Mr. Standfast

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We took our belongings to a green crook of the burn, and made
a very good breakfast. Wake had nothing in his pack but plasmon
biscuits and raisins, for that, he said, was his mountaineering
provender, but he was not averse to sampling my tinned stuff. He was a
different-sized fellow out in the hills from the anaemic intellectual of
Biggleswick. He had forgotten his beastly self-consciousness, and
spoke of his hobby with a serious passion. It seemed he had scrambled
about everywhere in Europe, from the Caucasus to the
Pyrenees. I could see he must be good at the job, for he didn't brag
of his exploits. It was the mountains that he loved, not wriggling
his body up hard places. The Coolin, he said, were his favourites,
for on some of them you could get two thousand feet of good rock.
We got our glasses on the face of Sgurr Alasdair, and he sketched
out for me various ways of getting to its grim summit. The Coolin
and the Dolomites for him, for he had grown tired of the Chamonix
aiguilles. I remember he described with tremendous gusto the joys
of early dawn in Tyrol, when you ascended through acres of flowery
meadows to a tooth of clean white limestone against a clean blue
sky. He spoke, too, of the little wild hills in the Bavarian
Wettersteingebirge, and of a guide he had picked up there and
trained to the job.

'They called him Sebastian Buchwieser. He was the jolliest boy
you ever saw, and as clever on crags as a chamois. He is probably
dead by now, dead in a filthy jaeger battalion. That's you and your
accursed war.'

'Well, we've got to get busy and end it in the right way,' I said.
'And you've got to help, my lad.'

He was a good draughtsman, and with his assistance I drew a
rough map of the crevice where we had roosted for the night,
giving its bearings carefully in relation to the burn and the sea.
Then I wrote down all the details about Gresson and the Portuguese
Jew, and described the latter in minute detail. I described, too,
most precisely the cache where it had been arranged that the
messages should be placed. That finished my stock of paper, and I
left the record of the oddments overheard of the conversation for a
later time. I put the thing in an old leather cigarette-case I possessed,
and handed it to Wake.
'You've got to go straight off to the Kyle and not waste any
time on the way. Nobody suspects you, so you can travel any road
you please. When you get there you ask for Mr Andrew Amos,
who has some Government job in the neighbourhood. Give him
that paper from me. He'll know what to do with it all right. Tell
him I'll get somehow to the Kyle before midday the day after
tomorrow. I must cover my tracks a bit, so I can't come with you,
and I want that thing in his hands just as fast as your legs will take
you. If anyone tries to steal it from you, for God's sake eat it. You
can see for yourself that it's devilish important.'

'I shall be back in England in three days,' he said. 'Any message
for your other friends?'

'Forget all about me. You never saw me here. I'm still Brand, the
amiable colonial studying social movements. If you meet Ivery, say
you heard of me on the Clyde, deep in sedition. But if you see Miss
Lamington you can tell her I'm past the Hill Difficulty. I'm coming
back as soon as God will let me, and I'm going to drop right into
the Biggleswick push. Only this time I'll be a little more advanced
in my views ... You needn't get cross. I'm not saying anything
against your principles. The main point is that we both hate dirty
treason.'

He put the case in his waistcoat pocket. 'I'll go round Garsbheinn,'
he said, 'and over by Camasunary. I'll be at the Kyle long
before evening. I meant anyhow to sleep at Broadford tonight ...
Goodbye, Brand, for I've forgotten your proper name. You're not
a bad fellow, but you've landed me in melodrama for the first time
in my sober existence. I have a grudge against you for mixing up
the Coolin with a shilling shocker. You've spoiled their sanctity.'

'You've the wrong notion of romance,' I said. 'Why, man, last
night for an hour you were in the front line - the place where the
enemy forces touch our own. You were over the top - you were in
No-man's-land.'

He laughed. 'That is one way to look at it'; and then he stalked
off and I watched his lean figure till it was round the turn of the hill.

All that morning I smoked peacefully by the burn, and let my
thoughts wander over the whole business. I had got precisely what
Blenkiron wanted, a post office for the enemy. It would need
careful handling, but I could see the juiciest lies passing that way to
the _Grosses _Haupiquartier. Yet I had an ugly feeling at the back of
my head that it had been all too easy, and that Ivery was not the
man to be duped in this way for long. That set me thinking about
the queer talk on the crevice. The poetry stuff I dismissed as the
ordinary password, probably changed every time. But who were
Chelius and Bommaerts, and what in the name of goodness were the
Wild Birds and the Cage Birds? Twice in the past three years I had
had two such riddles to solve - Scudder's scribble in his pocket-
book, and Harry Bullivant's three words. I remembered how it
had only been by constant chewing at them that I had got a sort of
meaning, and I wondered if fate would some day expound this
puzzle also.

Meantime I had to get back to London as inconspicuously as I
had come. It might take some doing, for the police who had been
active in Morvern might be still on the track, and it was essential
that I should keep out of trouble and give no hint to Gresson and
his friends that I had been so far north. However, that was for
Amos to advise me on, and about noon I picked up my waterproof
with its bursting pockets and set off on a long detour up the coast.
All that blessed day I scarcely met a soul. I passed a distillery which
seemed to have quit business, and in the evening came to a little
town on the sea where I had a bed and supper in a superior kind
of public-house.

Next day I struck southward along the coast, and had two experiences
of interest. I had a good look at Ranna, and observed that
the _Tobermory was no longer there. Gresson had only waited to get
his job finished; he could probably twist the old captain any way he
wanted. The second was that at the door of a village smithy I saw
the back of the Portuguese Jew. He was talking Gaelic this time -
good Gaelic it sounded, and in that knot of idlers he would have
passed for the ordinariest kind of gillie.

He did not see me, and I had no desire to give him the chance,
for I had an odd feeling that the day might come when it would be
good for us to meet as strangers.

That night I put up boldly in the inn at Broadford, where they
fed me nobly on fresh sea-trout and I first tasted an excellent
liqueur made of honey and whisky. Next morning I was early
afoot, and well before midday was in sight of the narrows of the
Kyle, and the two little stone clachans which face each other across
the strip of sea.
About two miles from the place at a turn of the road I came
upon a farmer's gig, drawn up by the wayside, with the horse
cropping the moorland grass. A man sat on the bank smoking,
with his left arm hooked in the reins. He was an oldish man, with a
short, square figure, and a woollen comforter enveloped his throat.

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Adventures of a Bagman

'Ye're punctual to time, Mr Brand,' said the voice of Amos. 'But
losh! man, what have ye done to your breeks! And your buits?
Ye're no just very respectable in your appearance.'

I wasn't. The confounded rocks of the Coolin had left their mark
on my shoes, which moreover had not been cleaned for a week, and
the same hills had rent my jacket at the shoulders, and torn my
trousers above the right knee, and stained every part of my apparel
with peat and lichen.

I cast myself on the bank beside Amos and lit my pipe. 'Did you
get my message?' I asked.

'Ay. It's gone on by a sure hand to the destination we ken of.
Ye've managed well, Mr Brand, but I wish ye were back in London.'
He sucked at his pipe, and the shaggy brows were pulled so low as
to hide the wary eyes. Then he proceeded to think aloud.

'Ye canna go back by Mallaig. I don't just understand why, but
they're lookin' for you down that line. It's a vexatious business
when your friends, meanin' the polis, are doing their best to upset
your plans and you no able to enlighten them. I could send word to
the Chief Constable and get ye through to London without a stop
like a load of fish from Aiberdeen, but that would be spoilin' the
fine character ye've been at such pains to construct. Na, na! Ye
maun take the risk and travel by Muirtown without ony creedentials.'

'It can't be a very big risk,' I interpolated.

'I'm no so sure. Gresson's left the _Tobermory. He went by here
yesterday, on the Mallaig boat, and there was a wee blackavised
man with him that got out at the Kyle. He's there still, stoppin' at
the hotel. They ca' him Linklater and he travels in whisky. I don't
like the looks of him.'

'But Gresson does not suspect me?'

'Maybe no. But ye wouldna like him to see ye hereaways. Yon
gentry don't leave muckle to chance. Be very certain that every
man in Gresson's lot kens all about ye, and has your description
down to the mole on your chin.'

'Then they've got it wrong,' I replied.
'I was speakin' feeguratively,' said Amos. 'I was considerin' your
case the feck of yesterday, and I've brought the best I could do for
ye in the gig. I wish ye were more respectable clad, but a good
topcoat will hide defeecencies.'

From behind the gig's seat he pulled out an ancient Gladstone
bag and revealed its contents. There was a bowler of a vulgar and
antiquated style; there was a ready-made overcoat of some dark
cloth, of the kind that a clerk wears on the road to the office; there
was a pair of detachable celluloid cuffs, and there was a linen collar
and dickie. Also there was a small handcase, such as bagmen carry
on their rounds.

'That's your luggage,' said Amos with pride. 'That wee bag's full
of samples. Ye'll mind I took the precaution of measurin' ye in
Glasgow, so the things'll fit. Ye've got a new name, Mr Brand, and
I've taken a room for ye in the hotel on the strength of it. Ye're
Archibald McCaskie, and ye're travellin' for the firm o' Todd, Sons
& Brothers, of Edinburgh. Ye ken the folk? They publish wee
releegious books, that ye've bin trying to sell for Sabbath-school
prizes to the Free Kirk ministers in Skye.'

The notion amused Amos, and he relapsed into the sombre
chuckle which with him did duty for a laugh.

I put my hat and waterproof in the bag and donned the bowler
and the top-coat. They fitted fairly well. Likewise the cuffs and
collar, though here I struck a snag, for I had lost my scarf somewhere
in the Coolin, and Amos, pelican-like, had to surrender the
rusty black tie which adorned his own person. It was a queer rig,
and I felt like nothing on earth in it, but Amos was satisfied.

'Mr McCaskie, sir,' he said, 'ye're the very model of a publisher's
traveller. Ye'd better learn a few biographical details, which ye've
maybe forgotten. Ye're an Edinburgh man, but ye were some years
in London, which explains the way ye speak. Ye bide at 6, Russell
Street, off the Meadows, and ye're an elder in the Nethergate U.F.
Kirk. Have ye ony special taste ye could lead the crack on to, if
ye're engaged in conversation?'

I suggested the English classics.

'And very suitable. Ye can try poalitics, too. Ye'd better be a
Free-trader but convertit by Lloyd George. That's a common case,
and ye'll need to be by-ordinar common ... If I was you, I would
daunder about here for a bit, and no arrive at your hotel till after
dark. Then ye can have your supper and gang to bed. The Muirtown
train leaves at half-seven in the morning ... Na, ye can't come with
me. It wouldna do for us to be seen thegither. If I meet ye in the
street I'll never let on I know ye.'

Amos climbed into the gig and jolted off home. I went down to
the shore and sat among the rocks, finishing about tea-time the
remains of my provisions. In the mellow gloaming I strolled into
the clachan and got a boat to put me over to the inn. It proved to
be a comfortable place, with a motherly old landlady who showed
me to my room and promised ham and eggs and cold salmon for
supper. After a good wash, which I needed, and an honest attempt
to make my clothes presentable, I descended to the meal in a coffee-
room lit by a single dim parafin lamp.

The food was excellent, and, as I ate, my spirits rose. In two days
I should be back in London beside Blenkiron and somewhere
within a day's journey of Mary. I could picture no scene now
without thinking how Mary fitted into it. For her sake I held
Biggleswick delectable, because I had seen her there. I wasn't sure
if this was love, but it was something I had never dreamed of
before, something which I now hugged the thought of. It made the
whole earth rosy and golden for me, and life so well worth living
that I felt like a miser towards the days to come.

I had about finished supper, when I was joined by another guest.
Seen in the light of that infamous lamp, he seemed a small, alert
fellow, with a bushy, black moustache, and black hair parted in the
middle. He had fed already and appeared to be hungering for
human society.

In three minutes he had told me that he had come down from
Portree and was on his way to Leith. A minute later he had whipped
out a card on which I read 'J. J. Linklater', and in the corner the
name of Hatherwick Bros. His accent betrayed that he hailed from
the west.

'I've been up among the distilleries,' he informed me. 'It's a poor
business distillin' in these times, wi' the teetotallers yowlin' about
the nation's shame and the way to lose the war. I'm a temperate
man mysel', but I would think shame to spile decent folks' business.
If the Government want to stop the drink, let them buy us out.
They've permitted us to invest good money in the trade, and they
must see that we get it back. The other way will wreck public
credit. That's what I say. Supposin' some Labour Government
takes the notion that soap's bad for the nation? Are they goin' to
shut up Port Sunlight? Or good clothes? Or lum hats? There's no
end to their daftness if they once start on that track. A lawfu'
trade's a lawfu' trade, says I, and it's contrary to public policy to pit
it at the mercy of wheen cranks. D'ye no agree, sir? By the way, I
havena got your name?'

I told him and he rambled on.

'We're blenders and do a very high-class business, mostly foreign.
The war's hit us wi' our export trade, of course, but we're no as
bad as some. What's your line, Mr McCaskie?'

When he heard he was keenly interested.

'D'ye say so? Ye're from Todd's! Man, I was in the book business
mysel', till I changed it for something a wee bit more lucrative. I
was on the road for three years for Andrew Matheson. Ye ken the
name - Paternoster Row - I've forgotten the number. I had a kind
of ambition to start a book-sellin' shop of my own and to make
Linklater o' Paisley a big name in the trade. But I got the offer from
Hatherwick's, and I was wantin' to get married, so filthy lucre won
the day. And I'm no sorry I changed. If it hadna been for this war, I
would have been makin' four figures with my salary and
commissions ... My pipe's out. Have you one of those rare and valuable
curiosities called a spunk, Mr McCaskie?'
He was a merry little grig of a man, and he babbled on, till I
announced my intention of going to bed. If this was Amos's
bagman, who had been seen in company with Gresson, I understood
how idle may be the suspicions of a clever man. He had probably
foregathered with Gresson on the Skye boat, and wearied that
saturnine soul with his cackle.

I was up betimes, paid my bill, ate a breakfast of porridge and
fresh haddock, and walked the few hundred yards to the station. It
was a warm, thick morning, with no sun visible, and the Skye hills
misty to their base. The three coaches on the little train were nearly
filled when I had bought my ticket, and I selected a third-class
smoking carriage which held four soldiers returning from leave.

The train was already moving when a late passenger hurried
along the platform and clambered in beside me. A cheery 'Mornin',
Mr McCaskie,' revealed my fellow guest at the hotel.

We jolted away from the coast up a broad glen and then on to a
wide expanse of bog with big hills showing towards the north. It
was a drowsy day, and in that atmosphere of shag and crowded
humanity I felt my eyes closing. I had a short nap, and woke to
find that Mr Linklater had changed his seat and was now beside me.

'We'll no get a Scotsman till Muirtown,' he said. 'Have ye nothing
in your samples ye could give me to read?'

I had forgotten about the samples. I opened the case and found
the oddest collection of little books, all in gay bindings. Some were
religious, with names like _Dew _of _Hermon and _Cool _Siloam; some
were innocent narratives, __How Tommy saved his _Pennies, __A Missionary
Child in _China, and __Little Susie and her _Uncle. There was a __Life of
David _Livingstone, a child's book on sea-shells, and a richly gilt
edition of the poems of one James Montgomery. I offered the
selection to Mr Linklater, who grinned and chose the Missionary
Child. 'It's not the reading I'm accustomed to,' he said. 'I like
strong meat - Hall Caine and Jack London. By the way, how d'ye
square this business of yours wi' the booksellers? When I was in
Matheson's there would have been trouble if we had dealt direct
wi' the public like you.'

The confounded fellow started to talk about the details of the
book trade, of which I knew nothing. He wanted to know on what
terms we sold 'juveniles', and what discount we gave the big
wholesalers, and what class of book we put out 'on sale'. I didn't
understand a word of his jargon, and I must have given myself
away badly, for he asked me questions about firms of which I had
never heard, and I had to make some kind of answer. I told myself
that the donkey was harmless, and that his opinion of me mattered
nothing, but as soon as I decently could I pretended to be absorbed
in the _Pilgrim's _Progress, a gaudy copy of which was among the
samples. It opened at the episode of Christian and Hopeful in the
Enchanted Ground, and in that stuffy carriage I presently followed
the example of Heedless and Too-Bold and fell sound asleep.
I was awakened by the train rumbling over the points of a little
moorland junction. Sunk in a pleasing lethargy, I sat with my eyes
closed, and then covertly took a glance at my companion. He had
abandoned the Missionary Child and was reading a little dun-
coloured book, and marking passages with a pencil. His face was
absorbed, and it was a new face, not the vacant, good-humoured
look of the garrulous bagman, but something shrewd, purposeful,
and formidable. I remained hunched up as if still sleeping, and tried
to see what the book was. But my eyes, good as they are, could
make out nothing of the text or title, except that I had a very
strong impression that that book was not written in the English tongue.

I woke abruptly, and leaned over to him. Quick as lightning he
slid his pencil up his sleeve and turned on me with a fatuous smile.

'What d'ye make o' this, Mr McCaskie? It's a wee book I picked
up at a roup along with fifty others. I paid five shillings for the lot.
It looks like Gairman, but in my young days they didna teach us
foreign languages.'

I took the thing and turned over the pages, trying to keep any
sign of intelligence out of my face. It was German right enough, a
little manual of hydrography with no publisher's name on it. It had
the look of the kind of textbook a Government department might
issue to its officials.

I handed it back. 'It's either German or Dutch. I'm not much of
a scholar, barring a little French and the Latin I got at Heriot's
Hospital ... This is an awful slow train, Mr Linklater.'

The soldiers were playing nap, and the bagman proposed a game
of cards. I remembered in time that I was an elder in the Nethergate
U.F. Church and refused with some asperity. After that I shut my
eyes again, for I wanted to think out this new phenomenon.

The fellow knew German - that was clear. He had also been seen
in Gresson's company. I didn't believe he suspected me, though I
suspected him profoundly. It was my business to keep strictly to
my part and give him no cause to doubt me. He was clearly
practising his own part on me, and I must appear to take him
literally on his professions. So, presently, I woke up and engaged
him in a disputatious conversation about the morality of selling
strong liquors. He responded readily, and put the case for alcohol
with much point and vehemence. The discussion interested the
soldiers, and one of them, to show he was on Linklater's side,
produced a flask and offered him a drink. I concluded by observing
morosely that the bagman had been a better man when he peddled
books for Alexander Matheson, and that put the closure on the business.

That train was a record. It stopped at every station, and in the
afternoon it simply got tired and sat down in the middle of a moor
and reflected for an hour. I stuck my head out of the window now
and then, and smelt the rooty fragrance of bogs, and when we
halted on a bridge I watched the trout in the pools of the brown
river. Then I slept and smoked alternately, and began to get
furiously hungry.

Once I woke to hear the soldiers discussing the war. There was
an argument between a lance-corporal in the Camerons and a sapper
private about some trivial incident on the Somme.

'I tell ye I was there,' said the Cameron. 'We were relievin' the
Black Watch, and Fritz was shelling the road, and we didna get up
to the line till one o'clock in the mornin'. Frae Frickout Circus to
the south end o' the High Wood is every bit o' five mile.'

'Not abune three,' said the sapper dogmatically.

'Man, I've trampit it.'

'Same here. I took up wire every nicht for a week.'

The Cameron looked moodily round the company. 'I wish there
was anither man here that kent the place. He wad bear me out.
These boys are no good, for they didna join till later. I tell ye it's
five mile.'

'Three,' said the sapper.

Tempers were rising, for each of the disputants felt his veracity
assailed. It was too hot for a quarrel and I was so drowsy that I
was heedless.

'Shut up, you fools,' I said. 'The distance is six kilometres, so
you're both wrong.'

My tone was so familiar to the men that it stopped the wrangle,
but it was not the tone of a publisher's traveller. Mr Linklater
cocked his ears.

'What's a kilometre, Mr McCaskie?' he asked blandly.

'Multiply by five and divide by eight and you get the miles.'

I was on my guard now, and told a long story of a nephew who
had been killed on the Somme, and how I had corresponded with
the War Office about his case. 'Besides,' I said, 'I'm a great student
o' the newspapers, and I've read all the books about the war. It's a
difficult time this for us all, and if you can take a serious interest in
the campaign it helps a lot. I mean working out the places on the
map and reading Haig's dispatches.'

'Just so,' he said dryly, and I thought he watched me with an
odd look in his eyes.

A fresh idea possessed me. This man had been in Gresson's
company, he knew German, he was obviously something very
different from what he professed to be. What if he were in the
employ of our own Secret Service? I had appeared out of the void
at the Kyle, and I had made but a poor appearance as a bagman,
showing no knowledge of my own trade. I was in an area interdicted
to the ordinary public; and he had good reason to keep an eye on
my movements. He was going south, and so was I; clearly we must
somehow part company.

'We change at Muirtown, don't we?' I asked. 'When does the
train for the south leave?'
He consulted a pocket timetable. 'Ten-thirty-three. There's
generally four hours to wait, for we're due in at six-fifteen. But this
auld hearse will be lucky if it's in by nine.'

His forecast was correct. We rumbled out of the hills into
haughlands and caught a glimpse of the North Sea. Then we were hung
up while a long goods train passed down the line. It was almost
dark when at last we crawled into Muirtown station and disgorged
our load of hot and weary soldiery.

I bade an ostentatious farewell to Linklater. 'Very pleased to
have met you. I'll see you later on the Edinburgh train. I'm for a
walk to stretch my legs, and a bite o' supper.' I was very determined
that the ten-thirty for the south should leave without me.

My notion was to get a bed and a meal in some secluded inn, and
walk out next morning and pick up a slow train down the line.
Linklater had disappeared towards the guard's van to find his
luggage, and the soldiers were sitting on their packs with that air of
being utterly and finally lost and neglected which characterizes the
British fighting-man on a journey. I gave up my ticket and, since I
had come off a northern train, walked unhindered into the town.

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