The Riddle of the Spinning Wheel

Cleek waved a hand toward it now.

"Which is your own window?" he asked softly.

She pointed. "Fourth from the left. That tall, narrowish slit-like one. It has mullioned panes – see? There are only three others like that on this side. The fourth from the left is mine. Why?"

"Because," said Cleek meaningly, "if you want me, put a light in that window – a red light, for preference, as at this distance it would be easier to see. And light and re-light it three times. I shall be on the watch. And if not I, my man Dollops. Until to-morrow morning, when I shall call. Remember – three times, if you want me, and I shall come immediately – in my professional guise or not, as you like. And keep up your heart, Miss Duggan. Things may not be as black as you think. Fourth from the left, isn't it?"

"Fourth from the left. How kind you are! I shall never be able to thank you for all your interest. And I have a little disused bicycle lamp in my cupboard. It has a red slide. I will flash that – if I need you. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Cleek, smiling, and standing bareheaded in the early morning sunshine.

The carriage drove on up the hill, turning at the corner and winding down again into the valley, and from the outer wall of the street upon the opposite side one could watch its progress as one watched the movements of a fly upon an adjacent bank. Cleek crossed the road and stopped there, head bent, arms folded upon the low stone top of the wall. Round along the tortuous hill road it went creeping along, at an incredibly slow pace it seemed from his position above it, on and on and on into the valley, and then up, up, up, the opposite hillside, through bushes and shrubs that screened it now and again from view, and betwixt immense boulders, until eventually it came abreast of the huge wrought-iron gates of the place and passed between them out of sight.

And as it disappeared Cleek turned upon his heel with a deep-drawn sigh.

"Gad! what an inheritance!" he mentally commented as he crossed the road and entered the portals of the inn itself. "Enough to fight for, indeed! Mr. Narkom, old friend, this is one of those subtle things which your middle-class upbringing could never understand. One of those things which belong to the few and the chosen. Heigho! And Esau bartered his birthright for a mess of pottage. She'd fight for it – and so would I! A nice girl – hysterical, high-strung, but full of the pride of race. The fourth window from the left, she said. I'll put Dollops on the job, while I snoop around a bit for myself, and see how the land lies. Mine host might possibly put me wise to a good deal, as our American cousins say."

So he strolled into the bar-parlour, and ordered a tankard of ale, and over it made the acquaintance of that particular specimen of rugged Scotch manhood who was for the time being to be his host.

"Fine views in these parts," said he, conversationally, and in the man-of-the-world-tourist-idiot voice which he affected upon occasions. "My man and myself want to put up here for the fishin', doncherknow. You can fix us in all right, I suppose?"

"Cairtainly, sair. Therre's plainty of rume in th' Three Fishairs," responded Mr. Fairnish, with a smile of welcome, and in that inimitable accent which is Scotland's own, and which rings like rugged music upon the ear of the stranger to those parts. "We've a nice bedroom facin' th' Castle. It'll be a grrand view in the mornin' wi' yer tea. And yer man – we'll find him a shake-down nearr-by, if ye so wish ut."

Cleek liked on sight this genial host with his mellow accent.

"Well, I'd prefer for him to be within reachin' distance of me, doncherknow," he said, with an inane grin into the red-whiskered countenance, blue-eyed and lined with exposure to wind and weather, that glowed above him.

"Cairtainly. If ye weesh it; Mrs. Fairnish will show ye yer rume, and anything ye may want – "

Cleek raised a detaining hand.

"Please don't be in any hurry," he said pleasantly. "I've all day here before me. Come down to do a bit of fishin', doncherknow. Fine sport in these parts, they tell me. And that's Aygon Castle, is it? I know the young lady, Miss Duggan, slightly. Grand place it looks, to be sure."

Mr. Fairnish raised his eyes ceilingwards. His hands followed them.

"It's a heavenly spot indeed," he said piously, as one might speak of some religious place of worship. "One of the grrandest in our whole country, sair. You'll be visitin' there, no doubt?"

"Oh, possibly. A friendly call, doncherknow. What's the old chap like who owns it?"

Mr. Fairnish cast a hurried look on either side of him. The canny Scot showed uppermost in his visage. But the coast was clear. Only a boy of ten or twelve played at the other end of the bar with a roughly made engine of wood, dragging it to and fro over the tiled floor.

"Sair Andrew's a harrd mon – a dour, harrd mon is Sair Andrew," he said in a low, harsh voice, and with a wrinkling of face muscles which spoke volumes. "I wudner cross his path unless I could help it. Harrd, sair, harrd as nails. And wi' a grrasp on him for every penny!"

"Oho!" said Cleek in two different tones. "Mean, is he?"

"Mean wi' ye call it? Mean? There's no worrd ter expraiss what Sair Andrew is at all. Not in the language, sair. But he's got a fine bailiff ter manage th' land, and 'tis wi' him the people deal. Not wi' Sair Andrew. Mistair Tavish, now – he's a fine chap, wi' a greeat hearrt an' a helpin' hand for aiverybody. Mistair Tavish, now, he's a gentleman, sair. Not a block er grranite, like th' old landlorrd!"

Cleek smiled. So even in these rocky fastnesses of the silent Highlands a man liked his bit of gossip, and loosened his tongue to pass the time of day with every stranger.

"Very interesting, Mr. – "

"Fairnish, Robairt Fairnish."

"Mr. Fairnish. And what about the rest of the family? Mean also?"

"Aw no, sair. Not Mistair Ross, at any rate, nor Miss Duggan, either," supplemented Mr. Fairnish, lighting his pipe with one horny hand and leaning out over the bar the better to address Cleek. "Another ale, sair? – cairtainly. Mr. Ross, now. A fine fellow, in spite of his strrange ways and his wonderful apparatus. He's lit th' whole Castle with electricity, sair; and Sair Andrew has no got ovair the effect o' it yet. He does nought but grrumble and growl at Mistair Ross for th' expainse and th' noosence of it, until, so I haird, th' Castle be no pleasant spot to live in. And his wife, Lady Paula Duggan – "

Mr. Fairnish raised his hands and eyes in a very expressive gesture.

"You don't like the lady of the Castle, then, Mr. Fairnish?" interposed Cleek, tossing off his ale and setting the empty tankard down upon the bar in front of him.

"Like her, do ye say, sair? Like her! Show me th' pairson in th' whole deestrict that does, and I'll tell him he's a liarr – if ye'll pardon my language. There's nought in the countryside that does like her – a black-haired, weecked foreigner like hersai'f – though ye'll no repeat my worrds, I pray, or 'twould go harrd with Robairt Fairnish when next rrent-day comes round. But never a bairnie that has ought to say that's plaisant o' her – th' black-eyed witch-wummun! An' that's a fact. She speaks a heathen tongue, sair, an' I never trusts a foreigner. They're suspeeshus characters, the best o' them."

Cleek threw back his head and laughed – laughed heartily.

"Well," said he, with a shake of the head, "perhaps you're right. Though I won't say that my experience has always been just that. However, the lady does not seem to find favour in your eyes. Mr. Ross Duggan I haven't met."

"A fine upstanding gentleman, sair, wi' ne'er a mean bone in his body."

"And Miss Duggan?"

"A gentle, kind creature wi' a hearrt o' gold. She'd do nought to harrm anny one, sair, and I've proof o' that – bless her! Nor Miss McCall, either."

"Miss McCall?"

"Lady Paula's companion and handy maid, sair. A leddy, if I knaws one. Engaged to Mistair Tavish, I unnerstand – though 'tis not yet given out to the gran' folk. But the' have th' saft look in their e'e for one anaither. And 'tis juist that it means. A puir freeted creatur' wi' an e'e fer the ghost o' the Castle. She'll have a fine mon in Mistair Tavish, I assure ye. And now 'tis time ye saw yer rume, sair, or I'm no a guid host ye'll ken."

So saying, Mr. Fairnish moved away from the bar reluctantly, as one stung by duty into doing something for which he had no relish, for bar and Fairnish were as synonymous as the Dawn and the Day – and almost as inseparable.

Cleek watched him with upflung eyebrow and keen eye. Then he followed, and set a hand upon the garrulous fellow's sleeve.

"Mr. Fairnish," he said quietly, "you've interested me immensely. My own fellow-folk, you know – what is it that Pope says? – 'The proper study of mankind is man.' Well, it's like that with me. Perhaps I'm over-curious – there are a lot of us like that in this world. But you mentioned a ghostly visitant of the Castle just now. You were speaking in jest, of course?"

An imperceptible something passed like a shadow over Mr. Fairnish's rugged face. He gave a shiver.

"In jest ye tak eet?" he said a trifle huskily. "Weel, 'tis in airnest that I spoke. For nevair a step near the grounds will ought o' th' countryside go at night. 'Tis a lang story, and I've no time to be tellin' it thee noo, sair, but here's a leetle. 'Tis a peasant-gairl that a Sair Andrew of the sixteenth century, I ken, abducted from her propair parents (they lived in the Lowlands, so I've heard tell), and brought to th' castle and locked up – for his ain pleasure! 'Tis a sorry tale, for the puir maid deed o' a broken hearrt an' a broken speerit, too, I tak' it, nigh on to twelve months latair, wi' a leetle one juist come ter gladden her sore hearrt."

"Indeed? And what became of the child, then?"

"No one knaws. 'Twas said 'twas stealed at night by the granfer and speerited awa'. And 'twas said th' de'il himsaif cam' an' claimed eet. No one knaws that parrt o' th' story, but there's a mony who says they du. Only the peasant-gairl hersaif haunts the Castle tu this day, sair, and stalks th' whole place over from top tu bottom, an' inside and out, a-lukin' fer her sheel."

"Poor girl!" There was genuine sympathy in Cleek's low-toned voice, and at sound of it Mr. Fairnish spun round and looked at him, his own face brightening.

"Then ye believe in eet?" he said. "Fer yer voice tells me so. And so du I – an' aiverybody in these parrts. And wi' a mon so harrd as Sair Andrew as laird, ye ken what a puir time the gel must have had long ago – wi' another of 'em th' same. You're a sympathetic gentleman at hearrt, sair, I knew it on sight uf ye, so ye'll be takin' a worrd of advice from me, and no be out in the grounds at nicht, when there's no mune. 'Tis said she twists the neck of every man she sees at nicht-time in the grounds after dark, as a revenge for what she suffered at the hands of one. Ugh! but it's a sorry tale and no prettier fer the telling, I ken… If ye come this way, sair, I'll introduce ye to my ain leddy, and she'll tak' unco' care o' ye."

"Thanks."

Cleek swung into step behind him and mounted the wide shallow oak stairs of the place to the tune of Mr. Fairnish's deep-pitched voice calling for "Mary! Mary!" In the fullness of time "Mary" appeared, and resolved herself into a buxom, high-bosomed, rosy-cheeked Highland lass, whom Mr. Fairnish had taken to wife (the second for him) last January. She appeared almost as garrulous as her husband, and while she showed Cleek his room – a long, low-ceiled bedroom overlooking the Castle and with windows across one end of it – she regaled him with tid-bits of gossip of neighbouring parts, and incidentally added to his already plentifully filled store of knowledge of the "Castle-folk" the fact that Miss Duggan herself was secretly engaged to a Captain Macdonald – one of the poorest land-owners of those parts – who, because of his poverty, was forbidden the house by Sir Andrew, and promptly sent about his business.