Huntingtower Part 12

"I breakfasted terrible early," he told the driver. "I think I'll have a bite to eat. Will you wait?"

"Ay," said the man, who was reading a grubby sheet of newspaper. "I'll wait as long as ye like, for it's you that pays."

d.i.c.kson left his pack in the cab and, oddly enough for a careful man, he did not shut the door. He re-entered the station, strolled to the bookstall and bought a _Glasgow Herald_. His steps then tended to the refreshment room, where he ordered a cup of coffee and two Bath buns, and seated himself at a small table. There he was soon immersed in the financial news, and though he sipped his coffee he left the buns untasted. He took out a penknife and cut various extracts from the _Herald_, bestowing them carefully in his pocket. An observer would have seen an elderly gentleman absorbed in market quotations.

After a quarter of an hour had been spent in this performance he happened to glance at the clock and rose with an exclamation. He bustled out to his taxi and found the driver still intent upon his reading.

"Here I am at last," he said cheerily, and had a foot on the step, when he stopped suddenly with a cry. It was a cry of alarm, but also of satisfaction.

"What's become of my pack? I left it on the seat, and now it's gone!

There's been a thief here."

The driver, roused from his lethargy, protested in the name of his G.o.ds that no one had been near it. "Ye took it into the station wi' ye," he urged.

"I did nothing of the kind. Just you wait here till I see the inspector.

A bonny watch _you_ keep on a gentleman's things."

But d.i.c.kson did not interview the railway authorities. Instead he hurried to the left-luggage office. "I deposited a small box here a short time ago. I mind the number. Is it there still?"

The attendant glanced at a shelf. "A wee deal box with iron bands. It was took out ten minutes syne. A man brought the ticket and took it away on his shoulder."

"Thank you. There's been a mistake, but the blame's mine. My man mistook my orders."

Then he returned to the now nervous taxi-driver. "I've taken it up with the station-master and he's putting the police on. You'll likely be wanted, so I gave him your number. It's a fair disgrace that there should be so many thieves about this station. It's not the first time I've lost things. Drive me to West George Street and look sharp." And he slammed the door with the violence of an angry man.

But his reflections were not violent, for he smiled to himself. "That was pretty neat. They'll take some time to get the kist open, for I dropped the key out of the train after we left Kirkmichael. That gives me a fair start. If I hadn't thought of that, they'd have found some way to grip me and ripe me long before I got to the Bank." He shuddered as he thought of the dangers he had escaped. "As it is, they're off the track for half an hour at least, while they're rummaging among Auntie Phemie's scones." At the thought he laughed heartily, and when he brought the taxi-cab to a standstill by rapping on the front window, he left it with a temper apparently restored. Obviously he had no grudge against the driver, who to his immense surprise was rewarded with ten s.h.i.+llings.

Three minutes later Mr. McCunn might have been seen entering the head office of the Strathclyde Bank, and inquiring for the manager. There was no hesitation about him now, for his foot was on his native heath.

The chief cas.h.i.+er received him with deference, in spite of his unorthodox garb, for he was not the least honoured of the bank's customers. As it chanced he had been talking about him that very morning to a gentleman from London. "The strength of this city," he had said, tapping his eyegla.s.ses on his knuckles, "does not lie in its dozen very rich men, but in the hundred or two homely folk who make no parade of wealth. Men like d.i.c.kson McCunn, for example, who live all their life in a semi-detached villa and die worth half a million." And the Londoner had cordially a.s.sented.

So d.i.c.kson was ushered promptly into an inner room, and was warmly greeted by Mr. Mackintosh, the patron of the Gorbals Die-Hards.

"I must thank you for your generous donation, McCunn. Those boys will get a little fresh air and quiet after the smoke and din of Glasgow. A little country peace to smooth out the creases in their poor little souls."

"Maybe," said d.i.c.kson, with a vivid recollection of Dougal as he had last seen him. Somehow he did not think that peace was likely to be the portion of that devoted band. "But I've not come here to speak about that."

He took off his waterproof; then his coat and waistcoat; and showed himself a strange figure with sundry bulges about the middle. The manager's eyes grew very round. Presently these excrescences were revealed as linen bags sewn on to his s.h.i.+rt, and fitting into the hollow between ribs and hip. With some difficulty he slit the bags and extracted three hide-bound packages.

"See here, Mackintosh," he said solemnly. "I hand you over these parcels, and you're to put them in the innermost corner of your strong room. You needn't open them. Just put them away as they are, and write me a receipt for them. Write it now."

Mr. Mackintosh obediently took pen in hand.

"What'll I call them?" he asked.

"Just the three leather parcels handed to you by d.i.c.kson McCunn, Esq., naming the date."

Mr. Mackintosh wrote. He signed his name with his usual flourish and handed the slip to his client.

"Now," said d.i.c.kson, "you'll put that receipt in the strong box where you keep my securities, and you'll give it up to n.o.body but me in person, and you'll surrender the parcels only on presentation of the receipt. D'you understand?"

"Perfectly. May I ask any questions?"

"You'd better not if you don't want to hear lees."

"What's in the packages?" Mr. Mackintosh weighed them in his hand.

"That's asking," said d.i.c.kson. "But I'll tell ye this much. It's jools."

"Your own?"

"No, but I'm their trustee."

"Valuable?"

"I was hearing they were worth more than a million pounds."

"G.o.d bless my soul," said the startled manager. "I don't like this kind of business, McCunn."

"No more do I. But you'll do it to oblige an old friend and a good customer. If you don't know much about the packages you know all about me. Now, mind, I trust you."

Mr. Mackintosh forced himself to a joke. "Did you maybe steal them?"

d.i.c.kson grinned. "Just what I did. And that being so, I want you to let me out by the back door."

When he found himself in the street he felt the huge relief of a boy who had emerged with credit from the dentist's chair. Remembering that there would be no midday dinner for him at home, his first step was to feed heavily at a restaurant. He had, so far as he could see, surmounted all his troubles, his one regret being that he had lost his pack, which contained among other things his _Izaak Walton_ and his safety razor. He bought another razor and a new Walton, and mounted an electric tram-car _en route_ for home.

Very contented with himself he felt as the car swung across the Clyde bridge. He had done well--but of that he did not want to think, for the whole beastly thing was over. He was going to bury that memory, to be resurrected perhaps on a later day when the unpleasantness had been forgotten. Heritage had his address, and knew where to come when it was time to claim the jewels. As for the watchers, they must have ceased to suspect him, when they discovered the innocent contents of his knapsack and Mrs. Morran's box. Home for him, and a luxurious tea by his own fireside; and then an evening with his books, for Heritage's nonsense had stimulated his literary fervour. He would dip into his old favourites again to confirm his faith. To-morrow he would go for a jaunt somewhere--perhaps down the Clyde, or to the South of England, which he had heard was a pleasant, thickly peopled country. No more lonely inns and deserted villages for him; henceforth he would make certain of comfort and peace.

The rain had stopped, and, as the car moved down the dreary vista of Eglinton Street, the sky opened into fields of blue and the April sun silvered the puddles. It was in such place and under such weather that d.i.c.kson suffered an overwhelming experience.

It is beyond my skill, being all unlearned in the game of psycho-a.n.a.lysis, to explain how this thing happened. I concern myself only with facts. Suddenly the pretty veil of self-satisfaction was rent from top to bottom, and d.i.c.kson saw a figure of himself within, a smug leaden little figure which simpered and preened itself and was hollow as a rotten nut. And he hated it.

The horrid truth burst on him that Heritage had been right. He only played with life. That imbecile image was a mere spectator, content to applaud, but shrinking from the contact of reality. It had been all right as a provision merchant, but when it fancied itself capable of higher things it had deceived itself. Foolish little image with its brave dreams and its swelling words from Browning! All make-believe of the feeblest. He was a coward, running away at the first threat of danger. It was as if he were watching a tall stranger with a wand pointing to the embarra.s.sed phantom that was himself, and ruthlessly exposing its frailties! And yet the pitiless showman was himself too--himself as he wanted to be, cheerful, brave, resourceful, indomitable.

d.i.c.kson suffered a spasm of mortal agony. "Oh, I'm surely not so bad as all that," he groaned. But the hurt was not only in his pride. He saw himself being forced to new decisions, and each alternative was of the blackest. He fairly s.h.i.+vered with the horror of it. The car slipped past a suburban station from which pa.s.sengers were emerging--comfortable black-coated men such as he had once been. He was bitterly angry with Providence for picking him out of the great crowd of sedentary folk for this sore ordeal. "Why was I tethered to sich a conscience?" was his moan. But there was that stern inquisitor with his pointer exploring his soul. "You flatter yourself you have done your share," he was saying.

"You will make pretty stories about it to yourself, and some day you may tell your friends, modestly disclaiming any special credit. But you will be a liar, for you know you are afraid. You are running away when the work is scarcely begun, and leaving it to a few boys and a poet whom you had the impudence the other day to despise. I think you are worse than a coward. I think you are a cad."

His fellow-pa.s.sengers on the top of the car saw an absorbed middle-aged gentleman who seemed to have something the matter with his bronchial tubes. They could not guess at the tortured soul. The decision was coming nearer, the alternatives loomed up dark and inevitable. On one side was submission to ignominy, on the other a return to that place, which he detested, and yet loathed himself for detesting. "It seems I'm not likely to have much peace either way," he reflected dismally.

How the conflict would have ended had it continued on these lines I cannot say. The soul of Mr. McCunn was being a.s.sailed by moral and metaphysical adversaries with which he had not been trained to deal. But suddenly it leapt from negatives to positives. He saw the face of the girl in the shuttered House, so fair and young and yet so haggard. It seemed to be appealing to him to rescue it from a great loneliness and fear. Yes, he had been right, it had a strange look of his Janet--the wide-open eyes, the solemn mouth. What was to become of that child if he failed her in her great need?

Now d.i.c.kson was a practical man and this view of the case brought him into a world which he understood. "It's fair ridiculous," he reflected.

"n.o.body there to take a grip of things. Just a wheen Gorbals keelies and the lad Heritage. Not a business man among the lot."

The alternatives, which hove before him like two great banks of cloud, were altering their appearance. One was becoming faint and tenuous; the other, solid as ever, was just a shade less black. He lifted his eyes and saw in the near distance the corner of the road which led to his home. "I must decide before I reach that corner," he told himself.

Then his mind became apathetic. He began to whistle dismally through his teeth, watching the corner as it came nearer. The car stopped with a jerk. "I'll go back," he said aloud, clambering down the steps. The truth was he had decided five minutes before when he first saw Janet's face.

He walked briskly to his house, entirely refusing to waste any more energy on reflection. "This is a business proposition," he told himself, "and I'm going to handle it as sich." Tibby was surprised to see him and offered him tea in vain. "I'm just back for a few minutes. Let's see the letters."