a Mr. Drysdale,” the landlord said. “He’s not overgenerous with the water, but perhaps you’ll manage it.” With which cold comfort Grant set off on a still colder drive over the hills to the Finley valley.
“Where is the house?” he asked the hirsute one, whose name he learned was Roddy, as they went along.
“At Carninnish.”
“Do you mean right in the village?” Grant had no intention of making so public an appearance at this early date.
“No; it’s the other side of the river from the village.”
“We don’t go through the village?”
“No; the bridge is before you come to the village at all.”
As they came to the edge of the divide the whole new valley opened maplike before Grant’s fascinated gaze several hundreds of feet below. There were no fields, no green at all except on the border of the river that ran, a silver thread, through scattered birch to the distant sea-loch. It was a brown country, and the intensity of the sea’s blue gave it a foreign air—faery lands forlorn, with a vengeance, Grant thought. As they ran seawards down the side of the hill he noticed two churches, and took his opportunity.
“You have enough churches for the size of the village.”
“Well,” said Roddy, “you couldn’t be expecting the Wee Frees to go to the U.F. That’s the U.F. down there—Mr. Logan’s.” He pointed down to the right over the edge of the road, where a bald church and a solid foursquare manse sheltered in some trees by the river. “The Wee Free is away at the other end of the village, by the sea.”
Grant looked interestedly out of the corner of his eyes at the comfortable-looking house that sheltered his quarry. “Nice place,” he said. “Do they take boarders?”
No, Roddy thought not. They let the house for a month in the summer. The minister was a bachelor, and his widowed sister, a Mrs. Dinmont, kept house for him. And his niece, Mrs. Dinmont’s daughter, was home for holidays just now. She was a nurse in London.
No word of another inmate, and he could not pursue the subject without making the always curious Highlander suspicious. “Many people at the hotel here?”
“Three,” said Roddy. As befitted the retainer of a rival concern there was nothing he did not know about the inn at Carninnish. But though all three were men, none of them was Lamont. Roddy had the history and predilections of all of them at his fingertips.
Carninnish House lay on the opposite side of the river from the village, close to the sea, with the high road to the north at its back. “You’d better wait,” Grant said, as Roddy pulled up before the door; and with what dignity Roddy’s method of coming to a halt had left him, he descended on to the doorstep. In the hall was a lean, rather sour-looking man in good tweeds. The stockbroker’s got a party, thought Grant. He had quite unconsciously pictured the stockbroking gentleman as round and pink and too tight about the trouser legs. It was therefore rather a shock when the lean man came forward and said, “Can I do anything for you?”
“I wanted to see Mr. Drysdale.”
“Come in,” said the man, and led him into a room littered with fishing tackle. Now Grant had intended quite shamelessly to try sob-stuff on the broker of his imagination, appealing to his generosity not to spoil his holiday; but the sight of the real man made him change his mind. He took out his professional card, and was gratified at the man’s surprise. It was a compliment to the perfection of the disguise which his old fishing clothes afforded.
“Well, Inspector, what can I do for you?”
“I want you to be good enough to let me fish in the Finley for a little. Two days at most, I think. I think a man I want is in the neighbourhood, and the only way I can go about without attracting notice is to fish. I thought the hotel at Garnie would have some fishing of their own, but it appears they haven’t. I won’t catch any fish, but I have fished a good deal, and I won’t frighten everything in the river.”
To his surprise a smile had come over the dour face of Mr. Drysdale. “Inspector,” he said, “I don’t think you can have any idea how unique this occasion is, how utterly unique you are. Even in the ’45 they didn’t come here looking for any one, and no one, certainly, has done it since. It’s simply incredible. A criminal in Carninnish, and a C.I.D. inspector looking for him! Why, drunk and incapable is the most horrible crime that this neighbourhood has known since the flood.”
“Perhaps my man thought of that,” said the inspector dryly. “Anyhow, I promise I shan’t bother you long if you give me the permission to fish.”
“Certainly you can fish. Anywhere you like. I’m going up the river now. Would you care to come with me, and I’ll introduce you to the best pools? You might as well have a decent day’s fishing if you’re going to fish at all. Send that madman back to Garnie”—Roddy was giggling with a maid in high-pitched Gaelic outside the open window, quite indifferent to the probable proximity of “the gentleman”—“and tell him he needn’t come back. I’ll send you over in the evening whenever you want to go.”
Delighted at the unexpected graciousness on the part of the ill-favoured and reputedly ungenerous one, Grant dismissed Roddy, who received his congé with the grave respect of an A.D.C., but departed in a flurry of high unintelligible cackle flung between himself and the maid. It sounded like the protesting row of an alarmed hen as she rockets over a fence to safety. When the noises had died away, Drysdale began in silence to collect his tackle for the river. He asked no more questions, and Grant was again grateful to him. To break the silence which Drysdale had evidently no intention of breaking, he asked about the state of the river, and soon they were talking fishing with the freedom of two enthusiasts. They proceeded up the right bank of the river—that is, the opposite bank from the village and the manse—and Drysdale pointed out the pools and their peculiarities. The whole tawny, narrow, boulder-strewn river was not more than six miles long. It ran from a hill loch in an impetuous scramble, broken by still pools, to the sea at Carninnish.
“I expect you’d like to be near the village,” Drysdale said, and suggested that the inspector should be left the lower half of the river while he went up to the hill end, where he would probably spend the day; and to that Grant gratefully agreed. As they passed opposite the manse, Grant said, “That the manse? Scotch clergymen seem to be very comfortable.”
“They are,” said Drysdale, with emphasis, but did not pursue the subject. Grant remarked on the apparent size of the house, and asked if they took boarders. It would be a good place to stay. Drysdale said that as far as he knew they did not take any one, and he repeated Roddy’s tale of the summer letting. He took leave of Grant with the abruptness of a shy man, and departed into the landscape, leaving Grant with the comfortable knowledge that he had an ally after his own heart if the need for one should arise.
Grant decided that he would start fishing perhaps two hundred yards above the manse and work slowly down, taking his bearings and keeping an eye on the traffic to and from the house. On his side of the river there was a cart-track that was almost a road, but on the other side there was, as far as he could see, only the path like a sheep-track made by the feet of fishermen and gillies, so that any one coming upriver would come on his side. The manse was surrounded by a stone wall, and faced away from him towards the high road on the other side of the river. Inside the wall was a row of scraggy firs which effectually hid the detail of the house. Only gleams of whitewash and its eight chimneys advertised
