Narrow as the track was, the oncoming cart showed no sign of slowing down, and Ken said, “Quick! We shall have to get out!”
This we did, and Ken, going to the cob’s head, backed his cart up, precariously tilting, on to the steep heather slope on the right, just in time for the other cart to pass. A ramrod, hawk-nosed man in tweeds held the reins, at his side an attractive girl in a tam-o’-shanter.
As they clattered past with a wheel of their cart about an inch from the gorge-edge, we all three stood with our hats raised, but, for all the acknowledgment we got, we might just as well have kept them on.
“That was General Finlayson and his daughter Janet,” Ken said with a hint of bitterness, as we climbed back into his dogcart. “The General’s not long back from South Africa. He’s been put on the Retired List, and he’s standing against me, in this bye-election, on a platform of punitive peace terms to be imposed in Pretoria.”
“Bunny and I heard of him, out there,” Raffles said. “A real fire-eater!”
“He owns the Castle Crissaig moors, up above my little place,” said Ken. “He’s on his way now to catch the steamer to Glasgow, with Janet to see him off. He’s due to harangue shipyard workers tomorrow, along Clydeside. What did you think of Janet?”
“Conspicuously bonnie,” said Raffles.
“I hoped to marry her,” Ken said gloomily, “but the war ruined my chances. I wrote critically, in dispatches to the newspaper I represented, about the General’s harsh methods in the field. The result is, he regards me as a pacifist traitor, and it’s ruined me with Janet. But damn it, a man must stand by his beliefs — or what is he?”
“He’s certainly not a Scotsman,” Raffles said, “fit to wear the trousers — or, rather, the kilt — in his own house.”
Ken Mackail’s house was a typical old moorland lodge, hard by the brawling stream, which Raffles and I, next day, Ken having gone off early, to catch the steamer to Glasgow and the hustings, fished in the company of Ken’s ghillie, Macpherson, a gaunt man with an old retriever called Shoona perpetually at his heel.
“Well, Macpherson,” said Raffles, when, having caught nothing but a couple of small brown trout all morning, we sat in the heather to eat the sandwiches and drink the whisky put up for us by Mrs. Macpherson, “I’m afraid Mr. Manders and I seem to be a bit out of practice.”
“Ye canna tak’ fish, sir,” said Macpherson, “if there’s ower few fish in the watter.”
“So the fault’s not entirely ours?” said Raffles. “You set our minds at rest. But tell us, Macpherson, how d’you fancy Mr. Mackail’s chances in this bye-election?”
“ ’Deed, sir,” said Macpherson gloomily, “wi’out the Lunnon politeecian coming up to support him on the hustings makes awfu’ persuasive speeches to yon Glesga folk, I wouldnae gie a bawbee for the young laird’s chances. General Finlayson’s a dour opponent, an’ a gleg one, forbye, which is why there’s ower few fish in our watter.”
Raffles asked what General Finlayson had to do with the paucity of fish, and Macpherson said grimly that, if we were so minded, he would show us — after dark.
As it turned out, the night was far from dark. In fact, when we reached the high moor after a long, rough trudge alongside the tumbling stream, the moon was almost as bright as we has seen it over the South African veldt.
We now were on the Castle Crissaig grouse-moor, General Finlayson’s property, and Macpherson, with Shoona at his heel, warned us to watch out for the General’s gamekeeper, James Fraser, who, with the Glorious Twelfth not far off, was apt to be on the prowl.
“Wi’ a gun for poachers,” said Macpherson. “Bluidy James Fraser!”
Near a small corrie of rowan trees, a little old stone bridge cast a humpbacked shadow over the stream, which here flowed deep and fish worthy. Macpherson led us furtively on to the bridge and showed us a small iron wheel secured by a chain and a massive padlock. He explained that the wheel was used to raise and lower a fine-mesh metal grille. When the grille was lowered, as it was now, fish which had spanned in the upper waters of the stream, were unable to return downstream, through Ken’s water, to the loch.
“And this is General Finlayson’s little pleasantry?” Raffles asked.
“Aye,” said Macpherson. “He’s awfu’ grudgesome against Mr. Mackail.”
“Well,” said Raffles, examining the padlock, “I happen to have in my pocket a small implement that might, just possibly —”
“Hist!” said Macpherson. “Bluidy James Fraser! Quick, mak’ for yon rowans!”
The three of us, with the wise old Shoona at Macpherson, incredulous. “ ’Tis the and into the tree-shadowed come. Peering out, I saw in the moonlight a figure on a bicycle, lampless, approaching along the rough track through the heather.
“Och!” whispered Macpherson, incredulous. “ ’Tis the young leddy from Castle Crissaig!”
Reaching the bridge, the girl in the tam-o’-shanter laid down her bicycle, looked quickly around her over the moor, then ran on to the bridge. Taking from her skirt-pocket what must have been a key, she unfastened the padlock. Through the chortling of the stream as it flowed fast under the bridge, I heard the jingle of the padlock-chain, then a grinding sound as she began, exerting considerable effort, to turn the iron wheel.
“She’s raising the grille,” I whispered.
“Letting many a fine fish through into Ken’s water,” Raffles murmured.
“Gowd help the lassie,” Macpherson whispered, “if bluidy James Fraser comes roarin’ on her like a wild man an’ tells her feyther!”
For an hour Janet Finlayson remained on the bridge, glancing continually about her over the moonlit moor; then she wound the grille down again into the water, refastened the chain and padlock, and pedalled off on her bicycle.
“Now we know where her heart is,” said Raffles. “This’ll be good news for Ken!”
As we stepped out, elated, into the moonlight, we were all grinning, and I fancied that even Shoona was baring her canines with sly amusement.
Our fishing next day, on Ken’s water, was unbelievable. Macpherson was bent under the weight of our creels. And in the evening, just in time for dinner, Ken turned up on a quick visit to see if we were enjoying ourselves. As buxom Mrs. Macpherson set a superb dish of salmon on the table, Raffles and I were waiting for Ken to comment on it, so that we could tell him to whose significant action we owed the noble repast.
But Ken seemed scarcely aware of what he was eating. He looked preoccupied, worried, and Raffles asked him if the election was not going well.
“A spectre’s arisen for me,” Ken admitted, “but I’m not going to depress you chaps with it — you’re here to enjoy yourselves.”
“We might enjoy a romp with a spectre,” said Raffles. “Tell us about it.”
It was the spectre of the written word. In one of his dispatches from South Africa to the anti-war newspaper he had represented, Ken had accused General Finlayson of ordering an entire Boer family, caught sniping from a farmhouse, to be severely flogged with a rhino-hide whip, a sjambok.
“I’d sent off the dispatch, written in my own hand,” Ken told us, “by a route that bypassed the censor, when I found out that the story, though it seemed quite in character for General Finlay-son, wasn’t true. Luckily, I was able to stop my dispatch from being published.”
“Then what’s the trouble?” Raffles asked.
The trouble, Ken explained, was that his manuscript on the sjambok atrocity had not been destroyed by his newspaper, but filed; and he had now received a warning from a colleague on the newspaper that the manuscript had vanished from the files and somehow fallen into the hands of a newspaper that supported General Finlayson’s candidature.