Rory turned to Macdonald. “Well, I got him for you. If it hadn’t been for me he’d ’a’ been over the hills and far away, Sam would. Here he is and he’s told you the truth, so now it’s up to you to get on with it.”
“It is and all,” said Macdonald. “Potter here will look after Sam Borwick, and you will come with me, Rory Macshane, and you might as well come quietly. There’s a matter of a prison sentence and so forth to be faced. Now I’m prepared to do my best for you. I know about you and I’ve got reason to respect you, because you got away from Stalag X, but we’ve got to get things fixed so that you’re straight with the law—and then, I’ll do my best to help you to a way of life that’ll be more worth while than what you’ve been doing. What about it?”
“You look a decent bloke,” said Rory Macshane. “What’s it to be now?”
“You come with me,” rejoined Macdonald. “I’ve no doubt you’re a good fellsman and I don’t want to chase you all over Bowland Forest. Potter, look alive.”
Macdonald slipped his right arm inside Rory Macshane’s and the grip of his arm muscles prevented Rory from getting away. A moment later, Potter had produced handcuffs and what he did, with great dexterity, was to handcuff Macdonald and Macshane together by their wrists.
“That’s the way of it, so come quietly,” said Macdonald. “You can’t get rid of me, even killing me wouldn’t help. So come along, and I’ll do my best for you—and Sam can come later.”
“Christ,” said Rory Macshane, “chained to a cop. I never thought of that one.”
“If you’re never chained to anything more than a cop you’ve not much to complain about,” said Macdonald cheerfully. “Come along and give evidence to the inspector; tell him what Sam said just now, and I’ll uphold you.”
Chapter Thirteen
“WELL, BORD,” said Macdonald later, “you’re a punctilious sort of chap, and I can well believe you find this the most unorthodox case you’ve ever been involved in, haywire, as they say.”
“You can call it haywire or anything else you like,” rejoined Bord cheerfully. “The thing which matters to me is that you’ve picked up three criminals. You’ve got Macshane after the police of the whole country had been hunting him for months, and you got him quietly, with no violence, and I’d have expected him to kill somebody before he let himself be taken.”
“Macshane isn’t a killer, neither is he a brutal criminal,” said Macdonald, “and I’ll put both those points before the judge when he’s brought up again. Macshane could have murdered Sam Borwick, he had Borwick at his mercy, but he didn’t even hurt him. He frightened Sam all right and that’s why Sam coughed up the evidence.”
“Sam Borwick,” went on Bord. “Leverstone’s been looking for him for months and Millstone, too. You found ’em both.”
“In a manner of speaking Brough found Millstone and thereby led me to Borwick,” said Macdonald. “When Brough was knocked out, I was sure it was Borwick who had done it. What was the point in knocking Brough out? To stop him saying, ‘I saw Sam. I tell you I saw him.’ And when I thought that one out, I thought, ‘Then Sam has been watching High Garth, hanging around there, and that means he hasn’t found the hiding place where his dad put the money.’ If Sam had found the money, he wouldn’t have been hanging round the house any longer.” Macdonald paused and then said: “Do you remember saying to me, ‘Why didn’t the old fool tell us all he knew?’ the old fool being Brough. Well, the more I’ve thought about it, the more do I believe that Brough could have told us a lot. Brough knew that Sam Borwick had been hanging around High Garth and he knew what Sam was after—the money. When Brough asked me to go over High Garth with him on Monday afternoon, I think he knew Sam Borwick would be around.”
“Aye, I think you’re right there,” said Bord. “Brough wanted to get inside that house, but he didn’t fancy doing it alone, and he didn’t trust any of his own chaps, so he asked you.”
“We’re getting on,” said Macdonald. “We’ve agreed that Sam had been around High Garth and that Brough knew it. That was probably the reason that Brough told Jock Shearling he could use the shippon, so that Sam should see there was someone around. Well, the next thing I learnt was about Millstone’s identity. Millstone had been involved in the Raine’s Wharf break-in. A night watchman had been coshed and the only man arrested for the job was Rory Macshane, who got a long sentence for robbery with violence, was sent to Dartmoor, and broke prison about three months ago. When Rory was arrested, he gave a lot of trouble, and fought like a madman, which didn’t do him any good. It occurred to me that he might have been employing P.O.W. tactics, making a diversion to help his pals get away. If that was it, Rory was successful, the other two did get away. When I heard that the dead man in High Garth was Millstone and that Millstone’s fingerprints had been found at Raine’s Wharf, it seemed a pretty good bet that the third man involved in that break-in was Sam Borwick and I believed that Brough had seen Sam Borwick up here. So it seemed to me that there was quite a chance that Rory Macshane was up here too, intending to settle the score between himself and Sam Borwick. After all, Rory had held the can for Sam over the Raine’s Wharf business.” Again, Macdonald paused, then he went on: “I shouldn’t have been in the least surprised if Rory Macshane had killed Sam, but he didn’t kill him, although he had every opportunity to do so. He didn’t even
