The Screaming Gull Page 6

  “Does he, indeed? Seems to me he’ll need a good deal of bossing, Peter, the way he carries on! Hitting people on the nose and hacking their shins!”

  “Och ay! But he’s gey saft-he’rted when it comes tae the bit.”

  “Look here!” I exclaimed. “This is going altogether too far. I refuse to be discussed in this patronizing manner!”

  “Listen to your father!” said Maureen. “Doesn’t he sound terrifying!”

  She laughed very softly and looked up at me out of the corner of her eye. She was wearing the daintiest little blue hat, with a white feather cocked up on one side, and her dark brown hair rippled out underneath in burnished waves. I was amazed that she could be so apparently care-free in the disturbing circumstances. Her costume was also of blue and round her neck was knotted cunningly a blue-and-white silk scarf. If she hadn’t been driving a very fast sports model Humber I might have done something about it. On the other hand. I might not, for I possessed a craven heart.

  “We ought to be a very nice family party,” she said demurely.

  She seemed just then to be completely occupied with her driving, for we were going through Bo’ness at a considerable speed. I failed to grasp her meaning.

  “Eh?” I said.

  “We ought to be a very nice family party,” she repeated. “And we might possibly enjoy a little holiday. Hiking.”

  “Ha!” exclaimed Peter, his shock of red hair sticking out between us. “I see yer plan. Ye’re tae be ma mither next!”

  Then it dawned on me.

  “Good lord!” I gasped and blushed. “Maureen!”

  “Why not… Bill? If you can adopt a son as a disguise, can’t I adopt both a husband and son for a similar purpose? There seem to be so many people intent on blocking our progress that we must do something to protect ourselves.”

  “Ye’ll need tae wear specs tae,” suggested Peter, adding as an afterthought, “Mither!”

  Maureen gurgled delightedly. But I was sorely worried. I realized that we had a task of considerable danger and difficulty ahead of us, though I had not the slightest notion of its character. I realized that Maureen was taking a grave risk and that at any moment I might be arrested as a murderer and have little chance of proving my innocence. But I also realized that to pretend that I was Maureen’s husband would prove the most difficult and dangerous job of all.

  Chapter 5

  We had driven almost a hundred miles before darkness fell, twisting and turning in our tracks, and we agreed to stop at an inn some distance from Stirling to have a good meal and to discuss plans.

  The Stirling Arms at Bannockburn seemed to be the place. It was a little two-storeyed building, with white-washed plaster walls and an old-fashioned, red-tiled roof, standing at the end of the long, cottage-lined main thoroughfare; and what ultimately decided us in our choice was Maureen’s delighted exclamation on seeing the spotless white curtains which shaded the windows and Peter’s quick sense of smell.

  “Gosh!” he murmured, as we drew up opposite the brightly lit front porch. “They’re makin’ Irish stew in there.”

  At the time, of course, I took no particular interest in the fact that our short rest took place in the historic village of Bannockburn. But afterwards it struck me as being something of a coincidence that our first definite plans in this strange adventure were made near the place where Bruce had fought for Scotland’s liberty.

  I still remember the excellent dinner with which we were provided that night. Peter’s Irish stew was delicious, and the landlady’s dry, home-made cider was to the liking of each of us. Maureen smiled across at me when, without warning, my ‘son’ rang the hand-bell on our table and demanded of an astonished maid, whose arms must have ached under the burden of our heaped plates in the first instance, a further generous helping of stew.

  “Don’t you want more, too. Bill?” she asked, her right eye half-closed.

  “No,” I answered. “I don’t want more — of that.”

  “Oh!” she flashed “So the man wants more — of something?”

  “Cider, maybe,” suggested Peter with something of a mumble, caused, no doubt, by his efforts with the stew. “Is that no’ richt, faither?”

  Maureen laughed. My romantic longings faded.

  *

  On the journey from Edinburgh I had given Maureen some account of my adventures earlier in the day and had explained in detail Peters presence. She had told me in her turn that as a last resort her father had given her a free hand in the matter of ‘The Screaming Gull’.

  “One thing is clear,” she said, when, our meal over, we were seated round the great coal fire in the deserted lounge of the inn, “and that is — we’ll have to give up that red car of mine. Wotherspoon and his friends will certainly have spotted it.”

  “True,” I agreed, and after a while, because I was badly scared and something of an egoist, I added: “But why are Merriman’s enemies so determined to lay hands on me? They could quite easily have informed the police of my whereabouts this morning and got me out of the way — temporarily at least. And it seems from the conversation I overheard in Collins’s that it was actually one of their own leaders who suggested to the police that I might be guilty of Merriman’s death. Yet now they are doing everything to get me into their own clutches.”

  I offered Maureen a cigarette and lit it for her; while I handed Peter a packet of fig-rolls which I had secured from the portly landlady of the inn. Both smiled a little as I produced the articles from the huge side-pockets of my remarkable checked tweed jacket.

  “Obviously their idea of calling you a murderer was thought of only after you had left Cairngarroch,” Maureen said. “It was a fairly cunning plan to keep you quiet, if you had any information in your possession which might prove to be a useful weapon against them. But it was clearly only a temporary measure, intended to serve only until they themselves could silence you; for if you were actually caught by the police there would be a chance — a very slight one, but still a chance — that their activities might be made public before the first of February.”

  “It’s the maddest thing — ” I was beginning.

  “I agree,” she cut in quietly. “I consider it a very strange coincidence that it was not until long after you had left Cairngarroch that Merriman died — from a not too serious wound — and that the police were called in.”

  “You think — ”

  “I don’t think anything, Bill. But I know that before we go any farther I must give you some explanation of all this mystery.”

  “Good!” I exclaimed. “My head’s whirling.”

  “Ye’re no’ gaun tae putt me oot?” inquired Peter with some anxiety.

  He was sitting very stiff and straight on a high-backed, red-plush settee which had been placed between the two horsehair arm-chairs occupied by Maureen and myself. He was neat and boyish in his short-trousered suit of brown flannel and his red hair stood out stiffly from his little round head. His lean jaws, working on the fig-rolls, moved unceasingly.

  “No,” smiled Maureen, “but you’ll have to listen carefully, like your father. I’m sure you’ll be able to help us.”

  “Ha!” remarked Peter.

  *

  The story which Maureen told was so strange that while she was speaking I forgot the precarious position in which we found ourselves. I forgot Maureen’s own loveliness. I forgot the dim, lamp-lit room in which we were seated and the heavy rain lashing on the curtained windows. My whole body grew strained. More than once, I confess, I longed to be home in Stranraer, leading the quiet and eminently safe life of a draper. I can laugh now at my fears; but just then I considered my feelings the reverse of comical.

  I don’t think Peter actually understood several parts of Maureen’s tale. Nevertheless, his eyes goggled and once or twice he sighed softly.

  “My father,” began Maureen very carefully, “is chief of the Scottish Department of the British Intelligence Service. Probably you have guessed something of the sort
already.

  “For the past six months he and the people under his immediate command have been worked to death; for last June, Merriman picked up in Argyllshire a very strange piece of information. He was engaged in Kintyre at the time on the Mistletoe Murders case, and when searching in an old book in the Campbeltown Museum for details regarding the terrible cult responsible for the crimes, he found an intriguing reference to a society named ‘The Screaming Gull’. It was, apparently, a secret body, having special signs and ritual.

  “According to Merriman, it was shortly after the Forty-Five Rebellion that the society had been formed in Scotland by a small coterie of Jacobites, who had the notion that one day their numbers would become so powerful that they would be able to bring the Stuarts back to the Scottish throne.

  “The society received its name in rather a curious way. There is an old Gaelic proverb — as I don’t know the language intimately I cannot give you the original — to the effect that a screaming gull scares all its enemies. The saying probably refers to a purposeful man who makes plenty of a din to achieve his ends; but the Jacobites who made up this particular body were at any rate successful in their choice of an odd and distinctive title.

  “Since its inception the society has flourished beyond all that the wildest dreams of its originators could have imagined. But while its membership has extended over the whole country, the binding idea behind it has deteriorated so much that now it is nothing less than a political ramp.

  “Of course, among the members there are those who are absolutely sincere, and whose one fantastic idea is to have Scotland as a separate state. I believe the present head of the society — the Blind One they call her — is motivated only by an overwhelming passion to make herself ruler of the lands north of the Tweed. But for the most part the influential members of the organization are out for nothing more or less than their own personal gain. It is believed, too, that many of them are in the pay of foreign governments.”

  Maureen spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact way, and it took a little time, therefore, before the full significance of her statements reached my bewildered understanding. But at last I had gripped the salient features of her story. I began to be dimly conscious of the amazing network of intrigue and counter-intrigue into which I had accidentally stumbled.

  It did not occur to me to doubt Maureen. For one thing she spoke confidently and without hesitation, as if with full knowledge of her subject. For another thing I could find no valid reason why she should make up such a tale for my benefit. But I could not resist putting the question which came leaping to the forefront of my mind.

  “Maureen,” I said, “how do you know all this?”

  “Gosh!” exclaimed Peter. “It’s — it’s wild!”

  “Please be patient,” continued Maureen. “I’m not a very good storyteller, and I believe I’ve got rather ahead with my yarn. Let’s go back to the point where Merriman found in the Campbeltown Museum the book which described the formation of ‘The Screaming Gull’.

  “He would probably have taken only a passing interest in the reference, save for rather a curious coincidence. A few weeks before, a Scot named Mitchell had been arrested in London on a charge of espionage. On his arm had been discovered the tattoo-mark representing a seagull in the act of calling, by which, Merriman now learned, each member of the society could be identified. He communicated, therefore, with my father, and in less than a couple of months the Intelligence Service was shocked and horrified to discover from reports coming in from all parts of Britain that a gigantic plot and recently been formed to overthrow the power of British rule in Scotland and to set up a kind of dictatorship. And the dictator was to be no other person than the present head of ‘The Screaming Gull’, who believes herself to be descended from the Stuart kings and to have inherited their Divine Right of personal rule in Scotland.

  “It would take too long to describe in detail how these discoveries were made. Our conclusions were laboriously arrived at from numerous small items of information collected in almost every town in Britain.

  “For instance, an old man died in Perth, who, on his deathbed, told his son the meaning of the tattoo-mark on his arm and explained that soon Britain would be involved in a struggle similar to that which had taken place in Ireland after the Great War. The son, who did not afterwards join ‘The Screaming Gull’, as his father had intended, retailed his information to a small, dapper Jew whom he met in a public-house. This Jew called himself Levison, but his real name is Lawson. He is a great friend of mine, Bill, and I hope you meet him before this job is over.”

  “Ha!” said Peter.

  “Of course,” Maureen explained rather quickly, “he is a very happily married man.”

  “Ha!” said Peter again in a most disconcerting manner.

  “There was a blacksmith in Hull,” continued Maureen, with a little smile, “about whom we had our suspicions. I visited his shop, and he was rather indiscreet in his remarks when I referred casually to the tattoo-mark on his arm.

  “Then in London a leading actress told a new admirer of the distinguished part she was about to play in a drama which would humble English pride in the dust. She was to be the leader of a new school of acting in an ideal state situated in Scotland. The admirer had been rather curious about the black velvet band which she invariably wore on her left forearm; though, in fact, she had told him how it was intended to hide the scar of a burn. And he went on paying court to her until at length he discovered what exactly lay beneath it.

  “But it was in Campbeltown that Merriman fastened upon the most important aspects of the mystery. Poor Merriman! When it came to ferreting things out he had methods entirely his own. I don’t think I ever met a man who was so chock-full of original ideas or who could play a part so well. On this occasion he disguised himself as a tinker, carrying a set of bagpipes, and, after preliminary investigations, actually joined the society as an inner-circle member.

  “None of the rest of us ever discovered how he achieved his purpose, for he was strangely reticent about his work. But the fact remains that he attended meetings of ‘The Screaming Gull’, without being suspected, for at least two months.

  “Chief among his discoveries was the fact that February the first is the date on which the great coup will be made. On that day members of the society, numbering some ten thousand, are to be ready and armed with rifles and revolvers which, at the last moment, will be smuggled over from Ireland.

  “In Glasgow one section is to storm the City Chambers and the police headquarters, while similar assaults are to be made in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, and other towns in every part of the country. By night-time it is hoped that the rout will be complete, for Merriman believed that many soldiers in the regular army and a number of policemen are actually members of the society.

  “Of course, you must understand that only the inner-circle of ‘The Screaming Gull’ are aware of the details of the grand attack. Ordinary members know that soon they will be asked to prove their loyalty to the cause by lighting, but they will wait patiently, taking no action, until their final instructions reach them. They will not even receive their arms and ammunition until the morning of the big coup. The need for such a scheme of secrecy is obvious, for, even though the vows of the society are fatally binding, ten thousand people could not be entrusted for long with such vital information concerning the plans of their leaders.

  “But Merriman immediately saw in the precaution a sort of heel of Achilles. If once he discovered the identity of the Blind One, the chief power in the organization, and her immediate lieutenants, he was confident that with the Secret Service behind him he could evolve a plan to prevent these final instructions from being sent out and to stop the landing of arms in Scotland. If he could silence the leaders the ordinary members would be as impotent as their fellow-citizens and could be dealt with at the leisure of the Government.

  “Merriman, however, in his last personal report to my father, confessed that so far he had failed in h
is effort to discover the identity of the Blind One. That was some days before you met him in Cairngarroch. Every available member of my father’s corps was then detailed for the search, with Merriman as the spear-head of the endeavour.

  “The number of persons available, however, for particular work was small; for other agents are busy with the problem of the arms which are to be smuggled into the country. The place in Ireland from which they are to be shipped and their landing-place in Britain are still completely unknown. Naturally, therefore, the amount of information we have collected up to the present moment is comparatively unimportant.

  “We know, however, that the two attacks made on Merriman’s life were caused by the fact becoming known to the Blind One that he had been a Secret Service agent during the Great War. She had become suspicious of him, and had, therefore, decided to eliminate a person who had so suddenly shown such a deep interest in her doings. And from the scraps of conversation which you overheard in Collins’s Hotel it is clear that her lieutenants had discovered the correctness of her suspicions.

  “We know, too, that the chief of ‘The Screaming Gull’ is an old blind woman, and that her home is in Scotland somewhere. Farther than that we have not progressed, though we believe that before he died Merriman was on the point of discovering a promising clue in Cairngarroch. But what that clue was I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “Then all we have to go upon,” I said rather hopelessly, “is that the chief of ‘The Screaming Gull’ is a blind woman who lives in Scotland?”

  “Just that,” answered Maureen, “with this added information. Merriman sent a code message to my father on the morning of the day he was thrown from the slip. There were two strange sentences at the end. ‘I have found’, he wrote, ‘that the gull’s nest is built upon an island. I cannot discover the locality of the island: but I have heard it referred to as the Cow and Calf.’”

  “And unless we find the Blind One in a week’s time and force her to give up the idea of revolution, then — ”