"And clean! And with those two attributes Hercules was enabled to clean out the Augean Stables and prove himself ready for anything that came," supplemented Mr. Narkom, with a noisy sigh. "Cussed and clean! That's your motto. I'll back it every time.... Now, then, to business. We've thrown enough bouquets at each other to last for a lifetime! There's a dickens of a cipher case which is tying me into knots at present, so I need all my faculties to untie myself again! Here are the facts, Cleek. Nothing much, but you will make more than I can of them; so here goes."
And so it came about that when Cleek left the offices in Scotland Yard that afternoon, and strolled leisurely down toward his diggings in Clarges Street, he was in possession of the full story, just as Maud Duggan had told it to Mr. Narkom, and had gleaned therewith one or two incidental conclusions upon his own account.
The journey to Scotland was likely to prove a fruitful one. And he was to see the gaunt crags of that most majestic and rugged country under more interesting conditions than he had at first bargained for.
But how interesting and how tragically enthralling, even Cleek himself was not able to foresee.
CHAPTER III
THE CASTLE O' DREAMS
To say that Cragnorth—that little unknown village of the Highlands which lies like an eagle's aerie upon the crest of the hills, scattering its few dwelling-places like seed over the hillside and down into the valley below—stood half-an-hour's distance from the station was to underestimate the fact. For it took Cleek and Dollops and Miss Duggan two mortal hours of driving in the station hack before they came in sight of it.
And it was just as they reached a bend in the hill-road and came out upon a deep ravine, moss-covered and still wreathed with the mists of the morning, that Cleek saw Aygon Castle for the first time, and felt the whole true meaning of what it meant to these lairds of the Highlands to live here, generation after generation, giving to their children the right of ownership in the ancestral homes; it was just then that Miss Duggan turned in her seat and pointed with one arm out-thrown toward it.
"That's the Castle. Isn't it too magnificently beautiful for words, Mr. Deland?" she said, with a suggestion of a catch in her voice at sight of it. "With those mists wreathing it about, and all its dear, gaunt, worn turrets piercing the top of the world like that! Now you can imagine how I feel toward the—the woman who would wrest all this from Ross, take what is his rightful inheritance from him and give it to a boy who is only half a Scotsman, and with the blood of another country running in his veins! Now you can understand why I came all the way to London to see Mr. Narkom. Look on it, Mr. Deland, and drink in its beauty. The sight of it is like heaven itself to me."