7
“Why, then,” Dr. Jackman said, “Mr. Logan is a fortunate young man.” The note of irony was faint. “I seem to recollect, Miss MacAskival, your mentioning that you met a young man at an Edinburgh party, last Christmas: I suppose this is he. And however did your betrothed contrive to come into this house, in this season?”
Whatever game the girl was playing, Logan thought, he too would have to play it now. And possibly he might carry it off. Jackman he took for an Englishman. Logan had some talent for languages and dialects; his courtroom years had taught him dissimulation; and since the war he had been in several amateur performances of the Players’ Club. Now for his present role: he had best play the part of a rather callow, but ambitious, clerk from the Lothians. His speech ought to have a strong suggestion of Scots, but to seem an imitation of public-school English, and with a touch of what people called “la-de-da.” A small moustache might have gone well with the part; it was a pity he hadn’t been given time to cultivate one.
So Logan stepped forward rather stiffly, offering his hand to Jackman. “Now the fat is in the fire, isn’t it? Rather. It’s grand to make your acquaintance, Dr. Jackman, but really, I must apologize for coming informally this way. It’s my fortnight’s holiday, and I had promised Mary to come for a holiday as soon as ever I could. Somehow my letters hadn’t reached her. The post is beastly nowadays, is it not? Some fishing-johnnies brought me over from North Uist, and set me ashore at the other end of your wee island. Now I must see Lady MacAskival today and ask her approval. For Mary and I do not mean to wait another quarter, do we, Mary, darling?”
The girl had stepped forward with him; and now Logan, putting an arm about her waist, gave her an overdemonstrative squeeze, in keeping with his new character. She did not seem disconcerted. “No, Hughie,” she said, “we mustn’t wait a day longer than necessary.”
Dr. Jackman’s thin lips contracted, but he took Logan’s hand briefly. “You and I will have much to discuss soon, Mr. Logan,” he said, “but just now, tell me this: if you came from the shore at Dalcruach, did you meet no one on your way?”
“Indeed I did see some men hunting,” Logan replied, easily, “but they were away down in the glen, and their backs to me, so they did not see me when I waved.” He was doing well enough with his assumed pronunciation, he thought; he threw just a suggestion of “awa’ doon” into his words. “Then there were two sportsmen on the cliffs, and I called after them, but the mist came up and hid them. I kept to the cliffs, the better for finding the castle. And Mary here”—he squeezed her again—“had told me her rooms were at the back of the house, so I went round, and Mary saw me and let me in.” He felt sure that Jackman disliked him intensely. Who wouldn’t, in his present role? He hoped he was convincing as a pushing, canny, and unmannerly junior clerk.
Jackman looked vexed, though not especially with him. “Mr. Logan,” Jackman said, “did you ever dream that you were the commander of a garrison, for instance, with Red Indians all about your fort; but that the moment you turned your back, your troops would vanish like shadows; and any shot that was fired at the enemy, would have to be fired by yourself?”
“No, sir,” Logan replied, with what he trusted was a properly oafish perplexity, “I never did. The fact of the matter is, I never do dream.”
“I should have thought of that,” Jackman observed. “No, I’m sure you never dream. But to return to the heart of the matter: I dream a great deal. And the conduct of Lady MacAskival’s servants is like a nightmare to me. What incompetence! Yet several of them saw service during the late war. If none of them spied you on the cliffs, they must be even duller than I thought. I suppose that Miss MacAskival has told you a very dangerous man is at large in the island?”
“She has, sir; and I am thankful I did not meet with him on my way. An Irishman, she says.”
“Yes, Donley: an Irishman, and a homicidal maniac. Our people have been seeking to arrest him for more than three days, but he always escapes their net. Those were not sportsmen you saw, Mr. Logan, but our people tracking this Donley. Neither Miss MacAskival nor anyone else in this house will be able to set foot outside while that man is at large, unless accompanied by an armed guard. I regret to say, Miss MacAskival, that I must forbid you to visit your garden until the man is caught. And please have the goodness to remember to keep back from the windows. The man is armed, Mr. Logan, and a crack shot. Only Ferd Caggia, our cook, is his peer with a gun. To be defended by a Maltese cook in one’s own castle! Ludicrous, isn’t it, Mr. Logan? I suppose you wonder why we haven’t summoned the police. But possibly Miss MacAskival has had time to tell you that the madman destroyed our boats, and we have been quite out of communication with the mainland. Presumably, however, our agents in Glasgow will send a launch to us in a day or two, by way of inquiry, and then we can call in the police. That launch, by the way, can give you passage back to the mainland, Mr. Logan.”
“That’s very thoughtful, I’m sure, sir,” Logan said innocently, “but it’s my plan to stay the best part of a fortnight, if Lady MacAskival will permit me.”
“Lady MacAskival is in no condition to make decisions of any nature. As for your remaining here—why, we’d best go upstairs to my study and discuss certain matters, Mr. Logan. Will you excuse me, Miss MacAskival?”
That barefoot little girl stepped forward like a princess. “Dr. Jackman: surely you remember my Airedale, Tyke?”
“Yes,” Jackman said with a frosty smile, “I do. A great pity, that rabbit-hunting accident.”
“You took Tyke for a walk, Dr. Jackman,” Mary MacAskival went on, dispassionately, “and never did you bring him back. I wish you to bring Hugh back to me. I intend to give him tea here in my parlor, one hour from now.”
“Of course, my dear young lady.” Jackman bowed slightly. “I shall bring him back safe in wind and limb: eh, Logan?” He clapped Logan lightly on the back. “And now, be so good as to follow me up these stairs. Mind the worn stone treads: they’re treacherous. No one knows how many generations of MacAskivals have trodden that granite through. There’s a legend that the ghost of Old Askival snatches at one’s ankles on those stairs. Eh, Miss MacAskival? I’m sure he’d snatch at yours, and small blame to him.” Jackman nodded at the girl with a kind of paternal gallantry.
Mary MacAskival stood in the doorway as Logan and Jackman began to ascend. “I believe it was my ankles that you noticed first, wasn’t it, Hughie?” Though the stair was dark, Logan thought that Jackman almost winced. “I suppose I really ought to tell you how it was that Hugh and I came to meet, Dr. Jackman. You’ve already guessed that it must have been during that wonderful fortnight Lady MacAskival and you let me spend in Edinburgh in December with Anne Lindsay, who had been at school with me. I happened to go into the Lawnmarket office of the British Linen Bank to change a five-pound note; and Hugh was so very helpful; and we found that he knew the Lindsays of George Square; and....”
“Quite,” said Dr. Jackman, “quite. Perhaps we had best leave the rest to my fertile imagination? Really, I am not in the least surprised; if you will pardon my saying so, Miss Mary MacAskival, the little episode is part and parcel with the traditional impulsiveness of ladies of your family. You understand what I mean. The inscription by the door of the old tower, for instance—we’ll show you that incised slab later, Mr. Logan. Just now, I’ve only one thing to say to you, Miss MacAskival. I advise you to go in to Lady MacAskival and tell her that a young man has come to call upon you. As for any mention of marriage, the shock might put an end to your aunt; and you know as well as I do the certain consequence to your own prospects. Yet you had best mention Mr. Logan’s coming, because old Agnes would tell her soon enough, in any event. I advise you to be extremely gentle and prudent in the telling. And while you are having your little chat with Lady MacAskival, I shall have my little chat with your Mr. Logan.”
Mary MacAskival sent a glance from her disturbing green eyes at Hugh as he followed Jackman up the dark stair; and she gave him a demure wink. Whatever else the girl had or lacked, she had sufficient courage in adversity. Then she was gone, and Jackman led him round and round the twisting stair in the thickness of the wall, past several shut doors, to the topmost chamber of the tower. Upon three sides were windows, not so large as those of Miss MacAskival’s room, but still big and handsome; and on the fourth wall was an immense fireplace, perhaps fifteenth-century work, with a ponderous chimney-piece carved crudely from basalt. On one side of the mantel, and standing two feet high, carved almost in the round, was the effigy of a naked man holding an axe; and on the other, a naked woman clutching a cross to her breast.
“A ponderous quaint affair, isn’t it?” Jackman observed, nodding toward the fireplace. “There are similar figures set into the outer wall, by the door of this tower: Askival and Merin, they say. The Old House is so well preserved only because it stood empty, but not a ruin, nearly the whole of the nineteenth century: the proprietors lived in the New House. They used the ground floors of the Old House for byres and rubbish-rooms. Sir Alastair MacAskival, the present old lady’s husband, restored the Old House—with his wife’s money. It’s far too large for such a household as she has now. The block that Sir Alastair added is all great drawing-rooms and dining-rooms and billiard-rooms and ball-rooms, with the kitchens below; and the present servants sleep in the upper rooms of that wing. Lady MacAskival has a grand bedroom hung with Spanish leather, in the Renaissance range; and I have rooms in that building. But I spend much of my time in this study. For centuries it was the private chamber of the chiefs of MacAskival. There’s a fine prospect; but I’ll show you that later, Mr. Logan. And have you noticed the ceiling? But I presume you’re no antiquarian.”
Indeed, the ceiling was a wonder. Though the colors in which its panels were painted were much like those of the ceiling in Mary MacAskival’s parlor, here geometrical designs alternated with scores of stiff representations of queer men and beasties: kings, perhaps, and knights, and ladies, and lions, and leopards, and griffins, and water-horses, and unicorns, and things for which Logan knew no name—no two alike. “Late fifteenth century, perhaps,” Jackman said, “and almost unique in the islands, this ceiling.”
At the center of all these painted ceiling-panels was a panel with a dull red background; and on it, little faded, was depicted a very odd creature. It had the body of a man; but there were cloven hoofs instead of feet, though it showed human hands; and the head was the narrow malign head of a goat. The face itself seemed to be a dismaying blend of human and animal features, in which the cunning slit goat-eyes dominated. “I see you are looking at the Firgower—the central panel,” Jackman went on. “A beast peculiar to Carnglass, it seems, the Firgower: half goat, half man. There’s still a ruinous building upon the cliffs called the Firgower’s house. I take it to have been the house of the last Pictish chief of Carnglass, before the Vikings came. There’s some remote Pict strain, as well as Norse, in your own Miss MacAskival, Mr. Logan. She is of the old family, true enough—not that she has the faintest legitimate claim to the property, you understand. But I suppose you have little interest in fictions like the Firgower. These legends sometimes have meaning, all the same. Once an archeologist told me that the Firgower may be some island memory of the last Pict chieftain himself: an ugly brute, to judge from this portrait. The old islanders used to say that the Firgower never died, but lives on from age to age. And that’s true enough, Mr. Logan, after a fashion—the goat strain, I mean. I don’t scruple to say that a goatish strain has run through the line of MacAskival, from beginning to end. Gallant men and handsome women; but concupiscent, Mr. Logan, concupiscent. You understand me? There are vessels for honor, and vessels for dishonor.”
“I can’t say that I do understand, precisely, sir.” The two of them were seated in leather chairs now, and Jackman was pouring sherry from an eighteenth-century decanter. What with Mary MacAskival absent, Logan could spend his time studying this unnerving Dr. Jackman. As Donley had told him, the fellow was clever, immensely clever; and more than that, wise, perhaps; and voluble. He made Logan uneasy to a degree Logan never had experienced with that gunman Donley. The little deformed man had a commanding presence. And still Logan was unsure of the nature of Jackman’s deformity: it was something about the spine and shoulders, though not crippling or really noticeable. Yet Jackman’s lean face had about it just a suggestion of that look of suffering and humiliation which one sometimes sees on the faces of congenital hunchbacks. And there was something dismaying about the man’s forehead. Right at the middle of his brow existed a small and shallow depression, about the size and shape of a sixpence; and there seemed to be no bone behind the skin at that spot. Now and then the place seemed to stir a little, as if the skin lay upon the quick brain. In an unpleasant way, it was fascinating.
“Very good old sherry, this,” Jackman was saying. “Sir Alastair kept an admirable cellar, and much of it still is below stairs. One has to watch the servants. There’s a quantity—perhaps two bins—of Jamaica rum of 1800 or earlier, commencing to lose its savor now, alas. Another drop, Mr. Logan? You’ve been looking at the hole in my head: not that I mean to reproach you, for you’d have to be blind to ignore it. It’s a souvenir of Spain. In the lines outside Teruel, a spent bullet went right through the bone. But there was a Russian surgeon in Teruel that day, luckily, and he got the bullet out, and now there’s a bit of plastic set into my poor skull. I call the place my third eye. You’ve read the Hebridean legends of third eyes, Mr. Logan? No? I suppose you’ve little time for general reading, what with the getting and spending of your vocation. For that matter, I presume you know next to nothing of the Spanish trouble, more than twenty years ago: a youthful indiscretion of mine. But possibly that’s just as well. Every man to his last. You will be twenty-seven years old, Mr. Logan, or perhaps twenty-eight? And earning seven pounds a week, like as not. And you aspire to marry the sole survivor of the old, old line of MacAskival. Not that I blame you, not in the least. In the coming world, Mr. Logan, there will be no rank and no class. And intellect will have its rewards. No, so far as social status is concerned, I offer no objection. ‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ as you Scots say, Mr. Logan. Yet I would be no friend to you if I neglected to give you some description of the difficulties in your way.”
His face and his facility of speech had served him well, Logan thought: Dr. Jackman had no doubt, it appeared, that Logan was indeed an Edinburgh clerk; and astute though Jackman obviously was, he had underestimated Logan’s age by nearly a decade. The man could make mistakes. Logan intended that Jackman should continue to make mistakes, at least until he could discover more about Lady MacAskival and Mary MacAskival and Jackman himself. “Difficulties, Dr. Jackman?” Logan said, leaning forward and acting the pushing clerk, at once brash and smarmy. “Difficulties? Mary has told me more than once that there will be no financial problem, for she says she’s money to burn. And look at this grand house. Aye, I’ll take more sherry, and I thank you. Would Lady MacAskival raise difficulties, do you think, Dr. Jackman? Look here, sir: I ask you as a son to his dad. If Lady MacAskival’s incapacitated, would it be asking too much for you to give away the bride, sir?”
That twist of the knife had been felt, Logan could tell: the skin twitched about the strange spot in Jackman’s forehead; but the man’s expression did not change, nor the tone of his voice alter. “Why,” Jackman said, “before you and I speak of marrying and giving in marriage, there is some history I must tell you, Mr. Logan. And I fear I have been neglecting my duties as host in Lady MacAskival’s absence.” He put his hand on a old-fashioned velvet bell-pull, and jerked it. “Among the difficulties of life in Carnglass, Mr. Logan, is the problem of staff. We take men where we find them, and try to be thankful for small mercies. Life in the remotest of the Hebrides isn’t to the taste of modern servants. Our butler, however, is rather a jewel; you’ll see him in a moment. The footman is a diamond, though rough. We may have to let the footman, Anderson, go; for he has involved us in all this trouble, doubtless with the best of intentions. It was on his urging that we engaged that Irish brute of a gamekeeper, Seamus Donley, who was some connection of Anderson’s. I could see that Donley was three parts savage, but in a lonely island like Carnglass, savagery may be a virtue in a keeper. What I failed to detect was his insanity. For a man of his age, Donley is astonishingly strong and quick—for a man of any age, so far as that goes. And quite out of his head. He concealed his madness with a certain Kerry wheedling wit. I must confess that I knew Donley had been in gaol at one time, in Belfast or Derry; but I mistook him for a mere simple-minded Irish rebel, relatively harmless. I’ve still some fellow-feeling for rebels: in my younger days I was rather a radical—almost an activist. I still have many acquaintances in the labor movement. You are not a Socialist, by any chance, Mr. Logan?”
“Oh, no, sir,” Logan demurred wholeheartedly, “that never would do at the British Linen Bank. The manager never would allow it.”
“Quite.” Dr. Jackman nodded approval, with the merest suggestion of a pucker about the corners of his mouth. “Quite right. Socialism is a snare and a delusion, at least as socialism is understood in Britain. Hold fast by your principles, Mr. Logan.”
A tap at the door, then; and a small gray-haired man in a neat velvet jacket entered. He almost stumbled upon Logan, and his mouth fell open. “Blimey!” he cried; and then, to Jackman, “Begging your pardon, that is, sir.” This must be the Cockney butler Donley had mentioned, Sam Tompkins; and he certainly did not look like a ruffian or a conspirator, though there was a shiftiness about the little eyes. South of Mason’s and Dixon’s Line, Logan reflected, such a servant would be given to “totin’ victuals.” Yet, the times and the place considered, a very decent-looking butler.
“Tompkins,” Dr. Jackman said, “this gentleman is Mr. Hugh Logan, a friend of Miss MacAskival. He was landed from a boat this morning. We shall put him in the brown room, opposite mine, and you are to see that everything is in order. Take his sack and stick and cape with you. And you’d best tell the others as they come in, for fear of misunderstanding. Niven is standing guard at the door just now? Very well. Make sure he gets nothing to drink. And tell Miss MacAskival that Mr. Logan will be late for tea; he and I are having a very interesting talk.”
As Tompkins went out, Jackman smiled at Logan. “Your arrival will be a nine-days’ wonder below stairs. If you observe some surliness or fecklessness below, please accept my apologies in advance. I never tolerate deliberate rudeness; report anything of that sort to me. Whatever the deficiencies of these fellows, I suppose they make up a better staff than the mob of Anguses and Annies that must have slept on the stairs and in the kitchens of the Old House in the grand old days of the MacAskivals—before Donald MacAskival was sold up, I mean. Miss MacAskival has told you something of the history of the family? Quite so. And speaking of old Donald MacAskival, who died raving in the New House, I have a curiosity to show you.” Jackman, going to a cupboard set in the wall, carefully drew out a heavy box and set it on the table before Logan.
The big box, or rather casket, seemed to be carved from a single block of stone, almost blue in color, but here and there shading into gray. The lid was of the same polished stone. “If the servants had the slightest notion of the value of these,” Jackman remarked, “I should have to put the casket under lock and key.” He lifted the lid and began to lift out strange stone figures, each some five inches high. “You play chess, Mr. Logan? I have a marble chessboard here—modern, I regret to say. But these chessmen are ancient, and Norse. They are called the Table-Men of Askival.”
The little statuettes were marvellously carved by some master of the Viking age. Each was wrapped in cotton-wool, and Jackman put them deftly in place on the marble board. They were of the same blue stone as the casket in which they had lain; and, after a thousand years, they remained almost perfect, only three or four being badly chipped. “The chiefs of MacAskival would have slit a hundred throats rather than have parted with these toys,” Jackman went on. “For more than a century, it was thought they were lost altogether, but Sir Alastair MacAskival discovered them when he was restoring the family tombs by St. Merin’s Chapel. The casket was resting, of all places, in the stone coffin that is said to be Askival’s own tomb. Perhaps Donald MacAskival hid them there when his creditors were hard at his heels, for even in the eighteenth century these things would have brought a pretty price. If so, they are all he left to his descendants. Sir Alastair died less than a month after the finding of these, and Lady MacAskival has told no one of them, so far as I am aware; so you are looking at works of art never photographed or catalogued by the museum-people. Do you ever go to the Queen Street Museum in Edinburgh? No? A pity. There they have walrus-ivory chessmen from Lewis, also Norse work, and perhaps as old as these. And there are others in the British Museum. You have not visited the British Museum? Once, like Marx, I went there daily. But I presume it is all l.s.d. with you, Mr. Logan. ‘Put money in thy purse, and yet again, put money in thy purse.’ So the world goes. Shall we make a game of it as we talk?”
Yes, fearfully and wonderfully made, these chessmen. The kings held drawn swords across their knees, and stared stonily out of bulging merciless eyes; the queens, with long wild faces, held daggers; the rooks were berserkers, biting on their shields; and all the other pieces, even the pawns, were modelled from the life of the age of the Sea-Kings. One set of men had been saturated in some reddish dye or paint; the other retained its natural blue hue. To play with these priceless and timeless things was to sink into a remote past. “They’re very nice, I’m sure,” Logan the bank-clerk said, with what he trusted was a Philistine indifference. “Aye, I’ll play you a game, sir, if you’ll promise me I sha’n’t miss my spot of tea with Miss Mary.”
“Miss MacAskival will excuse you; and it occurs to my mind, Logan, that perhaps we can discuss certain delicate matters more easily in the progress of a match. But I warn you, Mr. Logan, that I rarely lose. Here: I submit to a handicap.” Jackman removed his own queen from the board. “No protests: I think you’ll find me an old hand at chess.”
Logan advanced the pawn before his queen’s bishop. “I’ve had many a grand match at the West End Young Men’s Society for the Advancement of Chess, Dr. Jackman.”
“Indeed.” Jackman made a similar move with his king’s bishop’s pawn. “Now the question of marriage aside, Mr. Logan, I don’t suppose you’d choose to live in a great rambling ill-lit place such as the Old House of Fear is, would you?”
“Oh, never in the world, sir.” Logan moved again, and lost a pawn to Jackman. “No, sir, give me a nice semi-detached villa beyond Bruntsfield Links, any day. Even the New Town of Edinburgh is too old and stuffy for my taste, Dr. Jackman. I like a bit of a rockery in the front garden, and an Aga cooker, and a fridge, and a parlor with a pair of Portobello china dogs by the hearth.” He advanced his king’s knight.
Jackman shot a sharp glance at him. Had he overplayed his role a trifle? Logan wondered. The Aga cooker and the Portobello dogs were spreading the butter rather thick. He smiled ingenuously at Dr. Jackman; and apparently the smile was fatuous enough to convince that alarming gentleman.
“That is precisely the sort of man I took you to be, Logan: my congratulations. And do you think Miss MacAskival would share these reasonable ambitions?” He took Logan’s knight.
Logan captured one of Jackman’s pawns. “I don’t see why Mary shouldn’t, sir; she’s a canny lass, and the day of grand houses like this one is long past.”
Having sent a bishop on a raid deep into Logan’s territory, Jackman leaned back in his armchair. “Canny, Mr. Logan? Sensible? Miss MacAskival? Charming, certainly; beautiful, at least in many eyes; but canny is the last word I should apply to her. I consider her my ward de facto, you understand, and what I say now is for her good and your own, and is to be held in confidence.”
Logan took one of Jackman’s knights. “Perhaps you’ll take the trouble to enlighten me, Dr. Jackman.” He hunched forward, the picture of the respectful and hopeful young man on the rise.
Jackman frowned at the chessboard. “I take it that Miss MacAskival has given you to understand that she has large expectations, or possibly that she already has ample independent means? That she is Lady MacAskival’s heiress?”
“Why, sir, we’ve not discussed the matter in detail, but I have assumed that Mary was to have her due.”
“Her due, Mr. Logan? To be quite frank, Miss MacAskival is very little better than a waif. Her grandfather was first cousin to Sir Alastair MacAskival—though the closest male relative left to Sir Alastair, at the end of his life. But Sir Alastair and his cousin were on bad terms; and, in any event, Miss Mary MacAskival was born nearly a generation after old Sir Alastair died. This is a most tenuous family bond, you see, although it is true that the old line of MacAskival being almost extinct altogether, Mary MacAskival has a better claim than anyone else to be the head of her little dispersed and forgotten clan. Our Mary’s father was a ship’s second mate, and drowned off Naples in the late war. The girl, who cannot remember her father, was left with the widow at a village in North Uist. Had matters followed their usual course, probably she would have grown up knitting sweaters and milking cows, and have married some crofter. But then her mother died. The girl was left quite alone.
“Lady MacAskival is an old friend of mine, but I cannot say she has been known for openhandedness. A minister in North Uist wrote to her, however; and, oddly enough, Lady MacAskival agreed to take the child into her own household and provide for her schooling. Perhaps Lady MacAskival felt she owed some debt to her husband’s name; she is oppressed by a sense of guilt where her husband is concerned, but I sha’n’t enter into that. Whatever her reason, she took the girl Mary, and sent her to good schools—to the convent-school at Bridge of Earn, most recently. I must make it clear here, Mr. Logan, that she did not adopt Miss MacAskival, nor make any provision for her future.”
Jackman’s narration did not take his mind altogether from the chess-match. He played with assurance and even arrogance, while Logan lost three more pieces to him. Logan set his face in an expression meant to suggest alarm at both the account of Mary MacAskival and the match.
“What’s in a name, Mr. Logan,” Jackman continued, “or in the inheritance of family traits? The scientists have been at work on these things for a century and better, but nothing is settled. Possibly you followed the course of the Lysenko affair in the Soviet Union? No, I didn’t suppose that was an especial interest of yours. As I said, these problems of hereditary traits are not settled, though for my part I feel confident that the Russians will give us the answers before 1965. Well, our Miss Mary MacAskival seems to offer some decided evidence that a certain type of character is conveyed from generation to generation within a family, whether the cause is genetic or environmental. Since time out of mind, the MacAskival men and women—the family of the chiefs, I mean—have been rash, spendthrift, fearless, and—why, promiscuous, shall we say. Sir Alastair was an exception, true, going to the contrary extreme. It has been a family exceedingly inbred. I think I am not venturing too far when I suggest that the stock is worn out. The qualities I mentioned just now were dominant in both Mary’s father and mother. The beauty and the daring may survive long after the strength and the wits are gone.”
“Dr. Jackman, what are you telling me?” Logan deliberately threw a strong burr into his words, to simulate dismay; and his disturbance was not altogether feigned. But he did not neglect to take Dr. Jackman’s other knight.
Jackman compressed his mouth, as if pained at the necessity for speaking out. “Lady MacAskival, while she was still in full possession of her faculties, gave me a detailed account of the girl’s conduct—sometimes she calls Mary her niece, out of kindness—from the age of seven upward. I have made some serious study in the realm of psychiatric disturbances, if I may say so, Mr. Logan. From the month Lady MacAskival took the child under her patronage, there was trouble with the girl. The reports from the schools—she changed schools a number of times—were disturbing. Mary was haughty, full of notions of her family’s importance; shy, at the same time; and sometimes what I must call ferocious. Compensation, perhaps; no doubt she was very lonely. Lady MacAskival is not a cordial woman, and, besides, Mary saw her ‘aunt’ very seldom; and she did not make many friends at school. And now I am about to tell you something that may shock you, Logan, or may not. Did it ever occur to your mind that sexual overindulgence, like drunkenness, often is a retreat into a world of fantasy, caused by a deep unhappiness in this real world? Our Mary has fed on fantasies of one sort or another, it seems, ever since she was a baby. For her, the legends of Carnglass, for instance, are real: real in the most literal sense of that word. She might happen to identify you with her legendary ancestor, Sigurd Askival; and herself with his bride, Merin or Marin; and me with—why, the monster, the man-goat, the tyrant: the Firgower, that pleasant creature we see overhead.”
“Check,” said Logan. Jackman retrieved his situation promptly. “Aye, sir,” Logan said, “I know Mary is dreamy; but that’s small harm, if we’ve money enough for the whole of our lives.”
“I scarcely think you understand how extremely and dangerously fanciful Miss MacAskival is, Mr. Logan; nor what consequences that sort of mental sickness may lead to. She may have let you think, for instance, that she’s a great heiress, or rich already. In plain fact, she hasn’t a shilling of her own, and I may have difficulty in persuading Lady MacAskival to leave her two or three thousand pounds. My old friend says she has given the girl—who is no kin of hers really—schooling and breeding enough to make her a governess or schoolmistress; and she owes her no more. What is worse, perhaps, Mary lives in her own irrational private world of gods and devils. And that way lies ... why, extreme eccentricity, at the least. And then there is the concupiscence, which may be an inherited tendency, or at least the next thing to a biological characteristic.”
Logan took another pawn. “Oh, surely now, Dr. Jackman, you don’t mean to say that my Mary’s a wild girl?”
Jackman reached gently across the board and gave Logan a pat on the shoulder. “It’s best to know these things early, Logan. I do mean just that. When our Mary was scarcely thirteen, there was—well, what I really must call an affair with a farm laborer here in Carnglass, in the summer. The man was dismissed as soon as the thing was discovered; he could have been sent to prison, I suppose. And yet he does not seem to have taken the initiative. Then there was a report from school that the girl was found with an hotel porter. I sha’n’t say more concerning that. There have been two lesser incidents of the same nature—two that we know of. And finally, your case.”
“Dr. Jackman!” Logan had half convinced himself that he really was a decent, ambitious bank-clerk, and threw corresponding indignation and bewilderment into his outcry. “Dr. Jackman! I’d never think of anything—anything not proper with Mary. I mean the girl to be my wife, Dr. Jackman.”
Jackman raised his eyebrows. “Frankly, now: would you care to begin married life with a young woman of these tendencies? Possibly you don’t quite believe what I’ve told you, though I could show you letters. Yet you’d discover the truth after marriage, if you refused to credit it before. So far as your own conduct is concerned, Mr. Logan, I’m satisfied that you have behaved decently. But look at the matter from another point of view. Here is a girl who throws herself at the head of a young man she encounters casually in a bank, because he is bold enough to say he likes her ankles. She invites him to her house without even informing her guardians. She conducts, I suppose, some clandestine correspondence with him. She rushes into his arms after not having seen him for three months. Really, Lady MacAskival ought not to have allowed Mary that Christmas holiday in Edinburgh.”
“Dr. Jackman,” Logan said, “I trust you, and I see you’re an educated man. As for me, I never attended the varsity; it was not my line. But cannot this be all rumor and misunderstanding about Mary?”
“I don’t mean to be harsh upon the girl; after all, she is as much of a daughter as I possess, Logan. Oh, check again, by the way. I am not condemning—only explaining. I doubt if the girl can help herself. I suspect the concupiscence is in the blood. And her loneliness contributes: as I suggested, sexual promiscuity sometimes is more a symptom of a disorder than a disorder itself. I will be entirely blunt, if you will allow me, Mr. Logan: in the legal meaning of the phrase, and in other meanings, Mary MacAskival is not sane. She is not sane where men are concerned, nor in certain other matters. She suffers from a variety of delusions—I give you my word. She might suddenly tell you, for instance, that I, Edmund Jackman, desire to marry her—an absurdity, because it would be almost as if I were to marry my own granddaughter, of course. At times she has even come to me with—well, shall we say hints and invitations? That was when no younger man was available. It has been necessary to forbid her very strictly ever to be alone even with the servants; Mr. Royall and I take care, one or the other of us, to be in this house whenever she is. I’m sorry, Mr. Logan. But to tell you all this is the best service I can render you.”
“I had no notion, sir,” Logan told him. He took Jackman’s king’s rook. And Logan had no difficulty in looking perplexed. Jackman was a very different sort of being from the charlatan or bully he had thought he might be. Those fine black eyes of Jackman’s looked candidly into Logan’s.
“And I confess I am somewhat surprised, Logan,” Jackman was saying, “that you got yourself engaged to the girl while she is a minor.”
“Oh, surely, Dr. Jackman, Mary’s old enough to choose for herself.”
“I fear she already has chosen quite often, Logan; she began at a tender age, to put it somewhat coarsely. You do know just how old she is, I take it?”
“Not precisely, sir; she would not tell me her birthday. She said I ought not to spend the money for a present. Nineteen, nearing twenty, I suppose?”
“Then I have been unjust to you, Logan. If you had known ... Miss Mary MacAskival is barely fifteen. She prevaricates on that topic, as on many others. Of course, as any man with eyes in his head can see, Mary is a well-developed girl. Again, it runs in her family, I am told. Physically mature, yes; but emotionally and morally immature; and always will be.”
Why this disclosure affected Logan so deeply, he hardly could explain to himself. It was as if he actually had turned himself into the fictitious bank-clerk he was impersonating. In this matter, as in related matters, he might have been on the verge of making a great fool of himself. He had begun to fancy himself in the role of Galahad—or of Sigurd Askival—rescuing a beautiful maiden from a wicked enchanter. And it seemed to be turning out that the maiden was no maid, nor right in the head; and that the enchanter was by no means thoroughly wicked. He had listened to a drunken Irish terrorist spreading scandals about an unknown Dr. Jackman. He had not the least proof, indeed, that Jackman had any real connection with J. Dowie, Commission Agent, or with Captain Gare of the frightened eyes; they might be someone else’s agents, perhaps in the pay of those London connections of Lady MacAskival. It remained possible, and even probable, that this Dr. Jackman had aspirations after some of Lady MacAskival’s money; but he doubted very much whether Jackman was a conspirator, or a saboteur, or even a charlatan. Some sort of political radical, likely enough; and a dabbler in odd learned subjects; but a keen and even likeable man. And for what had Logan been paid to come to Carnglass? Not to criticize Dr. Jackman’s character, or to carry off young women—or children—of doubtful morals, but merely to buy a piece of real estate for his principal. He might have made a thoroughgoing fool of himself. Indeed, he had done so already. He had put himself in a ridiculous light with Jackman by accepting the role of suitor which Mary MacAskival, in her madcap childish way, had thrust upon him. He had sent a silly note to the police in Glasgow—though that would do no real harm, since surely Donley had no intention of delivering it. He may have helped a murderer escape from the island—almost surely he had done just that. He was almost an accomplice, what with the Irishman’s gun hidden in a sling under his arm. Yes, he was a damned fool; and he might have to play the fool a while longer, if only to extricate himself from this folly. He moved at hazard on the chessboard; the glaring eyes of a berserker-rook confronted him. One misgiving, however, did come into his head.
“Dr. Jackman,” he said, “I understand there was a factor, a Mr. Lagg. Where is he?”
Jackman seemed taken aback at this non sequitur. “Surely Mary has told you....”
“No, we had only a moment together before you came into the parlor, sir. She had simply mentioned a puzzle of sorts, with Mr. Lagg involved.”
Jackman was solemn and troubled. “I am virtually certain, Mr. Logan, that Lagg has been murdered. We have searched every nook in the island for him, these three days; but not a trace. As I have pieced matters together, Donley drank too much and broke into Lagg’s house in search of money. Lagg was very much of a Scot—if you’ll pardon me, Mr. Logan—and the servants talked of how he hoarded five-pound notes in his kitchen. Perhaps Lagg returned from a visit to the farm while Donley was doing his mischief. From the wreckage inside the New House, we can only conjecture that there was a struggle. Donley, we know to our sorrow, was armed. He may have forced Lagg, at the point of his pistol, to the cliff’s edge. But we cannot find the body. Then, after Lagg had disappeared and we had begun to question Donley, that Irishman broke away and ran into the bracken. In the evening he came down and burnt our boats, to keep us from reaching the police or in an attempt to get a boat for his escape; and we have been after him ever since. Presumably he is short of ammunition by this time. In the fight at the harbor, he threw burning petrol into the boats, and one of our boatmen was terribly burnt, poor fellow, and probably will lose the sight of at least one eye; I must dress his face again tonight. But Lagg? A gone gosling, I am very much afraid. And an efficient factor, for years.”
This account of Lagg’s end held together much better than did Donley’s. And Logan had told Donley he might bear witness for him at any trial! No whisper of this Carnglass episode, he hoped, would filter back to America. At this moment, Jackman took Logan’s queen. Yes, Hugh Logan had made a fool of himself through and through.
“But to return to a topic almost equally difficult for me, Logan: I think you will perceive that your marrying Miss MacAskival is wholly out of the question. To begin with, she simply isn’t of age. Besides, the shock of an announcement of that sort might put an end to Lady MacAskival, who is very old and very sick. And for your own sake, Logan—and I rather like your face and your ways—don’t be rash. If you still care for the girl after what I’ve told you, give her time to reach moral womanhood, if ever she can. I don’t say you need to break off the affair altogether. Be gentle with her; go back to Edinburgh; exchange letters now and then, if you like. But marriage, for the next two or three years, would be a catastrophe, I assure you.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Dr. Jackman,” Logan replied, still in his bank-clerk role.
“I usually am right,” Jackman told him, smiling. “And there’s this: it is worth something to Lady MacAskival to have a decent young man treat her ward decently. My recommendations happen to carry considerable weight with Lady MacAskival. Mary does not need a husband or a lover, but she does need a friend. And I can see that you mean to move ahead in the world; and you deserve to, Logan. So if you can contrive to act as I suggest, where our Mary is concerned, I think I can guarantee that Lady MacAskival will give you a cheque for fifteen hundred pounds. I have no intention of bribing you: I know you’re above that. But you deserve some compensation for the disappointment you’ve had, and for my part, I’d not be sorry to give you a leg up in the world. Don’t feel insulted, Logan. I put it to you plainly: will you do us the honor of accepting that cheque?”
What Logan might have done had he truly been the fictitious bank-clerk, he did not know. But as an experienced lawyer, he was disturbed by this offer. It was too much money for no real service. If once he had been inclined to mistake Dr. Jackman for a thorough scoundrel, it would not do now to make a model philanthropist of him. Of course he could not really take the money, being Hugh Logan; yet he could accept the cheque as the fictitious Logan and destroy it later. What he said was, “If you’ll allow me, sir, I’ll sleep on your offer and give you my answer tomorrow.”
“A sound policy.” Jackman lightly tapped his shoulder again. “And I believe I know already what your decision will be, Logan. Ah: checkmate.” Jackman had won the match with the thousand-year-old chessmen, despite his handicap.
Dr. Jackman rose. “We dine at seven, here in my study, Mr. Logan. In the Old House we have neither electricity nor running hot water—Lady MacAskival does not care for modern comfort—but old Agnes will bring hot water and a lamp to your room. I’ll show you there in a moment. But before the sun goes down, shall we enjoy the view from the battlements? I think the mist has lifted a trifle, though you come to us in a clouded month. By the way, Miss MacAskival will be at dinner with us. I ask you to say as little as possible to her about my observations, should you talk with her alone before dinner, or later—for her own interest, you understand, Logan. A personality as unbalanced as hers might be permanently affected by imprudent reproaches. I trust to your Scottish discretion. Just up the stair, now.”
They emerged upon the lead of the roof from under the conical-capped turret. A narrow walk led round the gabled cap of the great tower, between the stone slabs of the gable itself and the machicolations of the battlements. Before them was Askival harbor, the sunken yacht black against the pier; and beyond, across the foggy ocean, the sun was descending in a diffused glory. Despite its climate, Carnglass was a beautiful island. A corncrake flew low above the tower. Far below, in the policies, a jungle of rhododendrons was in bloom. And five armed men were walking up to the gate in the Edwardian block of the Old House of Fear.
“Mr. Royall!” Jackman called. The five looked up, and the leader, that “walking cadaver,” formed his thin hands into a trumpet. Even at this distance, his pallid face and protruding teeth were ugly in the extreme: a queer sort of secretary, this skeleton-like man with a rifle slung over his shoulder. “Mr. Royall!” Jackman cried out. “What luck?” The five men below stared in astonishment at Logan, beside Jackman at the battlements. The four hangdog faces behind Royall aroused a vague discomfort at the back of Logan’s mind.
“Rab and Carruthers have strayed, Dr. Jackman,” Royall called back. “Can you see them from the tower?” Though Jackman and Logan looked to north and east, there was not a sign of the other two men.
“Is there no trace of Donley?” Jackman shouted. Gesturing dispiritedly, Royall shouted back, “I’ll explain when I come up.”
“I doubt whether we can give you a decent dinner, Mr. Logan,” Jackman said as they turned back to the turret-stair. “Our cook, you understand, has been out with the searching-party, and we have had to press the butler into service in the kitchen. Have you ever lived in a state of siege? A mad island, this Carnglass.”
“Fish and chips would do nicely, thank you,” Logan told him. “I’ve not had a bite these twenty hours.” He still was the bank-clerk; it might be difficult to abandon this play-acting.
“Really, I scarcely think Miss MacAskival would care for fish and chips week in and week out, Logan.” Dr. Jackman said it drily. The man, after all, was doing no more than his duty in sheltering his friend’s ward from an unpromising suitor. Suppose, Logan thought, I were to tell him what I really am: how would he act then? Yet an impulse cautioned Logan to play this little deception according to its rules until he had talked with Miss Mary MacAskival, the girl of fifteen with the green eyes, the red hair, and the spotted past.