“Blind alley?” Robert Menzies echoed. “If I get the job to build this keep …” he broke off. “No, I will not believe it’s going to happen. Man, do you realize that if it did happen I’d make perhaps three thousand pounds? Three thousand pounds! It’s a fantastic sum of money. But no, no. I just will not believe it’s going to happen. I wish Mrs Royde had seemed a little more interested. That’s what’s worrying me. But her husband’s keen, I believe. That’s a strange kilt he’s wearing. What did you make of it?”

“I didn’t notice it.”

“You didn’t what?”

“I didn’t notice it.”

“Gosh, Alan, no wonder you think life’s a blind alley!” Robert Menzies exclaimed in amazement. “We’ll have James with us on Tuesday or Wednesday. If I get this keep to build and James gets the business side to look after … Alan, it’s just incredible. It’s like something in a fairy-story. Well, when James told me about that donation of twenty pounds to the S.B.A. I was really staggered, but that was only a beginning. He and I may get anywhere with a start like this. Oh, boy, America’s a great country.”

“I wish you’d get on with your plans and abstain from platitudinous ejaculation,” Alan observed severely.

If Robert Menzies had heard what Carrie was saying to her husband on the way back to Glenbogle in the Austin he would have felt that the likelihood of his plans for the keep being accepted were indeed incredible, for she was asking Chester if he did not think he was making Knocknacolly a much bigger proposition than they had originally intended.

“It’s sweet of you, Chester, but I never wanted you to spend so much money on it as that.”

“I thought you were aiming to make Knocknacolly the centre of this Scottish rebirth?”

“Yes, Chester, I had thought of doing that.”

“If you’re going to have a centre you want it to look like a centre, and I guess that building will look like a centre. Anyway, I want a stronghold up here. We can rent a place next summer when we come over, but the year after that I aim to spend three months killing off what stags I don’t kill next year and shutting up every hiker I can catch in that new dungeon.”

“You’ll have forgotten all about hikers by then.”

“Never,” he declared. “I’ll never forget about hikers till I’ve shut up that guy with the chin in a dungeon alive with mice.”

“But, Chester, I don’t want mice at Knocknacolly.”

“If this Scottish architect of yours builds that dungeon as I want it built not even a mouse will be able to get out of it.”