Old House of Fear

They took Hugh Logan and Mary MacAskival out of the Pict’s House. Anderson tied Logan’s wrists together, behind his back, with a length of heavy cord, pulling the knots savagely tight. Jackman held the girl by the arm meanwhile; and when Anderson had finished with Logan, under Jackman’s instructions he tied a cord to Mary’s right wrist, and retained the other end of the cord in his hand while Jackman removed Powert’s jacket and bandaged the flesh-wound with a strip torn from the tail of Powert’s shirt. This done, Jackman had Anderson tie the other end of Mary’s cord to Jackman’s own left wrist.

“There!” Jackman said, contentedly, “a brisk morning’s run, and no harm done. Anderson, Powert and I will take this charming couple to the Old House while you trot down the brae and call back Ferd and Niven; I think they should be near the sheiling this side of Cailleach.”

Anderson glowered at Logan. “Ye said I wud hae the thrashin’ o’ that clot, Doctor.”

“That you shall, Anderson, my man, that you shall—once we’re at the Old House. I do believe Anderson will learn all we need to know from you, Logan, in short order. Our treatment of you, Miss MacAskival, will need to be rather more laborious: the washing of the brain, as our Chinese friends say. But it will all come out in the wash, won’t it? And Powert, too, will be given his fair turn at you, Logan: fair shares for all, eh?” Jackman ran his tongue over his thin lips. “In one thing, at least, you seem to have told me the truth, Logan: you’ve no people in Carnglass, for you’d not have been cowering in that ruin if there were any. There’s Carruthers to be accounted for; but I suppose he may have missed his footing in the dark and have gone over the cliffs. I must confess that my estimate of your abilities has diminished, Logan. Whatever possessed you to light that fire here by the chapel? You might have eluded us four or five hours longer if you hadn’t done that. Well, drive him along, Powert.”

With his unwounded arm, Powert gave Logan a fierce shove in the back, setting him stumbling in the direction of the Old House; and Jackman tugged on Mary’s cord, pulling her with him behind Logan and Powert. The girl’s face was quite drained of color, but very haughty. “My dear,” Jackman said to her, casually, “how changed you are going to be within a few days! How very changed!”

Then, from somewhere below in the nearer valley, there came to them the crack of a rifle-shot. It was answered by another, apparently from a different gun. Next was a burst of firing, and then a faint cry.

Jackman’s satisfied smile altered horribly; he was Rumpelstiltskin again. “Logan,” he muttered, “is there a man of yours in Carnglass, after all? Or is that only Niven’s or Caggia’s nerves playing them tricks? Anderson, you and I must go down to see. Powert, we’ll leave you with Logan; he can’t do you harm. The girl will come with me. We’ll send back a man to help you get Logan to the Old House, Powert.”

Powert most obviously did not relish the plan. “Coom, Dr. Jackman, I’ve a bad arm, and this cove’s a queer one.”

“Nonsense,” Jackman said, “we’ll bind his feet, too, until we send Anderson or someone else for you.” Away below, there was only silence, but Jackman ran his hand across his forehead uneasily. “Here: we’ll put him inside the chapel with you, and you can watch the door, with your back to the wall: that’s safe enough.” Powert scowled, but shoved Logan toward the door of St. Merin’s Chapel. Jackman herded the four of them inside.

Now that the dawn came through the broken tracery of the chapel’s pointed windows, Logan could see that the single room contained seven or eight tombs raised above the floor, some of them very old; and a number of the flagstones, deeply incised by some rude stonecarver, apparently covered other graves. “Wha’ in hell’s yon!” cried Anderson, abruptly, pointing.

Near the northeast corner of the room, one of the flagstones had been raised, and now was leant against the wall. Where it had lain, a little mound of earth, freshly dug, protruded above the floor; and in the earth was thrust a curiously primitive wooden spade. The mound was about six feet long. They all crowded close to it. An earthenware dish had been set atop the mound, and the dish was filled with, of all things, nails and what looked like salt. Across the dish lay a branch from a rowan tree. “That,” Mary MacAskival said softly to Dr. Jackman, “is how the spirits of the newly dead are laid in these islands.”

“Wha’ fule’s been diggin’ graves?” Anderson growled, looking back over his shoulder toward the empty doorway.

Jackman stood rigid; then, “I think Carruthers must be under that clay. Anderson, take the spade and uncover him.” Mary MacAskival shivered slightly.

Anderson cursed, but under Jackman’s hard eye he began to shovel. The grave was very shallow. In a minute or two, a heavy shape could be made out, wrapped in a big piece of tarred canvas. “That will be the head at the far end,” Jackman whispered. “Powert, draw the canvas from the face.”

Mary had turned away, but Logan, dreadfully fascinated, saw clearly the smashed and fallen face of a man he never had looked upon before. And Jackman screamed: he screamed twice, and so terribly that his men shook, for the screams were worse than the ruined face in the grave. “Lagg! It’s Lagg!”

Quivering, Anderson dropped the spade. “Aye,” he said, “Tam Lagg, that we pit ower the cliff into the sea. For the love o’ God, Powert, cover his mug.”

Powert, his teeth chattering, let the canvas drop back over the corpse.

“Logan,” shrieked Jackman, turning a frantic face on him, “Logan, what are you? What are you? Do you make dead men rise from the sea? Was it you that put this thing here?” He had the pistol in his hand, and thrust it against Logan’s middle.

He will fire now, Logan thought, for he’s quite out of his head. There was the sound of a shot. But I’m not hit, Logan realized; I feel nothing. Jackman sprang away and looked out the doorway; the shot, after all, had come from outside, though in his tension Logan had thought, for an instant, that Jackman had pulled the trigger. Yet surely a gun had gone off fairly close at hand.

“Anderson, watch this door,” Jackman ordered; he had a measure of control over himself. “Powert, give me that rope.” He forced Logan to sit, and tied his ankles together. “We’ll return for you in a few minutes, Powert.”

“Me? I’ll not sit here by the dead man.” Powert scarcely could hold his rifle.

Jackman sent him a deadly look from those glowering black eyes of his. “You’ll be another dead man yourself, Powert, if I hear another word from you. Now, Anderson, we’ll look into this. Miss MacAskival, if you cry out, I’ll be forced to put a bullet through your head.” He shoved her through the doorway.

“Hugh,” Mary called back, reckless of Jackman, “Hugh, I love you!” Then she and Jackman and Anderson were out of sight.

Powert, left with Logan and the corpse, still shook; and he cursed Logan and Jackman and Carnglass while he made his preparations as if for siege. He pushed the helpless Logan roughly against Sir Alastair’s tomb, facing away from the doorway, and parallel with the open grave and the awful thing under the canvas. Then he pulled shut the sagging door of the chapel, so that some force would be required to budge it; and he himself leaned against a tombstone that came up to his shoulders, with his face toward the door, and his rifle in his hands, the barrel resting upon the head of another tombstone. So situated, Powert could watch the door, keep an eye on Logan and the sheeted thing, and have the comforting feel of stone at his back.

Logan himself, after the repeated shocks of that fair morning, was in little better state than Powert. Silent, he lay motionless against the tomb of Sir Alastair MacAskival, his brain dull, dull, dull. There were no more shots outside: only the rustle of a breeze in the rowan trees. The stillness was a trying thing. Powert was mumbling to himself: obscenities, blasphemies, scraps of nearly-forgotten prayer. The sunlight was pouring into the chapel through the unglazed Gothic windows. Five or six minutes passed thus.

Then a faint sound came. Was something stirring in the high graveyard grass, just outside the closed door? Did the door itself creak, as if very gently tried? “Anderson,” Powert cried out, choking, “is it you, man? Dr. Jackman?” Nothing answered. Did the door creak again, ever so slightly, or was it the breeze? “Sing out,” Powert shouted, glaring wild-eyed at the flimsy door, “or I’ll shoot!”

High in the wall behind Powert was one of the pointed windows, its stone tracery for the most part broken away. It must be at least eight feet above the level of the graveyard. Though Logan could see this window, Powert, intent on the doorway, could not. And as something rose cautiously above the windowsill, from outside, Logan bit his lip to keep back a cry.

It was a man’s head that cut off the morning light: a lean man, keen-eyed; and there was a long white beard on his chin; and there was a little black knife between his teeth. His eyes took in the room. Steadying himself by clutching the broken tracery with his left hand, stealthily he rose until his shoulders came above the window-ledge. In his brown right hand he held a large stone.

As if someone had thrust tentatively against it, the rotten door creaked shrilly. “Damn you,” Powert was crying, “speak up, or I’ll shoot.” The white-bearded man outside the window drew back his arm and flung the stone with great force, as if letting fly at a rabbit. The rock caught Powert at the back of his head; he fell to his knees, the rifle clattering on the flagstones. At that the door burst open, and two men tumbled into the room, and were upon Powert before he could recover. A boy followed them, and, kneeling by Logan, looked shyly into his face. These were the two men and the boy, MacAskivals from Daldour, that Logan had seen in Loch Boisdale, four days before.

Then there strode through the doorway a very tall old man, erect and vigorous and bearded to his chest, with a shotgun in his hand. He was worth looking at; but another man, hard on his heels, was still stranger. This was a burly, broad-shouldered fellow, with a heavy, jolly face, and mild eyes that were exceedingly odd, though it would have been difficult to say why. Something in the look of his face was queer enough. Yet it was his clothing that made him conspicuous. The other men wore the caps and canvas cloaks and rough homespun tweeds of the crofters and fishermen in the remoter Isles. This burly man, in strong contrast, was dressed in what seemed to be the garments of a laird or prosperous farmer: green tweed jacket, green corduroy breeches and long stockings, good heavy shoes. Under the open jacket was a soiled yellow waistcoat; and on his head was a battered porkpie hat. These clothes were in wretched repair, with dark stains here and there upon them. The breeches, seemingly split at the seams, were held together by pins. One sleeve of the jacket was ripped open from shoulder to wrist. And although the clothes had been got on, they did not fit the man who wore them.

Resting a hand on the boy’s shoulder, the tall old man bent over Logan and spoke in Gaelic. Logan shook his head: “I know only English.” Frowning, the old man muttered through his splendid beard to the boy beside him.

The boy stammered a little, as if overwhelmed with shyness; but there was no fear in him. He spoke to Logan in good, if careful, English. “Malcolm Mor MacAskival of Daldour asks what is your name, and what do you do in Carnglass.” The pirate-like old man looked hard at Logan.

These, then, were Mary MacAskival’s people! She had not been woolgathering when she spoke of them. How she had summoned them, Hugh Logan did not know; but the five of them—two had gagged Powert, and were sitting on the man—were staring at Logan intently. This was no time for long explanations. “Untie me,” Logan said. “I am Hugh Logan, and I am to marry Miss Mary MacAskival.”

There was a murmur from the men, and all five MacAskivals of Daldour took off their caps deferentially, and then put them back on again. With a fisherman’s deftness, old Malcolm Mor undid the cords about Logan’s wrists and ankles, and the two men who looked like twins promptly bound Powert with them. As he released Logan, Malcolm Mor said, in decent English, “Then I am your man, sir, and so are my sons and my grandson, and my nephew Angus, and my nephew Kenneth who is not here. We saw the man with the third eye lead the lady away. Will we go after her?” Malcolm Mor tapped his shotgun. Malcolm Mor’s two sons had old rifles; the boy and Angus, the queer burly man in the queerer clothes, were unarmed. One of the sons, almost bowing, handed Powert’s rifle to Logan as he stood up and tried to get the blood to circulate in his tingling wrists and ankles.

Hugh Logan surveyed his little army. “Yes, we will,” he said, “if they don’t come after us first. Just now they’re down in the valley hunting someone; but some of them will come back to the chapel.” These men, he thought, would be good shots; and to live in Daldour, they must be hardy and probably courageous, though he doubted whether they had much experience at man-killing.

“It is my nephew Kenneth that they are hunting,” Malcolm Mor observed. “I sent him to watch them from the bracken. It was Kenneth who shot his gun to lead them away from the chapel. They will not find him. We have watched them for a week, but we did not understand what they did, and there was no gentleman to lead us. We would have shot the man with the third eye when he took the lady away, but we were afraid that she might be hurt. Is it so that they are robbers and murderers?”

“That they are,” Logan said, emphatically.

“Then,” Malcolm Mor went on, in the slow, gentle Island English, “it would be lawful for us to hunt them?” Logan suspected that the people of Daldour were extremely shy of the law.

“It would,” Logan told him. “I am a lawyer, and I give you my authority.”

Malcolm Mor MacAskival’s old eyes lit up, and he smiled as some Norse rover might have smiled. “Then, sir,” he said, “we will go after the lady, and take the Old House of Fear.” He seemed to have no doubt whatsoever of the success of this undertaking by five or six men and a boy. “There are three more able-bodied men in Daldour, but we have no time to fetch them. Kenneth, my nephew, will come to us soon. Will we go down into the valley now, Mr. Logan?”

“Let’s have a look about,” Logan said. The men followed him through the chapel doorway. When Logan had thrown his rucksack on the fire, he had stuffed his binoculars into a trouser-pocket; and now he pulled them out and stared through them in the direction of the Old House; but, what with hills, rocks, and clumps of trees and thickets of bracken, he could see no one moving.

Then, a hundred yards away, and ascending toward the chapel, Anderson came into view. Logan dropped the binoculars and snatched up his rifle, but Anderson had seen them before he could get the gun to his shoulder. For a second, Anderson stared aghast; then, flinging himself around, he leaped downhill, vanishing into bracken, reappearing on a knoll, slipping, almost rolling down a talus-slope, merging with the blur of gray rock and purple heather and green bracken. Logan fired twice, but could not have hit him. At that, Malcolm Mor and his two sons brought up their guns and fired also. They did not really take aim, and Logan thought they meant to frighten, rather than to wound; but also he thought that they could be brought to shoot to kill if they must.

“We can catch him,” Malcolm Mor said, like a dog eager for the word from his master. “He is a town man, and we are faster.”

“No,” Logan decided, shaking his head, “no, there’ll be three others down there, and they have Miss MacAskival with them, on a rope. We’ll go down and after them, but together; and no one must shoot if the lady might be hurt.” This deliberation was agony to Logan himself, but he had been an officer, and he knew something of tactics.

The MacAskivals nodded. “My nephew Kenneth will be watching them from the bracken,” Malcolm Mor said. “We will go down, and he will join us; and if they take the lady to the Old House, then we will follow them into the house.”

Malcolm Mor’s nephew Angus, the burly man in the dirty yellow waistcoat, was nodding and smiling at every word his old uncle uttered. “Do you have a gun?” Logan said to him. The man opened his mouth, but words did not come out: only mouthed grunts, rather horrid. Malcolm Mor seemed somewhat embarrassed.

“He can not speak,” the boy—Malcolm Gille was his name—said apologetically. “He is called”—here the boy seemed to seek the English equivalent of a Gaelic term, and emerged triumphantly—“he is called Dumb Angus.” Dumb Angus nodded enthusiastically at the mention of his name. “And,” the boy went on, “he is simple. Dumb Angus is simple, and does not have a gun, but he is very strong, and he is honest, and he makes many jokes.” Dumb Angus bowed and smiled, and tapped himself on the head to prove that he knew he was simple. “He cannot speak,” the boy said, “but he makes jokes in other ways.”

Logan checked Powert’s rifle, and reloaded; one of Malcolm’s sons—their names, it turned out, were John and Robert—brought him a cartridge-pouch that Powert had worn. What ought they to do with Powert? Malcolm Mor, now assured that the majesty of the law sheltered the persecuted sept of MacAskival, speculatively fingered the little black knife in his belt. “No,” said Logan, “we’ll bring them all to trial, if we can.”

“There is one already taken and locked away,” Malcolm Mor offered. “His name, I think, is Carruthers. We took him the night before last night, and carried him to Daldour, and locked him in a byre, and he is afraid, for he thinks that we will eat him. Dumb Angus made him think so; that is one of the jokes of Dumb Angus. It is pleasant to have Dumb Angus in Daldour. We could carry this man, too, to Daldour, but there is not time.”

Dumb Angus was gesturing and beckoning, and pointing upward. At the east end of the chapel, behind the altar, ran a kind of low loft or gallery, of wood, probably built when the chapel was re-roofed by Sir Alastair MacAskival. “Yes,” said Logan, “that will do. Put Powert there, at the back, and no one is likely to notice him until we need him.” The sons of Malcolm carried Powert up the short flight of wooden steps, and tightened the cords and his gag. Dumb Angus might be simple, but he had eyes in his head.

And now they could start in pursuit of Jackman, for Mary MacAskival’s sake. Anderson probably would have warned Jackman and the others by this time; but the warning might do no mischief, for those four guns going off at his heels must have sounded to Anderson as if half the constabulary of Scotland were after him. They could not catch Jackman and the rest before they reached the Old House, the odds were, nor would it have been safe to fire at the retreating gang with Mary MacAskival in their midst. But by night, Logan was resolved, he and the Daldour people would make their try. “Well, gentlemen,” he said to Malcolm Mor and the others, “if you’re ready, I am.” And they started down the brae.

As they trotted and scrambled toward the valley, the boy running by Logan’s side, Logan said to Malcolm Gille, “Why does Dumb Angus wear such clothes?”

“Those clothes were not his.” The boy smiled broadly. “It is one of the jokes of Dumb Angus. They are the clothes of Mr. Lagg, the factor, that we found broken below the cliffs and buried in the chapel of St. Merin. For Dumb Angus, it is always Hallowe’en.”

The humor of Daldour, Logan took it, had its grisly side. Dumb Angus it must have been that Rab had encountered two nights before. If even the simpletons of Daldour—and the whole band of Daldour MacAskivals was a remarkably odd-looking lot—were this resourceful, it might be just possible for Logan to get Mary alive out of the Old House.