‘Just that!’ Moir said grimly. ‘I ken why ye went to Leith. There was news to be picked up aboot the navy yards at Rosyth. What else did ye bring?’ ‘Sometimes a man I didn’t know, and once a load of small iron drums. I can’t say what was inside. They didn’t tell me much.’ Moir pondered. He imagined that the drums held something that was needed by enemy submarines; but Jimmy’s frankness puzzled him. He did not think it was contrition, since he had no faith in his son. The lad seemed to have told the truth because he was afraid. ‘Where did ye leave yere foreign friends?’ he asked. ‘Where the road turns off to the old place of Whiterigg; they stopped there now and then, and there’s a gate, you mind. I got down to open it and they drove off.’ ‘Why?’ Moir demanded, and the fear was plainer in Jimmy’s eyes. ‘I think their work must be nearly done and they meant to get rid of me. After all, I don’t know very much, and they’d reckon I’d be afraid to tell what I had found out.’ Moir began to understand. The old house at Whiterigg had lately been left in charge of a caretaker who obviously belonged to the gang, which indicated that the latter was well organised. The lad was perhaps in some danger from them. ‘But what for did they gang to the Whiterigg?’ ‘To wait for high-tide, I expect. They’d run down to the waterfoot when a boat could come up the gut through the sands.’ ‘That would be the way o’ it, nae doot; but I dinna ken yet why ye cam’ hame.’ ‘Where else would he gang for safety?’ Janet asked in a pitiful tone. ‘Ony place but here! It’s to my sorrow he’s a son o’ mine. But let him speak.’ Jimmy’s narrative was not very lucid, but it appeared that he had been seized by a kind of panic when left in the road. He had very little money, something suspicious had happened at the last stopping place, and he thought his friends had betrayed him to the police, or might send somebody after him in the dark. He lost his nerve when he found the soldier in his way, and after getting past the man ran blindly across the moor towards home. When he finished Moir glanced at the tall oak clock. ‘Ye have aboot an ’oor, and then Mr. Jardine will be here with his motor scouts,’ he said, and taking his gun from a rack went out.