From London Far (21 page)

But straight above his head – he now realized – were several stout cables leading directly over the sweep of moor before him. And even as he noticed this the cables swayed, a clank and creak was audible, and from behind the next rise appeared the now oddly sinister shape of one of Properjohn’s Flying Foxes on its long journey to Inchfarr. There were, he calculated, not many of these weirdly impending contrivances: perhaps a dozen all told, so that when the system was in motion six were always travelling towards, and six away from, the island. But the size of each was considerable, so that it somewhat resembled (Meredith now saw) a covered railway truck suspended upside down, with the invisible upper side presumably exposed to the sky, and the lower so constructed as to fall open when required and precipitate its load into some conveyance stationed below.

Overhead the Flying Fox crept by. And at once – as if it were some piece of theatrical machinery operating a transformation scene – Meredith was aware that the landscape had changed around him. He had come to an elevation at which the sea was again visible; far out, two large aircraft were flying north; and on the remote horizon, obscure behind the broad glittering path of the sun, floated the ghosts of islands. In front of him the mass of Ben Carron had reared itself again in massive grandeur, its lower slopes sparsely clothed with larch and fir, its middle reaches bare rock and scree across which floated wisps of vapour, its summit lost in cloud. He was looking up a shallow valley through which ran a brawling burn; here and there the hurrying water stilled and deepened in a dark brown pool; the faint sound of its tumbling progress was drowned beneath the cries of peewits cutting their arabesques in air. And now two buildings were visible. High on one side of the valley at its farther end a white house, solid, low, and featureless save for a stunted and unmeaning central tower, stood amid a meagre plantation of spruce and pine. This must be Carron Lodge, where Mr Properjohn played the highland laird and where the unhappy Higbed was presumably immured. Along the other side of the valley ran the pylons which carried the cables for the Flying Foxes, and these ended not more than half a mile away in a raw and ill-proportioned structure of corrugated iron, high, unpainted, and – because windowless – displeasingly blind. Up to this building from beyond the valley, and ending before closed and solid doors, was a roughly metalled road along which there doubtless travelled those lorries which collected the guano and transported it to a railhead farther on.

All this had as its setting absolute solitude still. And here, then, was the nerve-centre of the conspiracy. It was amid these august presences of mountain and moor and ocean that frescoes from Florence and statues from Budapest, figurines from Cnossos and canvases from Venice, trundled out to sea against a counterweight of the immemorial droppings of birds. But what happened to them after they went bucketing over the battlements of Castle Moila? Meredith shook his head, never more vividly aware than now of the monstrous disorder of the world’s affairs. A weary Canadian soldier, it was said, had made his bed on what turned out to be the
Primavera
of Botticelli. The manuscripts of Goethe had been found fantastically mingled with a nation’s gold at the bottom of a mine. What had just passed overhead might very well contain the Horton
Venus
… And these confusions were the product of a diabolic possession of the European body politic such as posterity would find it hard to forgive. Again Meredith shook his head, distrustful of his own preponderant concern for stuff out of museums. After all, people – and by the million – had had a rougher ride than Titian’s resplendent lady could ever suffer.

Suppose that all the world’s Titians were up there in one Flying Fox, and the always unsound and now demented Higbed were in another. And suppose that he, Meredith, could preserve only one or the other from falling to destruction – what would be the right thing to do? William Godwin, the friend of Shelley, had maintained that it would be one’s duty to rescue the philosopher Fénelon from a burning house before attempting to rescue Fénelon’s pretty maidservant, or even one’s own aged and blameless mother – this because the philosopher had more potential ability to benefit mankind than the prettiest girl or most estimable old woman. Was Godwin right? And if one had to balance the assured cultural importance of the Titians against the very doubtful benefits which a rescued Higbed might bestow upon posterity – Meredith knitted his brows over this obscure question. But had not Bishop Butler, long ago, evolved some argument to dispose of quandaries like these? And Meredith looked absently about him, rather as if expecting the bishop to rise up helpfully from the heather. The bishop, however, was nowhere visible. Nor was Shamus. During this fit of metaphysical abstraction the lad had disappeared – unless, indeed, he had been transformed into what Meredith now saw not forty yards before him: the figure of a man in meagre knickerbockers and a deerstalker hat, absorbedly engaged in casting a fly over a small and improbable pool.

Here, then, was the critical encounter, unavoidable and imminent. And Meredith realized that once more it was an occasion for the lightning brain. Hours ago he ought to have gone over every possible opening, every likely move. Instead of which here he was tramping absently up to the fellow while harmlessly but ineptly meditating
Political Justice
and
The Analogy of Religion
. Ought he at once to reassume the role of Vogelsang? Or – since conceivably Properjohn knew that Vogelsang was dead, but understood little concerning the visitor to Moila – would this be wantonly to give the game away? And, if not Vogelsang, then what? The question was urgent, and, unfortunately, the lightning brain altogether refused to act. What, at this moment, came into Meredith’s head instead was that particular philosophical argument after which he had been fumbling some minutes before. Men are quite without the sort of prescience which can determine what amount of human happiness a specific action may ultimately achieve, and before the burning house conscience will be a surer guide than any attempts at utilitarian calculation. But it was, of course, someone earlier than Godwin that Bishop Butler was confuting… ‘Shaftesbury!’ Meredith triumphantly exclaimed – and was aware of being almost up with Properjohn as he did so.

And Properjohn – who had hitherto maintained a sinister and commanding immobility by his pool – turned, dropped his rod, and threw up his hands in despair. ‘Passworts!’ he cried. ‘Four, five, eight, ten passworts nobody tells me what. And natchly you reckon us ninnyficient all alonk.’ Properjohn looked much mortified and upset. Then his expression cleared; he kicked his expensive fishing-rod carelessly into the heather and took Meredith by the arm. ‘Dear feller,’ he said – and chuckled gleefully at this assuming of the laird – ‘Dear feller, charmin’ to have you drop in. Toppin’ year, what? Birts deuced stronk on the wing, eh? Come up and have a peg.’ And Properjohn marched Meredith off in the direction of Carron Lodge.

The moors were empty. Only the peewits looked down. Was it, or was it not, Vogelsang who was being thus hospitably led to entertainment? Still Meredith did not know. And still anything in the nature of brilliant improvisation failed him. So he walked in silence, waiting for Properjohn to speak again.

And Properjohn spoke, lowering his voice as if the heather might have ears. ‘We gotta Titian,’ he said. ‘We gotta Giotto.’ He rubbed his hands and spoke now in a sort of boastful whisper. ‘Almost we gotta German nextpert,
echter Kunsthistoriker
, save us maybe thousands, knows hundred two hundred perhaps places fine valuable pictures hid about Germany, Holland, France. We sure almost got him, Vogelsang passes as Birtsong.’

‘Almost
got him?’ said Meredith. ‘Did something go wrong?’

‘Shot.’ Properjohn was laconic. ‘All this too dam’ big organization, silly passworts and nobody hardly knows who. Some trouble in London I don’t yet get it just how.’ He shook his head despondently. ‘Same as I don’t quite get you. You know Bubear?’

So here the awkwardness began. Yes or no – oranges or lemons? Meredith could see no principle on which to choose. ‘Oh yes,’ he said – and tried to make the utterance as meaningful and cryptic as might be – ‘I know Bubear.’

‘Sure,’ said Properjohn – apparently acquiescing in what he took to be Meredith’s tone. ‘And now Bubear lost his face.’

‘Lost his face?’ Meredith was horrified by this drastic issue of the swipe he had been obliged to take at Bubear with a revolver butt.

‘Lost his face in a crisis and blew up two three thousand pounds not so bad goods. But he did clear the Titian and the Giotto.’ Properjohn’s voice was again triumphant. ‘We gotta Titian and a Giotto better almost anything we sent through yet. And about this Vogelsang passed as Birtsong now shot we get the faks soon enough. Bubear comes here tonight.’

Duncan comes here tonight
… But at Dunsinane, thought Meredith, this had been hard cheese on Duncan himself; whereas at Carron Lodge the victim would be a somewhat earlier arrival – one better seen in Martial and Juvenal than in the elementary precautions that should attend criminal investigation.

Vogelsang, then, was not only dead, but known to be dead, and Jean’s sanguine calculations as to Bubear’s reticence and duplicity had been all awry. Moreover, the adventure was repeating itself with slight variations, much as if it were a fairy tale. In London Meredith had met Bubear and had been mistaken for somebody unknown – with that unknown’s imminent arrival threatening exposure. Now in Scotland he had met Properjohn and been mistaken for somebody else unknown – with Bubear’s imminent arrival threatening exposure. There was something peculiarly paralysing about having to play the identical hazardous farce over again. Moreover, he was now without any assistance equivalent to Jean’s prompting – and to this had to be added his sense that the real Properjohn, who lurked beneath the absurdities of the polyglot laird, was a more formidable adversary than Bubear had been.

They drew near to Carron Lodge. It was, Meredith thought, an uncomfortably isolated spot. As locale for a trial of wits, or for another bout of slapstick hue and cry, he would prefer Bubear’s lately demolished warehouse every time. For one thing, Carron Lodge spoke of leisure and reflective quiet, which was just the sort of environment against which imposture could not hope successfully to stand. This time to carry off the necessary impersonation was utterly impossible – or at least it was so while the identity of the man to be impersonated was a blank. At any moment Properjohn might ask some simple questions which would end the matter.

For a moment Meredith meditated ignominious flight. After all, he now definitely knew that Bubear, presumably convoying the Horton
Venus
and the Giotto, was to arrive tonight. To make good an escape and at once arrange a little reception by the military or the police was plainly the rational, as it was the only hopeful, course. But was flight possible? That he could run faster than Properjohn recent experiences made him judge likely enough. But the moor was wide and shelterless, and so desperate a character would certainly be armed. Before Meredith had made ten yards the situation would be clear to his enemy, and this meant that before he had made fifteen yards Properjohn would be taking aim at him. And at fifteen yards, Meredith knew, a revolver in any sort of practised hand scores no misses. Flight, in fact, would be an altogether injudicious resort.

There were only two bright spots. The one was that Jean was for the moment out of it. The other was that he had not rashly claimed to be Vogelsang on the chance that Properjohn supposed him to be so. That would have been fatal indeed. It would have been fatal, he repeated to himself, frowning as he did so…

And even as he frowned he stopped, and confronted Properjohn with a half turn. Not without some difficulty his heels clicked together in the soft heather. ‘Vogelsang,’ he said

‘Hey?’ Properjohn looked at Meredith with a startled eye. ‘What that you say about Vogelsang passed as Birtsong?’

‘I am Vogelsang, my good Herr Properjohn. And it seems to me that about this Bubear of yours we must have a little talk. Why should he direct me to that castle instead of to your known house? And why should he send you a fantastic story about my having been shot? There is much in this that I do not understand, my friend.’

‘Hey–’

‘And why do you not give the countersign?’ Meredith, now that there had been abruptly revealed to him the only course in which a possible safety lay, felt quite his old self. He looked sternly at Properjohn. ‘Shaftesbury,’ he said deliberately, and let a deepening suspicion gather on his brow.

Properjohn raised both hands despairingly in air. ‘They mean nothinks to me, quarter, half, three-quarters these passworts! Always I–’

‘When the safety of other men is at stake,’ said Meredith silkily, ‘the forgetting of a password may be inconvenient – very inconvenient indeed, Herr Properjohn. Or
sogenannter
Herr Properjohn.’ And Meredith let his right hand steal in a sinister fashion towards a pocket.

‘But I am Properjohn!’

The man was really rattled. Just so, Meredith reflected, must Higbed have made his own claim to identity on these very moors. But although Properjohn was rattled, he too was edging a hand towards the pocket of his country-gentleman’s jacket. And this might be awkward. Meredith therefore let his own hands drop to his sides.
‘Also, gut
!’ he said soothingly, and wondered if it would be judicious and colourable to drop into German – a language which Properjohn had probably the same rather uncertain command of as English. ‘And perhaps you will prove it by explaining convincingly whom you took me for in the
Schloss
– the castle – of those old ladies?’

‘Natchly I take you for Signor Pantelli, big Italian dealer goes across tonight!’ Properjohn was indignant. ‘Goes across sell two three Giorgiones account clients thinks better leave Europe a while.’