第 11 页

clouded by my severe bodily discomfort. Those lentonite fumes had

fairly poisoned me, and the baking hours on the dovecot hadn't

helped matters. I had a crushing headache, and felt as sick as a cat.

Also my shoulder was in a bad way. At first I thought it was only a

bruise, but it seemed to be swelling, and I had no use of my left arm.

My plan was to seek Mr Turnbull's cottage, recover my garments,

and especially Scudder's note-book, and then make for the main

line and get back to the south. It seemed to me that the sooner I

got in touch with the Foreign Office man, Sir Walter Bullivant, the

better. I didn't see how I could get more proof than I had got

already. He must just take or leave my story, and anyway, with him

I would be in better hands than those devilish Germans. I had

begun to feel quite kindly towards the British police.

It was a wonderful starry night, and I had not much difficulty

about the road. Sir Harry's map had given me the lie of the land,

and all I had to do was to steer a point or two west of south-west

to come to the stream where I had met the roadman. In all these

travels I never knew the names of the places, but I believe this

stream was no less than the upper waters of the river Tweed. I

calculated I must be about eighteen miles distant, and that meant I

could not get there before morning. So I must lie up a day somewhere,

for I was too outrageous a figure to be seen in the sunlight.

I had neither coat, waistcoat, collar, nor hat, my trousers were

badly torn, and my face and hands were black with the explosion. I

daresay I had other beauties, for my eyes felt as if they were

furiously bloodshot. Altogether I was no spectacle for God-fearing

citizens to see on a highroad.

Very soon after daybreak I made an attempt to clean myself in a

hill burn, and then approached a herd's cottage, for I was feeling

the need of food. The herd was away from home, and his wife was

alone, with no neighbour for five miles. She was a decent old body,

and a plucky one, for though she got a fright when she saw me, she

had an axe handy, and would have used it on any evil-doer. I told

her that I had had a fall - I didn't say how - and she saw by my

looks that I was pretty sick. Like a true Samaritan she asked no

questions, but gave me a bowl of milk with a dash of whisky in it,

and let me sit for a little by her kitchen fire. She would have bathed

my shoulder, but it ached so badly that I would not let her touch it.

I don't know what she took me for - a repentant burglar,

perhaps; for when I wanted to pay her for the milk and tendered a

sovereign which was the smallest coin I had, she shook her head

and said something about 'giving it to them that had a right to it'.

At this I protested so strongly that I think she believed me honest,

for she took the money and gave me a warm new plaid for it, and

an old hat of her man's. She showed me how to wrap the plaid

around my shoulders, and when I left that cottage I was the living

image of the kind of Scotsman you see in the illustrations to

Burns's poems. But at any rate I was more or less clad.

It was as well, for the weather changed before midday to a thick

drizzle of rain. I found shelter below an overhanging rock in the

crook of a burn, where a drift of dead brackens made a tolerable

bed. There I managed to sleep till nightfall, waking very cramped

and wretched, with my shoulder gnawing like a toothache. I ate the

oatcake and cheese the old wife had given me and set out again just

before the darkening.

I pass over the miseries of that night among the wet hills. There

were no stars to steer by, and I had to do the best I could from my

memory of the map. Twice I lost my way, and I had some nasty

falls into peat-bogs. I had only about ten miles to go as the crow

flies, but my mistakes made it nearer twenty. The last bit was

completed with set teeth and a very light and dizzy head. But I

managed it, and in the early dawn I was knocking at Mr Turnbull's

door. The mist lay close and thick, and from the cottage I could

not see the highroad.

Mr Turnbull himself opened to me - sober and something more

than sober. He was primly dressed in an ancient but well-tended

suit of black; he had been shaved not later than the night before; he

wore a linen collar; and in his left hand he carried a pocket Bible.

At first he did not recognize me.

'Whae are ye that comes stravaigin' here on the Sabbath mornin'?'

he asked.

I had lost all count of the days. So the Sabbath was the reason

for this strange decorum.

My head was swimming so wildly that I could not frame a

coherent answer. But he recognized me, and he saw that I was ill.

'Hae ye got my specs?' he asked.

I fetched them out of my trouser pocket and gave him them.

'Ye'll hae come for your jaicket and westcoat,' he said. 'Come in-

bye. Losh, man, ye're terrible dune i' the legs. Haud up till I get ye

to a chair.'

I perceived I was in for a bout of malaria. I had a good deal of

fever in my bones, and the wet night had brought it out, while my

shoulder and the effects of the fumes combined to make me feel

pretty bad. Before I knew, Mr Turnbull was helping me off with

my clothes, and putting me to bed in one of the two cupboards that

lined the kitchen walls.

He was a true friend in need, that old roadman. His wife was

dead years ago, and since his daughter's marriage he lived alone.

For the better part of ten days he did all the rough nursing I

needed. I simply wanted to be left in peace while the fever took its

course, and when my skin was cool again I found that the bout had

more or less cured my shoulder. But it was a baddish go, and

though I was out of bed in five days, it took me some time to get

my legs again.

He went out each morning, leaving me milk for the day, and

locking the door behind him; and came in in the evening to sit

silent in the chimney corner. Not a soul came near the place. When

I was getting better, he never bothered me with a question. Several

times he fetched me a two days' old SCOTSMAN, and I noticed that the

interest in the Portland Place murder seemed to have died down.

There was no mention of it, and I could find very little about

anything except a thing called the General Assembly - some

ecclesiastical spree, I gathered.

One day he produced my belt from a lockfast drawer. 'There's a

terrible heap o' siller in't,' he said. 'Ye'd better coont it to see

it's a' there.'

He never even sought my name. I asked him if anybody had

been around making inquiries subsequent to my spell at the road-making.

'Ay, there was a man in a motor-cawr. He speired whae had ta'en

my place that day, and I let on I thocht him daft. But he keepit on

at me, and syne I said he maun be thinkin' o' my gude-brither frae

the Cleuch that whiles lent me a haun'. He was a wersh-lookin'

sowl, and I couldna understand the half o' his English tongue.'

I was getting restless those last days, and as soon as I felt myself

fit I decided to be off. That was not till the twelfth day of June,

and as luck would have it a drover went past that morning taking

some cattle to Moffat. He was a man named Hislop, a friend of

Turnbull's, and he came in to his breakfast with us and offered to

take me with him.

I made Turnbull accept five pounds for my lodging, and a hard

job I had of it. There never was a more independent being. He

grew positively rude when I pressed him, and shy and red, and

took the money at last without a thank you. When I told him how

much I owed him, he grunted something about 'ae guid turn

deservin' anither'. You would have thought from our leave-taking

that we had parted in disgust.

Hislop was a cheery soul, who chattered all the way over the pass

and down the sunny vale of Annan. I talked of Galloway markets

and sheep prices, and he made up his mind I was a 'pack-shepherd'

from those parts - whatever that may be. My plaid and my old hat,

as I have said, gave me a fine theatrical Scots look. But driving

cattle is a mortally slow job, and we took the better part of the day

to cover a dozen miles.

If I had not had such an anxious heart I would have enjoyed that

time. It was shining blue weather, with a constantly changing

prospect of brown hills and far green meadows, and a continual

sound of larks and curlews and falling streams. But I had no mind

for the summer, and little for Hislop's conversation, for as the

fateful fifteenth of June drew near I was overweighed with the

hopeless difficulties of my enterprise.

I got some dinner in a humble Moffat public-house, and walked

the two miles to the junction on the main line. The night express

for the south was not due till near midnight, and to fill up the time

I went up on the hillside and fell asleep, for the walk had tired me.

I all but slept too long, and had to run to the station and catch the

train with two minutes to spare. The feel of the hard third-class

cushions and the smell of stale tobacco cheered me up wonderfully.

At any rate, I felt now that I was getting to grips with my job.

I was decanted at Crewe in the small hours and had to wait till six to

get a train for Birmingham. In the afternoon I got to Reading, and

changed into a local train which journeyed into the deeps of Berkshire.

Presently I was in a land of lush water-meadows and slow

reedy streams. About eight o'clock in the evening, a weary and

travel-stained being - a cross between a farm-labourer and a vet -

with a checked black-and-white plaid over his arm (for I did not

dare to wear it south of the Border), descended at the little station

of Artinswell. There were several people on the platform, and I

thought I had better wait to ask my way till I was clear of the place.

The road led through a wood of great beeches and then into a

shallow valley, with the green backs of downs peeping over the

distant trees. After Scotland the air smelt heavy and flat, but

infinitely sweet, for the limes and chestnuts and lilac bushes were domes

of blossom. Presently I came to a bridge, below which a clear slow

stream flowed between snowy beds of water-buttercups. A little

above it was a mill; and the lasher made a pleasant cool sound in

the scented dusk. Somehow the place soothed me and put me at my

ease. I fell to whistling as I looked into the green depths, and the

tune which came to my lips was 'Annie Laurie'.

A fisherman came up from the waterside, and as he neared me he

too began to whistle. The tune was infectious, for he followed my

suit. He was a huge man in untidy old flannels and a wide-brimmed

hat, with a canvas bag slung on his shoulder. He nodded to me,

and I thought I had never seen a shrewder or better-tempered face.

He leaned his delicate ten-foot split-cane rod against the bridge,

and looked with me at the water.

'Clear, isn't it?' he said pleasantly. 'I back our Kenner any day

against the Test. Look at that big fellow. Four pounds if he's an

ounce. But the evening rise is over and you can't tempt 'em.'

'I don't see him,' said I.

'Look! There! A yard from the reeds just above that stickle.'

'I've got him now. You might swear he was a black stone.'

'So,' he said, and whistled another bar of 'Annie Laurie'.

'Twisdon's the name, isn't it?' he said over his shoulder, his eyes

still fixed on the stream.

'No,' I said. 'I mean to say, Yes.' I had forgotten all about

my alias.

'It's a wise conspirator that knows his own name,' he observed,

grinning broadly at a moor-hen that emerged from the bridge's shadow.

I stood up and looked at him, at the square, cleft jaw and broad,

lined brow and the firm folds of cheek, and began to think that

here at last was an ally worth having. His whimsical blue eyes

seemed to go very deep.

Suddenly he frowned. 'I call it disgraceful,' he said, raising his

voice. 'Disgraceful that an able-bodied man like you should dare to

beg. You can get a meal from my kitchen, but you'll get no money

from me.'

A dog-cart was passing, driven by a young man who raised his

whip to salute the fisherman. When he had gone, he picked up his rod.

'That's my house,' he said, pointing to a white gate a hundred

yards on. 'Wait five minutes and then go round to the back door.'

And with that he left me.

I did as I was bidden. I found a pretty cottage with a lawn

running down to the stream, and a perfect jungle of guelder-rose

and lilac flanking the path. The back door stood open, and a grave

butler was awaiting me.

'Come this way, Sir,' he said, and he led me along a passage and

up a back staircase to a pleasant bedroom looking towards the

river. There I found a complete outfit laid out for me - dress

clothes with all the fixings, a brown flannel suit, shirts, collars, ties,

shaving things and hair-brushes, even a pair of patent shoes. 'Sir

Walter thought as how Mr Reggie's things would fit you, Sir,' said

the butler. 'He keeps some clothes 'ere, for he comes regular on the

week-ends. There's a bathroom next door, and I've prepared a 'ot

bath. Dinner in 'alf an hour, Sir. You'll 'ear the gong.'

The grave being withdrew, and I sat down in a chintz-covered

easy-chair and gaped. It was like a pantomime, to come suddenly out

of beggardom into this orderly comfort. Obviously Sir Walter

believed in me, though why he did I could not guess. I looked at

myself in the mirror and saw a wild, haggard brown fellow, with a

fortnight's ragged beard, and dust in ears and eyes, collarless,

vulgarly shirted, with shapeless old tweed clothes and boots that