“According to my colleague,” Ken said, “that newspapers sending one of its staff men up to Glasgow to confer with General Finlayson’s election agent. That agent’s as crafty as a fox. I wouldn’t put it past him to have my story printed in pamphlets that seem to emanate from my own Election H.Q., and flood the constituency with them.”
“And plant people at your meetings,” Raffles said, “to ask you why, if the story were true, you suppressed it at the time?”
“Exactly! I couldn’t deny I’d written the story. They have the evidence — my own manuscript,” Ken said. “But it could be make to look that I’d raked it up now — a story I know to be false — to blackguard my political opponent. It could ruin my chances. Lesser things than this, just before a poll, have swung many an election.”
“And polling’s on the fourteenth?” Raffles said. “H’m! What’s this journalist chap’s name and when is he expected in Glasgow?”
“I don’t know his name,” Ken said, “but my colleague’s pretty sure the chap’ll be coming up to-morrow on the London-Glasgow express.”
“The Cock o’ the North,” Raffles said thoughtfully. “And to-morrow being the tenth, a lot of important Londoners will be on that train, bound for the grouse-moors. As I recall, the Cock o’ the North steams into Glasgow at eleven p.m. and most of the visitors on it put up for the night at that huge old hotel right alongside the station. H’m!”
He said no more on the matter, but next morning, when I went down to breakfast, Ken had already left to catch the steamer from Dunoon back to Glasgow, and I heard Raffles’s voice from the kitchen. I was buttering a bannock hot from the oven when he came into the breakfast-room.
“What were you talking to Mrs. Macpherson about?” I asked.
“I was taking a look at her game larder, Bunny.”
“Grouse-shooting doesn’t start till day after to-morrow, Raffles. There can’t be much in the larder yet.”
“Only ground game,” Raffles said, unfolding his napkin. “After you with the teapot, Bunny.”
I was at a loss to divine his intentions when, on the steamer from Dunoon, we arrived that evening in Glasgow and booked in at the hotel adjoining the station. Familiar to every dedicated grouse-shooter, the huge old warren of a hotel was virtually deserted. We had the echoing dining-room almost to ourselves. But at eleven o’clock, when we heard the Cock o’ the North, dead on time, steam into the station next door, what a change came over the scene!
We were sitting, with our coffee and liqueur whisky, in saddlebag chairs loomed over by a castor-oil plant, in the vast gas-lit mausoleum of a hall, when suddenly the rank and fashion of London came streaming in, all talking in loud, confident voices, all tweed-clad, the ladies looking about them through their lorgnettes in search of old friends in the crowd, the men with their guncases and shooting-sticks and their setters, pointers, retrievers, and spaniels, all of which looked as if they had pedigrees at least as long as those of their owners.
“Keep an eye open for anyone who looks like a journalist,” Raffles instructed me, through the din that was going on, the barking of dogs, the shrill yapping of a solitary Pekinese, the cries of well-bred delight as ladies kissed each other through their veils, and men with bluff shouts shook one another’s hands heartily.
“As a social occasion,” Raffles remarked, “only a Buckingham Palace garden party can compare with this, Bunny!”
“You’ve seen it before,” I said, “but it’s all new to me.”
I was impressed, recognising many a face familiar to high Society.
With trains or steamers to catch at an early hour, bound for the moors further north and the sacred rites of the Glorious Twelfth on the day after, the distinguished Londoners soon started going upstairs in loud converse to their rooms, while venerable pageboys, each with the leashes of half-a-dozen dogs in either hand, hobbled downstairs with them to the basement kennels.
“I didn’t notice anyone who looked particularly like a journalist,” I said, as peace reigned once more in the hall.
“I’ll see what I can find out at the desk, Bunny. Order us a couple of nightcaps.”
When Raffles returned to me, there was a grey gleam in his eyes. “He’s here, Bunny! There’s a journalist in Room Three-o-one. That’ll be our man. He’s probably arranged to meet with General Finlayson’s election agent first thing in the morning.”
With a flash of enlightenment, I exclaimed, “But he’s going to lose Ken’s fatal manuscript during the night?”
“Shh!” said Raffles. “Come on, we’ll take these drinks up to my room.”
In his room, when he turned up the gaslight, I saw that his valise had been unpacked by the chambermaid, his nightshirt laid out neatly on the bed, a box of Sullivans and his favorite bedtime reading, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, placed conveniently to hand.
“These doors have bolts, Bunny,” he said. “People in hotels are apt to bolt their doors, and bolts can be awkward to deal with. So, as conspirators seem to have started a hare in this election, I thought we might as well take a leaf out of their books.” He unlocked a small grip he had brought from Mackail Lodge. “This is from Mrs. Macpherson’s game larder,” he said, and held up, dangling by its ears, a fine hare.
“It’s been paunched,” he said, “and very well hung. Now, while we finish these drinks, the hotel will be settling down for the night. I’ll leave you then for a short while. Wait for me here.”
He was gone for about fifteen minutes, returning so suddenly that, with my nerves still on edge from our South African hardships, I sprang to my feet with a racing heart.
“Now then, Bunny,” he said, “I’ve tried the door of Room Three-o-one, and it’s bolted, as I thought it would be. So I’ve laid a good scent of hare on the carpets of all the stairs, landings, and corridors. There’s only the night porter on duty, down in the lobby, and he’s asleep already. Here’s my dressing gown. Put it on over your clothes, slip down to the basement, and release the dogs. When turmoil ensues and people come out of their rooms to find out what’s going on, I shall be watching my chance to slip into Room Three-o-one. Off you go, and I’ll see you at breakfast — all being well.”
“Oh, dear God!” I breathed.
On the stairs and in the broad corridors only an occasional gaslight had been left burning, dimly blue, as I stole down to the lobby. Most of the lights there had been turned off. The night porter was sound asleep in one of the saddlebag chairs. I tiptoed across the lobby and down stone stairs to the basement. I opened the kennels door.
Dimly I made out, in faint light filtering down from the lobby, the well-bred heads of setters, pointers, retrievers, and spaniels as they thrust them out between the bars of their cages to sniff at me in friendly inquiry.
“Good dogs, clever dogs,” I whispered to them, as I opened cage after cage. “Go find the hare, dogs! Push him out! Hie on! Go seek!”
The Pekinese, waking with a startled snuffle, hurled scandalized yaps at me and, when I released him, immediately attacked my trouser-cuffs with sharp teeth and bloodcurdling snarls. But then he spotted the procession of hunting dogs, led by a fine Gordon setter, streaming up the stairs to the lobby, and immediately rushed with indignant yaps to take his rightful place, as oriental royalty, at the head of the exodus.
Normally mute in the chase, the well-trained hunting dogs, excited by their unfamiliar surroundings and the hysterical yapping of the Pekinese, so far forgot themselves, when they picked up the scent of the hare, as to give tongue — especially the Cocker, Springer, and Welsh water spaniels — with a fearful clamor. Through the din I heard the wild shouting of the night porter.