“And me,” said Tibbets in a hollow voice. “They’ve just raised my screw. Now they’ll fire me.”
“Probably,” said Jaikie coolly. “It will be the hoax of the year, and the Wire is sensitive about hoaxes. It has been had lots of times… But you may ask why the thing hasn’t been disavowed already? This is Friday, and your interview appeared last Monday. A telegram to the View signed with Craw’s private code-word would have done the trick. That telegram was written out, but it wasn’t sent. Can you guess why?”
Tibbets, sunk in gloom, looked far from guessing.
“I stopped it. And the reason was because we want your help. What’s more, that telegram need never be sent. The interview can remain unrepudiated and your own reputation untarnished. It has done a good deal of harm to Craw, but he’ll say no more about it if—”
“If?” came Tibbets’s sharp question.
“If you give us a hand in an altogether different matter. Craw is being bullied by a gang of foreigners—Evallonians—Evallonian Republicans. That would be grand stuff for the Wire, wouldn’t it? Yes, but not a word must appear about it unless it is absolutely necessary, for, you see, this is a case for your famous solidarity. A portion of the British Press is being threatened, and in defence the rest of it must stand shoulder to shoulder. You’re the only representative of the rest on the spot; and I want you to come with me to-night to Castle Gay to see what happens. There may be no need for your help—in which case you must swear that you’ll never breathe a word about the business. On the other hand, you may be badly wanted. In Craw’s interest it may be necessary to show up a foreign plot to intimidate a British newspaper proprietor, and between the Wire and the View we ought to make a pretty good effort. What do you say?”
Tibbets looked at Jaikie with eyes in which relief was mingled with disappointment.
“Of course I agree,” he said. “I promise that, unless you give me the word, I will wipe anything I may see or hear clean out of my memory. I promise that, if you give me the word, I will put my back into making the highest and holiest row in the history of the British Press… But, Mr Galt, I wish you hadn’t brought in that interview as the price of my help. I needn’t tell you I’ll be thankful if it is allowed to stand. It means a lot to me. But, supposing Craw disowned it straight away, I’d still be glad to come in on to-night’s show. I’ve got my professional standards like other people, and I’m honest about them. If Craw’s independence is threatened by somebody outside our trade, then I’m out to defend him, though he were doing his damnedest to break me. Have you got that?”
“I’ve got it,” said Jaikie, “and I apologise. You see I’m not a journalist myself.”
Dickson McCunn spent the day, as he would have phrased it, “in waiting.” He was both courtier and business man. Middlemas was left to see to the packing of the Prince’s kit. Dickson’s was no menial task; it was for him to act for one day as Chief of Staff to a great man in extremity. He occupied his leisure in investigating Mrs Brisbane-Brown’s reference library, where he conned the history of the royal house of Evallonia. There could be no doubt of it; the blood of Stuart and Sobieski ran in the veins of the young gentleman now engaged in bed with a detective novel and a box of cigarettes.
He lunched alone with Mrs Brisbane-Brown. Alison, it appeared, was at the Castle, to which late the night before Mr Craw had also been secretly conveyed. In the afternoon Dickson fell asleep, and later was given a solitary tea by Middlemas. At the darkening Alison returned, the Prince was got out of bed, and there was a great mustering of the late General’s Highland accoutrements. Presently Dickson had the felicity of watching a young man in the costume of Prince Charles Edward (and, if the miniature in the drawing-room was to be trusted, favouring the original in most respects) being instructed by Alison, with the assistance of her gramophone, in the movements of the foursome and the eightsome reels. Dickson sat through the performance in a happy trance. The faded Stuart tartan of the kilt and plaid, the old worn velvet of the doublet, the bright silver of dirk and sword-hilt, the dim blue of the Garter riband, were part of something which he had always dreamed. The wig was impossible, for the head of the late General had been larger than the Prince’s, but Dickson applauded its absence. He had always thought of Prince Charlie as wearing his own hair, and that hair not too long.
Mrs Brisbane-Brown appeared at dinner “en grande tenue,” as she expressed it, with a magnificent comb of diamonds surmounting her head. But Alison was in her ordinary outdoor clothes. The ball was not for her, she said, for she had far too much to do. Jaikie was due at the Castle at half-past eight, and she must be there when he arrived. “That woman Cazenove,” she observed, “is no manner of use. She has been fluttering round Mr Craw like a scared hen, and undermining his self-confidence. She is undoing all the good you did him, Aunt Hatty. I have told Bannister to carry her to her bedroom and lock her in if she gets hysterical.”
She left before the meal was over, and her adieu to the Prince scandalised Dickson by its informality. “See that you turn up the collar of your ulster, sir, and tie a muffler round your chin. There are several people near the gate who have no business to be there. I shall have some fun dodging them myself.”
The car, driven by Wilkie, duly arrived at the stroke of nine, and Mrs Brisbane-Brown, attended by her nephew, who was muffled, as one would expect in an Australian, against the chills of a Scots October, was packed into it by Middlemas and her maid. Dickson did not show himself. His time was not yet, and he was fortifying himself against it by a pipe and a little hot toddy.
The story of the Ball may be read in the Canonry Standard and Portaway Advertiser, where the party from the Mains was incorrectly given as the Honourable Mrs Brisbane-Brown, the Honourable Alison Westwater, and Mr John Charvill. The Australian cousin was a huge success, and to this day many a Canonry maiden retains a tender memory of the tall young Chevalier, who danced beautifully—except in the reels, where he needed much guidance—and whose charm of manner and wide knowledge of the world upset all their preconceived notions of the inhabitants of the Antipodes. His aunt introduced him also to several of the neighbouring lairds, who found him not less agreeable than their womenkind. It was a misfortune that he left so early and so mysteriously. His name was on many virginal programmes for dances after midnight. Lord Fosterton wanted to continue his conversation with him about a new method of rearing partridges, which Mr Charvill had found in Czecho-Slovakia, and young Mr Kennedy of Kenmair, who was in the Diplomatic Service, and whose memory was haunted by a resemblance which he could not define, was anxious to exchange gossip with him about certain circles in Vienna with which he appeared to be familiar. As it was, Mr Charvill departed like Cinderella, but long before Cinderella’s hour.
At half-past ten Wilkie returned to the Mains and Dickson’s hour had come. He wore a heavy motoring ulster and a soft black hat which belonged to Barbon. It seemed to him the nearest approach he could find to the proper headwear. From Bannister he had borrowed a small revolver, for which he had only four cartridges. He felt it incongruous—it should have been a long sword.
At a quarter to eleven he stood on the pavement outside the Station Hotel, which was empty now, for the crowd which had watched the guests’ arrival had departed. A tall figure in a greatcoat came swiftly out. Dickson held the door open while he entered the car, and then got in beside him. His great hour had begun.
I wish that for Dickson’s sake I could tell of a hazardous journey, of hostile eyes and sinister faces, of a harsh challenge, a brush with the enemy, an escape achieved in the teeth of odds by the subtlety and valour of the Prince’s companion. For such things Dickson longed, and for such he was prepared. But truth compels me to admit that nothing of the sort happened. The idyllic is not the epic. The idyll indeed is an Alexandrian invention, born in the days when the epic spirit had passed out of life. But Dickson,
