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"I say, it's awfully decent of you ... I take back a lot of what I said tonight.... Of course, as matters stand, this is my job.... Tell MacBain not to lock us out." "I'll attend to that, if necessary. But don't mention me to Sylvia. She might resent the notion of being spied on. Say that you, too, were strolling about. You see, I heard the window being opened, and looked out, naturally.
"What a devil of a row!" said Packenham, as he clinked his glass against that of Macpherson, who, after the exciting events of the past hour, had been induced to take a nip to steady his nerves; "you ought to be d d well ashamed of yourself, Mac, to be mixed up in a fight over a Papist. What would Mr. MacBain say, eh?" "It's a verra bad business for me," said Macpherson ruefully.
Hence they were aware of this addition to the day's horrors before the house servants, who, headed by Tomlinson, were gathered on and near the flight of steps at the entrance. Every female servant in the establishment was there as well, not outside the door, but quaking in the hall. MacBain was the first among the men to realize what was happening.
They'll be relieved at four. They have instructions to allow no one to enter the wood. That's all they know." "If I go there, then, shall I be locked up?" "Not so bad as that, miss," smiled MacBain. "But I'd keep away from it if I was you. 'Let sleeping dogs lie' is a good motto." "But these are not sleeping dogs. They're wide-awake policemen." "Mebbe, miss. They have a soft job, I'm thinking.
After midnight the door bells and others communicated with a switchboard in the watchman's room; and a burglary alarm, which the man adjusted during his first round, rang there continuously if disturbed. Sylvia, leaving the door of her bedroom ajar, went to the servants' quarters by a back staircase. There she found MacBain, the watchman, eating his supper.
"Oh, papa, I don't think Ranald is a BAD boy," said his wife, almost pleadingly. "Bad? I'm sure I don't know what you call it. Who let off the dam last year so that the saw-mill could not run for a week? Who abused poor Duncie MacBain so that he was carried home groaning?" "Duncie MacBain!" exclaimed his wife, contemptuously; "great, big, soft lump, that he is.
She pressed an electric bell, which rang continuously in the night watchman's room; but he had run to the front of the house and was unlocking the front door, where a squad of willing men soon awaited Winter's instructions. For the Superintendent, after rushing to the telephone, had shouted an order to MacBain before he made off in the direction of the Quarry Wood.
"I don't feel as though I could sleep," she explained, "so I am going out into the park for a while. I'll unlatch one of the drawing-room windows and disconnect the alarm; and when I come in again I'll tell you." "Very well, miss," said MacBain. "It's a fine night, and you'll take no harm."
High and low they hunted without avail, until MacBain himself stumbled over a calcinated body in the murdered banker's bedroom. The poor creature had waked to some sense of disaster.
"Ye'll have to come back for me next month and tak' me awa' from Mâdurô. I'll do no more business here, I can see." "Right you are, Mac," and Packenham grasped his hand. "I will come back for you, if it takes me a month of Sundays to beat against the trades. And you're a white man, Mac; and I'll never laugh at MacBain nor Aberdeen theology any more."
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