As the eyes rested on him their sorrowfulness seemed to be shot with humour. A ghost of a smile lurked there, to which Dickson promptly responded. He grinned and bowed.
"Very pleased to meet you, Mem. I'm Mr. McCunn from Glasgow."
"They call me Saskia. This," nodding to the chair, "is my cousin Eugènie.... We are in very great trouble. But why should I tell you? I do not know you. You cannot help me."
"We can try," said Heritage. "Part of your trouble we know already through that boy. You are imprisoned in this place by scoundrels. We are here to help you to get out. We want to ask no questions--only to do what you bid us."
"You are not strong enough," she said sadly. "A young man--an old man--and a little boy. There are many against us, and any moment there may be more."
It was Dougal's turn to break in. "There's Lean and Spittal and Dobson and four tinklers in the Dean--that's seven; but there's us three and five more Gorbals Die-Hards--that's eight."
There was something in the boy's truculent courage that cheered her.
"I wonder," she said, and her eyes fell on each in turn.
"I think this is a perfectly simple business. Here's a lady shut up in this house against her will by a wheen blagyirds. This is a free country and the law doesn't permit that. My advice is for one of us to inform the police at Auchenlochan and get Dobson and his friends took up and the lady set free to do what she likes. That is, if these folks are really molesting her, which is not yet quite clear to my mind."
"Alas! It is not so simple as that," she said. "I dare not invoke your English law, for perhaps in the eyes of that law I am a thief."
"Deary me, that's a bad business," said the startled Dickson.
The two women talked together in some strange tongue, and the elder appeared to be pleading and the younger objecting. Then Saskia seemed to come to a decision.
"I will tell you all," and she looked straight at Heritage. "I do not think you would be cruel or false, for you have honourable faces.... Listen, then. I am a Russian and for two years have been an exile. I will not speak of my house, for it is no more, or how I escaped, for it is the common tale of all of us. I have seen things more terrible than any dream and yet lived, but I have paid a price for such experience. First I went to Italy where there were friends, and I wished only to have peace among kindly people. About poverty I do not care, for, to us, who have lost all the great things, the want of bread is a little matter. But peace was forbidden me, for I learned that we Russians had to win back our fatherland again and that the weakest must work in that cause. So I was set my task and it was very hard.... There were jewels which once belonged to my Emperor--they had been stolen by the brigands and must be recovered. There were others still hidden in Russia which must be brought to a safe place. In that work I was ordered to share."