jaikie. "I must have tramped about five hundred miles. My money's done, and I go home to-morrow, but I thought I'd have a look inside Evallonia first. But what are you doing, Ashie? Is it Boy Scouts or a revolution?"

The other smiled and did not at once reply. That was a mannerism which the University of Cambridge had taught him, for when Count Paul Jovian (he had half a dozen other Christian names which we may neglect) entered St. Mark's he had been too loquacious. He and a cousin had shared lodgings, and at first they were not popular. They had an unpleasant trick of being easily insulted, talking about duels, and consequently getting their ears boxed. When they migrated within the College walls, the dislike of the cousin had endured, but Count Paul began to make friends. Finally came a night when the cousin's trousers were removed and used to decorate the roof, as public evidence of dislike, while Paul was unmolested. That occasion gave him his nickname, for he was christened Asher by a piously brought-up contemporary, the tribe of Asher having, according to the Book of Judges, "abode in its breaches." "Ashie" he had remained from that day.

Jaikie had begun by disliking him, he was so noisy and strange and flamboyant. But Count Paul had a remarkable gift of adapting himself to novel conditions. Presently his exuberance quieted down, he became more sparing in speech, he developed a sense of humour and laboured to acquire the idiom of their little society. In his second year he was indistinguishable from the ordinary English undergraduate. He had a pretty turn of speed, but it was found impossible to teach him the Rugby game; at boxing too he was a complete duffer; but he was a brilliant fencer, and he knew all that was to be known about a horse. Indeed, it was in connection with horses that Jaikie first came to like him. A groom from a livery stable lost his temper with a hireling, who was badly bitted and in a fractious temper. The Count's treatment of the case rejoiced Jaikie's heart. He shot the man into the gutter, eased the bit, and quieted the animal with a curious affectionate gentleness. After that the two became friends, in spite of the fact that the Count's taste for horses and hunting took him into a rather different set. They played together in a cricket eleven of novices called the "Cads of all Nations," who for a week of one long vacation toured the Midlands, and were soundly beaten by every village team.

There was a tough hardihood about the man which made Jaikie invite him more than once to be his companion in some of his more risky enterprises—invitations regretfully refused, for some business always took Ashie home. That home Jaikie knew to be in Eastern Europe, but he had not associated him with Evallonia. There was also an extreme innocence. He wanted to learn everything about England, and took Jaikie as his mentor, believing that in him he had found the greatest common measure of the British people. Whether he learned much may be doubted, for Jaikie was too little of a dogmatist to be a good instructor. But they slipped into a close friendship, and rubbed the corners off each other's minds.

"I know what I'm doing," said Ashie at last; "but I am not quite sure where it will finish. But that's a long story. You're a little devil, Jaikie, to come here at the tag-end of your holiday. If you had come a month ago we might have had all sorts of fun."

He had relapsed into the manner of the undergraduate, but there was something in him now which made it a little absurd. For the figure opposite Jaikie was not the agreeable and irresponsible companion he had known. Ashie looked desperately foreign, without a hint of Cambridge and England; bigger too, more mature, and rather formidable. The thick dark eyebrows in combination with the fair hair had hitherto given his appearance a touch of comedy; now the same brows bent above the grey eyes had something in them martial and commanding. Rob Roy was more of a man on his native heath than on the causeways of Glasgow.

"If you can arrange to stay here for a little," said Ashie, "I promise to show you life."

"Thank you very much, but I can't. I must be off home to-morrow—a week's tramping, and then the train."

"Give me three weeks."

"I'm sorry, but I can't." Jaikie found it hard to sort out his feelings, but he was clear that he did not want to dally in Evallonia.

Ashie's voice became almost magisterial.

"What are you doing here to-day?" he asked.

"I'm lunching with a friend and going back to Kremisch in the evening."

"Who's your friend?"

"I'm not quite sure of his name." Jaikie's caution told him that Mr Glynde might have many aliases. "He's in a circus."

Ashie laughed—almost in the old light-hearted way. "Just the kind of friend you'd have. The Cirque Doré? I saw some of the mountebanks in the streets… . You won't accept my invitation? I can promise you the most stirring time in your life."

"I wish I could, but—well, it's no use, I can't."

"Then we must part, for I have a lot to do."

"You haven't told me what you're doing."

"No. Some day I will—in England, if I ever come back to England."

He called one of his scouts, to whom he said something in a strange tongue. The latter saluted and waited for Jaikie to follow him. Ashie gave him a perfunctory handshake—"Good-bye. Good luck to you"; and entered his tent.

The boy led Jaikie beyond the encampment, and, with a salute and a long stare, left him at the entrance to the bridge. A clock on a steeple told him that it was a quarter-past twelve, pretty much the time that Mr Glynde had appointed. The bridge was almost empty, for the sight-seers who had followed Ashie's outfit had trickled back to their midday meals. Jaikie spent a few minutes looking over the parapet at the broad waters of the river. This must be the Rave, the famous stream which sixty miles on flowed through the capital city of Melina. He watched its strong current sweep past the walls of the great Schloss, which there dropped sheer into it, before in a wide circuit it formed the western boundary of the castle park. What an impregnable fortress, he thought, must have been this House of the Four Winds in the days before artillery, and how it must have lorded it over the little burgh under its skirts!

There was a gatehouse on the Tarta side of the bridge, an ancient crumbling thing bright with advertisements of the Cirque Doré. Beyond it a narrow street wound under the blank wall of the castle, ending in a square in which the chief building was a baroque town-house. From where Jaikie stood this town-house had an odd apologetic air, a squat thing dwarfed by the Schloss: like a dachshund beside a mastiff. The day was very warm, and he crossed over from the glare of one side of the street to the shadow of the other. The place was almost empty, most of the citizens being doubtless engaged with food behind shuttered windows. Jaikie was getting hungry, and so far he had looked in vain for Mr Glynde's Luigi. But as he moved towards the central square a man came out of an entry, and, stopping suddenly to light a cigarette, almost collided with him. Jaikie saw a white cap and scarlet lettering, and had a glimpse of gold earrings and a hairy face. He remembered his instructions.

"Can you show me the way to the Cirque Doré?" he asked.

The man grinned. "I will lead you to a better restaurant," he said in French with a villainous accent. He held out his hand and shook Jaikie's warmly, as if he had found a long-lost friend. Then he gripped him by the arm and poured forth a torrent of not very intelligible praise of the excellence of the cuisine to which he was guiding him.

Jaikie found himself hustled up the street and pulled inside a little dark shop, which appeared to be a combination of a bird-fancier's and a greengrocer's. There was nobody there, so they passed through it into a court strewn with decaying vegetables and through a rickety door into a lane, also deserted. After that they seemed to thread mazes of mean streets at a pace which made the sweat break on Jaikie's forehead, till they found themselves at the other end of the town, where it ebbed away into shacks and market-gardens.

"I am very hungry," said Jaikie, who saw his hopes of luncheon disappearing.

"The Signor must have patience," was the answer. "He has still a little journey before him, but at the end of it he will have honest food."

Luigi was an adept at under-statement. He seemed to wish to escape notice, which was easy at this stagnant hour of the day. Whenever anyone appeared he became still as a graven image, with an arresting hand on Jaikie's arm. They chose such cover as was available, and any track they met they crossed circumspectly. The market-gardens gave place to vineyards, which were not easy to thread, and then to wide fields of ripe barley, hot as the Sahara. Jaikie was in good training, but this circus-man Luigi, though he looked plump and soft, was also in no way distressed, never slackening pace and never panting. By and by they entered a wood of saplings which gave them a slender shade. At the far end of it was a tall palisade of chestnut stakes, lichened and silvery with age. "Up with you," said Luigi, and gave Jaikie a back which enabled him to grasp the top and swing himself over. To his annoyance the Italian followed him unaided, supple as a monkey.

"Rest and smoke," he said. "There is now no reason for hurry except the emptiness of your stomach."

They rested for ten minutes. Behind them was the palisade they had crossed, and in front of them glades of turf, and wildernesses of fern and undergrowth, and groves of tall trees. It was like the New Forest, only on a bigger scale.

"It is a noble place," said Luigi, waving his cigarette. "From here it is seven miles to Zutpha, where is a railway. Tarta in old days was only, so to say, the farmyard behind the castle. From Zutpha the guests of the princes of this house were driven in great coaches with outriders. Now there are few guests, and instead of a coach-and-eight a Ford car. It is the way of the world."

When they resumed their journey it was at an easier pace. They bore to their left, and presently came in view of what had once been a formal garden on a grandiose scale. Runnels had been led from the river, and there was a multitude of stone bridges and classic statuary and rococo summer-houses. Now the statues were blotched with age, the bridges were crumbling, and the streams were matted beds of rushes. Beyond, rising from a flight of terraces, could be seen the huge northern façade of the castle, as blank as the side it showed to Tarta. It had been altered and faced with a white stone a century ago, but the comparative modernity of this part made its desolation more conspicuous than that of the older Gothic wings. What should have been gay with flowers and sun-blinds stood up in the sunlight as grim as a deserted factory; and that, thought Jaikie, is grimmer than any other kind of ruin.

Luigi did not take him up the flights of empty terraces. Beyond the formal garden he turned along a weedy path which flanked a little lake. On one side was the Cyclopean masonry of the terrace wall, and, where it bent at an angle, cloaked by a vast magnolia, they came suddenly upon a little paved court shaded by a trellis. It was cool, and it was heavily scented, for on one side was a thicket of lemon verbena. A table had been set for luncheon, and at it sat two men, waited on by a foot-man in knee breeches and a faded old coat of blue and silver.

"You are not five minutes behind time," said the elder of the two. "Anton," he addressed the servant, "take the other gentleman indoors and see to his refreshment." … To Jaikie he held out his hand. "We have met before, Mr Galt. I have the honour to welcome you to my poor house. Mr Glynde I think you already know."

"You expected me?" Jaikie asked in some surprise.

"I was pretty certain you would come," said Mr Glynde.

Jaikie saw before him that Prince Odalchini whom two years ago he had known as one of the tenants of the Canonry shooting of Knockraw. The Prince's hair was a little greyer, his well-bred face a little thinner, and his eyes a little darker round the rims. But in the last burned the same fire of a gentle fanaticism. He was exquisitely dressed in a suit of white linen with a tailed coat, and shirt and collar of turquoise-blue silk—blue and white being the Odalchini liveries. Mr Randal Glynde had shed the fantastic garments of the previous night, but he had not returned to the modishness of his English clothes; he wore an ill-cut suit of some thin grey stuff that made him look like a commis-voyageur in a smallish way of business, and to this part he had arranged his hair and beard to conform. To his outfit a Guards tie gave a touch of startling colour. "We will not talk till we have eaten," said the Prince. "Mr Galt must have picked up an appetite between here and Kremisch."

Jaikie had one of the most satisfying meals of his career. There was an omelet, a dish of trout, and such peaches as he had never tasted before. He had acquired a fresh thirst during his journey with Luigi, and this was assuaged by a white wine which seemed to be itself scented with lemon verbena, a wine in slim bottles beaded with the dew of the ice-cellar. He was given a cup of coffee made by the Prince's own hands, and a long fat cigarette of a brand which the Prince had specially made for him in Cairo.

"Luigi spoke the truth," said Mr Glynde smiling, "when he said that he would conduct you to a better restaurant."

The footman withdrew and silence fell. Bees wandered among the heliotrope and verbena and pots of sapphire agapanthus, and even that shady place felt the hot breath of the summer noon. Sleep would undoubtedly have overtaken Jaikie and Mr Glynde, but for the vigour of Prince Odalchini, who seemed, like a salamander, to draw life and sustenance from the heat. His high-pitched, rather emotional voice kept his auditors wakeful. "I will explain to you," he told Jaikie, "what you cannot know or have only heard in a perversion. I take up the history of Evallonia after Prince John sailed from your Scotch loch."

He took a long time over his exposition, and as he went on Jaikie found his interest slowly awakening. The cup of the abominations of the Republican Government had apparently long ago been filled. Evallonia was ready to spew them out, but unfortunately the Monarchists were not quite ready to take their place. This time it was not trouble with other Powers or with the League of Nations. Revolutions had become so much the fashion in Europe that they were taken as inevitable, whether their purpose was republic, monarchy, or dictatorship. The world was too weary to argue about the merits of constitutional types, and the nations were too cumbered with perplexed economics to have any desire to meddle in the domestic affairs of their neighbours. Aforetime the Monarchists had feared the intervention of the Powers or some finding of the League, and therefore they had sought the mediation of British opinion. Now their troubles were of a wholly different kind.

Prince Odalchini explained. Communism was for the moment a dead cause in Evallonia, and Mastrovin and his friends had as much chance of founding a Soviet republic as of plucking down the moon. Mastrovin indeed dared not show himself in public, and the present administration of his friends staggered along, corrupt, incompetent, deeply unpopular. It would collapse at the slightest pressure. But after that?

"Everywhere in the world," said the Prince, "there is now an uprising of youth. It does not know what it seeks. It did not know the hardships of war. But it demands of life some hope and horizon, and it is determined to have the ordering of things in its hands. It is conscious of its ignorance and lack of discipline, so it seeks to inform and discipline itself, and therein lies its danger."

"Ricci," he went on. "You remember him in the Canonry?—a youngish man like a horse-dealer. At that time he was a close ally of the Republican Government, but eighteen months ago he became estranged from it—he and Count Jovian, who was not with the others in Scotland. Well, Ricci had an American wife of enormous wealth, and with the aid of her money he set out to stir up our youth. He had an ally in the Jovian I have mentioned, who was a futile vain man, like your Justice Shallow in Shakespeare, easily flattered and but little respected, but with a quick brain for intrigue. These two laid the foundations of a body called Juventus, which is now the strongest thing in Evallonia. They themselves were rogues, but they enlisted many honest helpers, and soon, like the man in the Arabian Nights, they had raised a jinn which they could not control. Jovian died a year ago—he was always sick—and Ricci is no longer the leader. But the thing itself marches marvellously. It has caught the imagination of our people and fired their pride. Had we an election, the Juventus candidates would undoubtedly sweep the board. As it is, it contains all the best of Evallonian youth, who give up to it their leisure, their ambition and their scanty means. It is in its way a noble thing, for it asks only for sacrifice, and offers no bribes. It is, so to speak, a new Society of Jesus, sworn to utter obedience. But, good or ill, it has most damnably spiked the guns of us Royalists."

Jaikie asked why.

"Because it is arrogant, and demands that whatever is done for Evallonia it alone shall do it. The present Government must go, and at once, for it is too gross a scandal. If we delay, there will be a blind revolution of the people themselves. You will say—let Juventus restore Prince John. Juventus will do nothing of the kind, since Prince John is not its own candidate. If we restore him, Juventus will become anti-Monarchist. What then will it do? I reply that it does not yet know, but there is a danger that it may set up one of its own people as dictator. That would be tragic, for in the first place Evallonia does not need or desire a dictator, being Monarchist by nature, and in the second place Juventus does not want a dictatorship either. It is Nationalist, but not Fascist. Yet the calamity may happen."

"Has Juventus any leader who could fill the bill?" Jaikie asked.

The Prince shook his head. "I do not think so—therefore its action would be only to destroy and obstruct, not to build. Ricci with his wife's millions is now discredited; they have used him and cast him aside. There are some of the very young with power I am told—particularly a son of Jovian's."

"Is his name Paul?" Jaikie asked, and was told yes.

"I know him," he said. "He was at Cambridge with me. I have just seen him, for about two hours ago he stood me a drink."

The Prince in his surprise upset the coffee-pot, and even the sophisticated eyes of Mr Glynde opened a little wider.

"You know Paul Jovian? That is miraculous, Mr Galt. Will you permit me to speak a word in private with Mr Glynde? There are some matters still too secret even for your friendly ears."

The two withdrew and left Jaikie alone in the alcove among bees and butterflies and lemon verbena. He was a little confused in his mind, for after a solitary month he had suddenly strayed into a place where he seemed to know rather too many people. Embarrassing people, all of whom pressed him to stay longer. He did not much like their country. It was too hot for him, too scented and airless. He was not in the least interested in the domestic affairs of Evallonia, either the cantrips of Ashie or the solemn intrigues of the Prince. It was not his world; that was a cool, bracing upland a thousand miles away, for which he had begun to feel acutely homesick. Alison would soon be back in the Canonry, and he must be there to meet her. He felt that for the moment he was fed up with foreign travel.

The two men returned, and sat down before him with an air of purpose.

"Where did you find Count Paul?" the Prince asked.

"On the Kremisch side of the Tarta bridge. He was going into camp with a detachment of large-sized Boy Scouts."

"You know him well?"

"Pretty well. We have been friends ever since his first year. I like him—at least I liked him at Cambridge, but here he seems a rather different sort of person. He wanted me to stay on in Evallonia—to stay for three weeks."

The two exchanged glances.

"So!" said the Prince. "And your answer?"

"I refused. He didn't seem particularly well pleased."

"Mr Galt, we also make you that proposal. Will you be my guest here in Evallonia for a little—perhaps for three weeks—perhaps longer? I believe that you can be of incalculable value to an honest cause. I cannot promise success—that is not commanded by mortals—but I can promise you an exciting life."

"That was what I said to you last night," said Mr Glynde smiling. "My little stater would give you no guidance, but the fact that you have ventured into Evallonia encourages me to hope."

Jaikie at the moment had no desire for excitement. He felt limp and drowsy and oppressed; the Prince's luncheon had been too good, and this scented nook choked him; he wanted to be somewhere where he could breathe fresh air. Evallonia was wholly devoid of attractions.

"I don't think so," he said. "I'm tremendously honoured that you should want me, but I shouldn't be any use to you, and I must get home."

"You are not to be moved?" said Mr Glynde.

Jaikie shook his head. "I've had enough of the continent of Europe."

"I understand," said Mr Glynde. "I too sometimes feel that satiety, and think I must go home." He turned to the Prince. "I doubt if we shall persuade Mr Galt. I wish Casimir were here. Where, by the way, is he?"

The Prince replied with a word which sounded to Jaikie like "Unnutz," a word which woke a momentary interest in his lethargic mind.

"What then do you propose to do?" The Prince turned to him.

"Go back to Kremisch to-night, sleep there and set off home to-morrow."

"What must be must be. But I do not think it wise for you to start yet awhile. Let us go indoors, and I will show you some of the few household gods which poverty has left me."

Jaikie spent an hour or two pleasantly in the cool chambers of the great house. The place was shabby but not neglected, and there were treasures there which, judiciously placed on the market, might well have restored the Odalchini fortunes. He looked at long lines of forbidding family portraits; at a little room so full of masterpieces that it was a miniature Salle Carrée; at one of the finest collections of armour in the world; and at a wonderful array of sporting trophies, for the Odalchinis had been famous game-shots. He was given tea at a little table in the hall quite in the English fashion. But very soon he became restless. The sun was getting low, and he had a considerable distance to walk before supper.

"You had better go first to the Cirque Doré," said Mr Glynde. "There I will meet you, and show you the way out of the town. You have been in dangerous territory, Mr Galt, and must be circumspect in leaving it. No, we cannot go together. I will take a different road and meet you there. Luigi will guide you. You will cross the park by the way you came, and Luigi will be waiting for you outside the pale."

"I am sorry," said the Prince. He shook hands with so regretful a face, and his old eyes were so solemn that Jaikie had a moment of compunction. When he left the castle the cool of the evening was beginning, and the twilight scents came freshly and pleasantly to his nostrils. This was a better place than he had thought, and he felt more vigorous and enterprising. He had the faintest twinge of regret about his decision. After all, there was nothing to call him home, for there would be no Dickson McCunn there yet awhile, and no Dougal, and perhaps no Alison. But there would be the Canonry, and he fixed his mind upon its delectable glens as he retraced his path of the morning. One of Jaikie's endowments was an almost perfect instinct for direction, and he struck the high chestnut pale pretty much at the spot where he had first crossed it.

Getting over without Luigi's help was a difficult business, and, Jaikie's energy being wholly employed in the task, he did not trouble to prospect the land… . He tumbled over the top and dropped into what seemed to be a crowd of people.

Strong hands gripped him. A cloth was skilfully wound round his face, blinding his eyes and blanketing his voice. Another wrapped his arms to his side, and a third bound his legs. He struggled, but his sense of the physical superiority of his assailants was so great that he soon gave it up; he was like a thin rabbit in the clutch of an enormous gamekeeper. Yet the hands were not unkindly, and his bandages, though effective, were not painful.

He was carried swiftly along for a few minutes and then placed in some kind of car. Somebody sat down beside him. The car was started, and bumped for a little along very rough roads… . Then it came to a highway and moved fast… . Jaikie had by this time collected his thoughts, and they were wrathful. His first alarm had gone, for he reflected that there was no one likely to mean mischief to him. He was pretty certain what had happened. This was Prince Odalchini's way of detaining an unwilling guest. Well, he would presently have a good deal to say to the Prince and to Mr Glynde.

The car slowed down, and his companion, whoever he was, began with deft hands to undo his bonds. First he loosed his legs. Then, almost with the same movement, he released his arms and drew the bandages from his face. Then he snapped a switch which lit up dimly the interior of the limousine in which the blinds had been drawn.

Jaikie found himself looking at the embarrassed face of Ashie.

Chapter 3 DIVERSIONS OF A MARIONETTE

1.

Miss Alison Westwater dropped with a happy sigh beside a bed of wild strawberries still wet with dew, and proceeded to make a second breakfast. It was still early morning—not quite seven o'clock—but she had been walking ever since half-past five, when she had broken her fast on a cup of coffee and a last-night's roll provided by a friendly chambermaid. She had left the highway, which, switch-backing from valley to valley, took the traveller to Italy, and had taken a forest track which after a mile or two among pines came out on an upland meadow, and led to a ridge, the spur of a high mountain, from which the kingdoms of the earth could be surveyed. The sky was not the pale turquoise bowl which in her own country heralded a perfect summer day, but an intense sapphire; the shadows were also blue, and the sunshine where it fell was a blinding essential light without colour, so that the grass looked like snowdrifts. The air had an aromatic freshness which stung the senses, and Alison drew great breaths of it till her throat was as cold as if she had been drinking spring water.

This was her one satisfactory time in the day. The rest of her waking hours were devoted to a routine which seemed void alike of mirth or reason. Her father's neuritis had almost gone, but so had his good humour, and it was a very peevish old gentleman that she accompanied in pottering walks by the lake-side or in aimless motor drives on blinding hot highways. Lord Rhynns was particular about his food, and the hotel cuisine did not please him, so he was in the habit of sampling, without much success, whatever Unnutz produced in the way of café and konditorei. He was also particular about his clothes, and since he dressed always in the elder fashion of tight trousers, coloured waistcoat, stiff collar and four-in-hand tie, he was generally warm and correspondingly irascible. Her mother did not appear till after midday, and required a good deal of coddling, for, having been driven out of her accustomed beat, she found herself short of acquaintances and quite unable to plan out her days. One curious consequence was that both, who had habituated themselves to a life of Continental vagrancy, suddenly began to long passionately for home. His lordship remembered that the shooting season would soon begin in the Canonry, and was full of sad reminiscences of the exploits of his youth, while to her ladyship came visions of the cool chambers and the smooth and comforting ritual of Castle Gay.

"I am a marionette," Alison had written to Jaikie. "I move at the jerk of a string, and it isn't my parents that pull it. It's this ghastly place, which has invented a régime for the idle middle-classes of six nations. I defy even you to break loose from it. I do the same things and make the same remarks and wear the same clothes every day at the proper hour. I'm a marionette and so are the other people—quite nice they are, and well-mannered, and friendly, but as dead as salted herrings. A good old-fashioned bounder would be a welcome change. Or a criminal."

As she sat on the moss she remembered this sentence—and something else. Unnutz was mainly villas and hotels, but there was an old village as a nucleus—wooden houses built on piles on the lake shore, and one or two narrow twisting streets with pumpkins drying on the shingle roofs. There was a bathing-place there very different from the modish thing on the main promenade, a place where you dived in a hut under a canvas curtain into deep green water, and could swim out to some fantastic little rock islets. She had managed once or twice to bathe there, and yesterday afternoon she had slipped off for an hour and had had a long swim by herself. Coming back she had recognised in a corner of the old village the first face of an acquaintance she had met since she came to Unnutz. Not an acquaintance exactly, for he had never seen her. But she remembered well the shaggy leonine head, the heavy brows and the forward thrust of the jaw. She had watched those features two years ago during some agonised minutes in the library of Castle Gay, till Mr Dickson McCunn had adroitly turned melodrama into farce, and she was not likely to forget them. She remembered the name too—Mastrovin, the power behind the Republican Government of Evallonia. Had not Jaikie told her that he was the most dangerous underground force in Europe?

What was this dynamic personage doing in a dull little Tirolese health resort? Was her wish to be granted, and their drab society enlivened by a criminal?

The thought only flitted across her mind, for she had other things to think about. She must make the most of her holiday, for by half-past ten she must be back to join her father in his petit déjeuner on the hotel verandah. Usually she had the whole hillside to herself, but this morning she had seen a car on the road which led to the high pastures. It had been empty, standing at the foot of one of the tracks which climbed upward through the pines. Someone else had her taste for early mornings in the hills. It had annoyed her to think that her sanctuary was not inviolable. She hoped that the intruder, whoever he or she was, was short in the wind and would not get higher than the wood.

She got up from her lair among the strawberries and wandered across the meadow, where every now and then outcrops of rock stuck grey noses through the flowers. She had a drink out of an ice-cold runnel. She saw a crested tit, a bird which she had never met before, and screwed her single field-glass into her eye to watch its movements. Also she saw a kite high up in the blue, and, having only once in her life met that type of hawk, regarded him with a lively interest. Then she came to a little valley the top of which was a ravine in the high rocks, and the bottom of which was muffled in the woods. There was a woodcutter's cottage here, wonderfully hidden in a cleft, with the pines on three sides and one side open to the hill. Where Alison stood she looked down upon it directly from above, and could observe the beginning if its daily life. She had been here before, and had seen an old woman, who might have come out of Grimm, carrying pails of water from a pool in the stream.

Now instead of the old woman there was a young man, presumably her son. He came slowly from the cottage and moved to the fringe of the trees, where a path began its downhill course. He possessed a watch, for he twice consulted it, as if he were keeping an appointment. His clothes were the ordinary forester's—baggy trousers of homespun, heavy iron-shod boots, and an aged velveteen jacket with silver buttons. He carried himself well, Alison thought, better than most woodmen, who were apt to be round-shouldered and slouching.

A second man came out of the wood—also a tall man, but dressed very differently from the woodcutter, for he wore flannels and a green Homburg hat. "My motorist," thought Alison. "He must know something about the woods, for the way through them to this cottage isn't easy to find."

The newcomer behaved oddly. He took off his hat. The woodcutter gave him his hand and he bowed over it with extreme respect. Then the woodcutter slipped his arm in his and led him towards the cottage.

Alison in her perch far above put the glass to her eye and got a good view of the stranger. There could be no mistake. Two years ago she had sat opposite him at dinner at Castle Gay and at breakfast at Knockraw. She recognised the fine shape of his head, and the face which would have been classically perfect but for the snub nose. One did not easily forget Count Casimir Muresco.

But who was the other? Noblemen with nine centuries of pedigree behind them do not usually bow over the hands of foresters and uncover their heads. She could not see his face, for it was turned away from her, but before the two entered the cottage she had no doubt about his identity. She was being given the back view of the lawful monarch of Evallonia.

From that moment Alison's boredom vanished like dew in the sun. She realised that she had stumbled upon the fringe of great affairs. What was it that Prince John had said to her at the dinner at Maurice's? That Unnutz was not a very good place for a holiday that summer, that it might be unpleasant, but that, being English, she would always be free to get away. That could only mean that something momentous was going to happen at Unnutz. What was Prince John doing disguised as a woodcutter in this remote and secret hut? … What was Count Casimir, architect of revolutions, doing there so early in the morning? Plots were being hatched, thought the girl in a delicious tremor of excitement. The curtain was about to rise on the play, and, unknown to the actors, she had a seat in a box.

And then suddenly she remembered the face she had seen the afternoon before in the lakeside alley. Mastrovin! He was the deadly enemy of Count Casimir and the Prince. He must know, or suspect, that the Prince was in the neighbourhood. Casimir probably knew nothing of Mastrovin's presence. But she, Alison, knew. The thought solemnised her, for such knowledge is as much a burden as a delight.

Her first impulse was to scramble down the hillside to the cottage, break in on the conspirators, and tell them what she knew. But she did not move, for it occurred to her that she might be more useful, and get more fun out of the business, if she remained silent. She waited for ten minutes till the two men appeared again. This time she had a good view of the woodcutter through her glass, and she recognised the comely and rather heavy countenance of Prince John. Casmir took a ceremonious leave and started down the track through the forest. Alison, who knew all the paths, followed him at a higher level. She wanted to discover whether or not his steps had been dogged.

Alison had taught Jaikie many things, and he had repaid her by instructing her in some of his own lore. He had made her almost as artful and silent a tracker as himself, and under his tuition she had brought to a high pitch her own fine natural sense of direction. Like a swift shadow she flitted through the pines, now on bare needle-strewn ground, now among tangles of rock and whortleberry. The route she took was almost parallel to Casimir's, but now and then she had to make a circuit to avoid some rocky dingle, and there were times when she had to cast back or cast ahead to trace him. It was rough going in parts, and since Casimir showed a remarkable turn of speed she had sometimes to slither down steeps and sometimes to run. By and by came glimpses of the valley below, and at last through a thinning of the pines she saw the last twisting of the hill-path before it debouched on the highway. Presently she saw the waiting car, and the tracker, being a little ahead of the tracked, sank down among the whortleberries to await events.

Casimir appeared, going warily, with an eye on the white strip of high road. It was still empty, for the Firnthal does not rise early. He reached the car, and examined it carefully, as if he feared that someone might have tampered with it in his absence. Satisfied, he took the driver's seat, backed on to the high road, and set out in the direction of Italy.

Alison observed his doings with only half an eye, for between her and the car she had seen something which demanded attention. She was now some two hundred yards above the road, and the ground immediately below her was occupied by a little rock-fall much overgrown with fern and scrub. There was something among the bushes which had not been put there by nature. Her glass showed her that that something was the head of a man. It was a bare head, with grizzled hair and one bald patch at the back, and she knew to whom it belonged. Mastrovin was not in Unnutz for the sake of the excellent sulphur baths or the mountain air.

Alison slipped out of her lair and as noiselessly as she could crawled to her right along the slope of the hill. She struck the path by which Casimir had descended, a path which was, so to speak, the grand trunk road from the hills, and which a little higher forked in several directions. Waiting a moment to get her breath, she made a hasty bouquet of some blue campanulas and sprigs of whortleberry and then sauntered down the path, a little flushed, a little untidy about the hair and wet about the shoes, but on the whole a creditable specimen of early-rising vigorous maidenhood.

Mastrovin, when she came in sight of him, was descending the hill and had already reached the high road. He had covered his head with a green hat, and wore a dark green suit of breeches and Norfolk jacket, just like any other tourist in a mountain country. Alison's whistling caught his ear, and at the foot of the track he stopped to wait for her.

"Grüss Gott!" he said, forcing his harsh features into amiability. "I have been looking for a friend. Have you seen anyone—any man—up in the woods? My friend is tall and walks fast, and his clothes are grey."

One of Alison's accomplishments was that she understood German perfectly, and spoke it with fluency and a reasonable correctness. But it occurred to her that it would not be wise to reveal this talent; so she pretended to follow Mastrovin with difficulty and to puzzle over one word, and she began to answer in the purest Ollendorff.

"You are English?" he asked. "Speak English, please. I understand it."

Alison obeyed. She explained that she had indeed met a man in the high woods, though she had not specially remarked his clothes. She had passed him, and thought that he must have returned soon after, for she had not seen him on her way down. She described minutely the place of meeting—on the right-hand road at the main fork, near the brow of the hill, and not far from the rock called the Wolf Crag which looked down on Unnutz—precisely the opposite direction from the woodcutter's hut.

Mastrovin thanked her with a flourish of his hat. "I must now to breakfast," he said. "There is a gasthaus by the roadside where I will await my friend, if he is not already there."

2.

Usually the two miles to Unnutz were the one black spot in the morning's walk, for they were flat and dusty and meant a return to the house of bondage. But to-day Alison was scarcely conscious of them, for she was thinking hard, with a flutter at her heart which was half-painful and half-pleasant. Prince John was here in retreat for some purpose, and Count Casimir was in touch with him; that must mean that things were coming to a head in Evallonia. Mastrovin, his bitterest enemy, was on the trail of Casimir, and must know that Prince John was in the neighbourhood. That meant trouble. Her false witness that morning might send Mastrovin on a wild-goose chase to the wrong part of the forest, but it was very certain that he must presently discover the Prince's hermitage. The Prince and Casimir might suspect that their enemies were looking for them, but they did not know that Mastrovin was in Unnutz. She alone knew that, and she must make use of her knowledge. Casimir had gone off in the direction of Italy; therefore she must warn the Prince, and that must be done secretly when she could be certain that she was not followed. She had begun to plan a midnight journey, for happily she had a room giving on a balcony, from which it would be easy to reach the ground. To her surprise she found that she looked forward with no relish to the prospect; if she had had company it would have been immense fun, but, being alone, she felt only the weight of a heavy duty. She longed passionately for Jaikie.

Entering the hotel by a side door, she changed into something more like the regulation toilet of Unnutz, and sought her father on the verandah. For once Lord Rhynns was in a good humour.

"A little late, my dear," he complained mildly. "Yes, I have had a better night. I am beginning to hope that I have got even with my accursed affliction." Then, regarding his daughter with complacent eyes, he became complimentary. "You are really a very pretty girl, Alison, though your clothes are not such as gentlewomen wore in my young days." With a surprising touch of sentiment he added, "You are becoming very like my mother."

Taking advantage of her father's urbanity, Alison broached the question of going home.

"Presently, my dear. Another week, I think, should set me right. Your mother is anxious to leave—a sudden craving for Scotland. We shall go for a little to Harriet at Castle Gay—she has been more than kind about it, and Craw has behaved admirably. I am told he has the place very comfortable, and I have always found him conduct himself like a gentleman. Money, my dear. Ample means are not only the passport to the name of gentility, but they create the thing itself. In these days it is not easy for a pauper to preserve his breeding.

"By the way," he continued, "some friends of ours arrived here this morning. They are breakfasting more elaborately than we are in the salle-à-manger. The Roylances. Janet Roylance, you remember, was old Cousin Alastair Raden's second girl."

"What!" Alison almost shrieked. It was the best news she could have got, for now she could share her burden of responsibility. In the regrettable absence of Jaikie the Roylances were easily the next best.

"Yes," her father went on. "They have been at Geneva, and have come on here for a holiday. Sir Archibald, they tell me, is making a considerable name for himself in politics. For a young man in these days he certainly has creditable manners."

His lordship finished his coffee, and announced that he proposed to go to his sitting-room till luncheon to write letters. Alison dutifully accompanied him thither, paid her respects to her mother, who was also in a more cheerful mood, and then hastened downstairs. In the big dining-room she found the pair she sought at a table in one of the windows. Alison flung herself upon Janet Roylance's neck.

"You've finished breakfast? Then come outdoors and smoke. I know a quiet corner beside the lake. I must talk to you at once. You blessed angels have been sent by Heaven just at the right moment."

When they were seated where a little half-moon of shrubbery made an enclave above the blue waters of the Waldersee, Sir Archie offered Alison a cigarette.

"No, thank you. I don't smoke. If I did it would be a pipe, I'm so sick of the cigarette-puffing hussy. First of all, what brought you two here?"

Sir Archie grinned. "The Conference has adjourned till Bolivia settles some nice point with Uruguay."

"We came," said Janet, "because we are free people with no plans and we knew that you were here. We thought we should find you moribund with boredom, Allie, but you are radiant. What has happened? Have the parents turned over a new leaf?"

"Papa is quite good and nearly well. Mamma has actually begun to crave for Scotland. There's no trouble at present on the home front. But the foreign situation is ticklish. This place is going to be the scene of dark doings, and I can't cope with them alone. That's why I hugged you like a bear. Have you ever heard of Evallonia?"

"I have," said Janet, "for I sometimes read the Craw Press."

"We've expected a revolution there," said Sir Archie, "any time these last two years. But something seems to have gone wrong with the timing."

"Well, that has been seen to. The blow-up must be nearly ready, and it's going to start in this very place. Listen to me very carefully. The story begins two years ago in Castle Gay."

Briefly but vigorously Alison told the tale of the raid on the Canonry and the discomfiture by Jaikie and Dickson McCunn of Mastrovin and his gang. ("Jaikie?" said Sir Archie. "That's the little chap we saw with you at Maurice's? I was in a scrap alongside him years ago. Janet knows the story. Good stamp of lad.") She sketched the personalities of the three Royalists and the six Republicans, and she touched lightly upon Prince John. She described the face seen the afternoon before in the old village, and her sight that morning of the Prince and Casimir at the woodcutter's hut. The drama culminated in Mastrovin squatted like a partridge in the scrub above Casimir's car.

"Mastrovin!" Sir Archie brooded. "He was at Geneva as an Evallonian delegate. Wonderful face of its kind, but it would make any English jury bring him in guilty of any crime without leaving the box. He was very civil to me. I thought him a miscreant but a sportsman, though I wouldn't like to meet him alone on a dark night. He looked the kind of chap who wasn't afraid of anything—except the other Evallonian female. You remember her, Janet?"

His wife laughed. "Shall I ever forget her? You never saw such a girl, Allie. A skin like clear amber, and eyes like topazes, and the most wonderful dark hair. She dressed always in bright scarlet and somehow carried it off. Archie, who as you know is a bit of a falconer, remembered that in the seventeenth century there was a hawk called the Blood-red Rook of Turkey, so we always called her that. She was a Countess Araminta Some-thing-or-other."

Alison's eyes opened. "I know her—at least, I have met her. She was in London the season before last. Her mother was English, I think, and hence her name. She rather scared me. She wasn't a delegate, was she?"

"No," said Archie. "She held a watching brief for something. I can tell you she scared old Mastrovin. He didn't like to be in the same room with her, and he changed his hotel when she turned up at it."

"Never mind the Blood-red Rook," said Alison. "Mastrovin is our problem. I don't care a hoot for Evallonian politics, but having once been on the Monarchist side I'm going to stick to it. Evallonia is apparently at boiling-point. The Monarchist cause depends upon Prince John. Mastrovin is for the Republic or something still shadier, and therefore he is against Prince John. That innocent doesn't know his enemy is about, and Casimir has gone off in the direction of Italy. Therefore we have got to do something about it."

"What puzzles me," said Archie, "is what your Prince is doing in Unnutz, which isn't exactly next door to Evallonia, and why he should want to get himself up as a peasant?"

"It puzzles me, too, but that isn't the point. It all shows that things are getting warm in Evallonia. What we have got to do is to dig Prince John out of that hut before Mastrovin murders or kidnaps him, and stow him away in some safer place. I considered it rather a heavy job for me alone, but is should be child's play for the three of us. Don't tell me you decline to play."

During the last few minutes of the conversation Archie's face had been steadily brightening.

"Of course we'll play," he said. "You can count us in, Alison, but I'm getting very discreet in my old age, and I must think it over pretty carefully. It's a chancy business purloining princes, however good your intentions may be. The thing's easy enough, but it's the follow-up that matters… . Wait a second. I've always believed that the best hiding-place was just under the light. What about bringing him to this hotel to join our party?"

"As Prince John or as a woodcutter?" Janet asked.

"As neither," said Archie. "My servant got 'flu in Geneva, and I had to leave him behind. How would the Prince fancy taking on the job? I can lend him some of my clothes. Is he the merry class of lad that likes a jape?"

The luncheon-gong boomed. "We can talk about that later," said Alison. "Meanwhile, it's agreed that we three slip out of this place after dark. We'll take your car part of the way, and there's a moon, and I can guide you the rest. We daren't delay, for I'm positive that this very night Mastrovin will get busy."

Sir Archie arose with mirth in his eye, patted his hair and squared his shoulders. A boy approached and handed him a telegram.

"It's from Bobby Despenser," he announced. "The Conference has resumed and he wants me back at once. Well, he can whistle for me."

He tore the flimsy into small pieces.

"Take notice, you two," he said, "that most unfortunately I have not received Bobby's wire."

3.

On the following morning three people sat down to a late breakfast in a private sitting-room of the Hotel Kaiserin Augusta. All three were a little heavy about the eyes, as if their night's rest had been broken, but in the air of each was a certain subdued excitement and satisfaction.

"My new fellow is settling down nicely," said Sir Archie, helping himself to his third cup of coffee. "Answers smartly to the name of McTavish. Lucky I brought the real McTavish's passport with me. Curious thing, but the passport photograph isn't unlike him, and he has almost the same measurements. I've put some sticking-plaster above his left eye to correspond to the scar that McTavish got in Mespot, and I've had a go at his hair with scissors—he objected pretty strongly to that, by the way. I've put him into my striped blue flannel suit, which you could tell for English a mile away, and given him a pair of my old brown shoes. Thank God, he's just about my size. I'm going to buy him a black Homburg—the shops here are full of them—and then he'll look the very model of a gentleman's gentleman, who has had to supplement his London wardrobe locally."

"But, Archie, he has the kind of face that you can't camouflage," said Janet. "Anyone who knows him is bound to recognise him."

Her husband waved his hand. "N'ayez pas peur, je m'en charge, as old Perriot used to say at Geneva. He won't be recognised, because no one will expect him here. He's in the wrong environment—under the light, so to speak, which is the best sort of hiding-place. He won't go much out of doors, and I've got him a cubby-hole of a bedroom up in the attics. Not too comfortable, but Pretenders to thrones must expect to rough it a bit. He'll mess with the servants, who are of every nationality on earth, and I've told him to keep his mouth shut. Like all royalties, he's a dab at languages, and speaks English without an accent, but I'm teaching him to give his words a Scotch twist. He tumbled to it straight off, and says 'Sirr' just like my old batman. If anyone makes trouble I've advised him to dot him one on the jaw in the best British style. He looks as if he could swing a good punch."

The small hours of the morning had been a stirring time for the party. They had left the hotel by Alison's verandah a little before midnight, and in Archie's car had reached the foot of the forest path, meeting no one on the road. Then their way had become difficult, for it was very dark among the pines, and Alison had once or twice been at fault in her guiding. The moon rose when they were near the crest of the hill, and after that it had been easy to find the road to the hut through the dew-drenched pastures. There things marched fast. There was pandemonium with two dogs, quieted with difficulty by Alison, who had a genius for animals. The old woman, who appeared with a stable-lantern, denied fiercely that there was any occupant of the hut except herself, her husband being dead these ten years and her only son gone over the mountains to a wedding. She was persuaded in the end by Alison's mention of Count Casimir, and the three were admitted.

Then Prince John had appeared fully dressed, with what was obviously a revolver in his pocket. He recognised Alison and had heard of Sir Archie, and things went more smoothly. The news that Mastrovin was on his trail obviously alarmed him, but he took a long time to be convinced about the need for shifting his residence. Clearly he was a docile instrument in the hands of the Monarchists, and hesitated to disobey their orders for fear of spoiling their plan. Things, it appeared, were all in train for a revolution in Evallonia, at any moment he might be required to act, and Unnutz had been selected as the council-chamber of the conspirators. On this point it took the united forces of the party to persuade him, but in the end he saw reason. Alison clinched the matter. "If Mastrovin and his friends get you, it's all up. If you come with us it may put a little grit in the wheels, but it won't smash the machine. Remember, sir, that these men are desperate, and won't stick at trifles. They were desperate two years ago at Castle Gay, but now it is pretty well your life or theirs, and it had better be theirs."

When he allowed himself to be convinced his spirits rose. He was a young man of humour, and approved of Sir Archie's proposal that he should go to their hotel. He liked the idea of taking the place of the absent McTavish, and thought that he could fill the part. There only remained to give instructions to the old woman. If anyone came inquiring, she was not to deny the existence of her late guest, though she was to profess ignorance of who or what he was. Her story was to be that he had left the preceding afternoon with his belongings on his back. She did not know where he had gone, but believed that it was over the mountains to the Vossthal, since he had taken the path for the Vossjoch.

The journey back had been simple, though Alison had thought it wise to make a considerable detour. It had been slightly complicated by the good manners of the Prince, since he persisted in offering assistance to Janet and Alison, who needed it as little as a chamois. They had reached the hotel just before daybreak, and had entered, they believed, without being observed. That morning Sir Archie had explained to the manager about the delayed arrival of his servant, and the name of Angus McTavish had been duly entered in the hotel books with the Roylances' party.

"And now," said Archie, "he's busy attending to my dress-clothes. What says the Scriptures? 'Kings shall be thy ministers and queens thy nursing mothers.' We're getting up in the world, Janet. I'm going to raise a chauffeur's cap for him, and I want him to take your parents, Alison, out in the car this afternoon to accustom the neighbourhood to the sight of a new menial. As for me, I propose to pay another visit to the hut. There's bound to have been developments up that way, and we ought to keep in touch with them. I'll be an innocent tourist out for a walk to observe birds."

"What worries me," said Janet, "is how we are going to keep the Monarchists quiet. We may have Count Casimir here any moment, and that will give the show away."

"No, it won't. I mean, he won't. I left a letter for him which will give him plenty to think about."

Janet set down her coffee-cup. "What did you say in the letter?" she demanded severely.

"McTavish wrote it—I only dictated the terms. He quite saw the sense of it. It was by way of being a piteous cry for help. It said he had been pinched by Mastrovin and his gang, and appealed to his friends to fly to his rescue. Quite affecting it was. You see the scheme? We've got to keep McTavish cool and quiet on the ice till things develop. If Casimir and his lot are looking for him in Mastrovin's hands they won't trouble us. If Mastrovin is being hunted by Casimir he won't be able to hunt McTavish. What you might call a cancelling out of snags."

His wife frowned. "I wonder if you've not been a little too clever."

"Not a bit of it," was the cheerful answer. "Ordinary horse sense. As old Perriot said, 'N'ayez pas peur—'"

"Archie," said Janet, "if you quote that stuff again I shall fling the coffee-pot at you."

4.

Sir Archie did not return till nine o'clock that evening, for he had walked every step of the road and had several times lost his way. He refreshed himself in the sitting-room with sandwiches and beer, while Janet and Alison had their after-dinner coffee.

"How did McTavish behave?" he asked Alison.

"Admirably. He drives beautifully and both Papa and Mamma thought he was Scotch. The only mistake was that he treated us like grandees, and held the door open with his cap in his hand. How about you? You look as if you had been seeing life?"

"I've had a trying time," said Sir Archie, passing a hand through his hair. "There has been a bit of a row up at the hut. No actual violence, but a good deal of unpleasantness."

"Have you been fighting?" Janet asked, observing a long scratch on her husband's sunburnt forehead.

"Oh, that scratch is nothing, only the flick of a branch. But I've been through considerable physical tribulation. Wait till I get my pipe lit and you'll have the whole story… .

"I reached the hut between four and five o'clock in what John Bunyan calls a pelting heat. Ye gods, but it was stuffy in the pinewoods, and blistering hot on the open hillside! I made pretty good time, and arrived rather out of condition, for my right leg—my game leg as was—wasn't quite functioning as it should. Well, there was the old woman, and in none too good a temper. Poor soul, she had been considerably chivvied since we last saw her. It seemed that we were just in time this morning, for Mastrovin and his merry men turned up about an hour after we left. It was a mercy we didn't blunder into them in the wood, and a mercy that we had the sense to hide the car a goodish distance from where the track starts. Mastrovin must have spent yesterday in sleuthing, for he had the ground taped, and knew that McTavish had been in the hut at supper. He had three fellows with him, and they gave the old lady a stiff time. They didn't believe her yarn about McTavish having started out for the Vossthal. They ransacked every corner of the place, and put in some fine detective work examining beds and cupboards and dirty dishes, besides raking the outhouses and beating the adjacent coverts. In the end they decided that their bird had flown and tried to terrorise the old lady into a confession. But she's a tough ancient, and by her account returned them as good as they gave. She wanted to know what concern her great-nephew Franz was of theirs, poor Franz that had lost his health working in Innsbruck and had come up into the hills to recruit. All their bullying couldn't shake her about great-nephew Franz, and in the end they took themselves off, leaving her with a very healthy dislike of the whole push.

"Then, very early this morning, Count Casimir turned up and got his letter. It put him in a great taking. She said he grew as white as a napkin, and he started to cross-examine her about the hour and the manner of the pinching of McTavish. That was where I had fallen down, for I had forgotten to tell her what was in the letter. So she gave a very confused tale, for she described him as going off with us, mentioning the women in the party, and she also described Mastrovin's coming, and from what she said I gathered that he got the two visits mixed up. What specially worried him was that Mastrovin should have had women with him, and he was very keen to know what they were like. I don't know how the old dame described you two—I should have liked to hear her—but anyway, it didn't do much to satisfy the Count. She said that he kept walking about biting his lips, and repeating a word that sounded like 'Mintha.' After that he was in a hurry to be off, but before leaving he gave her an address—I've written it down—with which she was to communicate if she got any news.

"I was just straightening out the story for her—I thought it right to get her mind clear—and explaining that we had got McTavish safe and sound, but that it was imperative in his own interests that Count Casimir should believe there had been dirty work, when what do you think happened? Mastrovin turned up, accompanied by a fellow who looked like a Jew barber out of a job. He didn't recognise me and looked at me very old-fashioned. I was sitting in a low chair, and got up politely to greet him, when I had an infernal piece of bad luck. I sprang every blessed muscle in my darned leg. You see, it hadn't been accustomed to so much exercise for a long time, and the muscles were all flabby. Gad, I never knew such pain! It was the worst go of cramp I ever heard of. My toes stuck out like agonising claws—my calf was a solid lump of torment—the riding muscle above the knee was stiff as a poker and as hard as iron. I must have gone white with pain, and I was all in a cold sweat, and I'm dashed if I could do anything except wallow in the chair and howl.

"Well, Mastrovin wasn't having any of that. He gave me some rough-tonguing in German, and demanded of the old woman what kind of mountebank I was. But she had taken her cue—pretty quick in the uptake she is—or else she thought I was having a paralytic stroke. I was all dithered with the pain and couldn't notice much, but I saw that she had got off my shoes and stockings and had fetched hot water to bathe my feet. Then the barber-fellow took a hand, for he saw I wasn't playing a game. I daresay he was some kind of medico and he knew his business. He started out to massage me, beginning with the lower thigh, and I recognised the professional touch. In a few minutes he had me easier, and you know the way the thing goes—suddenly all the corded muscles dropped back into their proper places, and I was out of pain, but limp as chewing-gum.

"Then Mastrovin began to ask me questions, first in German, and then in rather better English than my own. I gave him my name, and his face cleared a little, for he remembered me from Geneva. He was quite polite, but I preferred his rough-tonguing to his civility. A nasty piece of work that lad—his eyes are as cold as a fish's, but they go through you like a gimlet. I was determined to outstay him, for I didn't want him to be giving the old lady the third degree, which was pretty obviously what he had come for. So I pretended to be down and out, and lay back in her chair gasping, and drank water in a sad invalidish way. I would have stuck it out till midnight, but friend Mastrovin must have been pressed for time, for after about half an hour he got up to go. He offered to give me a hand down the hill, but I explained that I wasn't yet ready to move, but should be all right in an hour or so. I consider I brought off rather a creditable piece of acting, for he believed me. I also told him that I had just popped in to Unnutz for a night and was hurrying back to Geneva. He knew that the Conference had been resumed, but said that he himself might be a little late… . That's about all. I gave him twenty minutes' law and then started home. D'you mind ringing the bell, Janet? I think I'll have an omelet and some more beer. Where's McTavish?"

"At his supper, I expect. What I want to know, Archie, is our next step. We can't go on hiding royal princes in the butler's pantry. McTavish will revolt out of sheer boredom."

"I don't think so." Archie shook a sapient head. "McTavish is a patient fellow, and has had a pretty strict training these last years. Besides, life is gayer for him here than up at that hut, and the food must be miles better. We've got to play a waiting game, for the situation is obscure. I had a talk with him this morning, and by all accounts Evallonian politics are a considerable mix-up."

"What did he tell you?" Alison asked sharply. She felt that to Archie and Janet it was all a game, but that she herself had some responsibility.

"Well, it seems that the revolution is ready to the last decimal—the press prepared, the National Guard won over, the people waiting, and the Ministers packing their portmanteaux. The Republican Government will go down like ninepins. But while the odds are all on the monarchy being restored, they are all against its lasting very long. It appears that in the last two years there has been a great movement in Evallonia of all the younger lot. They're tired of having the old 'uns call the tune and want to play a sprig themselves. I don't blame 'em, for the old 'uns have made a pretty mess of it."

"Is that the thing they call Juventus?" Alison asked. "I read about it in The Times."

"Some name like that. Anyhow, McTavish tells me it's the most formidable thing Evallonia has seen for many a day. They hate the Republicans, and still more Mastrovin and his Communists. But they won't have anything to do with Prince John, for they distrust Count Casimir and all that lot. Call them the 'old gang,' the same bouquets as we hand to our elder statesmen, and want a fresh deal with new measures and new men. They're said to be more than half a million strong, all likely lads in hard condition and jolly well trained—they've specialised in marksmanship, for which Evallonia was always famous. They have the arms and the money, and, being all bound together by a blood oath, their discipline is the stiffest thing on earth. Oh, and I forgot to tell you—they wear green shirts—foresters' green. They have a marching song about the green of their woodlands, and the green of their mountain lakes, and the green shirts of Evallonia's liberators. It's funny what a big part fancy haberdashery plays in the world to-day."

"Have they a leader?" Alison asked.

"That's what I can't make out. There doesn't seem to be any particular roi de chemises—that's what Charles Lamancha used to call me in my dressy days. But apparently the thing leads itself. The fact we've got to face is that if Casimir puts McTavish on the throne, which apparently he can do with his left hand, Juventus will kick him out in a week, and McTavish naturally doesn't want that booting. That's why he has been so docile. He sees that the right policy for him is to lie low till things develop."

"Then our next step must be to get in touch with Juventus," said Alison.

Janet opened her eyes. "You're taking this very seriously, Allie," she said.

"I am," was the answer. "You see, I was in it two years ago."

"But how is it to be done?" Archie asked. "McTavish doesn't know. He doesn't know who the real leaders are—nor Casimir, and certainly not Mastrovin. You see, the thing is by way of being a secret society, sort of jumble-up of Boy Scouts, Freemasons and the Red Hand. They have their secret pass-words, and the brightest journalist never sticks his head into one of their conclaves. They can spot a Monarchist or Republican spy a mile off, and don't stand on ceremony with 'em. They have a badge like Hitler's swastika—an open eye—but, apart from their songs and their green shirts, that's their only public symbol."

"My advice," said Janet, "is that we keep out of it, and restore the Prince to the sorrowing Count Casimir as soon as we can get in touch with him. You go back to Scotland with your family, Allie, and Archie and I will pop down into Italy."

There was a knock at the door and a waiter brought in the evening post. One letter was for Alison, which she tore open eagerly as soon as she saw the handwriting. She read it three times and then raised a flushed face.

"It's from Jaikie," she said, and there was that in her voice which made Archie and Janet look up from their own correspondence. "Jaikie, you know—my friend—Mr Galt that I told you about. He is somewhere in Evallonia."

"My aunt!" exclaimed Archie. "Then there will be trouble for somebody."

"There's trouble for him. He seems to have got into deep waters. Listen to what he says."

She read the following:

 

"I am in a queer business which I am bound to see through. But I can't do it without your help. Can you manage to get away from your parents for a few days, and come to Tarta, just inside the Evallonian frontier? You take the train to a place called Zutpha, where you will be met. If you can come wire Odalchini, Tarta, the time of your arrival. I wouldn't bother you if the thing wasn't rather important, and, besides, I think you would like to be in it."

 

"Short and to the point," commented the girl. "Jaikie never wastes words. He has a genius for understatement, so if he says it is rather important it must be tremendously important… . Wait a minute. Odalchini! Prince Odalchini was one of the three at Knockraw two years ago. Jaikie has got mixed up with the Monarchists."

Archie was hunting through his notebook. "What did you say was the name of the place? Tarta? That's the address Casimir gave the old woman to write to if she had any news. Schloss Thingumybob—the second word has about eight consonants and no vowels—Tarta, by Zutpha. Your friend Jaikie has certainly got among the Monarchists."

"Hold on!" Alison cried. "What's this?" She passed round the letter for inspection. It was a sheet of very common note-paper with no address on it, but in the top left-hand corner there was stamped in green a neat little open eye with some hieroglyphic initials under it.

"Do you see what that means?" In her excitement her voice sank to a whisper. "Jaikie is in touch with the Juventus people. This letter was sent with their consent—or the consent of one of them, and franked by him."

"Well, Allie?" Janet asked.

"Of course I'm going. I must go. But I can't go alone, for Papa wouldn't allow it. He and Mamma have decided to return to Scotland this week to Aunt Harriet at Castle Gay. You and Archie must go to Tarta and take me with you."

"Isn't that a large order? What about McTavish?"

"We must take him with us, for then we'll have all the cards in our hands. It's going to be terribly exciting, but I can promise you that Jaikie won't fail us. You won't fail me either?"

Janet turned smilingly to her husband. "What about it, Archie?"

"I'm on," was the answer. "I've been in a mix-up with Master Jaikie before. Bobby Despenser can whistle for me. The difficulty will be McTavish, who's a compromising piece of goods, but we'll manage somehow. Lord, this is like old times, and I feel about ten years younger. 'It little profits that an idle king, matched with an aged wife… .' Don't beat me, Janet. We're both ageing… . I always thought that the Almighty didn't get old Christoph to mend my leg for nothing."

Chapter 4 DIFFICULTIES OF A REVOLUTIONARY

When Jaikie saw who his captor was, his wrath ebbed. Had it been Prince Odalchini it would have been an outrage, but since it was Ashie, it was only an undergraduate "rag" which could easily be repaid in kind. But his demeanour was severe.

"What's the meaning of these monkey tricks?" he demanded.

"The meaning is," Ashie had ceased to smile, "that you have deceived me. What about your business with your circus friend? I had you followed—I was bound to take every precaution—and instead of feeding in a pot-house you run in circles like a hunted hare and end up at the Schloss. I had my men inside the park, and when I heard what you were up to I gave orders that you should be brought before me. You went straight from me to the enemy. What have you to say to that?"

Ashie's words were firm, but there was dubiety in his voice and a hint of uncertainty in his eye; this the other observed, and the sight wholly removed his irritation. Ashie was talking like a book, but he was horribly embarrassed.

"Well, I'm blowed!" said Jaikie. "Who the blazes made you my keeper? Let's get this straightened out at once. First, what I said was strictly true. I was going to lunch with my friend from the circus. If your tripe-hounds had been worth their keep they would have seen me meet him—a fellow with the name of the circus blazoned on his cap. The choice of a luncheon place was his own and I had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, I happened to know the man he took me to, Prince Odalchini—I met him two years ago in Scotland. Have you got that into your fat head?"

"Will you please give me the gist of your conversation with Prince Odalchini?"

"Why on earth should I? What has it got to do with you? But I'll tell you one thing. He was very hospitable and wanted me to stay a bit with him—same as you. I said no, that I wanted to go home, and I was on my way back when I fell in with your push and got my head in a bag. What do you mean by it? I'm sorry to tell you that you have taken a liberty—and I don't allow liberties."

"Prince Odalchini is the enemy, and we are in a state of war."

"Get off it. He's not my enemy, and I don't know anything about your local scraps. I told you I would have nothing to do with them, and I told the Prince the same."

"So you talked of Evallonian affairs?" said Ashie.

"Certainly. What else was there to talk about? Not that he told me much, except that there was likely to be trouble and that he wanted me to stay on and see the fun. I told him I wasn't interested in his tin-pot politics and I tell you the same."

This had the effect which Jaikie intended, and made Ashie angry.

"I do not permit such language," he said haughtily. "I do not tolerate insults to my country. Understand that you are not in your sleek England, but in a place where gentlemen defend their honour in the old way."

"Oh, don't be a melodramatic ass. I thought we had civilised you at Cambridge and given you a sense of humour, but you've relapsed into the noble savage. I've been in Evallonia less than one day and I know nothing about it. Your politics may be all the world to you, but they're tin-pot to me. I refuse to be mixed up in them."

"You've mixed yourself up in them by having intercourse with the enemy."

"Enemy be blowed! I talked for an hour or two to a nice old man who gave me a dashed good luncheon, and now you come butting in with your detective-novel tricks. I demand to be deported at once. Otherwise I'll raise the hairiest row about the kidnapping of a British subject. If you want international trouble, I promise you you'll get it. I don't know where we are, but here's this car, and you've got to deliver me at Kremisch by bedtime. That's the least you can do to make amends for your cheek."

Jaikie looked out of the window and observed that they had halted on high ground, and that below them lights twinkled as if from an encampment. For a moment he thought that he had struck the Cirque Doré. And then a bugle sounded, an instrument not generally used in circuses. "Is that your crowd down there?" he asked.

Ashie's face, even in the dim interior light of the car, showed perplexity. He seemed to be revolving some difficult question in his mind. When he spoke again there was both appeal and apology in his voice. Jaikie had an authority among his friends which was the stronger because he was wholly unconscious of it and in no way sought it. His personality was so clean-cut and his individuality so complete and secure that, while one or two gave him affection, all gave him respect.

"I'll apologise if you like," said Ashie. "I daresay what I did was an outrage. But the fact is, Jaikie, I badly want your help. Your advice, anyway. I'm in a difficult position, and I don't see my road very clearly. You see, I'm an Evallonian, and this is Evallonian business, but I've got a little outside the atmosphere of my own country. That's to the good, perhaps, for this thing is on the biggest scale and wants looking at all round it. That's why I need your help. Give me one night, and I swear, if you still want me to, I'll deliver you at Kremisch to-morrow morning and trouble you no more."

Jaikie was the most placable of mortals, he had a strong liking for Ashie, and he was a little moved by the anxious sincerity of his voice. He had half expected this proposal.

"All right," he said, "I'll give you one night. Have your fellows pinched my kit?"

Ashie pointed to a knapsack on the floor of the car, which he promptly shouldered. "Let's get out of this," he said. He spoke a word to the driver, who skipped round and opened the door, standing stiffly at the salute. Then he led the way down the little slope into the meadow of the twinkling lights. Presently he had to give a pass-word, and three times had to halt for that purpose before they reached his tent. The gathering was far larger than that which Jaikie had seen at the Tarta bridge, and he noticed a considerable number of picketed horses.

"What are these chaps after?" he asked.

"We are riding the marches," was the answer. "What at Cambridge they call beating the bounds. It is not desirable that for the present we should operate too near the capital."

There were two tents side by side and separated by a considerable space from the rest, as if to ensure the commander's privacy. A sentry stood on guard whom Ashie dismissed with an order. He led Jaikie into the bigger of the tents. It was furnished with a camp mattress, two folding chairs, and a folding table littered with maps. "You will sleep next door. You may have a companion for the night, but of that I speak later. Meantime, let us dine. I can only offer you soldiers' fare."

The fare proved excellent. A mushroom omelet was brought in by one of the green-shirts, and cups of strong coffee. There was a dish of assorted cold meats, and a pleasantly mild cheese. They drank white wine, and Ashie insisted on Jaikie tasting the native liqueur. "It is made from the lees of wine," he told him. "Like the French marc, but not so vehement."

When the meal was cleared away Jaikie lit his pipe and Ashie a thin black cigar. "Now for my story," the latter said. "There is one fact beyond question. The rotten Republican Government is doomed, and hangs now by a single hair which a breath of wind can destroy. But when the hair has gone, what then?"

He told much the same tale that Jaikie had heard that day from Prince Odalchini, but with a far greater wealth of detail. Especially he expounded the origin and nature of Juventus, with which he had been connected from the start. "Most of this is common knowledge," he said, "but not all—yet. We are not a secret society, but we have our arcana imperii." He described its beginnings. Ricci had designed it as a counter-move against the Monarchists, but it had soon turned into something very different, a power detached indeed from the Monarchists but altogether hostile to the Republic, and Ricci, the used instead of the user, had been flung aside. "It was no less than a resurgence of the spirit of the Evallonian nation," he said solemnly.

He explained how it had run through the youth of the country like a flame in stubble. "We are a poor people," he said, "though not so poor as some, for we are closer to the soil, and less dependent upon others. But we have been stripped of some of our richest parts where industry flourished, and many of us are in great poverty. Especially it is hard for the young, who see no livelihood for them in their fathers' professions, and can find none elsewhere. Evallonia, thanks to the jealous Powers, has been reduced to too great an economic simplicity, and has not that variety of interests which a civilised society requires. Also there is another matter. We have always made a hobby of our education, as in your own Scotland. Parents will starve themselves to send their sons to Melina to the university, and often a commune itself will pay for a clever boy. What is the consequence? We have an educated youth, but no work for it. We have created an academic proletariat and it is distressed and bitter."

Ashie told his story well, but his language was not quite his native wood-notes. Jaikie wondered whose reflections he was repeating. He wondered still more when he launched into an analysis of the exact feelings of Evallonian youth. There was a subtlety in it and an acumen which belonged to a far maturer and more sophisticated mind.

"So that is that," he concluded. "If our youth is to be satisfied and our country is to prosper, it is altogether necessary that the Government should be taken to pieces and put together again on a better plan. What that plan is our youth must decide, and whatever it is it must provide them with a horizon of opportunity. We summon our people to a new national discipline under which everyone shall have both rights and duties."

Where had Ashie got these phrases, Jaikie asked himself—"arcana imperii," "academic proletariat," "horizon of opportunity"? There must be some philosopher in the background. "That sounds reasonable enough," was all he said.

"It is reasonable—but difficult. Some things we will not have. Communism, for one—of that folly Europe contains too many awful warnings. We have had enough talk of republics, which are the dullest species of oligarchy. Evallonia, having history in her bones, is a natural monarchy. Her happiest destiny would be to be like England."

"That is all right then," said Jaikie. "You have Prince John."

Ashie's face clouded.

"Alas! that is not possible. For myself I have nothing against the Prince. He represents our ancient line of kings, and he is young, and he is well spoken of, though I have never met him. But he is fatally compromised. His supporters, who are about to restore him, are indeed better men than our present mis-governors, but they are relics—fossils. They would resurrect an old world with all its stupidities. They are as alien to us as Mastrovin and Rosenbaum, though less hateful. If Prince John is set upon the throne, it is very certain that our first duty will be regretfully to remove him—regretfully, for it is not the Prince that we oppose, but his following."

"I see," said Jaikie. "It is rather a muddle. Are the Monarchists only a collection of stick-in-the-muds?"

"You can judge for yourself. You have seen Prince Odalchini, who is one of the best. He worships dead things—he speaks the language of a vanished world."

Once again Jaikie wondered how Ashie, whose talk had hitherto been chiefly of horses, had managed to acquire this novel jargon.

"You want a king, but you won't—or can't—have the Prince. Then you've got to find somebody else. What's your fancy? Have you a possible in your own rank?"

Ashie knit his brows. "I do not think so. We have admirable regimental officers and good brigadiers, but no general-in-chief. Juventus was a spontaneous movement of many people, and not the creation of one man."

"But you must have leaders."

"Leaders—but no leader. The men who presided at its birth have gone. There was Ricci, who was a trickster and a coward. He has washed himself out. There was my father, who is now dead. I do not think that he would have led, for he was not sure of himself. He had great abilities, but he was too clever for the common run of people, and he was not trusted. He was ambitious, and since his merits were not recognised, he was always unhappy, and therefore he was ineffective. I have inherited the prestige of his name, but the Almighty has given me a more comfortable nature."

"Why not yourself?" Jaikie asked. "You seem to fill the bill. Young and bold and not yet compromised. Ashie the First—or would it be Paul the Nineteenth? I'll come and grovel at your coronation."

Jaikie's tone of badinage gave offence.

"There is nothing comic in the notion," was the haughty answer. "Four hundred years ago my ancestors held the gates of Europe against the Turk. Two centuries before that they rode in the Crusades. The house of Jovian descends straight from the Emperors of Rome. I am of an older and prouder race than Prince John."

"I'm sure you are," said Jaikie apologetically. "Well, why not have a shot at it? I would like to have a pal a reigning monarch."

"Because I cannot," said Ashie firmly. "I am more confident than my father, God rest his soul, but in such a thing I do not trust myself. Your wretched England has spoiled me. I do not want pomp and glory. I should yawn my head off in a palace, and I should laugh during the most solemn ceremonials, and I should certainly beat my Ministers. I desire to remain a private gentleman and some day to win your Grand National."

Jaikie whistled.

"We have certainly spoiled you for this game. What's to be done about it?"

"I do not know," was the doleful answer. "For I cannot draw back. There have been times when I wanted to slip away and hide myself in England. But I am now too deep in the business, and I have led too many people to trust me, and I have to consider the honour of my house."

"Honour?" Jaikie queried.

"Yes, honour," said Ashie severely. "Have you anything to say against it?"

"N-o-o. But it's an awkward word and apt to obscure reason."

"It is a very real thing, which you English do not understand."

"We understand it well enough, but we are shy of talking about it. Remember the inscription in the Abbey of Thelème—'Fais ce que voudrais, for the desires of decent men will always be governed by honour.'"

Ashie smiled, for Rabelais, as Jaikie remembered, had been one of the few authors whom he affected.

"That doesn't get one very far," he said. "I can't leave my friends in the lurch any more than you could. I have been forced in spite of myself into a position out of which I cannot see my way, and any moment I may have to act against my will and against my judgment. That's why I want your advice."

"There are people behind you prodding you on? Probably one in particular? Who is it?"

"I cannot say."

"Well, I can. It's a woman."

Ashie's face darkened, and this time he was really angry. "What the devil do you mean? What have you heard? I insist that you explain."

"Sorry, Ashie. That was a silly remark, and I had no right to make it."

"You must mean something. Someone has been talking to you. Who? What? Quick, I have a right to know."

Ashie had mounted a very high horse and had become unmistakably the outraged foreign grandee.

"It was only a vulgar guess," said Jaikie soothingly. "You see, I know you pretty well, Ashie. It isn't easy to shift you against your will. I couldn't do it, and I don't believe any of your friends could do it. You've become a sensible chap since we took you in hand, and look at things in a reasonable way. You're not the kind of fellow to run your head against a stone wall. Here you are with all the materials of a revolution in your hands and you haven't a notion what to do with them. It's no good talking about honour and about loyalty to your crowd when if you go on you are only going to land them in the soup. And yet you seem determined to go on. Somebody has been talking big to you and you're impressed. From what I know of you I say that it cannot be a man, so it must be a woman."

Ashie's face did not relax.

"So you think I'm that kind of fool! The slave of a sentimental woman? … The damnable thing is that you're right. The power behind Juventus is a girl. Quite young—just about my own age. A kinswoman of mine, too, sort of second cousin twice removed. I'll tell you her name. The Countess Araminta Troyos."

Jaikie's blank face witnessed that he had never heard of the lady.

"I've known her all my life," Ashie went on, "and we have been more or less friends, though I never professed to understand her. Beautiful? Oh yes, amazingly, if you admire the sable and amber type. And brains! She could run round Muresco and his lot, and even Mastrovin has a healthy respect for her. And ambition enough for half a dozen Mussolinis. And her power of—what do you call the damned thing?—mass-persuasion?—is simply unholy. She is the soul of Juventus. There's not one of them that doesn't carry a picture postcard of her next his heart."

"What does she want? To be Queen?"

"Not she, though she would make a dashed good one. She's old-fashioned in some ways, and doesn't believe much in her own sex. Good sane anti-feminist. She wants a man on the throne of Evallonia, but she's going to make jolly well sure that it's she who puts him there."

"I see." Jaikie whistled gently through his teeth, which was a habit of his. "Are you in love with her?"

"Ye gods, no! She's not my kind. I'd as soon marry a were-wolf as Cousin Mintha."

"Is she in love with you?"

"No. I'm positive no. She could never be in love with anybody in the ordinary way. She runs for higher stakes. But she mesmerises me, and that's the solemn truth. When she orates to me I feel all the pith going out of my bones. I simply can't stand up to her. I'm terrified of her. Jaikie, I'm in danger of making a blazing, blasted fool of myself. That's why I want you."

Ashie's cheerful face had suddenly become serious and pathetic, like a puzzled child's, and at the sight of it Jaikie's heart melted. He was not much interested in Evallonia, but he was fond of Ashie, now in the toils of an amber and sable Cleopatra. He could not see an old friend dragged into trouble by a crazy girl without doing something to prevent it. A certain esprit de sexe was added to the obligations of friendship.

"But what can I do?" he asked. "I don't know the first thing about women—I've hardly met any in my life—I'm no match for your cousin."

"You can help me to keep my head cool," was the answer. "You stand for the world of common sense which will always win in the long run. When I'm inclined to run amok you'll remind me of England. You'll lower the temperature."

"You want me to hold your hand?"

"Just so. To hold my hand."

"Well," said Jaikie after a pause. "I don't mind trying it out for a fortnight. You'll have to give me free board and lodging, or I won't have the money to take me home."

Ashie's face cleared so miraculously that for one uncomfortable moment Jaikie thought that he was about to be embraced. Instead he shook hands with a grip like iron.

"You're a true friend," he said. "Come what may, I'll never forget this… . There's another thing. Unless we're to have civil war there must be some arrangement. Somebody must keep in touch with the Monarchists, or in a week there will be bloody battles. Juventus has cut off all communication with the enemy and burned its boats, but it cannot be allowed to go forward blindly, and crash head-on into the other side. I want a trait d'union, and you're the man for it. I can't do it, for I'm too conspicuous—I should be found out at once, and suspected of treachery. But you know Prince Odalchini. You've got to be my go-between. How do you fancy the job?"

Jaikie fancied it a good deal. It promised amusement and a field for his special talents.

"It won't be too easy," Ashie went on. "You see, you're by way of being my prisoner. All my fellows by this time know about your visit to the Prince and my having you kidnapped. We've tightened up the screws in Juventus, and I daren't let you go now."

"Then if I hadn't decided to stay, you'd have kept me by force?" Jaikie demanded.

"No. I would have delivered you at Kremisch according to my promise, but it would have been an uncommon delicate job, and I should have had to do the devil of a lot of explaining. I've given out that you are an English friend, who is not hostile but knows too much to be safe. So you'll have to be guarded, and your visits to the House of the Four Winds will have to be nicely camouflaged. Lucky I'm in charge of Juventus on this side of the country."

"You've begun by handicapping me pretty heavily," said Jaikie. "But I'll keep my word and have a try."

An orderly appeared at the tent door with a message. Ashie looked at his watch.

"Your stable-companion for the night has arrived," he said. "I think you'd better clear out while I'm talking to him. He's an English journalist, and rather a swell, I believe, who has been ferreting round for some weeks in Evallonia. It won't do to antagonise the foreign press just yet—especially the English, so I promised to see him tonight and give him some dope. But I'll see that he's beyond the frontier to-morrow morning. We don't want any Paul Prys in this country at present."

"What's his name?" Jaikie asked with a sudden premonition.

Ashie consulted a paper. "Crombie—Dougal Crombie. Do you know him?"

"I've heard of him. He's second in command on the Craw Press, isn't he?"

"He is. And he'll probably be a sentimental royalist, like the old fool who owns it."

Long ago in the Glasgow closes there had been a signal used among the Gorbals Die-hards, if one member did not desire to be recognised when suddenly confronted by another. So when Mr Crombie was ushered into the tent and observed beside the Juventus commander a slight shabby figure, which pinched its chin with the left hand and shut its left eye, he controlled his natural surprise and treated Ashie as if he were alone.

"May I go to bed, sir?" Jaikie asked. "I'm blind with sleep, and I won't be wakened by my fellow-guest."

Ashie assented, and Jaikie gave the Juventus salute and withdrew, keeping his eyes strictly averted from the said fellow-guest.

He did not at once undress, but sat on the sleeping valise and thought. His mind was not on the House of the Four Winds and the difficulties of keeping in touch with Prince Odalchini; it was filled with the picture of an amber and sable young woman. That he believed to be the real snag, and he felt himself unequal to coping with it. In the end, on note-paper which Ashie had given him, he wrote two letters. The first was to Miss Alison Westwater and the second to Prince Odalchini; then he got into pyjamas, curled himself inside the valise, and was almost at once asleep.

He was wakened by being poked in the ribs, and found beside him the rugged face of Dougal illumined by a candle.

"How on earth did you get here, Jaikie?" came the hoarse whisper.

"By accident," was the sleepy answer. "Ran into Ashie—that's Count Paul—knew him at Cambridge. I'm a sort of prisoner, but I'll be all right. Don't ask me about Evallonia, for you know far more than me."

"I daresay I do," said Dougal. "Man, Jaikie, this is a fearsome mess. Mr Craw will be out of his mind with vexation. Here's everything ripe for a nice law-abiding revolution, and this dam-fool Juventus chips in and wrecks everything. I like your Count Paul, and he has some rudiments of sense, but he cannot see that what he is after is sheer lunacy. The Powers are in an easy temper, and there would be no trouble about an orderly restoration of the old royal house. But if these daft lads start running some new dictator fellow that nobody ever heard of, Europe will shut down like a clam. Diplomatic relations suspended—economic boycott—the whole bag of tricks. It's maddening that the people who most want to kick out the present Government should be working to give it a fresh lease of life, simply because they insist on playing a lone hand."

"I know all that," said Jaikie. "Go away, Dougal, and let me sleep."

"I tell you what"—Dougal's voice was rising, and he lowered it at Jaikie's request—"we need a first-class business mind on this job. There's just one man alive that I'd listen to, and that's Mr McCunn. He's at Rosensee, and that's not a thousand miles off, and he's quite recovered now and will likely be as restless as a hen. I'm off there tomorrow morning to lay the case before him."

"Good," Jaikie answered. "Now get to bed, will you?"

"I must put him in touch with Count Casimir and Prince Odalchini—the big Schloss at Tarta is the place—that's the Monarchist centre. And what about yourself? How can I find you?"

"If I'm not hanged," said Jaikie drowsily, "it will be at the same address. I'll turn up there some time or other. I wish you'd put these two letters in your pocket, and post them to-morrow when you're over the frontier. And now for pity's sake let me sleep."

Chapter 5 SURPRISING ENERGY OF A CONVALESCENT

Mr Dickson McCunn sat in a wicker chair with his feet on the railing of a small verandah, and his eyes on a wide vista of plain and forest which was broken by the spires of a little town. Now and then he turned to beam upon a thick-set, red-haired young man who occupied a similar chair on his left hand. He wore a suit of grey flannel, a startling pink shirt and collar, and brown suede shoes—things so foreign to his usual wear that they must have been acquired for this occasion. He was looking remarkably well, with a clear eye and a clear skin to which recent exposure to the sun had given a becoming rosiness. His hair was a little thinner than two years ago, but no greyer. Indeed, the only change was in his figure, which had become more trim and youthful. Dougal judged that he had reduced his weight by at least a stone.

He patted his companion's arm.

"Man, Dougal, I'm glad to see you. I was thinking just yesterday that the thing I would like best in the world would be to see you and Jaikie coming up the road. I've been wearying terribly for the sight of a kenned face. I knew you were somewhere abroad, and I had a sort of notion that you might give me a look in. Are they making you comfortable here? It's not just the place I would recommend for a healthy body, for they've a poor notion of food."

"Me?" he exclaimed in reply to a question. "I've never been better in my life. It's a perfect miracle. I walked fifteen miles the day before yesterday and never turned a hair. I'll give the salmon a fright this back-end. I tell you, Dougal, Dr Christoph hasn't his equal on this earth. He's my notion of the Apostles that could make the lame walk and the blind see. When I came here I was a miserable decrepit body that couldn't sleep, and couldn't take his meat, and wanted to lie down when he had walked a mile. He saw me twice a day, and glowered and glunched at me, like an old-fashioned minister at the catechising, and asked me questions—he's one that would speir a whelk out of its shell. But he wouldn't deliver a judgment—not him—just told me to possess my soul in patience till he was ready. He made me take queer wee medicines, and he prescribed what I was to eat. Oh, and I had what they call massage—he was a wonder at that, for he seemed to flype my body as you would flype a stocking. And I had to take a daft kind of bath, with first hot water and then cold water dropping on me from the ceiling and every drop like a rifle bullet. I thought I had wandered into a demented hydropathic… . Then after three weeks he spoke. 'Mr McCunn,' he says, 'I'm happy to tell you that there's nothing wrong with you. There's been a heap wrong, but it's gone now, the mischief is out of your system, and all you have to do is to build your system up. You will soon be able to eat what you like,' he says, 'and the more the better, and you can walk till you fall down, and you can ride on a horse'—not that I was likely to try that—'and I don't mind if you tumble into the burn. You're a well man,' he says, 'but I'd like to keep you here for another three weeks under observation.' Oh, and he wrote a long screed about my case for the Edinburgh professor—I've got a copy of it—I don't follow it all, for it is pretty technical and Dr Christoph isn't very grand at English. But the plain fact is, that I've been a sick man and am now well, and that in five days' time I'll be on the road for Blaweary, singing the 126th Psalm:

 

"Among the heathen say the Lord

Great things for us hath wrought."

 

Mr McCunn hummed a stave from the Scots metrical version to a dolorous tune.

"You've been enjoying yourself fine," said Dougal.

The other pursed his lips. "I would scarcely say that. I've enjoyed the fact of getting well, but I haven't altogether enjoyed the process. There were whiles when I was terrible bored, me that used to boast that I had never been bored in my life. The first weeks it was like being back at the school. I had my bits of walks prescribed for me, and the hours when I was to lie on my back and rest, and when I sat down to my meals there was a nurse behind my chair to see that I ate the right things and didn't forget my medicine. I had an awful lot of time on my hands. I doddered about among the fir-woods—they're a careful folk, the Germans, and have all the hillsides laid out like gentlemen's policies—nice tidy walks, and seats to sit down on, and directions about the road that I couldn't read. I'll not deny that it's a bonny countryside—in its way, but the weather was blazing hot and I got terrible tired of these endless fir-trees. It's a monotonous place, for when you get to the top of one rig there's another of the same shape beyond, covered with the same woods. Man, I got fair sick for a sight of an honest bald-faced hill.

"Indoors," he went on, "it was just the same. It's all very well to be told to rest and keep your mind empty, but that was never my way. I brought out a heap of books with me, and was looking forward to getting a lot of quiet reading done. But the mischief was that I couldn't settle to a book. I had intended to read the complete works of Walter Savage Landor—have you ever tried him, Dougal? I aye thought the quotations from him I came across most appetising. But I might as well have been reading a newspaper upside down, for I couldn't keep my mind on him. I suppose that my thoughts having been so much concerned lately with my perishing body had got out of tune for higher things. So I fell back on Sir Walter—I'm not much of a hand at novels, as you know, but I can always read Scott—but I wasn't half through Guy Mannering when it made me so homesick for the Canonry that I had to give it up. After that I became a mere vegetable, a bored vegetable."

"You don't look very bored," said Dougal.

"Oh, it's been different the last weeks, when the doctor told me I was cured, for I've been pretty nearly my own master. I've had some grand long walks—what you would call training walks, for I was out just for the exercise and never minded the scenery. I've sweated pounds and pounds of adipose tissue off my bones. I hired a car, too, and got Peter Wappit to drive it, and I've been exploring the countryside for fifty miles round. I've found some fine scenery and some very respectable public-houses. You'll be surprised that I mention them, but the fact is that my mind has been dwelling shamelessly on food and drink. I've never been so hungry in all my days. I'm allowed to eat anything I like, but the trouble is that you can't get it in this house. The food is deplorable for a healthy man. Endless veal, which I cannot bide—and what they call venison, but is liker goat—and wee blue trouts that are as wersh as the dowp of a candle—and they've a nasty habit of eating plums and gooseberries with butcher's meat. I'll admit the coffee is fine, but they've no kind of notion of tea. Tea has always been my favourite meal, but here you never see a scone or a cookie—just things like a baby's rusks, and sweet cakes that you very soon scunner at. So I've had to supplement my diet at adjacent publics… . I tell you what, Dougal, Peter is a perfect disgrace. It's preposterous that a man should have been two years in jyle in Germany and have picked up so little of the language. He just stammers and glowers and makes noises like a clocking hen, and it's me that has to do the questioning, with about six words of the tongue and every kind of daft-like grimace and contortion. If the Germans weren't an easy-tempered folk we'd have had a lot of trouble.

"But, thank God," said Mr McCunn, "that's all very near by with. I've got back my health and now I want something to occupy my mind and body." He pushed back his chair, stood up, doubled his fists and made playful taps at Dougal's chest to prove his vigour.

"What about yourself, Dougal?" he said. "Let's hear what you've been up to. Is Mr Craw still trying to redd up the affairs of Europe?"

"He is. That's the reason I'm out here. And that's the reason I've come to see you. I want your advice."

"In that case," said Mr McCunn solemnly, "we'd be the better of a drink. Beer is allowed here, and it's a fine mild brew. We'll have a tankard apiece."

"Now," said he, when the tankards had been brought, and he was comfortably settled again in his chair, "I'm waiting on your story. Where have you come from?"

"From Evallonia."

For a moment or two Dickson did not speak. The word set his mind digging into memories which had been heavily overlaid. In particular he recalled an autumn night on a Solway beach when in the moonlight a cutter swung down the channel with the tide. He saw a young man under whose greatcoat was a gleam of tartan, and he remembered vividly a scene which for him had been one of tense emotion. On the little finger of his left hand he wore that young man's ring.

"Aye, Evallonia," he murmured. "That's where you would be. And how are things going in Evallonia?"

"Bad. They couldn't be worse. Listen, Mr McCunn, and I'll give you the rudiments of a perfectly ridiculous situation."

Dickson listened, and his occasional grunts told of his lively interest. When Dougal had finished, he remained for a little silent and frowning heavily. Then he began to ask questions.

"You say the Monarchists have got everything arranged and can put Prince John on the throne whenever they're so minded? Can they put up a good Government?"

"I think so. They've plenty of brains among them and plenty of experience. Count Casimir Muresco is a sort of lesser Cavour. I've seen a good deal of him and can judge. You'll remember him?"

"Aye, I mind him well. I thought he had some kind of a business head. Prince Odalchini was a fine fellow, but a wee thing in the clouds. What about the Professor—Jagon, I think they called him?"

"He has gone over to Juventus. Discovered that it fulfilled his notion of democracy. He was a maggotty old body."

"Well, he'll maybe not be much loss. You say that there's a good Government waiting for Evallonia, but that this Juv-Juventus thing—that's Latin isn't it?—won't hear of it because they didn't invent it themselves. What kind of shape would they make at running the country?"

"Bad, I think. They've brains, but no experience, and not much common sense. They're drunk with fine ideas and as full of pride as an old blackcock, but they're babes and sucklings at the job of civil administration."

"But they've power behind them?"

"All the power there is in Evallonia. They've an armed force uncommon well trained and disciplined—you never saw a more upstanding lot of lads. The National Guard, which is all the army that is permitted under the Peace Treaty, is good enough in its way, but it's small, and the people don't give a hang for it. Juventus has captured the fancy of the nation, and with these Eastern European folk, that means that the battle is won. They can no more make a good Government than they could square the circle, but they can play the devil with any Government that they don't approve of. You may say that the real motive power in Evallonia to-day is destructive. But they'll have to set up some sort of figure-head—one of themselves, though there's nobody very obvious—and that will mean an infernal mess, the old futile dictatorship ran-dan, and no end of trouble with the Powers. I've the best reason to be positive on that point, for Mr Craw has seen—" and he mentioned certain august names.

Dickson asked one other question. "What about the Republicans?"

Dougal laughed. "Oh, their number's up all right. Whoever is top-dog, they're bound to be the bottom one for many a day. They've their bags packed waiting to skip over the frontier. But they'll do their best, of course, to make the mischief worse. Mastrovin, especially. If he's caught in Evallonia he'll get short shrift, but he'll be waiting outside to put spokes in the wheels."

"Yon's the bad one," said Dickson reflectively. "When he is thrawn, he has a face that's my notion of the Devil… . It seems that Juventus is the proposition we have to consider. What ails Juventus at Prince John?"

"Nothing. They've no ill-will to him—only he's not their man. What they dislike is his supporters."

"Why?"

"Simply because they're the old gang and associated in their minds with all the misfortunes and degradation of Evallonia since the War. Juventus is thinking of a new world, and won't have any truck with the old. They're new brooms, and are blind to the merits of the old besoms. They're like laddies at school, Mr McCunn—when catties come in they won't look at a bool or a girr."

Dickson whistled morosely through his teeth.

"I see," he said. "Well, it looks ugly. What kind of advice do you want from me?"

"I want a business-like view of the situation from a wise man, and you can't get that in Evallonia."

"But how in the name of goodness can I give you any kind of view when I don't know the place or the folk?"

"I've tried to put the lay-out before you, and I want the common sense of a detached observer. You may trust my facts. I've done nothing but make inquiries for the last month, for the thing is coming between Mr Craw and his sleep. I've seen Count Casimir and all his lot and talked with them till my brain was giddy. I've taken soundings in Evallonian public opinion, to which I had pretty good access."

"Have you seen much of Juventus?"

Dougal drew down the corners of his mouth.

"Not a great deal. You see, it's a secret society, and you can no more get inside it than into a lodge of Masons. I've talked, of course, to a lot of the rank-and-file, and I can judge their keenness and their popular support. There was one of them I particularly wanted to see—a woman called Countess Troyos—but I was warned that if I went near her she would have me shot against a wall—she's a ferocious Amazon and doesn't like journalists. But I managed to get an interview with one of the chiefs, a certain Count Paul Jovian, a son of the Jovian that was once a Republican Minister. It was that interview that gave me the notion of coming to you, for this Count Paul has some rudiments of sense, and has lived a lot in England, and I could see that he was uneasy about the way things were going. He didn't say much, but he hinted that there ought to be some sort of compromise with the Monarchists, so there's one man at any rate that will accept a reasonable deal… . And Jaikie whispered as much to me before I left."

"Jaikie!" The word came almost like a scream from the startled Mr McCunn. "I thought he was on a walking-tour in France."

"Well, he has walked into Evallonia. He was with Count Paul, whom it seems he knew at Cambridge. He told me he was a prisoner."

"How was he behaving himself?"

"Just as Jaikie would. Pretending to be good and meek and sleepy. The same old flat-catcher. If Juventus knew the type of fellow Jaikie was they wouldn't rest till they saw him safe in bed in the Canonry."

Dickson grinned. "I'm sure they wouldn't." But the grin soon faded. He strode up and down the little verandah with his head bowed and his hands clasped behind his back. He did this for perhaps five minutes, and then, with a "Just you bide here" to his companion, he disappeared into the house.

He was absent for the better part of an hour, and when he returned it was with a gloomy and puzzled countenance.

"I got the Head Schwester to telephone for me to Katzensteg to the aerodrome. There's some jukery-pukery on, and it seems I can't get a machine for the job. The frontier is closed to private planes and only the regular air service is allowed."

"Whatever do you want an aeroplane for?" Dougal asked.

"To get to Evallonia," said Dickson simply. "I've never been in one, but they tell me it's the quickest way to travel. There'll be nothing for it but to go by road. I'll have to attend strictly to the map, for Peter has no more sense of direction than a sheep."

"But what will you do when you get there?"

"I thought of having a crack with Prince Odalchini in the first place… ."

"The thing's impossible," Dougal cried. "Man, the country is already almost in a state of siege. Juventus won't let you near the Prince. They're sitting three-deep round his park wall. They carted me over the frontier yesterday with instructions that I wasn't to come back if I valued my life—and, mind you, I had their safe conduct."

"All the same, I must find some way of getting to him." In Dickson's voice there was a note of dismal obstinacy which Dougal knew well.

"But it's perfectly ridiculous," said Dougal. "I wish to Heaven I had never come here. You can't do a bit of good to anybody and you can do the devil of a lot of harm to yourself."

"I can see the place and some of the folk, and give you that business advice you said you wanted."

"You'll see nothing except the inside of a guardroom," Dougal wailed. "Listen to reason, Mr McCunn. I must be in Vienna to-morrow, for I have to sign a contract about paper for Mr Craw. Stay quietly here till I come back, and then maybe we'll be able to think of a plan."

"I can't," said Dickson. "I must go at once… . See here, Dougal. Do you observe that ring?" He held up his left hand. "I got it two years back come October on the Solway sands. 'I've gotten your ring, Sire,' I says to him, 'and if I get the word from you I'll cross the world.' Well, the word has come. Not direct from Prince John, maybe, but from what they call the logic of events. I would think shame to be found wanting. It's maybe the great chance of my life… . Where more by token is his Royal Highness?"

"How should I know?" said Dougal wearily. "Not in Evallonia, but lurking somewhere near, waiting on a summons that will likely never come. Poor soul, I don't envy him his job… . And you're going to stick your head into a bees' byke, when nobody asks you to. You say it's your sense of duty. If that's so, it's a misguided sense not very different from daftness. My belief is that the real reason is that you're looking for excitement. You're too young. You're like a horse with too much corn. You're doing this because it amuses you."

"It doesn't," was the solemn answer. "Make no mistake about that, Dougal. I'm simply longing to be back at Blaweary. I want to be on the river again—I hear the water's in fine trim—and I want to get on with my new planting—I'm trying Douglas firs this time… . I don't care a docken for Evallonia and its politics. But I'm pledged to Prince John, and in all my sixty-three years I've never broken my word. I'm sweir to go—I'll tell you something more, I'm feared to go. I've never had much truck with foreigners, and their ways are not my ways, and I value my comfort as much as anybody. That was why I tried to get an aeroplane, for I thought it would commit me and get the first plunge over, for I was feared of weakening. As it is I'll have to content myself with the car and that sumph Peter Wappit. But some way or other I'm bound to go."

Dougal's grim face relaxed into an affectionate smile.

"You're a most extraordinary man. I'll not argue with you, for I know it's about as much good as making speeches to a tombstone. I'll go back to Evallonia as soon as my business is finished, and I only hope I don't see your head stuck up on a spike on Melina gate-house."

"Do you think that's possible?" Dickson asked with a curious mixture of alarm and rapture.

"Not a bit of it. I was only joking. The worst that can happen is that you and Peter will be sent back over the border with a flea in your ear. If Juventus catches you they'll deport you as a harmless lunatic… . But for God's sake don't get into the same parish as Mastrovin."