Chapter one of The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan. This is a LibriVox
recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by A. Cliff Stone
of Sydney, Australia. The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buckan, Chapter one,
The Man who Died. I returned from the city about three o'clock on
that May afternoon, pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months
in the Old Country and was fed up with it. If anyone had told
me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that, I should
have laughed at him. But there was the fact the weather made me liverish
to talk of the ordinary englishman made me sick. I couldn't get enough exercise,
and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda water that has been
standing in the sun. Richard Hannay, I kept telling myself, you have
got in the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.
It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been
building up those last years in Bulawayo. I had got my pile not one
of the big ones, but good enough for me, and I had figured
out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out
from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since.
So England was a sort of Arabian nights to me, and I counted
on stopping there for the rest of my days. But from the first I
was disappointed with it. In about a week, I was tired of seeing
sights. In less than a month, I had had enough of restaurants and
theaters and race meetings. I had no real power to go about with,
which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but
they didn't seem much interested in me. They would fling me a question or
two about South Africa and then get on with their own affairs. A lot
of imperialist ladies asked me to Tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors
from Vancouver. And that was the dismallest business of all. Here was I,
thirty seven years old, sound and wind and limb, with enough money
to have a good time, yawning my head off all day. I had
just about settled to clear out and get back to the Veld, for I
was the best bored man in the United Kingdom. That afternoon I had been
worrying my brokers about investments to give my mind something to work on, and
on my way home I turned into my club, rather a pothouse which took
in colonial members. I had a long drink and read the evening papers.
They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an
article about Carolidi's the Greek premier. I rather fancied the chap. From all
accounts, he seemed the one big man in the show, and he played
a straight game too, which was more than could be said for most of
them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna,
but we were going to stick by him. In One paper said that he
was the only barrier between Europe and armageddon. I remember wondering if I could
get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort
of place that might keep a man from yawning. About six o'clock I went
home, dressed, dined at the Cafe Royal and turned into a music hall.
It was a silly show, all capering women and monkey faced men,
and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear. As
I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place, the crowd
surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the
people for having something to do. These shop girls and clerks and dandies and
policemen had some interest in life that kept them going. I gave half a
crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn. He was a fellow sufferer
at Oxford Circus. I looked up into the spring sky and I made a
vow. I would give the old country another day to fit me into something.
If nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape.
My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langhom Place. There
was a common staircase with a porter and a liftman at the entrance, but
there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was quite
shut off from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I
had a fellow to look after me, who came in by the day.
He arrived before eight o'clock every morning and used to depart at seven. For
I never dined at home. I was just fitting my key into the door
when I noticed a man at my elbow. I had not seen him approach,
and the sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim man with
a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue eyes. I recognized him as
the occupant of a flat on the top floor with whom I had passed the
time of day on the stairs. Can I speak to you? He said?
May I come in for a minute. He was steadying his voice with
an effort, and his hand was pouring my arm. I got my door
open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the threshold than he
made a dash for my back room, where I used to smoke and write
my letters. Then he bolted back. Is the door locked, he asked
feverishly, and he fastened the chain with his own hand. I'm very sorry,
he said, humbly. It's a mighty liberty. But you look the
kind of man who would understand. I've had you in my mind all this
week when things got troublesome, Say will you do me a good turn?
I'll listen to you, I said, that's all I promise. I was
getting worried by the antics of this nervous little chap. There was a tray
of drinks on the table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff
whisky and soda. He drank it off in three gulbs and cracked the glass
as he set it down. Pardon, he said, I'm a bit rattled
to night. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.
I sat down in an arm chair and lit my pipe. What does it
feel like? I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal
with a madman. A smile flickered over his drawn face. I'm not mad
yet, say sir. I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a
cool customer. I reckon too, You're an honest man and not afraid of
playing a bold hand. I'm going to confide in you. I need help
worse than any man ever needed it, and I want to know if I
can count you in. Get on with your yarn, I said, and
I'll tell you. He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and
then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first,
and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is the
gist of it. He was an American from Kentucky, and after college,
being pretty well off, he had started out to see the world. He
wrote a bit and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent
a year or two in southeastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine
linkinguist and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts. He
spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen in the newspapers.
He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the
interest of them, and then because he couldn't help himself. I read him
as a sharp, restless fellow who always wanted to get down to the roots
of things. He got a little further down that he wanted. I am
giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out away.
Behind all the governments and the armies, there was a big, subterranean
movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come on it
by accident. It fascinated him. He went further, and then he got
caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of
educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that Beside them, there were financiers who
were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling
market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the
years. He told me some queer things had explained a lot that had puzzled
me. Things had happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came
out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared,
and where the sinews of war came from, the aim of the whole
conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads. When I asked why,
he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything
would be in the melting pot, and they looked to see a new world
emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels and make fortunes by buying up
wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no farther land.
Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than
hell. Do you wonder, he cried, for three hundred years they have
been persecuted, and this is the return match for the programs. The Jew
is everywhere, but you have to go far down the back stairs to find
him. Take any big Teutonic business concern, if you have dealings with it.
The first man you meet is Prince von unsu Something, an elegant young
man who talks Eton and harrow English, but he cuts no ice. If
your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathis Westphalian with
a retreating brow in the manners of a hog. He is the German businessman
that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're the biggest kind of
job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one,
you are brought up against a little white faced Jew in a bath chair with
an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, sir, he is the man who
is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire
of the Czar. Because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some
one horse location on the Vulgar. I could not help saying that his jew
anarchists seem to have got left behind a little. Yes, no, he
said, they won up to a point, but they struck a bigger thing
than money, a thing that couldn't be bought. The old elemental fighting instincts
of man. If you're going to be killed, you invent some kind of
flag and country to fight for it, and if you survive, you get
to love the thing. Those foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care
for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna.
But my friends haven't played their last card. By a long sight. They've
gotten the ace of their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a
month, they are going to play it and win. But I thought you
were dead. I put in Moore's Janhavite. He smiled. I recognized the
quotation. It was about all that Latin. I knew I'm coming to that.
But I've got to put you wise about a lot of things. First,
If you read your newspaper, I guess you know the name of Constantine
Karalides. I sat up for that, for I had been reading about him
that very afternoon. He is the man that has wrecked all their games.
He is the one big brain in the whole show, and he happens also
to be an honest man. Therefore he has been marked down these twelve months
past. I found that out, not that it was difficult for any fool
could guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to
get him, and that knowledge was deadly. That's why I have had to
decease. He had another drink and I mixed it for him myself, for
I was getting interested in the beggar. They can't get him in his own
land, for he has a bodyguard of Epparotes that would skin their grandmothers.
But on the fifteenth day of June he is coming to this city. The
British Foreign Office has taken to having international tea parties, and the biggest of
them is due on that date. Now Karlides is reckoned the principal guest,
and if my friends have their way, he will never return to his admiring
countrymen. That's poor enough. Anyhow, I said, you can warn him
and keep him at home and play their game. He asked sharply. If
he does not come, they win, for he's the only man that can
straighten out the tangle. And if his government are warned, he won't come,
for he does not know how big the stakes will be on June the
fifteenth. What about the British government, I said, they're not going to
let their guests be murdered. Tip them the wink and they'll take extra precautions.
No good. They might stuff your city with plainclothes detectives and double the
police, and Constantine would still be a doomed man. My friends are not
playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for the taking off,
with the eyes of all Europe on it. He'll be murdered by an
Austrian and there'll be plenty of evidence to show the connivance of the big folk
in Vienna, in Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of
course, but the case will look black enough to the world. I'm not
talking hot he am my friend. I happen to every detail of the hellish
contrivance, and I can't tell you it will be the most finished piece of
black guardism since the Borges. But it's not going to come off if there's
a certain man who knows the wheels of the business alive right here in London
on the fifteenth day of June. And that man is going to be your
servant. Franklin P. Scudder. I was getting to like the little chap.
His jaw had shut like a rat trap, and there was the fire
battle in his gimlety eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn, he
could act up to it. Where did you find out the story, I
asked. I got the first hint in an inn on the Arkansi in Tyrel.
That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a first
shop in the Galatian quarter of Buddha, in a stranger's club in Vienna,
and in a little bookshop off the Racknitztrasse and Lipzig. I completed my evidence
ten days ago in Paris. I can't tell you the details now, for
it's something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind,
I judged at my business to disappear, and I reached a city by
a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French American, and
I sailed from Hamburger Jue diamond merchant in Norway. I was an English student
of absent, collecting materials for lectures. But when I left Bergen I was
a cinema man with special ski films, and I came here from Leith with
a lot of pulp wood propositions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers.
Till yesterday. I thought I had muddied my trail some and was feeling
pretty happy. Then the recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down
some more whisky. Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this
block. I used to stay close in my room all day and only slip
out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for a bit
from my window, and I thought I recognized him. He came in and
spoke to the porter. When I came back from my walk last night,
I found a card in my letter box. It bore the name of the
man I want least to meet on God's Earth. I think that the look
in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked skier on his face, completed my
conviction of his honesty. My own voice sharpened a bed as I asked him
what he did next. I realized that I was bottled as sure as a
pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to
die. If my pursuers knew I was dead, they would go to sleep
again. How did you manage it? I told the man that valets me
that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look like
death. That wasn't difficult for I am no slouch at Disguis's. Then I
got a corpse. You can always get a body in London if you know
where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the
top of a four wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my
room. You see, I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest.
I went to bed and got my man to mix me a sleeping draft,
and then told him to clear out. He wanted to fetch a doctor,
but I swore some and said I couldn't abide leeches. When I was
left alone, I started to fake up that corpse. He was my size,
and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some
spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the only weak point in the
likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I daresay there will
be somebody tomorrow to swear to having heard a shot, But there are no
neighbors on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I
left the body in bed, dressed up in my pajamas, with a revolver
lying on the bedclothes and a considerable mess around. Then I got into a
suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies. I didn't dare to shave
for fear of leaving tracks. And besides, there wasn't any kind of use
my trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind
all day, and there seemed nothing to do but to make an appeal to
you. I watched from my window till I saw you come home, and
then slipped down the stair to meet you there. Sir, I guess you
know about as much as me of this business. He sat blinking like an
owl, fluttering with nerves, and yet desperately determined. By this time I
was pretty well convinced that he was going straight with me. It was the
wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tails
which had turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of
judging the man rather than the story. If he had wanted to get a
location in my flat and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a
milder yarn. Hand me your key, I said, and I'll take a
look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but I'm bound to verify a
bit if I can. He shook his head mournfully. I reckoned, you'd
ask for that, but I haven't got it. That's on my chain on
the dressing table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn't leave
any clues to breed suspicions the gentry who are after me at bright eyed citizens.
You'll have to take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you'll
get proof of the corpse business. Right enough, I thought for an instant
or two. Right, I'll trust you for the night. I will lock
you into this room and keep the key. Just one word, mister Scudder,
I believe you're straight, but if so be, you are not,
I should warn you that I'm a handy man with a gun. Sure,
he said, jumping up with some briskness. I haven't the privilege of your
name, sir, but let me tell you that you're a white man.
I'll thank you to lend me a razor. I took him into my bedroom
and turned him loose. In half an hour's time, a figure came out
that I scarcely recognize. Only his gimlety, hungry eyes were the same.
He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the middle, and he
had cut his eyebrows further. He carried himself as if he had been drilled,
and was the very model, even to the brown complexion of some British
officer who had had a long spell in India. He had a monocle two
which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone
out of his speech. My hat, mister Scudder, I stammered, Not
mister Scudder, he corrected. Captain Theophilis Digby of the forty of Gurkha's,
presently home on leave. I'll thank you to remember that, Sir. I
made him up a bed in my smoking room and sought my own couch,
more cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things did happen occasionally,
even in this god forgotten metropolis. I awoke next morning to hear my
man Paddock making the juice of a row at the smoking room door. Paddock
was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the salar key,
and I had inspanned him as my servant as soon as I got to
England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus and
was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could count on
his loyalty. Stop that row, Paddock, I said, there's a friend
of mine, Captain. Captain I couldn't remember the name, Dossing down in
there, get breakfast for two and then come and speak to me. I
told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a great swell with his
nerves pretty bad from overwork, who wanted absolute rest and stillness. Nobody had
got to know he was here, for he would be besieged by communications from
the India Office and the Prime Minister, and his cure would be ruined.
I am bound to say. Scudder played up splendidly when he came to breakfast.
He fixed Paddock with his eyeglass just like a British officer, asked him
about the Boer War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about
imaginary powers. Paddock couldn't learn to call me sir, but he surred Scudder
as if his life depended on it. I left him with the newspaper and
a box of cigars and went down to the city to luncheon. When I
got back, the liftman had an important face, nasty business here this morning,
sir gent and number fifteen being and shot hisself. They just took him
to the moutary. The police are up there now. I sent it to
Number fifteen and found a couple of bobbies and dan inspector busy making an examination.
I asked a few idiotic questions, and they soon kicked me out.
Then I found the man that had valeted Scudder and pumped him, but I
could see he suspected nothing. He was a whining fellow with a churchyard face,
and half a crown went far to console him. I attended the inquest
next day. A partner of some publishing firm gave evidence that the deceased had
brought him would Pulp propositions and had been, he believed, an agent of
ourn American business. The jury found it a case of suicide while of unsound
mind, and the few effects were handed over to the American consul to deal
with. I gave Scudder a full account of the affair, and it interested
him greatly. He said he wished he could have attended the inquest, for
he reckoned it would be about as spicy as to read one's own obituary notice.
The first two days he stayed with me in that back room. He
was very peaceful. He read and smoked a bit, and made a heap
of jottings in a notebook, And every night we had a game of chess,
at which he beat me hollow. I think he was nursing his nerves
back to health, for he had had a pretty trying time. But on
the third day I could see he was beginning to get restless. He fixed
up a list of the days till June fifteenth, and ticked each off with
a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand against them. I would find him
sunk in a brown study, with his sharp eyes abstracted, and after those
spells of meditation he was apt to be very despondent. Then I could see
that he began to get edgy again. He listened for little noises and was
always asking me if Paddock could be trusted. Once or twice he got very
peevish, had apologized for it. I didn't blame him. I made every
allowance, for he had taken on a fairly stiff job. It was not
the safety of his own skin that troubled him, but the success of the
scheme. He had planned that little man was clean grit all through, without
a soft spot in him. One night he was very solemn, say hannay.
He said, I, judge, I should let you a bit deeper
into this business. I should hate to go out without leaving somebody else to
put up a fight. And he began to tell me in detail what I
had only heard from him vaguely. I did not give him very close attention.
The fact is I was more interested in his own adventures than in his
high politics. I reckoned that Carolidis and his affairs were not my business,
leaving all that to him. So a lot that he said slipped clean out
of my memory. I remember that he was very clear that the danger to
Calidi would not begin till he had got to London, and would come from
the very highest quarters, where there would be no thought of suspicion. He
mentioned the name of a woman, Julia set in Ye as having something to
do with the danger. She would be the decoy I gathered to get Karalites
out of the care of his guards. He talked too, about a black
Stone and a man that listed in his speech, and he described very particularly
somebody that he never referred to without a shudder, an old man with a
young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk. He spoke a good
deal about death too. He was mortally anxious about winning through with his job,
but he didn't care a rush for his life. I reckon, it's
like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out, and waking to
find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the window.
I used to thank God for such mornings way back in the blue Grass country,
and I guess I'll thank him when I wake up on the other side
of Jordan next day. He was much more cheerful and read the life of
Stonewall Jackson much of the time. I went out to dinner with a mining
engineer I had got to see on business, and came back about half past
ten in time for our game of chess. Before turning in, I had
a cigar in my mouth. I remember as I pushed open the smoking room
door, the lights were not lit, which struck me as odd. I
wondered if Scudderhead turned in already. I snapped a switch, but there was
nobody there. Then I saw something in the far corner which made me drop
my cigar and fall into a cold sweat. My guest was lying sprawled on
his back. There was a long knife through his heart which skewered him to
the floor. End of chapter one, Chapter two of the Thirty nine Steps
by John Bucking. The Sleep of Ox recording is in the public domain.
Read by A. Cliff Stone of Sydney, Australia. Chapter two, The
Milkman sets out on his travels. I sat down in an armchair and felt
very sick. That lasted for maybe five minutes, and was succeeded by a
fit of the horrors. The poor, staring, white face on the floor
was more than I could bear, and I managed to get a tablecloth and
cover it. Then I staggered to a cupboard, found the brandy and swallowed
several mouthfuls. I had seen men die violently before, indeed I had killed
a few myself in the Metabali War, but this cold blooded indoor business was
different. Still, I managed to pull myself together. I looked at my
watch and saw that it was half past ten. An idea seized me,
and I went over the flat with a small tooth comb. There was nobody
there, nor any trace of anybody, but shuttered and bolted all the windows
and put the chain on the door. By this time my wits were coming
back to me, and I could think again. It took me about an
hour to figure the thing out, and I did not hurry, for unless
the murderer came back, I had till about six o'clock in the morning for
my cogitations. I was in the soup. That was pretty clear. Any
shadow of a doubt I might have had about the truth of Scudder's tale was
now gone. The proof of it was lying under the tablecloth. The men
who knew that he knew what he knew had found him and had taken the
best way to make certain of his silence. Yes, but he had been
in my rooms four days, and his enemies must have reckoned that he had
confided in me. So I would be the next to go. It might
be that very night, or next day, or the day after. But
my nubber was up all right. Then suddenly I thought of another probability.
Supposing I went out now and called in the police, or went to bed
and let Paddock find the body and call them in the morning. What kind
of a story was I to tell about Scudder? I had lied to Paddock
about him and the whole thing looked desperately fishy. If I made a clean
breast of it and told the police everything he had told me, they would
simply laugh at me. The odds were a thousand to one that I would
be charged with the murder, and the circumstantial evidence was strong enough to hang
me. Few people knew me in England. I had no real power who
could come forward and swear to my character. Perhaps that was what those secret
enemies were playing for. They were clever enough for anything, and an English
prison was as good a way of getting rid of me to laughter June fifteenth
as a knife in my chest. Besides, if I told the whole story,
and by any miracle was believed, I would be playing their game,
Karalides would stay at home, which was what they wanted. Somehow or other,
the sight of Scudder's dead face had made me a passionate believer in his
scheme. He was gone, but he had taken me into his confidence,
and I was pretty well bound to carry on his work. You may think
this ridiculous for a man in danger of his life, but that was the
way I looked at it. I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not
braver than other people, But I hate to see a good man down,
and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play
the game in his place. It took me an hour or two to think
this out, and by that time I had come to a decision. I
must vanish somehow and keep vanished till the end of the second week in June.
Then I must somehow find a way to get in touch with the government
people and tell them what Scudder had told me. I wished to heaven he
had told me more, and that I had listened more carefully to the little
he had told me. I knew nothing but the barest facts. There was
a big risk that even if I weathered the other day, I would not
be believed in the end. I must take my chance of that and hope
that something might happen which would confirm my tale in the eyes of the government.
My first job was to keep going for the next three weeks. It
was now the twenty fourth day of May, and that meant twenty days of
hiding before I could venture to approach the powers that be. I reckoned that
two sets of people would be looking for me, Scudder's enemies to put me
out of existence, and the police who would want me for Scudder's murder.
It was going to be a giddy hunt, and it was queer how the
prospect comforted me. I had been slacked so long that almost any chance of
activity was welcome. When I had to sit alone with their corpse and wait
on fortune, I was no better than a crushed worm. But if my
neck safety was to hang on my own wits, I was prepared to be
cheerful about it. My next thought was whether Scudder had any papers about him
to give me a better clue to the business. I drew back the tablecloth
and searched his pockets, for I had no longer any shrinking from the body.
The face was wonderfully calm for a man who had been struck down in
a moment. There was nothing in the breast pocket, and only a few
loose coins and a cigar holder in the waistcoat. The trousers held a little
penknife in some silver, and the side pocket off his jacket contained an old
crocodile skinned cigar case. There was no sign of the little black book in
which I had seen him making notes that had no doubt been taken by his
murderer. But As I looked up from my task, I saw that some
drawers had been pulled out in the writing table. Scudder would never have left
them in that state, for he was the tidiest of mortals. Someone must
have been searching for something, perhaps for the pocketbook. I went round the
flat and found that everything had been ransacked, the inside of books, drawers,
cupboards, boxes, even the pockets of the clothes in my wardrobe and
the sideboard in the dining room. There was no trace of the book.
Most likely the enemy had found it, but they had not found it on
Scudder's body. Then I got out a Natlas and looked at a big map
of the British Isles. My notion was to get off to some wild district
where my veld craft would be of some use to me, for I would
be like a trapped rat in a city. I considered that Scotland would be
best, for my people were Scotch and I could pass anywhere as an ordinary
Scotsman. I had half an idea at first to be a German tourist,
for my father had had German partners, and I had been brought up to
speak the tongue pretty fluently, not to mention, having put in three years
prospecting for copper in German to Maryland. But I calculated that it would be
less conspicuous to be a scot and less in a line with what the police
might know of my past. I fixed on Galloway as the best place to
go. It was the nearest wild part of Scotland so far as I could
figure it out, and from the look of the map, was not over
thick with population. A search in Bradshaw informed me that a train left Saint
Pancras at seven ten, which would land me at any Galloway station in the
late afternoon. That was well enough, but a more important matter was how
I was to make my way to Saint Pancras, for I was pretty certain
that Scudder's friends would be watching outside. This puzzled me for a bit.
Then I had an inspiration, on which I went to bed and slept for
two troubled hours. I got up at four and opened my bedroom shutters.
The faint light of a fine summer morning was flooding the skies, and the
sparrows had begun to chatter. I had a great revulsion of feeling and felt
a god forgotten full my inclination was to let things slide in trust to the
British police taking a reasonable view of my case. But as I reviewed the
situation, I could find no arguments to bring against my decision of the previous
night. So with a iron mouth, I resolved to go on with my
plan. I was not feeling in any particular funk, only disinclined to go
looking for trouble. If you understand me, I hunted out a well used
tweed suit, a pair of strong naw boots, and a flannel shirt with
a collar. Into my pockets. I stuffed a spear shirt, a cloth
cap, some handkerchiefs, and a toothbrush. I had drawn a good sum
in gold from the bank two days before in case Scudder should want money,
and I took fifty pounds of it and sovereigns in a belt which I had
brought back from Rhodesia. That was about all I wanted. Then I had
a bath and cut my mustache, which was long and drooping into a short,
stubbly fringe. Now came the next step. Paddock used to arrive punctually
at seven thirty and let himself in with a latch key, But about twenty
minutes to seven. As I knew from bitter experience, the milkman turned up
with a great clatter of cans and deposited my share outside my door. I
had seen that Melbourne sometimes when I had gone out for an early ride.
He was a young man about my own height, with an ill nourished mustache,
and he wore a white overall on him. I staked all my chances.
I went into the darkened smoking room, where the rays of morning light
were beginning to creep through the shutters. There I breakfasted off a whiskey and
soda and some biscuits from the cupboard. By this time it was getting on
for six o'clock. I put a pipe in my pocket and filled my pouch
from the tobacco jar on the table by the fireplace. As I poked into
the tobacco, my fingers touched something hard, and I drew out Scudder's little
black pocketbook that seemed to me a good omen. I lifted the cloth from
the body and was amazed at the peace and dignity of the dead face.
Goodbye, old Chap, I said, I'm going to do my best for
you. Wish me well wherever you are. Then I hung about in the
waiting for the milkman. That was the worst part of the business, for
I was fairly choking to get out of doors. Six thirty past, then
six forty, but still he did not come. The fall had chosen this
day, of all days, to be late. At one minute after the
quarter to seven, I heard the rattle of the cans outside. I opened
the front door, and there was my man, singling out my cans from
a bunch he carried, and whistling through his teeth. He jumped a bit
at the sight of me. Come in here a moment. I said,
I want to word with you, and I led him into the dining room.
I reckon, you're a bit of a sportsman, I said, and
I want you to do me a service. Lend me your cap and overall
for ten minutes, and here's a sovereign for you. His eyes opened at
the sight of the gold, and he grinned broadly. What's the game,
he asked, a bet, I said, I haven't time to explain,
but to win it, I've got to be a milkman for the next ten
minutes. All you've got to do is to stay here till I come back.
You'll be a bit late, but nobody will complain and you will have
that quid for yourself, right, oh, he said cheerily. I ain't
the man to spoil a bit of sport. Here's the red Governor. I
stuck on his flat blue hat and his white overall, picked up the cans,
banged my door and went whistling downstairs. The porter at the foot told
me to shut my drawer, which sounded as if my makeup was adequate.
At first I thought there was nobody in the street. Then I caught sight
of a policeman a hundred yards down, and a loafer shuffling past on the
other side. Some impulse made me raise my eyes to the house opposite,
and there at the first floor window was a face. As the loafer passed,
he looked up, and I fancied a signal was exchanged. I crossed
the street, whistling gaily and imitating the jaunty swing of the milkman. Then
I took the first side street and went up a left hand turning which led
past a bit of vacant ground. There was no one in the little street,
so I dropped the milk cans inside the hoarding and sent the cap and
overall after them. I had only just put on my cloth cap when a
postman came round the corner. I gave him good morning, and he answered
me unsuspiciously. At the moment the clock of a neighboring church struck the hour
of seven, there was not a second to spare. As soon as I
got to Euston Road, I took to my heels and ran. The clock
at Euston station showed five minutes past the hour. At Saint Pancras, I
had no time to take a ticket. Let I own that I had not
settled upon my destination. A porter told me the platform, and as I
entered it, I saw the train already in motion. Two station officials blocked
the way, but I dodged them and clambered into the last carriage. Three
minutes later, as we were roaring through the Northern Tunnels and irate guard interviewed
me. He wrote out for me a ticket to Newton Stewart, a name
which had suddenly come back to my memory, and he conducted me from the
first class compartment where I had ensconced myself to a third class smoker occupied by
a sailor and a stout woman with a child. He went off grumbling,
and as I mopped my brow, I observed to my companions and my broadest
scots that I was a sword job catching trains. I had already entered upon
my part the impotence O that geared, said the lady bitterly. He needed
a Scotch tongue to pit him in his place. He was complaining O this
we and o'hayana ticket and her no flower till August twelve month, and he
was objecting to this gentleman spitting. The sailor morosely agreed, and I started
my new life in an atmosphere a protest against authority. I reminded myself that
a week ago I had been finding the world dull end of chapter two,
Chapter three of the Thirty Nine by John bucking This LibriVox recording is in the
public domain. Read by A cliff Stone of Sydney, Australia. The Thirty
nine Steps by John Buckan, Chapter three, The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper.
I had a solemn time traveling north that day. It was fine mayweather,
with the hawthorn flowering on every hedge, and I asked myself why when
I was still a free man I had stayed on in London and not got
the good of this heavenly country. I didn't dare face the restaurant car,
but I got a luncheon basket at Leads and shared it with the fat woman.
Also I got the morning's papers with news about starters for the Derby in
the beginning of the cricket season, and some paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were
settling down at a British squadron was going to Keel. When I had done
with them, I got out Scudder's little black pocketbook and studied it. It
was pretty well filled with jottings, chiefly figures, though now and then a
name was printed in. For example, I found the words Hofguard and Luneville
and avocado pretty often, and especially the word Pavia. Now, I was
certain that Scudder never did anything without a reason, and I was pretty sure
that there was a cipher in all this. That is a subject which has
always interested me, and I did a bit added myself once as an intelligence
officer at Dalagoa Bay during the Boer War. I have a head for things
like chests and puzzles, and I used to reckon myself pretty good at finding
out cipher's. This one looked like the numerical kind, where sets of figures
correspond to the letters of the alphabet. But any fairly shrewd man can find
the clue to that sort after an hour or two's work. And I didn't
think Scudder would have been content with anything so easy, so I fastened on
the printed words, for you can make a pretty good numeracle cipher if you
have a key word which gives you the sequence of the letters. I tried
for hours, but none of the words answered. Then I fell asleep and
woke at Dumfries, just in time to bundle out and get into the slow
Galloway train. There was a man on the platform whose looks I didn't like,
but he never glanced at me, And when I caught sight of myself
in the mirror of an automatic machine, I didn't wonder. With my brown
face, my old tweeds, and my slouch, I was the very model
of one of the hill farmers who were crowding into the third class carriages.
I traveled with half a dozen in an atmosphere of shag and clay pipes.
They had come from the weekly market, and their mouths were full of prices.
I heard accounts of how the lambing had gone up in the Cairn,
and the Douche, and a dozen other mysterious waters above. Half the men
had lunched heavily and were highly flavored with whiskey, so they took no notice
of me. We rumbled slowly into a land of little wooded glens, and
then to a great white moorland place gleaming with locks, with high blue hills
showing northwards. About five o'clock the carriage had emptied and I was left alone.
As I had hoped, I got out at the next station, a
little place whose name I scarcely noted, set right in the heart of a
bog. It reminded me of one of those forgotten little stations in the crew.
An old station master was digging in his garden, and with his spade
over his shoulder, sauntered to the train, took charge of a parcel,
and went back to his potatoes. A child of ten received my ticket,
and I emerged on a white road that straggled over the brown moor. It
was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as clear as a cut
amethyst. The air had the queer rooty smell of bogs. But it was
as fresh as mid ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits.
I actually felt lighthearted. I might have been a boy out for a
spring holiday tramp instead of a man of thirty seven, very much wanted by
the police. I felt just as I used to fuel when I was starting
for a big trek on a frosty morning on the high Veld. If you
believe me, I swung along that road whistling. There was no plan of
campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this blessed,
honest smelling hill country. For every mile put me in better humor with
myself. In a roadside planting, I cut a walking stick of hazel and
presently struck off the highway up a bypath which followed the glen of a brawling
stream. I reckoned that I was still far ahead of any pursuit, and
for that night might please myself. It was some hour since I had tasted
food, and I was getting very hungry when I came to a herd's cottage
set in a nook beside a waterfall. A brown faced woman was standing by
the door and greeted me with the kindly shyness of Morland places. When I
asked for a night's lodging, she said I was welcome to the bed and
the loft, and very soon she set before me a hearty meal of ham
and eggs, scones and sweet milk. At the darkening, her man came
in from the hills, a lean giant who in one step covered as much
ground as three paces of ordinary mortals. They asked me no questions, for
they had the perfect breeding of all dwellers in the wilds. But I could
see they set me down as a kind of dealer, and I took some
trouble to confirm their view. I spoke a lot about cattle, of which
my host knew little, and I picked up from him a good deal about
the local Galloway markets, which I tucked away in my memory for future use.
At ten, I was nodding in my chair, and the bed in
the loft received a weary man who never opened his eyes till five o'clock set
the little homestead of going once more. They refused any payment, and by
sex I had breakfasts and was striding southwards again. My notion was to return
to the railway line a station or two farther on than the place where I
had alighted yesterday, and to double back. I reckoned that that was the
safest way. The police would naturally assume that I was always making farther from
London in the direction of some western port. I thought I had still a
good bit of a start, for, as I reasoned, it would take
some hours to fix the blame on me, and several more to identify the
fellow who got on board the train. At Saint Pancras, it was the
same jolly, clear spring weather, and I simply could not contrive to feel
care worn. Indeed, I was in better spirits than I had been for
months. Over a long ridge of moorland, I took my road, skirting
the side of a high hill which the herd had called Cairnsmoor. A fleet
nesting curlews and plovers were crying everywhere, and the links of green pasture by
the streams were dotted with young lambs. All the slackness of the past months
was slipping from my bones, and I stepped out like a four year old.
By and by I came to a swell of moorland which dipped to the
vale of a little river, and a mile away in the heather, I
saw the smoke of a train. The station. When I reached it proved
to be ideal for my purpose. The moor surged up around it and left
room only for the single line, the slender siding, a waiting room,
an office, the station master's cottage, and a tiny yard of gooseberries and
sweet william. There seemed no road to it from anywhere, and to increase
the desolation, the waves of a tarn lapped on their gray granite beach half
a mile away. I waited in the deep heather till I saw the smoke
of an east going train on the horizon. Then I approached the tiny booking
office and took a ticket for Dumfries. The only occupants of the carriage were
an old shepherd and his dog, a war led brute that I mistrusted.
The man was asleep, and on the cushions beside him was that morning Scotsman.
Eagerly I seized on it, for I fancied it would tell me something.
There were two columns about the Portland Place murder, as it was called.
My man Paddock had given the alarm and had the milkman arrested poor devil.
It looked as if the latter had earned his sovereign hardly, but for
me he had been cheap at the price, for he seemed to have occupied
the police for the better part of the day. In the latest news I
found a further installment of the story. The milkman had been released. I
read and the true criminal, about whose identity the police were reticent, was
believed to have got away from London by one of the northern lines. There
was a short note about me as the owner of the flat. I guessed
the police had stuck that in as a clumsy contrivance to persuade me that I
was unsuspected. There was nothing else in the paper, nothing about foreign politics,
or calides, or the things that had interested Scudder. I laid it
down and found that we were approaching the station at which I had got out
yesterday. The potato digging station master had been gingered up into some activity,
for the west going train was waiting to let us pass, and from it
had descended three men who were asking him questions. I supposed that they were
the local police, who had been stirred up by Scotland Yard and had traced
me as far as this one horse siding, Sitting well back in the shadow.
I watched them carefully. One of them had a book and took down
notes. The old potato digger seemed to have turned peevish, but the child
who had collected my ticket was talking volubly. All the party looked out across
the moor, where the white road departed. I hoped they were going to
take up my tracks there. As we moved away from that station, my
companion woke up. He fixed me with a wandering glance, kicked his dog
viciously, and inquired where he was. Clearly he was very drunk. That's
what comes o beIN a teetotaller, he observed. In bitter regret. I
expressed my surprise that in him I should have met a blue ribbon storeward.
Aye, but I'm a strong teetotaler, he said pergnaciously. I took the
pledge last Martinmas and having a touch a drop o whiskey since the end,
not even a hogmanate, though I was attempted. He swung his heels up
on the seat and burrowed a frowsy head into the cushions. Now that's a
get, he moaned, a head better than a hell fire and tween in
looking different ways for the Zabbath? What did it? I asked a drink,
They ca brandy. Being a teetot, I keep it off the whiskey,
But I was nip nipping a day at this brandy, and I doubt
I'll know beweel for a fortnight. His voice died away into a splutter and
sleep once more laid his heavy hand on him. My plan had been to
get out at some station down the line, but the train suddenly gave me
a better chance, for it came to a standstill at the end of a
culvert which spanned a brawling, porter colored river. I looked out and saw
that every carriage window was closed and no human figure appeared in the landscape.
So I opened the door and dropped quickly into the tangle of hazels which edged
the line. It would have been all right, but for that infernal dog,
under the impression that I was decamping with its master's belongings, it started
to bark and all begot me by the trousers. This woke up the herd,
who stood balling at the carriage door in the belief that I had committed
suicide. I crawled through the thicket, reached the edge of the stream,
and in cover of the bushes, put a hundred yards or so behind me.
Then from my shelter I peered back and saw the guard and several passengers
gathered round the open carriage door and staring in my direction. I could not
have made a more public departure if I had left with a bugler and a
brass band. Happily, the drunken herd provided a diversion. He and his
dog, which was attached by a rope to his waist, suddenly cascaded out
of the carriage, landed on their heads on the track, and rolled some
way down the bank towards the water. In the rescue which followed the dog
bit somebody or I could hear the sound of hard swearing. Presently they had
forgotten me, And when after a quarter of a mile's crawl I ventured to
look back, the train had started again and was vanishing into the cutting.
I was in a wide semicircle of moorland, with the Brown River as radius
and the high hills forming the northern circumference. There was not a sign or
sound of a human being, only the plashing water and the interminable crying of
curlews. Yet, oddly enough, for the first time, I felt the
terror of the hunted on me. It was not the police that I thought
of, but the other folk, who knew that I knew Scudder's sigarette and
dared not let me live. I was certain that they would pursue me with
a keenness and vigilance unknown to the British law, and that once the grip
closed on me, I should find no mercy. I looked back, and
there was nothing in the landscape. The sun glinted on the metals of the
line and the wet stones in the stream, and you could not have found
a more peaceful sight in the world. Nevertheless, I started to run,
Crouching low in the runnels of the bog. I ran till the sweat blinded
my eyes. The mood did not leave me till I had reached the rim
of mountain and flung myself panting on a ridge high above the young waters of
the Brown River. From my vantage ground, I could scan the whole moor,
right away to the railway line and to the south of it, where
green fields took the place of heather. I have eyes like a hawk,
but I could see nothing moving in the whole countryside. Then I looked east
beyond the ridge and saw a new kind of landscape, shallow green valleys with
plentiful fir plantations, and the faint lines of dust which spoke of high roads.
Last of all, I looked into the blue May sky, and there
I saw that which set my pulses racing. Low down in the south,
a monoplane was climbing into the heavens. I was as certain as if I
had been told that that aeroplane was looking for me, and that it did
not belong to the police. For an hour or two I watched it from
a pit of heather. It flew low along the hill tops, and then
in narrow circles over the valley up which I had come. Then it seemed
to change its mind, rose to a great height, and flew away back
to the south. I did not like this espionage from the air, and
I began to think less well of the countryside I had chosen for a refuge.
These heather hills were no sort of cover if my enemies were in the
sky, and I must find a different kind of sanctuary. I looked with
more satisfaction to the green country beyond the ridge, for there I should find
woods and stone houses. About six in the evening I came out of the
moorland to a white ribbon of road which wound up the narrow vale of a
lowland stream. As I followed it, fields gave place to bent. The
glen became a plateau, and presently I had reached a kind of pass where
a solitary house smoked in the twilight. The road swung over a bridge,
and leaning on the parapet was a young man. He was smoking a long
clay pipe and studying the water with spectacled eyes, in whose left hand was
a small book with a finger Marking the place. Slowly, he repeated,
as when a gryphen through the wilderness with wingered step o'er hill and maury Dale
pursues the Aramaspian. He jumped around as my step rung on the keystone,
and I saw a pleasant sunburnt boyish face. Good evening to you, he
said, gravely. It's a fine night for the road. The smell of
pete smoke and of some savory roast floated to me from the house. Is
that place an end? I asked? At your service, he said politely.
I am the landlord, sir, and I hope you will stay the
night, for to tell you the truth, I have had no company for
a week. I pulled myself up on the parapet of the bridge and filled
my pipe. I began to detect an ally. You're young to be an
inkeeper, I said. My father died a year ago and left me the
business. I live here with my grandmother. It's a slow job for a
young man, and it wasn't my choice of profession. Which was he actually
blushed. I want to write books, he said, And what better chance
could you ask? I cried, man. I've often thought that an innkeeper
would make the best oryteller in the world. Not now, he said eagerly.
Maybe in the old days, when you had pilgrims and ballad makers and
highwaymen and mail coaches on the road, but not now. Nothing comes here
but motor cars full of fat women who stopped for lunch, and a fisherman
or two in the spring, and the shooting tenants in August. There is
not much material to be got out of that. I want to see life,
to travel the world and write things like Kipling and Conrad but the most
I've done yet is to get some verses printed in Chamber's journal. I looked
at the inn, standing golden in the sunset against the brown hills. I've
knocked a bit around the world, and I wouldn't despise such a hermitage.
Do you think that adventure is found only in the tropics or among gentry in
red shirts? Maybe you're rubbing shoulders were at this moment. That's what Keppling
says. He said, his eyes brightening, and he quoted some verse about
romance brings up the nine fifteen. Here's a true tale for you. Then
I cried, and a month from now you can make a novel out of
it. Sitting on the bridge in the soft May gloaming, I pitched him
a lovely yarn. It was true in essentials, too, though I altered
the minor details. I made out that I was a mining magnet from Kimberly
who had had a lot of trouble with IDB and had shown up a gang.
They had pursued me across the ocean, and had killed my best friend
and were now on my tracks. I told the story well, though I
say it, who shouldn't. I pictured a flight across the Kalahari to German
Africa, to crackling, parching days, the wonderful blue velvet nights. I
described an attack on my life on the voyage home, and I made a
really horrid affair of the Portland place murder. You're looking for adventure, I
cried, Well, you've found it here. The devils are after me,
and the police are after them. It's a race that I mean to win,
by God, he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply. It is
all pure ride a Haggard and Cone and Doyle. You believe me, I
said, gratefully. Of course I do, and he held out his hand.
I believe everything out of the common. The only thing too distrust is
the normal. He was very young, but he was the man for my
money. I think they're off my track for the moment, but I must
lie close for a couple of days. Can you take me in? He
caught my elbow in his eagerness and drew me towards the house. You can
lie a snug here as if you were in a moss hole. I'll see
that nobody blabs either, and you'll give me some more material about your adventures.
As I entered the inn porch, I heard from far off the beat
of an engine. There, silhouetted against the dusky west, was my friend
the monoplane. He gave me a room at the back of the house with
a fine outlook over the plateau, and he made me free of his own
study, which was stacked with cheap editions of his favorite authors. I never
saw the grandmother, so I guessed she was bedridden. An old woman called
Margaret brought me my meals, and the innkeeper was around me at all hours.
I wanted some time to myself, so I invented a job for him.
He had a motor bicycle, and I sent him off next morning for
the daily paper, which usually arrived with the post in the late afternoon.
I told him to keep his eyes skinned and make note of any strange figures
he saw, keeping a special sharp lookout for motors and aeroplanes. Then I
sat down in real earnest to Scudder's notebook. He came back at midday with
the Scotsman. There was nothing in it except some further evidence of Paddock and
the Milkman, and a repetition of yesterday's statement that the murderer had gone north,
but there was a long article reprinted from the Times about Carlides and the
state of affairs and the Balkans, though there was no mention of any visit
to England. I got rid of the innkeeper for the afternoon, for I
was getting very warm in my search for the cipher. As I told you,
it was a numerical cipher, and by an elaborate system of experiments,
I had pretty well discovered what were the knolls and stops. The trouble was
the key word, and when I thought of the odd million words he might
have used, I felt pretty hopeless. But about three o'clock I had a
sudden inspiration. The name Julia Checkeny flashed across my memory. Scudderhead said it
was the key to the Carrillides business, and it occurred to me to try
it on his cipher. It worked. The five letters of Julia gave me
the position of the vows. A was J the tenth letter of the alphabet,
and so represented by X in the cipher. E was you he calls
X, X, I, and so on. Chicken Ye gave me the
numerals for the principal consonants. I scribbled that scheme on a bit of paper
and sat down to read Scudder's pages. In half an hour, I was
reading with a whitish face and fingers that drummed on the table. I glanced
out of the window and saw a big touring car coming up the glen towards
the end. It drew up at the door, and there was the sound
of people alighting. There seemed to be two of them, men in aquascutams
and tweed caps. Ten minutes later, the innkeeper slipped into the room,
his eyes bright with excitement. There's two chats below looking for you, he
whispered. They're in the dining room, having whiskeys and sodas. They asked
about you, and said they had hoped to meet you here. Oh,
and they described you jolly well, down to your boots and shirt. I
told them you had been here last night and had gone off on a motor
bicycle this morning. And one of the chaps swore like a navy. I
made him tell me what they looked like. One was a dark eyed,
thin fellow with bushy eyebrows. The other was always smiling, enlisted in his
talk. Neither was any kind of foreigner on this My young friend was positive.
I took a bit of paper and wrote these words in German, as
if they were part of a letter. Blackstone Scudder had got on to this,
but he could not act for a fortnight. I doubt if I can
do any good now, especially as Karalides is uncertain about his plans. But
if mister t advisers, I will do the best. I I manufactured it
rather neatly, so that it looked like a loose page of a private letter.
Take this down and say it was found in my bedroom, and ask
them to return it to me if they overtake me. Three minutes later I
heard the car begin to move, and peeping behind the curtain, caught sight
of the two figures. One was slim, the other was sleek. That
was the most I could make of my reconnaissance. The innkeeper appeared in great
excitement. Your paper woke them up, he said, gleefully. The dark
fellow went as white as death and cursed like blazers, and the fat one
whistled and looked ugly. They paid for their drinks with half a sovereign and
wouldn't wait for change. Now I'll tell you what I want you to do,
I said, Get on your bicycle, and go off to Newton Stewart.
To the chief constable, describe the two men and say you suspect them
of having had something to do with the London murder. You can invent reasons.
The two will come back. Never fear not to night, for they'll
follow me forty miles along the road. But first thing tomorrow morning, tell
the police to be here, bright and early. He set off like a
docile child, while I worked at Scudder's notes. When he came back,
we dined together, and in common decency I had to let him pump me.
I gave him a lot of stuff about lion hunts and the Marta belly
war, thinking all the while what tamed businesses these were compared to this I
was now engaged in. When he went to bed, I set up and
finished Scudder. I smoked in a chair till daylight, for I could not
sleep. About eight next morning I witnessed the arrival of two constables and a
sergeant. They put their car in a coach house under the innkeeper's instructions,
and entered the house. Twenty minutes later, I saw from my window a
second car come across the plateau from the opposite direction. Ed did not come
up to the inn, but stopped two hundred yards off in the shelter of
a patch of wood. I noticed that its occupants carefully reversed it before leaving
it. A minute or two later I heard their steps on the gravel outside
the window. My plan had been to lie hid in my bedroom and see
what happened. I had a notion that if I could bring the police and
my other more dayangerous pursuers together, something might work out of it to my
advantage. But now I had a better idea. I scribbled a line of
thanks to my host, opened the window, and dropped quietly into a gooseberry
bush. Unobserved. I crossed the dike, crawled down the side of a
tributary burn, and won the high road. On the far side of the
patch of trees, there stood the car, very spick and span in the
morning sunlight, but with the dust on her which told of a long journey.
I started her, jumped into the chauffeur's seat, and stole gently out
onto the plateau. Almost at once the road dipped so that I lost sight
of the inn, but the wind seemed to bring me the sound of angry
voices. End of chapter three, Chapter four of The Thirty nine Steps by
John Buchan, their sleebrivox recordings in the public domain, read by A cliffs
Stone of Sydney, Australia. The Thirty nine Steps by John Buckan, Chapter
four, The Adventure of the Radical Candidate. You may picture me driving that
forty horsepower car for all she was worth, over the Crisp Moor roads on
that shining May morning, glancing back at first over my shoulder and looking anxiously
to the next turning, then driving with a vague eye, just wide enough
awake to keep on the highway. For I was thinking desperately of what I
had found in Scudder's pocketbook. The little man had told me a pack of
lies. All his yarns about the Balkans and the jew anarchists and the Foreign
Office conference were eyewashed, and so was Carolides. And yet not quite as
you shall hear. I had staked everything on my belief in his story,
and had been let down. Here was his book telling me a different tale.
And instead of being once bitten twice shy, I believed it absolutely Why
I don't know, it rang desperately true. And the first yarn if you
understand me had been in a queer way true also in spirit. The fifteenth
day of June was going to be a day of destiny, a bigger destiny
than the killing of a day ago. It was so big that I didn't
blame Scudder for keeping me out of the game and wanting to play a lone
hand. That I was pretty clear was his intention. He had told me
something which sounded big enough, but the real thing was so immortally big that
he, the man who had found it out, wanted it all for himself.
I didn't blame him. It was risks, after all, that he
was chiefly greedy about. The whole story was in the notes with gaps,
you understand, which he would have filled up from his memory. He stuck
down his authorities, too, and had an odd trick of giving them all
a numerical value and then striking a balance which stood for the reliability of each
stage in the yarn. The four names he had printed were authorities, and
there was a man to Crosnie, who got five out of a possible five,
and another fellow, Amma's Foot, who got three. The bare bones
of the tale were all that was in the book. These and one queer
phrase which occurred half a dozen times inside brackets. Thirty nine steps was the
phrase, and at its last time of use it ran thirty nine steps.
I counted them high tide ten seventeen p m. I could make nothing of
that. The first thing I learned was that it was no question of preventing
a war that was coming, as sure as Christmas had been arranged, said
Scudder ever since February nineteen twelve. Karalides was going to be the occasion.
He was booked all right, and was to hand in his checks on June
fourteenth, two weeks and four days from that May morning. I gathered from
Scudder's notes that nothing on earth could prevent that. His talk of eparody guards
that would skin their own grandmothers was all Billio. The second thing was that
this war was going to come as a mighty surprise to Britain. Carrollini's death
would set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would chip in with
an ultimatum. Russia wouldn't like that, and there would be high words,
but Berlin would play the peacemaker and pour oil on the waters till suddenly she
would find a good cause for a quarrel, pick it up and in five
hours let fly at us. That was the idea, and a pretty good
one too. Honey and fair speeches, and then a stroke in the dark.
While we were talking about the goodwill and good intentions of Germany, our
coast would be silently ringed with mines and submarines would be waiting for every battleship.
But all this depended upon the third thing, which was due to happen
on June fifteenth. I would never have grasped this if I hadn't won.
Happened to meet a French staff officer coming back from West Africa who had told
me a lot of things. One was that in spite of all the nonsense
talked in Parliament, there was a real working alliance between France and Britain,
and that the two general staffs met every now and then and made plans for
joint action in case of war. Well, in June, a very great
swell was coming over from Paris, and he was going to get nothing less
than a statement of the disposition of the British Home Fleet on mobilization. At
least I gathered it was something like that. Anyhow, it was something uncommonly
important But on the fifteenth day of June there were to be others in London,
others at whom I could only guess. Scudder was content to call them
collectively the black Stone. They represented not our allies, but our deadly foes.
And the information destined for France was to be diverted too their pockets,
and it was to be used, remember, used a week or two later,
with rate guns and swift torpedoes. Suddenly, in the darkness of a
summer night, this was the story I had been deciphering in a back room
of a country inn, overlooking a cabbage garden. This was the story that
hummed in my brain as I swung in the big touring car from Glen to
Glen. My first impulse had been to write a letter to the Prime Minister,
but a little reflection convinced me that that would be useless. Who would
believe my tale? I must show a sign, some token in proof,
and heaven knew what that could be. Above all, I must keep going
myself, ready to act when things got riper, and that was going to
be no light job. With the police of the British Isles and full cry
after me and the watchers of the black stone. Running silently and swiftly on
my trail, I had no very clear purpose in my journey, but I
steered east by the sun, for I remembered from the map that if I
went north I would come into a region of culpits and industrial towns. Presently
I was down from the moorlands and traversing the broad how of a river for
miles. I ran alongside a park wall, and in a break of the
trees I saw a great castle. I swung through little, old thatched villages
and over peaceful lowland streams, and passed gardens blazing with hawthorne and yellow labanum.
The land was so deep in peace that I could scarcely believe that somewhere
behind me were those who sought my life hi, and that in a month's
time, unless I had the almightiest of luck, these round country faces would
be pinched and staring, and men would be lying dead in English fields.
About midday I entered a long, straggling village and had a mind to stop
and eat. Halfway down was the post office, and on the steps of
it stood the postmistress and a policeman, hard at work conning a telegram.
When they saw me. They wakened up, and the policeman advanced with raised
hand and cried on me to stop. I nearly was full enough to bay.
Then it flashed upon me that the wire had to do with me,
that my friends at the end had come to an understanding and were united and
desiring to see more of me, and that it had been easy enough for
them to why the description of me and the car to thirty villages through which
I might pass. I released the brakes just in time, as it was.
The policeman made a claw at the hood and only dropped off when he
got my left in his eye. I saw that main roads were no place
for me and turned into the byways. It wasn't an easy job without a
map, for there was the risk of getting onto a farm road and ending
in a duck pond or a stable yard, and I couldn't afford that kind
of delay. I began to see what an ass I had been to steal
the car. The big green brute would be the safest kind of clue to
me over the breadth of Scotland. If I left it and took to my
feet, it would be discovered in an hour or two, and I would
get no start in the race. The immediate thing to do was to get
to the onliest roads. These I soon found when I struck up a tributary
of the Big River and got into a glen with steep hills all about me
and a corkscrew road at the end, which climbed over a pass. Here
I meant nobody, but it was taking me too far north, so I
slewed east along a bad track, and finally struck a big double line railway
away. Below me, I saw another broadish valley, and it occurred to
me that if I crossed it, I might find some remote end to pass
the night. The evening was now drawing in, and I was furiously hungry,
for I had eaten nothing since breakfast, except a couple of buns I
had bought from a baker's cart. Just then I heard a noise in the
sky, and lo and behold there was that infernal aeroplane, flying low,
about a dozen miles to the south end, rapidly coming towards me. I
had the sense to remember that on a bare moor, I was at the
aeroplane's mercy, and that my only chance was to get to the leafy cover
of the valley down hill, I went like blue lightning, screwing my head
round whenever I dared to watch that damned flying machine. Soon I was on
a road between hedges and dipping to the deep cut glen of a stream.
Then came a bit of thick wood, where I slackened speed. Suddenly on
my left I heard the hoot of another car, and realized, to my
horror that I was almost up on a couple of gate posts through which a
private road debouched on the highway. My horn gave an agonized roar, but
it was too late. I clapped on my brakes, but my impetus was
too great, and there before me a car was sliding athwart my course,
and a second there would have been the juice of a wreck. I did
the only thing possible and ran slap into the hedge on the right, trusting
to find something soft beyond. But there I was mistaken. My car slithered
through the hedge like butter, and then gave a sickening plunge forward. I
saw what was coming, leapt on the seat and would have jumped out,
but a branch of hawthorne got me in the chest, lifted me up and
held me while a ton or two of expensive metal slipped below me. Bucked
and pitched, and then dropped with an almighty smashed fifty feet to the bed
of the stream. Slowly that thorn let me go. I subsided first on
the hedge and then very gently on a bower of nettles. As I scrambled
to my feet, a hand took me by the arm, and a sympathetic
and badly scared voice asked me if I were hurt. I found myself looking
at a tall young man in goggles and a leather ulster who kept on blessing
his soul and winnying apologies for myself. Once I got my wind back,
I was rather glad than otherwise. This was one way of getting rid of
the car. My blame, sir, I answered him. It's lucky that
I did not add homicide to my follies. That's the end of my Scotch
motor tour, but it might have been the end of my life. He
plucked out a watch and studied it. You're the right sort of fellow,
he said. I can spare a quarter of an hour, and my house
is just two minutes off. I'll see you clothed and fed and snug in
bed. Where's your kit, by the way, is it in the burn
along with the car? It's in my pocket, I said, brandishing a
toothbrush. I'm a colonial and travel light. A colonial, he cried,
by gadge or the very man I've been praying for. Are you, by
any blessed chance? A free trader? I am, said I, without
the foggiest notion of what he meant. He patted my shoulder and hurried me
into his car. Three minutes later we drew up before a comfortable looking shooting
box set among pine trees, and he hushered me indoors. He took me
first to a bedroom and flung half a dozen of his suits before me,
For my own had been pretty well reduced to rags. I selected a loose
blue serge, which differed most conspicuously from my former garments, and burrowed a
linen collar. Then he howled me to the dining room, where the remnants
of a meal stood on the table, and announced that I had just five
minutes to feed. You can take a snack in your pocket and we'll have
supper when we get back. I've got to be at the Masonic hall at
eight o'clock, or my agent will comb my hair. I had a cup
of coffee in some cold ham while he yearned away on the hearth rug.
You find me in the juice of a mess. Mister Bye the bye.
You haven't told me your name Twisden, any relation of old Tommy Twisden of
the sixtieth No. Well, you see, I'm Liberal candidate for this part
of the world, and I had a meeting on tonight at Brattleburn. That's
my chief town and an infernal Tory stronghold. I had got the Colonial ex
Premier, fellow Crumpleton coming to speak for me tonight, and had the thing
tremendously billed, and the whole place ground baited. This afternoon I had a
wire from the Ruffian saying he had got influenza at Blackpool. And here I
am left to do the whole thing myself. I had meant to speak for
ten minutes. I must now go on for forty, And though I've been
racking my brains for three hours to think of something, I simply cannot last
the course. Now you've got to be a good chap and help me.
You're a free trader and can tell our people what a wash out protection as
in the colonies. All you fellows have the gift of the gab I wish
to heaven I had it, I'll be for evermore in your debt. I
had very few notions about free trade, one way or the other, but
I saw no other chance to get what I wanted. My young gentleman was
far too absorbed in his own difficulties to think how odd it was to ask
a stranger who had just missed death by an ace and had lost a thousand
guinea car to address a meeting for him on the spur of the moment.
But my necessities did not allow me to contemplate oddnesses or to pick and choose
my supports. All right, I said, I'm not much good as a
speaker, but I'll tell them a bit about Australia. At my words,
the cares of the ages slipped from his shoulders, and he was rapturous in
his thanks. He lent me a big driving coat and never troubled to ask
why I had started on a motor tour without possessing an ulster. And as
we slipped down the dusty roads, poured into my ears the simple facts of
his history. He was an orphan, and his uncle had brought him up.
I've forgotten the uncle's name, but he was in the cabinet, and
you can read his speeches in the papers. He had gone round the world
after leaving Cambridge and then, being short of a job, his uncle had
advised politics. I gathered that he had no preference in parties. Good chaps
in both, he said, cheerfully, and plenty of blighters too. I'm
liberal because my family have always been Whigs. But if he was lukewarm politically,
he had strong views on other things. He found out. I knew
a bit about horses and jawed away about the Derby entries, and he was
full of plans for improving his shooting. Altogether, a very clean, decent,
callow young man. As we passed through a little town, two policemen
signaled us to stop and flash their lanterns on us. Beg pardon, sir,
Harry said one. We've got instructions to look out for a car,
and the descriptions. No one like yours, right O, said my host,
while I thanked Providence for the devious ways I had been brought to safety.
After that, he spoke no more, for his mind began to labor
heavily with his coming speech. His lips kept muttering, his eye wandered,
and I began to prepare myself for a second catastrophe. I tried to think
of something to say myself, but my mind was dry as a stone.
The next thing I knew, we had drawn up outside a door in a
street and were being welcomed by some noisy gentleman with rosettes. The hall had
about five hundred in it, women, mostly a lot of bald heads,
and a dozen or two young men. The chairman, a weasly minister with
a redgish nose, lamented Crumpleton's absence, soliloquised on his influenza, and gave
me a certificate as a trusted leader of Australian thought. There were two policemen
at the door, and I hoped they took note of that testimonial. Then
Sir Harry started. I never heard anything like it. He didn't begin to
know how to talk. He had about a bushel of notes from which he
read, and when he let go of them, he fell into one prolonged
stutter. Every now and then he remembered a phrase he had learned by heart,
straightened his back and gave it off like Henry Irving, and the next
moment he was bent double and crooning over his papers. It was the most
appalling rot too. He talked about the German menace and said it was all
a Torry invention to cheat the poor of their rights and keep back the great
flood of social reform. But that organized labor realized this and laughed the Torries
to scorn. He was all for reducing our navy as a proof of our
good faith, and then sending Germany an ultimatum telling her to do the same,
or we would knock her into a cocked hat. He said that but
for the Tories, Germany and Britain would be fellow workers in peace and reform.
I thought of the little black book in my pocket, a giddy lot.
Scudder's friends cared for peace and reform, yet in a queer way.
I liked the speech. You could see the niceness of the chap shining out
behind the muck with which he had been spoon fed. Also, it took
a load off my mind. I mightn't be much of an orator, but
I was a thousand percent better than Sir Harry. I didn't get on so
badly When it came to my turn, I simply told them all I could
remember about Australia, praying there should be no Australian there, all about its
Labor Party and emigration and universal service. I doubt if I remembered to mention
free trade, but I said there were no Tories in Australia, only labor
and liberals. That fetched a cheer, and I woke them up a bit
when I started in to tell them the kind of glorious business I thought could
be made out of the Empire if we really put our backs into it altogether.
I fancy I was rather a success. The Minister didn't like me,
though, and when he proposed a vote of thanks, spoke of Sir Harry's
speech as statesman like and mine as having the eloquence of an emigration agent.
When we were in the car again, my host was in wild spirits at
having got his job over a ripping speech Twisden. He said, now you're
coming home with me. I'm all alone, and if you'll stop a day
or two, I'll show you some very decent fishing. We had a hot
supper and I wanted it pretty badly, and then drank grog in a big,
cheery smoking room with a crackling wood fire. I thought the time had
come for me to put my cards on the table. I saw by this
man's eye that he was the kind you can trust. Listen, Sir Harry,
I said, I've something pretty important to say to you. You're a
good fellow, and I'm to be frank. Where on earth did you get
that poisonous rubbish you talk tonight? His face fell. Was it as bad
as that? He asked? Ruefully? It did sound rather thin. I
got most of it out of the progressive magazine and pamphlets that agent chap of
mine keeps sending me. But you surely don't think Germany would ever go to
war with us. Ask that question in six weeks and it won't need an
answer, I said, If you'll give me your attention for half an hour,
I am going to tell you a story. I can see yet that
bright room with the deers heads and the old prince on the walls, Sir
Harry standing restlessly on the stone curb of the hearth, and myself lying back
in an armchair speaking. I seemed to be another person standing aside and listening
to my own voice and judging carefully the reliability of my tale. It was
the first time I had ever told anyone the exact truth so far as I
understood it, and it did me no end of good, for it straightened
out the thing in my own mind. I blinked no detail. He heard
all about Scudder and the milkman, and the note book and my doings in
Galloway. Presently he got very excited and walked up and down the hearth rug.
So you see, I concluded, you have got here in your house
the man that has wanted for the Portland Place murder. Your duty is to
send your car for the police and give me up. I don't think i'll
get very far. There'll be an accident and i'll have a knife in my
ribs an hour or so after a rest. Nevertheless, it's your duty as
a law abiding citizen. Perhaps in a month's time you'll be sorry, but
you have no cause to think of that. He was looking at me with
bright, steady eyes. What was your job in Rhodesia, mister Hannay,
he asked, mining engineer. I said, I've made my pile cleanly,
and I've had a good time in the making of it. Not a profession
that weakens the nerves, is it? I laughed? Oh, as to
that, my nerves are good enough. I took down a hunting knife from
a stand on the wall and did the old mush owner trick of tossing it
and catching it in my lips. That wants a pretty steady heart, he
watched me with a smile. I don't want proofs. I may be an
ass on the platform, but I can size up a man. You're no
murderer, and you're no fool, and I believe you are speaking the truth.
I'm going to back you up. Now, what can I do?
First? If you want to write a letter to your uncle, I've got
to get in touch with the government people some time before the fifteenth of June.
He pulled his mustache. That won't help you. This says foreign Office
business, and my uncle would have nothing to do with it. Besides,
you'd never convince him. No, I'll go one better. I'll write to
the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office. He's my godfather and one of the
best going. What do you want? He sat down at a table and
wrote to my dictation. The gist of it was that if a man called
Twisden, I thought I had better stick to that name turned up before June
fifteenth. He was to entreat him kindly. He said, Twisden would prove
his bona fiders by passing the word black stone and whistling. Annie Laurie Good
said, Sir Harry, that's the proper style. By the way, you'll
find my godfather. His name's Sir Walter Boulevand down at his country cottage forwards
Suntide. It's close to Artinswell on the kennet. That's done. Now,
what's the next thing. You're about my height? Lend me the oldest tweed
suit you've got. Anything will do, so long as the color is the
opposite of the clothes I destroyed this afternoon. Then show me a map of
the neighborhood and explain to me the lie of the land. Lastly, if
the police come seeking me, just show them the car in the glen.
If the other lot turn up, tell them I caught the South Express after
your meeting. He did, or promised to do all these things. I
shaved off the remnants of my mustache and got inside an ancient suit of what
I believe is called heather mixture. The map gave me some notion of my
whereabouts, and told me the two things I wanted to know, where the
main railway to the south could be joined, and what were the wildest districts
near at hand. At two o'clock he wakened me from my slumbers in the
smoking room arm chair and led me blinking into the dark, starry night.
An old bicycle was found in a tool shed and handed over to me first,
turned to the right, up by the long firward. He enjoined,
by daybreak you'll be well into the hills. Then I should pitch the machine
into a bog and take to the moors on foot. You can put in
a week among the shepherds and be as safe as if you were in New
Guinea. I peddled diligently upstair roads of hell gravel till the skies grew pale
with morning. As the mists cleared before the sun, I found myself in
a wide, green world, with glens falling on every side, and a
far away blue horizon. Here at any rate I could get early news of
my enemies. End of chapter four, Chapter five of The Thirty Nine Steps
by John Buckan. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by Cliff
Stone of Sydney, Australia. The Thirty nine Steps by John Buchan, Chapter
five, The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman. I sat down on the very
crest of the pass and took stock of my position. Behind me was the
road climbing through a long cleft in the hills, which was the upper glend
of some notable river. In front was a flat space of maybe a mile,
all pitted with bog holes and rough with tussocks. And then beyond it
the road fell steeply down another glend to a plane whose blue dimness melted into
the distance. To left and right were round shouldered green hills, as smooth
as pancakes. But to the south, that is the left hand, there
was a glimpse of high, heathery mountains, which I remembered from the map
as the big knot of hill, which I had chosen for my sanctuary.
I was on the central boss of a huge upland country and could see everything
moving for miles. In the meadows below the road, half a mile back
a cottage smoke, but it was the only sign of human life. Otherwise
there was only the cooling of plovers and the tinkling of little streams. It
was now about seven o'clock, and as I waited, I heard once again
that ominous beat in the air. Then I realized that my vantage ground might
be in reality a trap. There was no cover for a tom it in
those bald green places. I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat grew
louder. Then I saw an aeroplane coming up from the east. It was
flying high, but as I looked, it dropped several hundred feet and began
to circle round the knot of hill in narrowing circles, just as a hawk
wheels before it pounces. Now it was flying very low, and now the
observer on board caught sight of me. I could see one of the two
occupants examining me through glasses. Suddenly it began to rise in swift halls,
and the next I knew it was speeding eastward again, till it became a
speck in the blue morning. That made me do some savage thinking my enemies
had located me and the next thing would be a cordon round me. I
didn't know what force they could command, but I was certain it would be
sufficient. The aeroplane had seen my bicycle and would conclude that I would try
to escape by the road. In that case there might be a chance on
the moors to the right or left. I wheeled the machine a hundred yards
from the highway and plunged it into a moss hole, where it sank among
pond weed and water buttercups. Then I climbed to a knoll which gave me
a view of the two valleys. Nothing was stirring on the long white ribbon
that threaded them. I have said there was not cover in the whole place
to hide a rat. As the day advanced, it was flooded with soft,
fresh light till it had the fragrant sunniness of the South African beld.
At other times I would have liked the place, but now it seemed to
suffocate me. The free moorlands were prison walls, and the keen hill air
was the breath of a dungeon. I tossed the coin heads right, tails
left, and it fell heads. So I turned to the north. In
a little I came to the brow of the ridge, which was the containing
wall of the pass. I saw the high road for maybe ten miles,
and far down at something that was moving, and that I took to be
a motor car. Beyond the ridge, I looked on a rolling green moor
which fell away into wooded glens. Now my life on the Veld has given
me the eyes of a kite, and I can see things for which most
men need a telescope. Away down the slope, a couple of miles away,
several men were advancing like a row of beaters at a chute. I
dropped out of sight behind the skyline. That way was shut to me,
and I must try the bigger hills to the south beyond the highway. The
car I had noticed was getting nearer, but it was still a long way
off, with some very steep gradients before it. I ran hard, crouching
low except in the hollows, And as I ran, I kept scanning the
brow of the hill before me. Was it imagination or did I see figures
two perhaps more moving in a glen beyond the stream. If you are hemmed
in on all sides in a patch of land, there was only one chance
of escape. You must stay in the patch and let your enemies search it
and not find you. That was good sense. But how on earth was
I to escape? Notice? In that tablecloth of a place I would have
buried myself to the neck and mud, or laying below water, or climbed
the tallest tree. But there was not a stick of wood. The bog
holes were little puddles, the stream was a slender trickle. There was nothing
but short heather and bare held bent in the white highway. Then in the
tiny bite of road, beside a heap of stones, I found the roadman.
He had just arrived and was wearily flinging down his hammer. He looked
at me with a fishy eye and yawned. Can buffoon the day I ever
left the herden, he said, as if to the world at large.
There I was my endmaster. Now I'm a slave to the government. Tethered
to the roadside we seen and at back like a suckle. He took up
the hammer, struck a stone, dropped the implement with an oath, and
put both hands to his ears. Mercy on me. My head's bursting,
he cried. He was a wild figure, about my own size, but
much bent, with a week's beard on his chin and a pair of big
horn spectacles. I can't dat, he cried again. The serve. I
am orn, just report me. I'm from my bed. I asked him
what was the trouble, though indeed that was clear enough. The trouble is
that I'm no sober. Last night my daughter Marian was wett it an they
danced till four an the buyer me an some mither Chile sat down to the
drinkin' an here. I am pity that I ever look at on the wine
when it was red. I agreed with him about bed. It's easy speaking,
he moaned. But I got a postcard yestern saying that the new road
Surveyor would be round the day. He'll come and he'll no find me,
or else he'll find me foul. And either way I'm a dune man.
I'll hour back to my bed, an say I'm no wheel, but I
do. That'll no help me, for they kin my kind. Oh no
wellness. Then I had an inspiration. Does the new surveyor know you?
I asked? Know him? He's just been a week at the job.
He rings about in a wee motor corps and wild spear the inside. Uda
awelke, where's your house? I asked, and was directed by a wavering
finger to the cottage by the stream. Well back to your bed, I
said, and sleep in peace. I'll take on your job for a bit
and see the surveyor. He stared at me blankly. Then, as the
notion dawned on his fuddled brain, his face broke into the vacant, drunken
smile. You're the billy, he cried. It'll be easy, eunuch managed,
I've finished that being a stained so you need a chap bony mare this
mornoon. Just take the barry a weal, eunuch metal fray yon quarry dun
the rude to macnither bing the morn My name's Alexander Trummel, and I've been
seven year at the trade, and twenty or four that hurden on leath and
water. My friends, Calm and while specky for I wear glasses being wake
eyed the sick. Just you speak the surveyor fair and call him sir,
and he'll be fell pleased. I'll be back or midday. I borrowed his
spectacles and filthy old hat, stripped off coat, waistcoat and collar and gave
him them to carry home. Borrowed too, the foul stump of a clay
pipe as an extra property. He indicated my simple tasks, and without more
Ado set off at an amble bedwoods bed may have been his chief object,
but I think there was also something left in the foot of a bottle.
I prayed that he might be safe under cover before my friends arrived on the
scene. Then I set to work to dress for the part. I opened
the collar of my shirt. It was a vulgar blue and white check,
such as plowman wear, and revealed a neck as brown as any tinkers.
I rolled up my sleeves, and there was a forearm which might have been
a blacksmith's, sunburnt and rough with old ours. I got my boots and
trouser legs, all white from the dust of the road, and hitched up
my trousers, tying them with string below the knee. Then I set to
work on my face. With a handful of dust, I made a water
mark round my neck, the place where mister Turnbull's Sunday ablutions might be expected
to stop. I rubbed a good deal of dirt, also into the sunburn
of my cheeks. A roadman's eyes would no doubt be a little inflamed,
so I contrived to get some dust in both of mine, and by dint
of vigorous rubbing, produced a bleary effect the sandwiches Sir Harry had given me
head gone off with my coat, but the roadman's lunch, tied up in
a red handkerchief, was at my disposal. I ate with great relish several
of the thick slabs of scone and cheese, and drank a little of the
cold tea. And the handkerchief was a local paper, tied with string and
addressed to mister Turnbull, obviously meant to solace his midday leisure. I did
up the bundle of game and put the paper conspicuously beside it. My boots
did not satisfy me, but by dint of kicking among the stones, I
reduced him to the granite like surface which marks a roman's foot gear. Then
I bit and scraped my finger nails till the edges were all cracked and uneven.
The men I was matched against would miss no detail. I broke one
of the boot laces and retied it in a clumsy knot, and loose to
the other, so that my thick gray socks bulged over the uppers. Still
no sign of anything on the road. The motor I had observed half an
hour ago must have gone home. My toilet complete, I took up the
barrow and began my journeys to and from the quarry a hundred yards off.
I remember an old scout in Rhodesia, who had done many queer things in
his day, once telling me that the secret of playing a part was to
think yourself into it. You could never keep it up, he said,
unless you could manage to convince yourself that you were it. So I shut
off all other thoughts and switched them on to the road mending. I thought
of the little white cottage as my home. I recalled the years I had
spent herding on leath and water. I made my mind dwell lovingly on sleep
in a box bed and a bottle of cheap whiskey. Still nothing appeared on
that long white road. Now and then a sheep wandered off the heather to
stare at me. A heron flopped down to a pool in the stream and
started to fish, taking no more notice of me than if I had been
a milestone. On I went trundling my loads of stone with the heavy step
of the professional. Soon I grew warm, and the dust on my face
changed into solid and abiding grit. I was already counting the hours till evening
should put a limit to mister Turnbull's monotonous toil. Suddenly, a crisp voice
spoke from the road, and looking up, I saw a little forward two
seater and a round faced young man in a bowler hat. Are you Alexander
Turnbull? He asked. I am the new County Road Surveyor. You live
at black Hope Foot and have charge of the section from laid or Bears to
the rigs. Good a fair bit of road, Turnbull, and not badly
engineered, A little soft about a mile off, and the edges want cleaning.
See you look after that good morning. You'll know me the next time
you see me. Clearly, my get up was good enough for the dreaded
surveyor. I went on with my work, and as the morning grew towards
noon, I was cheered by a little traffic. A baker's van breasted the
hill and sold me a bag of ginger biscuits, which I stowed in my
trouser pockets against emergencies. Then a herd passed with sheep and disturbed me somewhat
by asking loudy what had become o specky in bed We the colic, I
replied, and the herd passed on. Just about midday, a big car
stole down the hill, glide, passed and drew up a hundred yards beyond.
Its Three occupants descended as if to stretch their legs, and sauntered towards
me. Two of the men I had seen before from the window of the
Galloway Inn. One lean, sharp and dark, the other comfortable and smiling.
The third had the look of a countryman, a vet perhaps, or
a small farmer. He was dressed in ill cut knickerbockers, and the eye
off his head was as bright and weary as a hen's morning. Said the
last, that's a fine easy drop of yours. I had not looked up
on their approach, and now, when accosted, I slowly and painfully straightened
my back after the manner of roadmen, spat vigorously after the manner of the
low Scot, and regarded them steadily. Before replying, I confronted three pairs
of eyes that missed nothing. There's were jobs, and there's better, I
said sententiously. I would rather have yours sitting a day on your hinder lands
on day cushions. It's you and your muckle, cause a rigged my roads.
If we a haad or roys, ye should be made to mean what
ye break. The bright eyed man was looking at the newspaper lying beside Turnbull's
bundle. I see you get your papers in good time, he said,
I glanced at it casually. I in good time, seeing that that paper
came out last Saturday, I'm just six days late. He picked it up,
glanced at the superscription, and laid it down again. One of the
others had been looking at my boots, and a word in German called the
speaker's attention to them. You've a fine taste in boots. He said,
these were never made by a country shoemaker. They were not, I said
readily. They were made in London. I got them free. The gentleman
that was here last year for the shooting what was his name? Now?
And I scratched a forgetful head. The sleek, one spoken German. Let
us get on, he said, this fellow is all right. They asked
one last question. Did you see anyone passed early this morning? He might
be on a bicycle, or he might be on foot. I very nearly
fell into the trap and told a story of a bicyclist hurrying past in the
gray dawn. But I had the sense to see my danger. I pretended
to consider very deeply. I wasn't up very early. I said, you're
seeing My daughter was merrit last night, and we keep it up late.
I opened the house store about Stephen, and there was neighbody on the road.
Then since I came up here, there has just been the baker and
the ruckle heard beside you, gentlemen. One of them gave me a cigar,
which I smelt gingerly and stuck in Turbull's bundle. They got into their
car and were out of sight in three minutes. My heart leapt with an
enormous relief, but I went on wheeling my z It was as well for
ten minutes later the car returned, one of the occupants waving a hand to
me. Those gentry left nothing to chance. I finished Turnbull's bread and cheese,
and pretty soon I had finished the stones. The next step was what
puzzled me. I could not keep up this road making business for long.
A merciful providence had kept mister Turnbull indoors, but if he appeared on the
scene there would be trouble. I had a notion that the cordon was still
tight round the glen, and that if I walked in any direction, I
should meet with questioners. But get out I must. No man's nerve could
stand more than a day of being spied on. I stayed at my post
till five o'clock. By that time I had resolved to go down to Turnbull's
cottage at nightfall and take my chance of getting over the hills in the darkness.
But suddenly a new car came up the road and slowed down a yard
or two from me. A fresh wind had risen, and the occupant wanted
to light a cigarette. It was a touring car with the tonneau full of
assortment of baggage. One man sat in it, and by an amazing chance
I knew him. His name was Marmaduke Jopley, and he was an offense
to creation. He was a sort of blood stockbroker who did his business by
toadying eldest sons and rich young peers and foolish old ladies. Marmee was a
familiar figure I understood at balls and polo weeks in country houses. He was
an adroit scandalmonger and would crawl a mile on his belly to anything that had
a title or a million. I had a business introduction to his firm when
I came to London, and he was good enough to ask me to dinner
at his club. There he showed off at a great rate and patted about
his duchesses till the snobbery of the creature turned me sick. I asked the
man afterwards why nobody kicked him, and was told that Englishmen reverenced the weaker
sex. Anyhow, there he was, now Natalie, dressed in a fine
new car, obviously on his way to visit some of his smart friends.
A sudden darfness took me, and in a second I had jumped into the
tonneau and hat him by the shoulder. Hullo jopley, I sang out,
Well met, my lad. He got a horrid fright. His chin dropped
as he stared at me. Who the devil are you? He gasped.
My name's Hannay, I said, from Rhodesia. You remember, good God,
the murderer. He choked just so, and there'll be a second murder.
My dear, if you don't do as I tell you, gimme that
coat of yours, that cap too. He did as he was bid for.
He was blind with terror over my dirty trousers and vulgar shirt. I
put on his smart driving coat, which buttoned high at the top and thereby
hid the deficiencies of my collar. I stuck the cap on my head and
added his gloves to my get up. The dusty roadman in a minute was
transformed into one of the neatest motorists in Scotland. On mister Jopley's head,
I clapped Turnbull's unspeakable hat and told him to keep it there. Then,
with some difficulty, I turned the car. My plan was to go back
the road he had come, for the watchers, having seen it before,
would probably let it pass unremarked, and Marmie's figure was in no way like
mine. Now, my child, I said, sit quite still and be
a good boy. I mean you no harm. I'm only borrowing your car
for an hour or two. But if you play me any tricks, and
above all, if you open your mouth, as sure as there's a god
above me, I'll wring your neck, savvee. I enjoyed that evening's ride.
We ran eight miles down the valley, through a village or two and
I could not help noticing several strange looking folk lounging by the roadside. These
were the watchers who would have had much to say to me if I had
come in other garb or company. As it was, they looked incuriously.
On one touched his cap and salute, and I responded graciously. As the
dark fowl, I turned up a side glen, which, as I remember
from the map, led into an unfrequented corner of the hills. Soon the
villagers were left behind, then the farms, and then even the wayside cottage.
Presently we came to a lonely moor where the night was blackening the sunset
gleam in the bog pools. Here we stopped, and I obligingly reversed the
car and restored to mister Jopley his belongings A thousand thanks, I said,
there's more use in you than I thought. Now be off and find the
police. As I sat on the hillside watching the towel like dwindle, I
reflected on the various kinds of crime I had now sampled. Contrary to general
belief, was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar,
a shameless impostor and a highwayman with a marked taste for expensive motor cars.
End of chapter five, Chapter six of The Thirty nine Steps by John Buckan.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Cliff Stone of
Sydney, Australia. The Thirty nine Steps by John Buckan, Chapter six,
The Adventure of the Bold Archeologist. I spent the night on a shelf of
the hillside, in the lee of a boulder, where the heather grew long
and soft. It was a cold business, for I had neither coat nor
waistcoat. These were in mister Turnbull's keeping, as was Scudder's little book,
my watch, and worst of all, my pipe and tobacco pouch. Only
my money accompanied me in my belt, and about half a pound of ginger
biscuits in my trousers pocket. I supped off half those biscuits, and by
worming myself deep into the heather, got some kind of warmth. My spirits
had risen, and I was beginning to enjoy this crazy game of hide and
seek. So far I had been miraculously lucky. The milkman, the literary
innkeeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic marmie were all pieces
of undeserved good fortune. Somehow, the first success gave me a feeling that
I was going to pull the thing through. My chief trouble was that I
was desperately hungry. When a Jew shoots himself in the city and there is
an inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was well nourished. I
remember thinking that they would not call me well nourished if I broke my neck
in a bog hole. I lay and tortured myself for the ginger biscuits merely
emphasized the aching void. With the memory of all the good food I had
thought so little of in London. There were paddocks, crisp sausages, and
fragrant shavings of bacon and shapely poached eggs. How often I had turned up
my nose at them. There were the cutlets they did at the club,
and a particular hand that stood on the cold table for which my soul lusted.
My thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal edible and finally settled on a
Porterhouse steak and a quarter of bitter, with a Welsh rabbit to follow.
In longing hopelessly for these dainties. I fell asleep. I woke very cold
and stiff, about an hour after dawn. It took me a little while
to remember where I was, for I had been very weary and had slept
heavily. I saw first a pale blue sky through a net of heather,
then a big shoulder of hell, and then my own boots, placed neatly
in a blaberry bush. I raised myself on my arms and looked down into
the valley, and that one look set me lacing up my boots in mad
haste, for there were men below, not more than a quarter of a
mile off, stout on the hillside like a fan, and beating the heather.
Marmie had not been slow in looking for his revenge. I crawled out
of my shelf into the cover of a boulder, and from it gained a
shallow trench which slanted up the mountain face. This led me presently into the
narrow gully of a burn, by way of which I scrambled to the top
of the ridge. From there I looked back and saw that I was still
undiscovered. My pursuers were patiently quartering the hillside and moving upwards, keeping behind
the sky line. I ran for maybe half a mile till I judged I
was above the uppermost end of the glen. Then I showed myself and was
instantly noted by one of the flankers, who passed the word to the others.
I heard cries coming up from below, and saw that the line of
search had changed its direction. I pretended to retreat over the skyline, but
instead went back the way I had come, and in twenty minutes was behind
the ridge overlooking my sleeping place. From that viewpoint, I had the satisfaction
of seeing the pursued streaming up the hill at the top of the glen on
a hopelessly false scent. I had before me a choice of roots, and
I chose a ridge which made an angle with the one I was on,
and so would soon put a deep glen between me and my enemies. The
exercise had warmed my blood, and I was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly.
As I went, I breakfasted on the dusty remnants of the ginger biscuits.
I knew very little about the country, and I hadn't a notion what I
was going to do. I trusted to the strength of my legs, but
I was well aware that those behind me would be familiar with the lie of
the land, and that my ignorance would be a heavy handicap. I saw
in front of me a sea of hills, rising very high towards the south,
but northwards, breaking down into broad ridges which separated wide and shallow dales.
The ridge I had chosen seemed to sink after a mile or two to
a moor, which lay like a pocket in the uplands. That seemed as
good a direction to take as any other. My stratagem had given me a
fair start. Call it twenty minutes, and I had the width of a
glen behind me before I saw the first heads of the pursuers. The police
had evidently called in local talent to their aid, and the men I could
see had the appearance of herds or gamekeepers. They hallooed at the sight of
me, and I waved my hand. Two dived into the glen and began
to climb my ridge, while the others kept their side of the hill.
I felt as if I were taking part in a schoolboy game of hare and
hounds, but very soon it began to seem less of a game. Those
fellows behind were hefty men on their native heath. Looking back, I saw
that only three were following direct and I guessed that the others had fetched a
circuit to cut me off. My lack of local knowledge might very well be
my undoing, and I resolved to get out of this tangle of glens to
the pocket of more I had seen from the tops. I must so increase
my distance as to get clear away from them, and I believed I could
do this if I could find the right ground for it. If there had
been cover, I would have tried a bit of stalking, But on these
bare slopes you could see a fly a mile off. My hope must be
in the length of my legs and the soundness of my wind. But I
needed easier ground for that, for I was not bred a mountaineer. How
I longed for a good Africander pony. I put on a great spurt and
got off my ridge and down into the moor before any figures appeared on the
skyline behind me. I crossed a burn and came out on a high road
which made a pass between two glens. All in front of me was a
big field of heather sloping up to a crest, which was crowned with an
odd feather of trees, and the dike by the roadside was a gate from
which a grass grown track led over the first wave of the moor. I
jumped to dike and followed it, and after a few hundred yards, as
soon as it was out of sight of the highway, the grass stopped,
and it became a very respectable road, which was evidently kept with some care.
Clearly it ran to a house, and I began to think of doing
the same. Hitherto my luck had held, and it might be that my
best chance would be found in this remote dwelling. Anyhow, there were trees
there, and that meant to cover. I did not follow the road,
but the burnside, which flanked it on the right, where the bracken grew
deep and the high banks made a tolerable screen. It was well I did
so, for no sooner had I gained the hollow, than looking back,
I saw the pursuit topping the ridge from which I had descended. After that
I did not look back. I had no time. I ran up the
burnside, crawling over the open places, and for a large part, wading
in the shallow stream, I found a deserted cottage with a row of phantom
peat stacks and an overgrown garden. Then I was among young hay, and
very soon had come to the edge of a plantation of wind blown furs.
From there I saw the chimneys of the house smoking A few hundred yards to
my left. I forsook the burnside, crossed another dike, and almost before
I knew was on a rough lawn. A glance back told me that I
was well out of sight of the pursuit, which had not yet passed the
first lift of the moor. The lawn was a very rough place, cut
with a scythe instead of a mower, and planted with beds of scrubby rhododendrons.
A brace of black game, which are not usually garden birds, rose
at my approach. The house before me was the ordinary Morland farm, with
a more pretentious whitewashed wing. Added. Attached to this wing was a glass
veranda, and through the glass I saw the face of an elderly gentleman,
meekly watching me. I stalked over the border, of course held gravel,
and entered the open veranda door. Within was a pleasant room, glass on
one side and on the other a mass of books. More books showed in
an inner room. On the floor, instead of tables, stood cases such
as you see in a museum, filled with coins and queer stone implements.
There was a knee whole desk in the middle, and seated at it with
some papers and open volumes. Before him was the benevolent old gentleman. His
face was round and shiny, like mister Pickwick's. Big glasses were stuck on
the end of his nose, and the top of his head was as bright
and bare as a glass bottle. He never moved when I entered, but
raised his placid eyebrows and waited on me to speak. It was not an
easy job, with about five minutes to spare, to tell a stranger who
I was and what I wanted, and to win his aid. I did
not attempt it. There was something about the eye of the man before me,
something so keen and knowledgeable that I could not find a word. I
simply stared at him and stuttered. You seem in a hurry, my friend,
he said slowly. I nodded towards the window. It gave a prospect
across the moor through a gap in the plantation, and revealed certain figures half
a mile off, straggling through the heather. Ah, I see, he
said, and took up a pair of field glasses through which he patiently scrutinized
the figures. A fugitive from justice. Eh, well, we'll go into
the matter at our leisure. Meantime, I object to my privacy being broken
in upon by the clumsy rural policeman. Go into my study and you will
see two doors facing you. Take the one on the left and close it
behind you. You will be perfectly safe. And this extraordinary man took up
his pen. Again. I did as I was bid, and found myself
in a little dark chamber which smelt of chemicals and was lit only by a
tiny window high up in the wall. The door had swung behind me with
a click, like the door of a safe. Once again, I had
found an unexpected sanctuary. All the same, I was not comfortable. There
was something about the old gentleman which puzzled and rather terrified me. He had
been too easy and ready, almost as if he had expected me, and
his eyes had been horribly intelligent. No sound came to me in that dark
place. For all I knew the police might be searching the house, and
if they did, they would want to know what was behind this door.
I tried to possess my soul in patience and to forget how hungry I was.
Then I took a more cheerful view. The old gentleman could scarcely refuse
me a meal, and I fell to reconstructing my breakfast. Bacon and eggs
would content me, but I wanted the better part of a fletch of bacon
and half a hundred eggs. And then, while my mouth was watering an
anticipation, there was a click and the door stood open. I emerged into
the sunlight to find the master of the house sitting in a deep arm chair
in the room he called his study, and regarding me with curious eyes.
Have they gone? I asked, they have gone? I convinced him that
you had crossed the hill. I do not choose that the police should come
between me and one whom I am delighted to honor. This is a lucky
morning for you, mister Richard Hannay. As he spoke, his eyelids seemed
to tremble and to fall a little over his keen gray eyes. In a
flash, the phrase of scudders came back to me. When he had described
the man he most dreaded in the world. He said that he could hood
his eyes like a hawk. Then I saw that I had walked straight into
the enemy's headquarters. My first impulse was to throttle the old Ruffian and make
for the open air. He seemed to anticipate my intention, for he smiled
gently and nodded to the door behind me. I turned and saw two men
servants who had me covered with pistols. He knew my name, but he
had never seen me before, And as the reflection darted across my mind,
I saw a slender chance. I don't know what you mean, I said,
roughly, And who are you calling? Richard Hannay? My name's Annsley,
so he said, still smiling. But of course you have others.
We won't quarrel about a name. I was pulling myself together now, and
I reflected that my garb, lacking coat and waistcoat and collar, would at
any rate not betray me. I put on my surliest face and shrugged my
shoulders. I suppose you're going to give me up after all, and I
call it a damn dirty trick. My god, I wish I had never
seen that cursed motor car. Here's the money, and be damned to you,
and I flung four sovereigns on the table. He opened his eyes a
little. Oh no, I shall not give you up, my friends,
and I will have a little private settlement with you. That is all.
You know a little too much, mister Hannay. You are a clever actor,
but not quite clever enough. He spoke with assurance, but I could
see the dawning of a doubt his mind. Oh, for God's sake,
stop drawing, I cried. Everything's against me. I haven't had a bit
of luck since I came on shore at Leath. What's the harm in a
poor devil with an empty stomach picking up some money he finds in a bust
up motor car. That's all I'd done. And for that I've been chivvied
for two days by those blasted bobbies over those blasted hills. I tell you,
I'm fair sick of it. You can do what you like. Oh
boy, ned Ainsley's got no fight left in him. I could see that
the doubt was gaining. Will you oblige me with the story of your recent
doings? He asked, I can't governor, I said, in a real
beggar's wine, I've not had a bite to eat for two days. Give
me a mouthful of food and then you'll hear God's truth. I must have
shown my hunger in my face, for he signaled to one of the men
in the doorway a bit of cold pie was broad and a glass of beer.
And I wolfed them down like a pig, or rather like ned Ainsley,
for I was keeping up my character. In the middle of my meal.
He spoke suddenly to me in German, but I turned on him a
face as blank as a stone wall. Then I told him my story.
How I had come off an archangel's ship at leathh a week ago and was
making my way overland to my brother at Wigtown. I had run short of
cash, I hinted vaguely at a spree, and I was pretty well on
my uppers when I had come on a hole and a hedge, and looking
through, had seen a big motor car lying in the burn. I had
poked about to see what had happened, and had found three sovereigns lying on
the seat and one on the floor. There was nobody there or any sign
of an owner, so I had pocketed the cash. But somehow the law
had got after me. When I had tried to change a sovereign in a
baker's shop, the woman had cried on the police, and a little later,
when I was washing my face in a burn, I had been nearly
gripped and had only got away by leaving my coat and waistcoat behind me.
They can have the money back, I cried, for a fat lot of
good. It's done me. Those perishers are all down on a poor man.
Now. If it had been you, Governor, that had found the
quids, nobody would have troubled you. You're a good liar, Hannay,
he said. I flew into a rage. Stop fooling, damn you.
I tell you my name's Annesley, and I'd never heard of anyone called Hannay
in my born days. I'd sooner have the police than you, with your
hannais and your monkey faced pistol tricks. No, Governor, I beg pardon.
I don't mean that. I'm much obliged to you for the grub,
and I'll thank you to let me go. Now the coast clear. It
was obvious that he was badly puzzled. You see, he had never seen
me, and my appearance must have altered considerably from my photographs if he had
got one of them. I was pretty smart and well dressed in London,
and now I was a regular tramp. I do not propose to let you
go. If you are what you say you are, you will soon have
a chance of clearing yourself. If you are what I believe you are,
I do not think you will see the light much longer. He rang a
bell, and a third servant appeared from the veranda. I want the lancaster
in five minutes, he said, There will be three to luncheon. Then
he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest ordeal of all.
There was something weird and devilish in those eyes, cold, malignant, unearthly,
and most hellishly clever. They fascinated me like the bright eyes of a
snake. I had a strong impulse to throw myself on his mercy and offer
to join his side. And if you consider the way I felt about the
whole thing, you will see that that impulse must have been purely physical,
the weakness of a brain mesmerized and mastered by a stronger spirit. But I
managed to stick it out, and even to grin. You'll know me next
time, guv'nor, I said Karl. He spoke in German to one of
the men in the doorway. You will put this fellow in the store room
till I return, and you will be answerable to me for his keeping.
I was marched out of the room with a pistol at each year. The
store room was a damp chamber in what had been the old farm house.
There was no carpet on the uneven floor, and nothing to sit down on
but a school form. It was black as pitch, for the windows were
heavily shuttered. I made out by groping that the walls were lined with boxes
and barrels and sacks of some heavy stuff. The whole place smelt of mold
and disuse. My jailers turned the key in the door, and I could
hear them shifting their feet as they stood on guard outside. I sat down
in that chilly darkness and a very miserable frame of mind. The old boy
had gone off in a motor to collect the two Ruffians who had interviewed me
yesterday. Now they had seen me as the roadmen, and they would remember
me for I was in the same rig. What was a Roman doing twenty
miles from his beat, pursued by the police. A question or two would
put them on the track. Probably they had seen mister Turnbull, probably MARMI
two. Most likely they could link me up with Sir Harry, and then
the whole thing would be crystal clear. What chance had I in this Morland
house with three desperadoes and their armed servants. I began to think wistfully of
the police now plotting over the hills after my wraith. They at any rate,
were fellow countrymen and honest men, and their tender mercies would be kinder
than these ghoulish aliens. But they wouldn't have listened to me. That old
devil with the eyelids had not taken long to get rid of them. I
thought he probably had some kind of graft with the constabulary. Most likely he
had letters from cabinet ministers saying he was to be given every facility for plotting
against Britain. That's the sort of ourlish way we run our politics in this
job the old country. The three would be back for lunch, so I
hadn't more than a couple of hours to wait. It was simply waiting on
destruction, for I could see no way out of this mess. I wished
that I had Scutter's courage, for I am free to confess. I didn't
feel any great fortitude. The only thing that kept me going was that I
was pretty furious. It made me boil with rage to think of those three
spies getting the pull on me like this. I hoped that at any rate
I might be able to twist one of their necks before they downed me.
The more I thought of it, the angrier I grew, and I had
to get up and move about the room. I tried the shutters, but
they were the kind that locked with the key, and I couldn't move them.
From the outside came the faint clucking of hens in the warm sun.
Then I groped among the sacks and boxes. I couldn't open the ladder,
and the sacks seemed to be full of things like dog biscuits that smelt of
cinnamon. But as I circumnavigated the room, I found a handle in the
wall which seemed worth investigating. There was the door of a wall cupboard,
what they call a press in Scotland, and it was locked. I shook
it and it seemed rather flimsy. For want of something better to do,
I put out my strength on that door, getting some purchase on the handle
by looping my braces round it. Presently the thing gave with a crash,
which I thought would bring in my waters to inquire. I waited for a
bit and then started to explore the covered shelves. There was a multitude of
queer things there. I found an odd vestor or two in my trouser pockets
and struck a light. It was out in a second, but it showed
me one thing. There was a little stock of electric torches on one shelf.
I picked up one and found it was in working order, with the
torch to help me. I investigated further. There were bottles and cases of
queer smelling stuffs, chemicals, no doubt for experiments, and there were coils
of fine copper wire and yanks and yanks of thin oiled silk. There was
a box of detonators and a lot of cord for fuses. Then away at
the back of the shelf I found a stout brown cardboard box, and inside
it a wooden case. I managed to wrench it open, and within lay
half a dozen little gray bricks, each a couple of inches square. I
took up one and found that it crumbled easily in my hand. Then I
smelt it and put my tongue to it. After that I sat down to
think. I hadn't been a mining engineer for nothing, and I knew lentter
night, when I saw it with one of these bricks, I could blow
the house to smoother reens. I had used the stuff in Rhodesia and knew
its power. But the trouble was that my knowledge wasn't exact. I had
forgotten the proper charge and the right way of preparing it, and I wasn't
sure about the timing. I had only a vague notion too, as to
its power, for though I had used it, I had not handled it
with my own fingers. But it was a chance, the possible chance.
It was a mighty risk, but against it was an absolute black certainty.
If I used it. The odds were, as I reckoned, about five
to one in favor of my blowing myself into the tree tops. But if
I didn't, I should very likely be occupying a six foot hole in the
garden by the evening. That was the way I had to look at it.
The prospect was pretty dark either way, but anyhow there was a chance,
both for myself and for my country. The remembrance of Little Scudder decided
me. It was about the beastliest moment of my life, for I am
no good at these cold blooded resolutions. Still, I managed to rake up
the plug to set my teeth and choke back. The horrid doubts of flooded
in on me. I simply shut off my mind and pretended I was doing
an experiment as simple as Guy Fawkes fireworks. I got a detonator and fixed
it to a couple of feet of fuse. Then I took a quarter of
a lench Night brick and buried it near the door below one of the sacks
and a crack of the floor, fixing the detonator in it. For all
I knew half those boxes might be dynamite. If the cupboard held such deadly
explosives, why not the boxes. In that case there would be a glorious
skyward journey for me and the German servants and about an acre of surrounding country.
There was also the risk that the detonation might set off the other bricks
in the cupboard. For I had forgotten most that I knew about lent night.
But it didn't do to begin thinking about the possibilities. The odds were
horrible, but I had to take them. I ensconced myself just below the
sill of the window and lit the fuse. Then I waited for a moment
or two. There was dead silence, only a shuffle of heavy boots in
the passage and the peaceful cluck of hens from the warm out of doors.
I commended my soul to my maker and wondered where I would be. In
five seconds, A great wave of heat seemed to surge upwards from the floor
and hang for a blistering instant in the air. Then the wall opposite me
flashed into a golden yellow and dissolved with a rending thunder that hammered my brain
into a pole. Something dropped on me, catching the point of my left
shoulder, and then I think I became unconscious. My stupor can scarcely have
lasted beyond a few seconds. I felt myself being choked by thick yellow fumes
and struggled out of the debris to my feet. Somewhere behind me, I
felt fresh air. The jambs of the window had fallen and through the ragged
rent. The smoke was pouring out to the summer noon. I stepped over
the broken into and found myself standing in a yard and a dense and acrid
fog. I felt very sick and ill, but I could move my limbs,
and I staggered blindly forward away from the house. A small knaw laid
ran into a wooden aqueduct at the other side of the yard, and into
this I fell. The cool water revived me, and I had just enough
wits left to think of escape. Squirmed up the laid among the slippery green
slime till I reached a mill wheel. Then I riggled through the axle hole
into the old mill and tumbled onto a bed of chaff. A nail caught
the seat of my trousers, and I left a wisp of heather mixture behind
me. The mill had been long out of use, the ladders were rotten
with age, and in the loft the rats had gnawed great holes in the
floor. Nauseus shook me and a wheel, and my head kept turning while
my left shoulder and arms seemed to be stricken with the palsy. I looked
out of the window and saw a fog still hanging over the house and smoke
escaping from an upper window. Please God, I had set the place on
fire, for I could hear confused cries coming from the other side. But
I had no time to linger. Since this mill was obviously a bad hiding
place. Anyone looking for me would naturally follow the lad and I made certain
the search would begin as soon as they found that my body was not in
the storeroom. From another window, I saw that on the far side of
the mill stood an old stone dovecot. If I could get there without leaving
tracks, I might find a hiding place. For I argued that my enemies,
if they thought I could move, would conclude I had made for open
country and would go seeking me. On the moor, I crawled down the
broken ladder, scattering chaff behind me to cover my footsteps. I did the
same on the mill floor and on the threshold, with the door hung on
broken hinges. Peeping out, I saw that between me and the dovecot was
a piece of bare cobbled ground where no footmarks would show. Also, it
was mercifully hid by the mill buildings from any view from the house. I
slipped across the space, got to the back of the dove cot and prospected
a way of ascent. That was one of the hardest jobs I ever took.
On my shoulder and arm ate like hell, and I was so sick
and giddy that I was always on the verge of falling. But I managed
it somehow, by the use of out jutting stones and gaps in the masonry
and a tough ivory route, I got to the top. In the end
there was a little parapet behind which I found space to lie down. Then
I proceeded to go off into an old fashioned swoon. I woke with a
burning head and the sun glaring in my face. For a long time I
lay motionless, for those horrible fumes seemed to have loosened my joints and dulled
my brain. Sounds came to me from the house men speaking throatily, and
the throbbing of a stationary car. There was a little gap in the parapet
to which I wriggled, and from which I had some sort of prospect of
the yard. I saw figures come out, a servant with his head bound
up, and then a younger man in knickerbockers. They were looking for something,
and moved towards the mill. Then one of them caught sight of the
wisp of cloth on the nail and cried out to the other. They both
went back to the house and brought two more to look at it. I
saw the rotund figure of my late captor, and I thought I made out
the man with the lisp. I noticed that all had pistols. For half
an hour they ransacked the mill. I could hear them kicking over the barrels
and pulling up the rotten planking. Then they came outside and stood just below
the dovecot, arguing fiercely. The servant with the bandage was being soundly rated.
I heard them fiddling with the door of the dove cot, and for
one horrid moment I fancied they were coming up. Then they thought better of
it and went back to the house. All that long, blistering afternoon I
lay baking on the rooftop. First was my chief torment. My tongue was
like a stick, and to make it worse, I could hear the cool
drip of water from the mill laid. I watched the course of the little
stream as it came in from the moor, and my fancy followed it to
the top of the glen, where it must issue from an icy fountain fringed
with cool ferns and mosses. I would have given a thousand pounds to plunge
my face into that. I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of
Moorland. I saw the car speed away, with two occupants and a man
on a hill pony riding east. I judged they were looking for me,
and I wished them joy of their quest. But I saw something else more
interesting. The house stood almost on the summit of a swell of moorland,
which crowned a sort of plateau, and there was no higher point nearer than
the big Hills, six miles off. The actual summit, as I have
mentioned, was a biggish clump of trees furs, mostly with a few ashes
and beaches. On the dovecot, I was almost on a level with the
tree tops, and I could see what lay beyond. The wood was not
solid, but only a ring, and inside was an oval of green tarth
for all the world like a big cricket field. I didn't take long to
guess what it was. It was an aerodrome, and a secret one.
The place had been most cunningly chosen. For suppose anyone were watching an aeroplane
descending here, he would think it had gone over the hill beyond the trees.
As the place was on top of a rise in the midst of a
big amphitheater, any observer from any direction would conclude it had passed out of
view behind the hill. Only a man very close at hand would realize that
the aeroplane had not gone over, but had descended in the midst of the
wood. An observer with a telescope on one of the higher hills might have
discovered the truth, but only herds went there, and herds do not carry
spyglasses. When I looked from the dovecot, I could see far away a
blue line which I knew was the sea, and I grew furious to think
that our enemies had the secret conning tower to rake our waterways. Then I
reflected that if that aeroplane came back, the chances were ten to one that
I would be discovered. So through the afternoon I lay and prayed for the
coming of darkness, and glad I was when the sun went down over the
big western hills and the twilight haze crept over the moor. The aeroplane was
late, the gloaming was far advanced when I heard the bead of wings and
saw it vol plaining downward to its home in the wood. Lights twinkled for
a bit, and there was much coming and going from the house. Then
the dark fell in silence. Thank god, it was a black night.
The moon was well on its last quarter and would not rise till late.
My thirst was too great to allow me to tarry, so about nine o'clock,
so far as I could judge, I started to descend. It wasn't
easy, and half way down I heard the back door of the house open
and saw the gleam of a lantern against the mill wall. For some agonizing
minutes I hung by the ivy and prayed that whoever it was would not come
round by the dove cot. Then the light disappeared and I dropped as softly
as I could on to the hard soil of the yard. I crawled on
my belly in the lee of a stone dyke till I reached a fringe of
trees which surrounded the house. If I had known how to do it,
I would have tried to put had aeroplane out of action, but I realized
that any attempt would probably be futile. I was pretty certain that there would
be some kind of defense round the house, so I went through the wood
on hands and knees, feeling carefully every inch before me. It was as
well, for presently I came on a wire about two feet from the ground.
If I had tripped over that, it would doubtless have rung some bell
in the house, and I would have been captured. A hundred yards farther
on I found another wire, cunningly placed on the edge of a small stream.
Beyond that lay the moor, and in five minutes I was deep in
bracken and heather. Soon I was round the shoulder of the rise, and
in the little glen from which the mill laid flowed. Ten minutes later my
face was in the spring, and I was soaking down pints of the blessed
water. But I did not stop till I had put half a dozen miles
between me and that a cursed dwelling. End of chapter six Chapter seven of
the Thirty nine Steps by John Buckin. This LibriVox recording is in the public
domain. Read by cliff Stone of Sydney, Australia. The Thirty nine Steps
by John Buckan, Chapter seven, The dry Fly Fisherman. I sat down
on a hilltop and took stock of my position. I wasn't feeling very happy.
For my natural thankfulness at my escape was clouded by my severe bodily discomfort.
Those lent night fumes had fairly poisoned me, and the baking hours on
the dove cot hadn't helped matters. I had a crushing headache and felt as
sick as a cat. Also, my shoulder was in a bad way.
At first I thought it was only a bruise, but it seemed to be
swelling, and I had no use of my left arm. My plan was
to seek mister Turnbull's cottage, recover my garments and especially as notebook, and
then make for the main line and get back to the South. It seemed
to me that the sooner I got in touch with the Foreign Office man,
Sir Walter Bulevant, the better. I didn't see how I could get more
proof than I had got already. He must just take or leave my story,
and anyway with him I would be in better hands than those devilish Germans.
I had begun to feel quite kindly towards the British police. It was
a wonderful starry night, and I had not much difficulty about the road.
So Harry's map had given me the lie of the land, and all I
had to do was steer a point or two west of southwest to come to
the stream where I had met the roadman. In all these travels I never
knew the names of the places, but I believe the stream was no less
than the upper waters of the river Tweed. I calculated I must be about
eighteen miles distant, and that meant I could not get there before morning,
so I must lay up a day somewhere, for I was too outrageous a
figure to be seen in the sunlight. I had neither coat, waistcoat collar,
nor hat. My trousers were badly torn, and my face and hands
were black with the explosion. I dare say I had other beauties, for
my eyes felt as if they were furiously bloodshot. Altogether, I was no
spectacle for god fearing citizens to see on a high road. Very soon after
daybreak, I made an attempt to clean myself and a hell burn, and
then approached a herd's cottage, for I was feeling the need of food.
The herd was away from home, and his wife was alone with no neighbor
for five miles. She was a decent old body, and a plucky one,
for though she got a fright when she saw me. She had an
axe handy and would have used it on any evil doer. I told her
that I had had a fall. I didn't say how, and she saw
by my looks that I was pretty sick. Like a true Samaritan, she
asked no questions, but gave me a bowl of milk with a dash of
whisky in it, and let me sit for a little by her kitchen fire.
She would have bathed my shoulder, but it ached so badly that I
would not let her touch it. I don't know what she took me for
a repentant burglar, perhaps, for when I wanted to pay her for the
milk and tended a sovereign, which was the smallest coin I had, she
shook her head and said something about giving it to them that had a right
to it. At this I protested so strongly that I think she believed me
honest, for she took the money and gave me a warm new plaid for
it, and an old hat of her man's. She showed me how to
wrap the plaide around my shoulders, and when I left that cottage I was
the living image of the kind of scotsman you see in the illustrations to Burn's
poems. But at any rate I was more or less clad. It was
as well, for the weather changed before midday to a thick drizzle of rain.
I found shelter below an overhanging rock in the crook of a burn,
where a drift of dead brackens made a tolerable bed. There I managed to
sleep till nightfall, waking very cramped and wretched, with my shoulder gnawing like
a toothache. I ate the oatcake and cheese the old wife had given me
and set out again. Just before the darkening. I passed over the miseries
of that night among the wet hills. There were no stars to steer by,
and I had to do the best I could from my memory of the
map. Twice I lost my way, and I had some nasty falls into
peat bogs. I had only about ten miles to go, as the crow
flies, but my mistakes made it nearer twenty. The last bit was completed
with set teeth and a very light and dizzy head. But I managed it,
and in the early dawn I was knocking at mister Turnbull's door. The
mist lay close and thick, and from the cottage I could not see the
high road. Mister Turnbull himself opened to me, sober and something more than
sober. He was primly dressed in an ancient but well tendered suit of black.
He had been shaved not later than the night before. He wore a
linen collar, and in his left hand he carried a pocket bible. At
first he did not recognize me. Way are ye that comes stravegan here on
the sabbath mornin, he asked, I had lost all count of the days,
so the Sabbath was the reason for this strange decorum. My head was
swimming so wildly that I could not frame a coherent answer. But he recognized
me, and he saw that I was ill. How ye got my specks,
he asked. I fetched them out of my trousers pocket and gave him
them. Yell, hay, come for your jacob and whistcoat, he said,
Come in by lush man year, terrible dunny. The legs hod up
till I get ye to a chair. I perceived I was in for a
bout of malaria. I had a good deal of fever in my bones,
and the wet night had brought it out, while my shoulder and the effects
of the fumes combined to make me feel pretty bad. Before I knew,
mister Turnbull was helping me off with my clothes and putting me to bed in
one of the two cupboards that lined the kitchen walls. He was a true
friend in need, that old roadman. His wife was dead years ago,
and since his daughter's marriage he lived alone. For the better part of ten
days. He did all the rough nursing I needed. I simply wanted to
be left in peace while the fever took its course. And when my skin
was cool again, I found that the bout had more or less cured my
shoulder. But it was a baddish go and though I was out of bed
in five days, it took me some time to get my legs again.
He went out each morning, leaving me milk for the day and locking the
door behind him, and came in in the evening to sit silent in the
chimney corner. Not a soul came near the place when I was getting better.
He never bothered me with a question. Several times he fetched me a
two days old scotsman, and I noticed at the interest in the Portland place,
murder seemed to have died down. There was no mention of it,
and I could find very little about anything except a thing called the General Assembly,
some ecclesiastical spree I gathered. One day, he produced my belt from
a lock fast draw. There's a terrible heap of cella in it, he
said, you'd better coot it to see it. So there. He never
even sought my name. I asked him if anybody had been around making inquiry
subsequent to my spell at the roadmaking II, there was a man in a
murdor corps. He speared way had tamed my place that day, and I
let on. I thought him daft, but he keepin it on at me,
and syin I said. He mourned me, thinking, oh, my
good brother Frey, the clerk that wilsmy lent me a horn. He was
a worsh looking soul, and I couldna understand the half o'er his English tongue.
I was getting restless those last days, and as soon as I felt
myself fit, I decided to be off That was not till the twelfth day
of June, and as luck would have it, a drover when past that
morning taking some cattle to moffit. He was a man named HiSLIP, a
friend of turnbulls, and he came in to his breakfast with us and offered
to take me with him. I made turnbull except five pounds for my lodging,
and a hard job I had of it. There was never a more
independent being. He grew positively rude when I pressed him, and shy and
read, and took the money at last without a thank you. When I
told him how much I owed him, he grunted something about, oh gid
turn deserve in an ethera. You would have thought from our leave taking that
we had parted in disgust. HiSLIP was a cheery soul who chatted all the
way over the pass and down the sunny vale of Annon. I talked of
Galloway markets and sheep prices, and he made up his mind. I was
a pack shepherd from those parts. Whatever that may be, my plaide and
my old hat, as I have said, gave me a fine theatric Scot's
look. But driving cattle is a mortally slow job, and we took the
better part of the day to cover a dozen miles. If I had not
such an anxious heart, I would have enjoyed that time. It was shining
blue weather, with a constantly changing prospect of brown hills and far green meadows,
and a continual sound of larks and curlews and falling streams. But I
had no mind for the summer, and little for his slip's conversation. For
as the faithful fifteenth of June drew near, I was overweighed by the hopeless
difficulties of my enterprise. I got some dinner in a humble moffered public house
and walked the two miles to the junction on the main line. The night
express for the South was not due till the midnight, and to fill up
the time, I went up on the hillside and fell asleep, For the
walk had tired me. I all but slept too long and had to run
to the station to catch the train with two minutes to spare. The feel
of the hard third class cushions and smell of Stowe tobacco cheered me up wonderfully.
At any rate, I felt now that I was getting to grips with
my job. I was decanted at Crew in the small hours and had to
wait till six to get a train for Birmingham. In the afternoon, I
got to reading and changed into a local train which journeyed into the deeps of
Berkshire. Presently I was in a land of lush water meadows and slow ready
streams about eight o'clock in the evening, a weary and travel stained being a
cross between a farm laborer and a vet where they checked black and white plade
over his arm, for I did not dare to wear it. South of
the border descended at the little station of Artinswell. There were several people on
the platform, and I thought I had better wait to ask my way till
I was clear of the place. The road led through a wood of great
beaches, and then to a shallow valley with the green backs of downs peeping
over the distant trees. After Scotland, the air smelt heavy and flat,
but infinitely sweet, for the limes and chest nuts and lilac bushes were domes
of blossom. Presently I came to a bridge, below which a clear,
slow stream flow between snowy beds of water buttercups. A little above it was
a mill, and the lasher made a pleasant cool sound in the scented dusk.
Somehow the place soothed me and put me at my ease. I fell
to whistling as I looked into the green depths, and the tune which came
to my lips was Annie Lorrie. A fisherman came up from the water side,
and as he neared me, he too began to whistle. The tune
was infectious, for he followed my suit. He was a huge man in
untidy old flannels and a wide brimmed hat, with a canvas bag slung on
his shoulder. He nodded to me, and I thought I had never seen
a shrewder or bitter tempered face. He leaned whose delicate ten foot split cane
rod against the bridge and looked with me at the water clear, isn't it?
He said? Pleasantly. I back out kenned any day against the test.
Look at that big fellow four pounds if he's an ounce. But the
evening rise is over and you can't tempt him. I don't see him,
said I. Look there a yard from the reeds, just above that stickle.
I've got him. Now you might swear he was a black stone,
so he said, and whistled another bar of any lorry. Twisden's the name,
isn't it, he said over his shoulder, his eyes still fixed on
the stream. No, I said, I mean to say, yes,
I had forgotten all about my alias. It's a wise conspirator that knows his
own name, he observed, grinning broadly at a more hen that emerged from
the bridgish shadow. I stood up and looked at him, at the square,
cleft drawer and broad lined brow, and the firm folds of cheek,
and began to think that here, at last was an ally worth having.
His whimsical blue eyes seemed to go very deep. Suddenly he frowned. I
call it disgraceful, he said, raising his voice. Disgraceful that an able
bodied man like you should dare to beg You can get a meal from my
kitchen, but you'll get no money from me. A dog cart was passing,
driven by a young man, who raised his whip to salute the fisherman.
When he had gone, he picked up his rod. That's my house,
he said, pointing to a white gate a hundred yards on. Wait
five minutes and then go round to the back door, and with that he
left me. I did as I was bidden. I found a pretty cottage
with a lawn running down to the stream, and a perfect jungle of guelder,
rose and lilac flanking the path. The back door stood open, and
a grave butler was awaiting me. Come this way, sir, he said,
and he led me along a passage and up a back staircase to a
pleasant bedroom looking towards the river. There I found a complete outfit laid out
for me, dress clothes with all the fixings, a brown flannel suit,
shirts, collars, ties, shaving things and hair brushes, even a pair
of painted shoes. Sir Walter thought, as how, mister Reggie, things
would fit you, Sir, said the butler. He keeps some clothes here
for he comes regular on the weekends. There's a bathroom next door, and
I prepared a hot bath dinner in half an hour. Sir, you'll hear
the gong. The grave being withdrew and I sat down in a chintz covered
easy chair and gaped. It was like a pantomime to come suddenly out of
biggardom into this orderly comfort. Obviously, Sir Walter believed in me, though
why he did I could not guess. I looked at myself in the mirror
and saw a wild, haggard brown fellow with a fortnight's ragged beard and dust
and ears and eyes, collarless, vulgarly shirted, with shapeless old tweed clothes
and boots. It had not been cleaned for the better part of a month.
I made a fine tramp and a fair drover, And here I was
ushered by a prim butler into this temple of gracious ease. And the best
part of it was that they did not even know my name. I resolved
not to puzzle my head, but to take the gifts the gods had provided.
I shaved and bathed luxuriously, and got into the dress clothes and clean,
crackling shirt, which fitted me not so badly. By the time I
had finished, the looking glass showed a not unpersonable young man. Sir Walter
awaited me in a dusky dining room, where a little round table was lit
with silver candles. The sight of him, so respectable and established and secure,
the embodiment of law and government and all the conventions, took me aback
and made me feel an interloper. He couldn't know the truth about me,
or he wouldn't treat me like this. I simply could not accept his hospitality
on false pretenses. I'm more obliged to you than I could say, but
I'm bound to make things clear, I said. I'm an innocent man,
but I'm wanted by the police. I've got to tell you this, and
I won't be surprised if you kick me out. He smiled, that's all
right, don't let that interfere with your appetite. We can talk about these
things after dinner. I never ate a meal with greater relish, for I
had had nothing all day. At railway sandwiches, Sir Walter did me proud,
for we drank a good champagne and had some uncommon fine port afterwards.
It made me almost hysterical to be sitting there, waited on by a footman
and a sleek butler, and remember that I had been living for three weeks
like a brigand with every man's hand against me. I told Sir Walter about
tiger fish and the zambizi that bite off your fingers if you give them a
chance, and we discussed sport up and down, the globe, for he
had hunted a bit in his day. We went to his for coffee,
a jolly room full of books and trophies and untidiness and comfort. I made
up my mind that if ever I got rid of this business and had a
house of my own, I would create just such a room. Then,
when the coffee cups were cleared away and we had got our cigars alight,
my host swung his long legs over the side of his chair and bade me
get started with my yarn. I've obeyed Harry's instructions, he said, And
the bribe he offered me was that you would tell me something to wake me
up. I'm ready, mister Hannay. I noticed with a start that he
called me by my proper name. I began at the very beginning. I
told of my boredom in London, and the night I had come back to
find Scudder gibbering on my doorstep. I told him all Scudder had told me
about Carlides and the Foreign Office conference, and that made him purse his lips
and grin. Then I got to the murder, and he grew solemn again.
He heard all about the milkman in my time in Galloway, and by
deciphering Scudder's notes at the Inn. You've got them here, he asked sharply,
and drew a long breath. When I whipped the little book from my
pocket, I said nothing of the contents. Then I described my meeting with
Sir Harry and the speeches at the hall. At that he laughed uproariously.
Harry talked dashed nonsense, did he I quite believe it. He's as good
a chap as ever breathed, But his idiot of an uncle has stuffed his
head with maggots. Go on, mister Hannay, my day as Rodman excited
him a bit. He made me described the two fellows in the car very
closely, and seemed to be raking back in his memory. He grew merrier
again when he heard of the fate of that ass Jopley. But the old
man in the Morland House solemnized him again. I had to describe every detail
of his appearance, bland and bald, headed, and hooded his eyes like
a bird. He sounds a sinister while foul, and you dynamited his hermitage
after he had saved you from the police. Spirited piece of work, that
presently I reached the end of my wanderings. He got up slowly and looked
down at me from the hearth rug. You may dismiss the police from your
mind, he said, You're in no danger from the law of this land.
Great Scott, I cried, have they got the murderer? No,
but for the last fortnight they have dropped you from the list of possibles.
Why, I asked in amazement. Principally because I received a letter from Scudder.
I knew something of the man, and he did several jobs for me.
He was half crank, half genius, but he was wholly honest.
The trouble about him was his partiality for playing a lone hand. That made
him pretty well useless in any secret service. A pity, for he had
uncommon gifts. I think he was the bravest man in the world, for
he was always shivering with fright, and yet nothing would choke him off.
I had a letter from him on the thirty first of May, but he
had been dead a week by then. The letter was written and posted on
the twenty third. He evidently did not anticipate an immediate decease. His communications
usually took a week to reach me, for they were sent under cover to
Spain and then to Newcastle. He had a mania, you know, for
concealing his tracks. What did he say? I stammered nothing, merely that
he was in danger but had found shelter with a good friend, and that
I would hear from him before the fifteenth of June. He gave me no
address, but said he was living near Portland Place. I think his object
was to clear you if anything happened. When I got it, I went
to Scotland Yard, went over the details of the inquest and concluded that you
were the friend. We made inquiries about you, mister Hannay, and found
you were respectable. I thought I knew the motives for your disappearance, not
only the police, the other one too, And when I got Harry's scrawl,
I guessed at the rest I have been expecting you any time this past
week. You can imagine what a load this took off my mind. I
felt a free man once more, for I was now up against my country's
enemies only, and not my country's law. Now let us have the little
notebook, said Sir Walter. It took us a good hour to work through
it. I explained the cipher, and he was jolly quick at picking it
up. He amended my reading of it on several points, but I had
been fairly correct on the whole. His face was very grave before he had
finished, and he sat silent for a while. I don't know what to
make of it, he said at last, he is right about one thing.
What is going to happen the day after tomorrow? How the devil can
it have got known? That is ugly enough in itself. But all this
about war and the black Stone it reathed like some wild, mellow drama.
If only I had more confidence in Scudder's judgment. The trouble about him was
that he was too romantic. He had the artistic temperament and wanted a story
to be better than God meant it to be. He had a lot of
odd biases too. Jews, for example, made him see red Jews in
the high finance the black Stone. He repeated, dur schwartz Stein, it's
like a Penny novelette. And all this stuff about Carlides, that is the
weak part of the tale. For I happen to know that the virtuous Caillides
is likely to outlast us both there is no state in Europe that wants him
gone. Besides, he has just been playing up to Berlin and Vienna and
giving my chief some uneasy moments. No Scudder has gone off the track there.
Frankly, Hannah, I don't believe that part of his story. There's
some nasty business afoot and he found out too much and lost his life over
it. But I am ready to take my oath that it is ordinary spy
work. A certain great European power makes a hobby of her spy system,
and her methods are not too particular. Since she plays by piece work.
Her blackguards are not likely to stick at a murder or two. They want
our naval dispositions for their collection at the Marinamt, but they will be pigeonholed,
nothing more. Just then the butler entered the room. There's a trunk
a call from London, Sir Walter, it's mister Eath. He wants to
speak to you personally. My host went off to the telephone. He returned
in five minutes with a whitish face. I apologize to the shade of Scudder,
he said. Karalides was shot dead this evening at a few minutes after
seven. End of chapter seven chapter eight of The Thirty Nine Steps by John
buckin the sleebrivox recording is in the public domain. Read by Cliff Stone of
Sydney, Australia, The Thirty Nine Steps by John buckin chapter eight, the
Coming of the black Stone. I came down to breakfast next morning, after
eight hours of blessed, dreamless sleep, to find Sir Walter decoding a telegram
in the midst of muffins and marmalade. His fresh rosiness of yesterday seemed a
thought tarnished. I had a busy hour on the telephone after you went to
bed, he said, I got my chief to speak to the First Lord
and the Secretary of War, and they are bringing Royer over a day sooner
this wire clinches it, he will be in London of five odd that the
code word for a Sioux chef destas major general should be porker. He directed
me to the hot dishes, and went on, not that I think it
will do much good. If your friends were clever enough to find out the
first arrangement, they are clever enough to discover the change. I would give
my head to know where the leakers. We believe there are only five men
in England who knew about Rowyer's visit, And you may be certain there were
fewer in France, for they manage these things better there. While I ate,
he continued to talk, making me, to my surprise, a present
of his full confidence. Can the dispositions not be changed? I asked?
They could, he said, but we want to avoid that. If possible,
they are the result of immense thought, and no alteration would be as
good. Besides, on one or two points, change is simply impossible.
Still something could be done, I suppose, if it were absolutely necessary.
But you see the difficulty, Hannay. Our enemies are not going to be
such fools as to pick Rowyer's pocket or any childish game like that. They
know that would me to row and put us on our guard. Their aim
is to get the details without any one of us knowing, so that Royer
will go back to Paris in the belief that the whole business is still deadly
secret. If they can't do that, they fail. For once we suspect
they know that the whole thing must be altered, then we must stick by
the Frenchman's side till he is home again. I said, If they thought
they could get the information, in Paris, they would try there. It
means that they have some deep scheme on foot in London, which they reckon
is going to win out. Rowyers dines with my chief and then comes to
my house where four people will see him, Whittaker, from the Admiralty,
myself, Sir Arthur Drew, and General Winstanley. The first Lord is ill
and has gone to sharing him at my house. He will get a certain
document from Whittaker, and after that he will be motored to Portsmouth, where
a destroyer will take him to Harvard. His journey is too important for the
ordinary boat train. He will never be left unattended for a moment till he
is safe on French soil, the same with Whittaker, till he meets Royer.
That is the best we can do, and it's hard to see how
there can be any miscarriage. But I don't mind admitting that I'm horribly nervous.
This murder of Karilides will play the juice and the chancellries of Europe.
After breakfast, he asked me if I could drive a car, Well,
you'll be my chauffeur today, and where Hudson's rig You're about his size.
You have a hand in this business, and we are taking no risks.
There are desperate men against us who will not respect the country retreat of an
overwhipped official. When I first came to London, I had bought a car
and amused myself with running about the south of England, so I knew something
of the geography. I took Sir Walter to town by the Bath Road and
made good doing. It was a soft, breathless June morning, with a
promise of sultriness later, but it was delicious enough swinging through the little towns
with their freshly watered streets, and past the summer gardens of the Thames Valley.
I landed Sir Walter at his house in Queen Anne's Gate punctually by half
past eleven. The butler was coming up by train with the luggage. The
first thing he did was to take me round to Scotland Yard. There we
saw a prim gentleman with a clean shaven lawyer's face. I brought you the
Portland Place. Murderer was Sir Walter's introduction. The reply was a wry smile.
Edward have been a welcome present, bulevand this I presume is mister Richard
Hannay, who for some days greatly interested my department. Mister Hannay will interest
it again. He has much to tell you, but not today for certain
grave reasons. His towel must wait for four hours. Then I can promise
you you will be entertained and possibly edified. I want you to assure mister
Hannay that he will suffer no further inconvenience. This assurance was promptly given.
You can take up your life where you left off. I was told your
flat, which probably you no longer wish to occupy, is waiting for you,
and your man is still there. As you were never publicly accused,
we considered that there was no need of a public exculpation. But on that,
of course, you must please yourself. We may want your assistance later
on mc givoray, Sir Walter said, as we left, then he turned
me loose. Come and see me to morrow, Hannay. I needn't tell
you to keep deadly quiet. If while were you, I would go to
bed, for you must have considerable areas of sleep to overtake. You had
better lie low, for if one of your black Stone friends saw you,
there might be trouble. I felt curiously at a loose end. At first,
it was very pleasant to be a free man, able to go where
I wanted without fearing anything. I had only been a month under the ban
of the law, and it was quite enough for me. I went to
the Savoy and ordered very carefully a very good luncheon, and then smoked the
best cigar of the house could provide. But I was still feeling nervous.
When I saw anybody look at me in the lounge, I grew shy and
wondered if they were thinking about the murder. After that, I took a
taxi and drove miles away up into North London. I walked back through fields
and lines of villas and terraces, and then slums and mean streets, and
it took me pretty nearly two hours. All the while my restlessness was growing
worse. I felt that great things, tremendous things were happening or about to
happen, and I, who was the cog of the whole business, was
out of it. Royer would be landing at Dover, Sir Walter would be
making plans with the few people in England who were in the secret, and
somewhere in the darkness, the black Stone would be working. I felt the
sense of danger and impending calamity, and I had the cures feeling too that
I alone could avert it, alone could grapple with it. But I was
out of the game now. How could it be otherwise? It was not
likely that cabinet ministers and admiralty lords and generals would admit me to their counsels.
I actually began to wish that I could run up against one of my
three enemies that would lead to developments. I felt that I wanted enormously to
have a vulgar scrap with those gentry where I could hit out and flatten something.
I was rapidly getting into a very bad temper. I didn't feel like
going back to my flat. That had to be faced sometime, but as
I still had sufficient money, I thought I would put it off till next
morning and go to a hotel for the night. My irritation lasted through dinner,
which I had at a restaurant in Germine Street. I was no longer
hungry and let several courses passed untasted. I drank the best part of a
bottle of Burgundy, but it did nothing to cheer me. An abominablelessness had
taken possession of me. Here was I a very ordinary fellow, with no
particular brains, and yet I was convinced that somehow I was needed to help
this business through, that without me it would all go to blazes. I
told myself it was sheer silly conceit that four or five of the cleverest people,
living with all the might of the British Empire at their back, had
the job in hand. Yet I couldn't be convinced. It seemed as if
a voice kept speaking in my ear, telling me to be up and doing
or I would never sleep again. The upshot was at about half past nine.
I made up my mind to go to Queen Anne's Gate. Very likely
I would not be admitted, but it would ease my conscience to try.
I walked down Jemine Street and at the corner of Duke Street, past a
group of young men. They were in evening dress, had been dining somewhere
and were going on to a music hall. One of them was mister Marmaduke
Jopley. He saw me and stopped short by God the murderer. He cried,
here, you fellows, hold him that's Hannay, the man who did
the Portland Place murder. He gripped me by the arm and the others crowded
round. I wasn't looking for any trouble, but my ill temper made me
play the full. A policeman came up, and I should have told him
the truth, and if he didn't believe it, demanded to be taken to
Scotland Yard, or for that matter, to the nearest police station. But
a delay at that moment seemed to me unendurable, and the sight of Marmie's
imbecile face was more than I could bear. I let out with my left
and had the satisfaction of seeing him measure his length in the gutter. Then
began an unholy row. They were all on me at once, and the
policeman took me in the rear. I got in one or two good blows,
for I think with fair play, I could have licked the lot of
them. But the policeman pinned me behind and one of them got his fingers
on my throat. Through a black cloud of rage, I heard the officer
of the law asking what was the matter, and Marmie, between his broken
teeth, declaring that I was hannay the murderer. Oh damn it all,
I cried, Make the fellow shut up. I advise you to leave me
alone. Constable Scotland Yard knows all about me, and you'll get a proper
wigging if you interfere with me. You've got to come along with me,
young man, said the policeman. I saw you strike that gentleman, cruel
ard. You began it too, for he wasn't doing nothing. I've seen
you. Best go quietly, or I'll have to fix you up. Exasperation
and an overwhelming sense that at no cost must I delay gave me the strength
of a bull elephant. I fairly wrenched the Constable off his feet, flawed
the man who was gripping my collar, and set off at my best pace
down Duke Street. I heard a whistle being blown and the rush of men
behind me. I have a very fair turn of speed, and that night
I had wings in a jiffy. I was in Pall Mall and had turned
down towards Saint James's Park. I dodged the policeman at the Palace gates,
dived through a press of carriages at the entrance to the mall, and was
making for the bridge before my pursuers had crossed the roadway. In the open
ways of the park, I put on a spurt. Happily there were a
few people about, and no one tried to stop me. I was staking
all on getting to Queen Ann's Gate. When I entered that quiet thoroughfare,
it seemed deserted. Sir Walter's house was in the narrow part, and outside
it three or four motor cars were drawn up. I slackened speed some yards
off and walked briskly up to the door. If the butler refused me admission,
or if he even delayed to open the door, I was done.
He didn't delay. I had scarcely run before the door opened. I must
see Sir Walter. I pented. My business is desperately important. That butler
was a great man. Without moving a muscle, he held the door open
and then shut it behind me. Sir Walter is engaged, Sir, and
I have orders to admit no one. Perhaps you will wait. The house
was of the old fashioned kind, with a wide hall and rooms on both
sides of it. At the far end was an alcove with a telephone and
a couple of chairs, and there the butler offered me a seat. See
here, I whispered. There's trouble about and I'm in it. But Sir
Walter knows, and I'm working for him. If any one comes and asks
if I am here, tell him a lie. He nodded, and presently
there was a noise of voices in the street and a furious ringing at the
bell. I never admired a man more than that butler. He opened the
door, and, with a face like a graven image, waited to be
questioned. Then he gave them it. He told them whose house it was,
and what his orders were, and simply froze them off the doorstep.
I could see it all from my alcove, and it was better than any
play. I hadn't waited long till there came another ring at the bell.
The butler made no bones about admitting this new visitor. While he was taking
off his coat, I saw who it was. You couldn't open a newspaper
or a magazine without seeing that face. The gray beard cut like a spade,
the firm fighting mouth, the blunt, square nose, and the keen
blue eyes. I recognized the first Sea Lord, the man they say that
made the new British Navy. He passed my alcove and was rushered into a
room at the back of the hall. As the door opened, I could
hear the sound of low voices. It shut and I was left alone again.
For twenty minutes. I sat there, wondering what I was to do
next. I was still perfectly convinced that I was wanted, but when or
how I had no notion. I kept looking at my watch, and as
the time crept on to half past ten, I began to think that the
conference must soon end. In a quarter of an hour, Rowyer should be
speeding along the road to Portsmouth. Then I heard a bell ring, and
the butler appeared. The door of the back room opened and the first Sea
Lord came out. He walked past me, and in passing King glanced in
my direction, and for a second we looked each other in the face.
Only for a second, but it was enough to make my heart jump.
I had never seen the great Man before, and he had never seen me.
But in that fraction of time, something sprang into his eyes, and
that something was recognition. You can't mistake it. It is a flicker,
a spark of light, a minute shade of difference, which means one thing
and one thing only. It came involuntarily, for in a moment it died,
and he passed on in a maze of wild fancies. I heard the
street door close behind him. I picked up the telephone book and looked up
the number of his house. We were connected at once, and I heard
a servant's voice. Is his lordship at home? I asked? His lordship
returned half an hour ago, said the voice, and has gone to bed.
He is not very well tonight. Will you leave a message? Sir
rang off, and almost tumbled into a chair. My part in this business
was not yet ended. It had been a close shave, but I had
been in time. Not a moment could be lost so much. Boldly to
the door of that back room and entered without knocking. Five surprised faces looked
up from a round table. There was Sir Walter and Drew, the war
minister, whom I knew from his photographs. There was a slim, elderly
man who was probably Whittaker, the admiralty official. And there was General Winstanley,
conspicuous from the long scar on his forehead. Lastly, there was a
short, stout man with an iron gray mustache and bushy eyebrows, who had
been arrested. In the middle of a sentence, Sir Walter's face showed surprise
and annoyance. This is mister Hannay, of whom I have spoken to you,
he said apologetically to the company. I am afraid, Hannay, this
visit is ill timed. I was getting back my coolness that remains to be
seen, Sir, I said, but I think it maybe in the nick
of time. For God's sake, gentlemen, tell me who went out a
minute ago, Lord a Lower, Sir Walter said, reddening with anger.
It was not, I cried. It was his living image. But it
was not Lord a Lower. It was someone who recognized me, someone I
have seen in the last month. He had scarcely left the doorstep when I
rang up Lord a Lower's house and was told he had come in half an
hour before and had gone to bed. Who who, Someone stammered the black
stone. I cried, and I sat down in a chair so recently vacated,
and looked round at five badly scared gentlemen. End of chapter eight Chapter
nine of The Thirty nine Steps by John Buckan. This LibriVox recording is in
the public domain. Read by cliff Stone of Sydney, Australia. The Thirty
nine Steps by John Bucking, Chapter nine. The thirty nine Steps nonsense,
said the official from the Admiralty. Sir Walter got up and left the room
while we looked blankly at the table. He came back in ten minutes with
a long face. I have spoken to a Lower, he said, had
him out of bed, very grumpy. He went straight home after Mulross's dinner.
But it's madness broke in general, WinCE Stanley, do you mean to
tell me that that man came here and sat beside me for the best part
of half an hour, and that I didn't detect the imposture? A lower
must be out of his mind, don't you see the cleverness of it?
I said, you were too interested in other things to have any eyes.
You took Lord a Lower for granted, if it had been anybody else you
might have looked more closely. But it was natural for him to be here,
and that put you all to sleep. The Frenchman spoke very slowly and
in good English. The young man is right. His psychology is good.
Our enemies have not been foolish he bent his wise brows on the assembly.
I will tell you a tale, he said. It happened many years ago
in Senegal. I was quartered in a remote station, and to pass the
time used to go fishing for big barbele in the river. A little Arab
mare used to carry my luncheon basket, one of the salted dunbreed you got
at Timbuctou in the old days. Well, one morning I had good sport
and the mayor was unaccountably restless. I could hear her whinnying and squealing and
stamping her feet, and I kept soothing her with my voice while my mind
was intent on fish. I could see her all the time as I thought,
out of a corner of my eye, tethered to a tree twenty yards
away. After a couple of hours, I began to think of food.
I collected my fish in a tarp hallen bag and moved down the stream towards
the mare trolling my line. When I got up to her, I flung
the tarp pallen on her back. He paused and looked round. It was
the smell that gave me warning. I turned my head and found myself looking
at a lion three feet off an old man eater. That was the terror
of the village. What was left of the mare, a mass of blood
and bones and hide, was behind him. What happened, I asked.
I was enough of a hunter to know a true yarn. When I heard
it, I stuffed my fishing rod into his jaws, and I had a
pistol. Also, my servants came presently with rifles. But he left his
mark on me. He held up a hand which lacked three fingers. Consider
he said the mare had been dead more than an hour, and the brute
had been patiently watching me ever since. I never saw the kill, for
I was accustomed to the mayor's fretting, and ever marked her absence, For
my consciousness of her was only of something torny, and the lion filled that
part. If I could blunder thus, gentlemen, in a land where men's
senses are keen, why should we busy preoccupied urban folk? Not err Also,
Sir Walter nodded. No one was ready to gain see him, but
I don't see, went on when Stanley. Their object was to get these
dispositions without our knowing it. Now it only required one of us to mention
to a lower our meeting tonight for the whole fraud to be exposed. Sir
Walter laughed dryly. The selection of a lower shows their acumen. Which of
us was likely to speak to him about to night? Or was he likely
to open the subject? I remembered the first Sea lord's reputation for taciturnity and
shortness of temper. The one thing that puzzles me, said the General,
is what good his visit here would do that spy, fellow, he did
not carry away several pages of figures and strange names in his head. That
is not difficult, the Frenchman replied. A good spy is trained to have
a photographic memory like your own. Macaulay, You noticed he said nothing,
but went through these papers again and again. I think we may assume that
he has every detail stamped on his mind. When I was younger, I
could do the same trick. Well, I suppose there is nothing for it
but to change the plans, said Sir Walter ruefully. Whittaker was looking very
glum. Did you tell Lord a Lower what has happened? He asked?
No. Well, I can't speak with absolute assurance, but I'm nearly certain
we can't make any serious changes unless we alter the geography of England. Another
thing must be said. It was Royer who spoke. I talked freely when
that man was here. I told something of the military plans of my government.
I was permitted to say so much. But that information would be worth
many millions to our enemies. No, my friends, I see no other
way. The man who came here and his confederates must be taken, and
taken at once. Good God, I cried, and we have not a
rag of a clue. Besides, said Whittaker, there is the post.
By this time the news will be on its way. No, said the
Frenchman. You do not understand the habits of the spy. He receives personally
his reward and he delivers personally his intelligence. We in France know something of
the breed. There is still a chance, mes Ami. These men must
cross the sea, and there are ships to be searched and ports to be
watched. Believe me, the need is desperate for both France and Britain.
Lawyer's grave good sense seemed to pull us together. He was the man of
action among fumblers. But I saw no hope in any face, and I
felt none where among the fifty millions of these islands, and within a dozen
hours were we to lay hands on the three cleverest rogues in Europe. Then
suddenly I had an inspiration. Where is Scudder's book? I cried to Sir
Walter quick Man, I remember something in it. He unlocked the door of
a bureau and gave it to me. I found the place. Thirty nine
steps I read, and again, thirty nine steps I counted them. High
tide ten seventeen pm. The Admiralty man was looking at me as if he
thought I had gone mad. Don't you see it's a clue, I shouted.
Scudder knew where these fellows led. He knew where they were going to
leave the country, though he kept the name to himself. Tomorrow was the
day, and it was some place where high tide was at ten seventeen.
They may have gone tonight. Someone said not they They have their own snug,
secret way, and they won't be hurried. I know Germans, and
they are mad about working to a plan. Where the devil? Can I
get a book of tide tables? Whittaker brightened up. It's a chance,
he said, Let's go over to the Admiraltea. We got into two of
the waiting motor cars, all but Sir Walter, who went off to Scotland
Yard to mobilize mc gillivray. So he said. We marched through empty corridors
and big bear chambers, where the charwomen were busy, till we reached a
little room lined with books and maps. A resident clerk was unearthed, who
presently fetched from the library the admiraltea tide tables. I sat at the desk,
and the others stood round. For somehow or other I had got charge
of this expedition. It was no good. There were hundreds of entries,
and so far as I could see, ten seventeen might cover fifty places.
We had to find some way of narrowing the possibilities. I took my head
in my hands and thought there must be some way of reading this riddle.
What did Scudder mean by steps? I thought of dock steps. But if
he had meant that, I didn't think he would have mentioned the number.
It must be some place where there were several staircases, and one marked out
from the others by having thirty nine steps. Then I had a sudden thought
and hunted up all the steamer sailings. There was no boat which left for
the continent at ten seventeen p m. Why was high tide so important.
If it was a harbor, it must be some little place where the tide
matted, or else it was a heavy draft boat. But there was no
regular steamer sailing at that hour, And somehow I didn't think they would travel
by a big boat from a regular harbor. So it must be some little
harbor where the tide was important, or perhaps no harbor at all. But
if it was a little port, I couldn't see what the steps signified.
There were no sets of staircases on any harbor that I had ever seen.
It must be some place which a particular staircase identified and where the tide was
full at ten seventeen. On the whole, it seemed to me that the
place must be a bit of open coast, but the staircases kept puzzling me.
Then I went back too wider considerations. Whereabouts would a man be likely
to leave for Germany, a man in a hurry who wanted a speedy and
a secret passage. Not from any of the big harbors, and not from
the Channel or the West coast or Scotland for remember he was starting from London.
I measured the distance on the map and tried to put myself in the
enemy's shoes. I should try for Ostend or Antwerp or Rotterdam, and I
should sail from somewhere on the east coast between Cromer and dover All, this
was very loose guessing, and I don't pretend it was ingenious or scientific.
I was an kind of Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had
a kind of instinct about questions like this. I don't know if I can
explain myself, but I used to use my brains as far as they went,
and after they came to a blank wall, I guessed, and I
usually found my guess is pretty right. So I set out all my conclusions
on a bit of admiralty paper. They ran like this fairly certain number one
place where there are several sets of stairs. One that matters distinguished by having
thirty nine steps, two full tide at ten seventeen PM, leaving show only
possible at full tide. Three steps not dock steps, and so placed probably
not harbor. Four no regular night steamer at ten seventeen means of transport must
be tramp unlikely yacht or fishing boat. There my reasoning stopped. I made
another list, which I headed guest, but I was just as sure of
the one as the other guest. One place not harbor but open coast.
Two boats, small trawler, yacht or launch. Three place somewhere on east
coast between Cromer and Dover. It struck me as odd that I should be
sitting at that desk with a cabinet minister, a field marshal, two high
government officials at a French general watching me while from the scribble of a dead
man, I was trying to drag a secret which meant life or death for
us. Sir Walter had joined us, and presently McGillivray arrived. He had
sent out instructions to watch the ports and railway stations for the three men whom
I had described to Sir Walter, not that he or anybody else thought that
that would do much good. Here's the most I can make of it,
I said, we have got to find a place where there are several staircases
down to the beach, one of which thirty nine steps. I think it's
a piece of open coast with biggish cliffs somewhere between the wash and the channel.
Also, it's a place where full tired as at ten seventeen tomorrow night.
Then an idea struck me. Is there no inspector of Coastguards, or
some fellow like that who knows the east coast? Whittaker said there was,
and that he lived in Clapham. He went off in a car to fetch
him, and the rest of us sat about the little room and talked of
anything that came into our heads. I lit a pipe and went over the
whole thing again till my brain grew weary. About one in the morning,
the coastguard man arrived. He was a fine old fellow, with the look
of a naval officer, and was desperately respectful to the company. I left
the war Minister to cross examine him, for I felt he would think it
cheek in me to talk. We want you to tell us the place as
you know of on the east coast, where there are cliffs and where several
sets of steps run down to the beach. He thought for a bit,
what kind of steps d'you mean, sir? There are plenty of places with
roads cut down through the cliffs, and most roads have a step or two
in them, or do ye mean regular staircases all steps, so to speak.
Sir Arthur looked towards me. We mean regular staircases, I said.
He reflected a minute or two. I don't know that I can think of
any Wait a second. There's a place in Norfolk, Brattlesham, beside a
golf course where there are a couple of staircases to let the gentleman get a
lost ball. That's not it, I said, Then there are plenty of
marine parades. If that's what you mean, every seaside resort has them.
I shook my head. It's got to be more retired than that, I
said, Well, gentlemen, I can't think of anywhere else. Of course,
there's the Roff what's that, I asked, The big chalk headland Kent,
close to Bradgate. It's got a lot of villas on the top and
some of the houses have staircases down to a private beach. It's a very
high toned sort of place, and the residents they are like to keep by
themselves. I tore opened the tide tables and found Bradgate high tide. There
was at teen twenty seven pm on the fifteenth of June. We're on the
scent at last, I cried, excitedly. How can I find out what
is the tide at the roof? I can tell you that, sir,
said the coastguard man. I once was lent a house there in this very
month, and I used to go out at night to the deep sea fishing
the tides. Ten minutes before Bradgate, I closed the book and looked round
at the company. If one of those staircases has thirty nine steps, we
have solved the mystery, gentleman, I said, I want the loan of
your car, Sir Walter, and a map of the roads. If mister
mc gillivray will spare me ten minutes, I think we can prepare something for
tomorrow. It was ridiculous in me to take charge of the business like this,
but they didn't seem to mind. And after all, I had been
in the show from the start. Besides, I was used to rough jobs,
and these eminent gentlemen were too clever not to see it. Edwards,
General Royer, who gave me my commission, I for one, he said,
AM content to leave the matter in mister Hannay's hands. By half past
three, I was tearing past the moonlit hedge grows of Kent, with McGillivray's
best man on the seat beside me. End of chapter nine, Chapter ten
of The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buckan. This LibriVox recording is in the
public domain. Read by Cliff Stone of Sydney, Australia. The Thirty Nine
Steps by John Buckan, Chapter ten, various parties converging on the sea in
blue June morning found me at Bradgate, looking from the Griffin Hotel over a
smooth sea to the lightship on the cock Sands, which seemed the size of
a bellboy. A couple of miles further south and much nearer the shore,
a small destroyer was anchored Scafe. McGillivray's man, who had been in the
navy, knew the boat and told me her name and her commanders. So
I sent off a wire to Sir Walter. After breakfast, Scaife got from
a house agent a key for the gates of the staircases on the rough.
I walked with him along the sands and sat down in a nook on the
cliffs while he investigated the half dozen of them. I didn't want to be
seen but the place at this hour was quite deserted, and all the time
I was on that beach, I saw nothing but seagulls. It took him
more than an hour to do the job, and when I saw him coming
towards me conning a bit of paper, I can tell you my heart was
in my mouth. Everything depended, you see on my guests proving right,
He read aloud the number of steps in the different stairs thirty four, thirty
five, thirty nine, forty two, forty seven and twenty one where the
cliffs grew lower. I almost got up and shouted. We hurried back to
the town and sent a wire to mc gillivray. I wanted half a dozen
men, and I directed them to divide themselves among different specified hotels. Then
Skape set out to prospect the house at the end of the thirty nine steps.
He came back with news that both puzzled and reassured me. The house
was called Trafalgar Lodge and belonged to an old gentleman called Appleton, a retired
stockbroker. The house agent said mister Appleton was there a good deal in the
summer and was in residence now, had been for the better part of a
week. Scape could pick up very little information about him, except that he
was a decent old fellow who paid his bills regularly and was always good for
a fiver for a local charity. Then Scafe seemed to have penetrated to the
back door of the house, pretending he was an agent for sewing machines.
Only three servants were kept, a cook, a parlor maid and a housemaid,
and they were just the sort you would find in a respectable middle class
household. The cook was not the gossiping kind and had pretty soon shut the
door in its face, but Scafe said he was positive she knew nothing.
Next door, there was a new house building which would give good cover for
observation, and the villa on the other side was to let and its garden
was rough and shrubby. I borrowed Skafe's telescope, and before lunch went for
a walk along the roof. I kept well behind the rows of villas and
found a good observation point on the edge of the golf course. There I
had a view of the line of turf along the cliff top, with seats
placed at intervals, and the little square plots railed in and planted with bushes.
Whence the staircases descended to the beach saw Trafalgar Lodge very plainly, a
red brick villa with a veranda, a tennis lawn behind, and in front
the ordinary seaside flower garden full of margharitas and scraggy geraniums. There was a
flagstaff from which an enormous union jack hung limply in the still air. Presently,
I observed someone leave the house and saunter along the cliff. When I
got my glasses on him, I saw it was an old man wearing white
flannel trousers, a blue serge jacket and a straw hat. He carried field
glasses and a newspaper and sat down on one of the iron seats and began
to read. Sometimes he would lay down the paper and turn his glasses on
the sea. He looked for a long time at the destroyer. I watched
him for half an hour till he got up and went back to the house
for his luncheon. When I returned to the hotel for mine, I wasn't
feeling very confident. This decent commonplace dwelling was not what I had expected.
The man might be the ball archeologist of that horrible moalland farm, or he
might not. He was exactly the kind of satisfied old bird you will find
in every suburb and every holiday place. If you wanted a type of the
perfectly harmless person, you would probably pitch on that. But after lunch,
as I sat in the hotel porch, I perked up, for I saw
the thing I had hoped for and had dreaded to miss. A yacht came
up from the south and dropped anchor pretty well opposite the Ruff. She seemed
about a hundred and fifty tons, and I saw she belonged to the squadron
from the wide ensign. So Scaife and I went down to the harbor and
hired a boatman for an afternoon's fishing. I spent a warm and peaceful afternoon.
We caught between us about twenty pounds of cod and lithe and out in
that dancing blue sea, I took a cheerier view of things Above the white
cliffs of the Ruff. I saw the green and red of the villas,
and especially the great flagstaff of Trafalgar Lodge. About four o'clock, when we
had fished enough, I made the boatman row us round the yacht, which
lay like a delicate white bird, ready at a moment to flee scape.
Said she must be a fast boat for her build, and that she was
pretty heavily engined. Her name was the Ariadne, as I discovered from the
cap of one of the men who was polishing brass work. I spoke to
him and got an answer in the soft dialect of Essex. Another hand that
came along past me the time of day in an unmistakable English tongue. Our
boatman had an argument with one of them about the weather, and for a
few minutes we lay our oars close to the starboard bow. Then the men
suddenly disregarded us and bent their heads to their work. As an officer came
along the deck. He was a pleasant, clean looking young fellow, and
he put a question to us about our fishing in very good English. But
there could be no doubt about him, his close cropped head and the cut
off his collar and tie never came out of England. That did something to
reassure me, But as we rode back to Bradgate, my obstinate doubts would
not be dismissed. The thing that worried me was the reflection that my enemies
knew that I had got my knowledge from Scudder, and it was Scudder who
had given me the clue to this place. If they knew that Scudder had
this clue, would they not be certain to change their plans? Too much
depended on their success for them to take any risks. The whole question was
how much they understood about Scudder's knowledge. I had talked confidently last night about
Germans always sticking to a scheme. But if they had any suspicions that I
was on their track, they would be fools not to cover it. I
wondered if the man last night had seen that I recognized him somehow I did
not think he had, and to that I had clung. But the whole
business had never seemed so difficult as that afternoon, when, by all calculations
I should have been rejoicing in a short success. In the hotel, I
met the commander of the destroyer, to whom Scaife introduced me, and with
whom I had a few words. Then I thought I would put in an
hour or two watching Trafalgar Lodge. I found a place farther up the hill,
in the garden of an empty house. From there, I had a
full view of the court on which two figures were having a game of tennis.
One was the old man whom I had already seen. The other was
a younger fellow, wearing some club colors in the scarf round his middle.
They played with tremendous zest, like two city agents who wanted hard exercise to
open their paws. You couldn't conceive a more innocent spectacle. They shouted and
laughed and stopped for drinks. When a maid brought out two tankards on a
saba, I rubbed my eyes and asked myself if I was not the most
immortal fall on earth. Mystery and darkness had hung about the men who hunted
me over the Scotch Moor in aeroplane and motor car, and notably about that
infernal antiquarian. It was easy enough to connect those folk with the knife that
pinned scudder to the floor, and with fell designs on the world's piece.
But here were two guileless citizens, taking their innocuous exercise, and soon about
to go indoors to a humdrum dinner, where they would talk of market prices
and the last cricket scores, and the gossip of their native surbiton. I
had been making a net to catch vultures and falcons, and low and behold,
two plump thrushes had blundered into it. Presently, a third figure arrived,
a young man on a bicycle with a bag of golf clubs slung on
his back. He strolled round to the tennis lawn and was welcomed riotously by
the players. Evidently they were chafing him, and their chiefs sounded horribly English.
Then the plump man, mopping his brow with a silk handkerchief, announced
that he must have a tub. I heard his very words. I've got
into a proper lava. He said. This will bring down my weight and
my handicap. Bob, I'll take you on tomorrow and give you a stroke
a hole. You couldn't find anything more English than that. They all went
into the house and left me feeling a precocious idiot. I had been barking
up the wrong tree this time. These men might be acting, But if
they were, where was their audience? They didn't know I was sitting thirty
yards off in a road of Deendron. It was simply impossible to believe that
these three hearty fellows were anything but what they seemed. Three ordinary game playing
suburban englishmen wearisome if you like, but sordidly innocent. And yet there were
three of them, and one was old and one was plump, and one
was lean and dark, and their house chimed and with Scudder's notes, and
half a mile off was lying a steam yacht with at least one German officer.
I thought of Carolides lying dead, and all Europe trembling on the edge
of earthquake, and the men I had left behind me in London who were
waiting anxiously for the events of the next hours. There was no doubt that
hell was afoot somewhere. The black Stone had won, and if it survived
this June night would bank its winnings. There seemed only one thing to do,
go forward, as if I had no doubts, and if I was
going to make a fool of myself to do it handsomely, Never in my
life have I faced the job with greater disinclination. I would rather, in
my then mind, have walked into a den of anarchists, each with his
browning handy, or faced a charging line with a pop gun, than enter
that happy home of three cheerful englishmen and tell them that their game was up.
How they would laugh at me. But suddenly I remembered a thing I
once heard in Rhodesia from old p A. Piana. I have quoted Peter
already in this narrative. He was the best scout I ever knew, and
before he had turned respectable, he had been pretty often on the windy side
of the law when he had been wanted badly by the authorities. Peter once
discussed with me the question of disguises, and he had a theory which struck
me at the time. He said, barring absolute certainties like fingerprints, mere
physical traits were very little useful identification. If the fugitive really knew his business.
He laughed at things like dyed hair and false beards and such childish follies.
The only thing that mattered was what Peter called atmosphere. If a man
could get into perfectly different surroundings from those in which he had been first observed,
and this is the important part, rarely play up to these surroundings and
behave as if he had never been out of them. He would puzzle the
cleverest detectives on earth, and he used to tell a story of how he
once borrowed a black coat and went to church and shared the same hymn book
with the man that was looking for him. If that man had seen him
in decent company before, he would have recognized him. But he had only
seen him snuffing the lights in a public house with a revolver. The recollection
of Peter's talk gave me the first real comfort that I had had that day.
Peter had been a wise old bird, and these fellows I was after
were about the pick of the avery. What if they were playing Peter's game.
A fool tries to look different, A clever man looks the same and
is different again. There was that other maxim of Peter's which had helped me
when I had been a roadman. If you are playing a part, you
will never keep it up unless you convince yourself that you are at That would
explain the game of tennis. Those chaps didn't need to act. They just
turned a handle and asked into another life, which came as naturally to them
as the first. It sounds a platitude, but Peter used to say that
it was the big secret of all the famous criminals. It was now getting
on for eight o'clock, and I went back and saw Scaife to give him
his instructions. I arranged with him how to place his men, and then
I went for a walk, for I didn't feel up to any dinner.
I went round the deserted golf course and then to a point on the cliffs
farther north, beyond the line of the villas. On the little trim newly
made roads, I met people and flannels coming back from tennis and the beach,
and a coastguard from the wireless station, and donkeys and pierrots padding homewards
out at sea. In the blue dusk, I saw lights appear on the
Ariadne and on the destroyer away to the south, and beyond the cock Sands
the bigger lights of steamers making for the Thames. The whole scene was so
peaceful and ordinary that I got more dashed in spirits every second, and it
took all my resolution to stroll towards Trafalgar Lodge about half past nine. On
the way, I got a piece of solid comfort from the sight of a
greyhound that was swinging along at a nursemaid's heels. He reminded me of a
dog I used to have in Rhodesia, and of the time when I took
him hunting with me in the Parley Hills. We were after Rebok the dunkind
and I recollected how we had followed one beast, and both he and I
had clean lost it. A greyhound works by sight, and my eyes are
good enough, but that buck simply leaked out of the landscape. Afterwards I
found out how it managed it against the gray rock of the cob Jeese.
It showed no more than a crow against a thundercloud. It didn't need to
run away. All it had to do was stand still and melt into the
background. Suddenly, as these memories chased across my brain, I thought of
my present case and applied the moral. The black stone didn't need to bolt.
They were quietly absorbed into the landscape. I was on the right track,
and I jammed that down in my mind and vowed never to forget it.
The last word was with Peter Piana. Scapesmen would be posted now,
but there was no sign of a soul. The house stood as open as
a marketplace for anybody to observe. A three foot railing separated it from the
cliff road. The windows on the ground floor were all open and shaded.
Lights and the low sound of voices revealed where the occupants were finishing dinner.
Everything was as public and above board as a charity bazaar. Feeling the greatest
fall on earth, I opened the gate and rang the bell. A man
of my sort, who has traveled about the world and rough places, gets
on perfectly well with two classes, what you may call the upper and the
lower. He understands them, and they understand him. I was at home
with herds and tramps and roadmen, and I was sufficient at my ease with
people like Sir Walter and the men I had met the night before. I
can't explain why, but it is a fact. But what fellows like me
don't understand is the great, comfortable, satisfied, middle class world, the
folk that live in villas and suburbs. He doesn't know how they look at
things. He doesn't understand their conventions, and he is as shy of them
as of a black member. When a trim parlor maid opened the door,
I could hardly find my voice. I asked for mister Rappleton and was ushered
in. My plan had been to walk straight into the dining room, and
by a sudden appearance waken them in that start of recognition which would confirm my
theory. But when I found myself in that neat hall, the place mastered
me. There were the golf clubs and tennis rackets, the straw hats and
caps, the rows of gloves, the sheaf of walking sticks which you will
find in ten thousand British home. A stack of neatly folded coats and waterproofs
covered the top of an old oak chest. There was a grandfather clock ticking,
and some polished brass warming pans on the walls, and a barometer and
a print of chiltern winning the Saint Leger. The place was as orthodox as
an Anglican church. When the maid asked me for my name, I gave
it automatically and were shown into the smoking room on the right side of the
hall. That room was even worse. I hadn't time to examine it,
but I could see some framed group photographs above the mantelpiece, and I could
have sworn they were English public school or college. I had only one glance,
for I managed to pull myself together and go after the maid, but
I was too late. She had already entered the dining room and given my
name to her master, and I had missed the chance of seeing how the
three took it. When I walked into the room, the old man at
the head of the table had risen and turned round to meet me. Was
an evening dress, a short coat and black tie, as was the other,
whom I called in my own mind the plump one. The third,
the dark fellow, wore a blue serge suit and a soft white collar,
and the colors of some club or school. The old man's manner was perfect,
mister Hannay, he said, hesitatingly, did you wish to see me?
One moment, you fellows, and I'll rejoin you. We had better
go to the smoking room. Though I hadn't an ounce of confidence in me,
I forced myself to play the game. I pulled up a chair and
sat down on it. I think we have met before, I said,
and I guess you know my business. The light in the room was dim,
but so far as I could see their faces, they played the part
of mystification very well. Maybe maybe, said the old man. I haven't
a very good memory, but I'm afraid you must tell me your errand sir,
for I really don't know it well, then, I said, and
all the time I seemed to myself to be talking pure foolishness. I have
come to tell you that the game's up. I have a warrant for the
arrest of you three gentlemen. Arrest, said the old man, and he
looked really shocked. Arrest, good God, what for for the murder of
Franklin Scudder in London on the twenty third day of last month. I never
heard the name before, said the old man, in a dazed voice.
One of the others spoke up. That was the Portland Place murder. I
read about it, good heavens, you must be mad, sir. Where
do you come from Scotland yard? I said. After that, for a
minute there was utter silence. The old man was staring at his plate and
fumbling with a nut, the very model of innocent bewilderment. Then the plump
one spoke up. He stammered a little, like a man picking his words.
Don't get flustered, uncle, he said, It's all a ridiculous mistake.
But these things happened sometimes, and we can easily set it right.
It won't be hard to prove our innocence. I can show that I was
out of the country on the twenty third of May, and Bob was in
a nursing home. You were in London. But you can explain what you
were doing, right, Percy. Of course, that's easy enough. The
twenty third that was the day after Agatha's wedding. Let me see what was
I doing. I came up in the morning from Woking and lunched at the
club with Charlie Simmons. Then, oh yes, I dined with the fishmongers.
I remember, for the punch didn't agree with me and I was seedy
next morning. Hang it all, there's the cigar box I brought back from
the dinner. He pointed to an object on the table and laughed nervously.
I think, sir, said the young man, addressing me respectfully. You
will see you are mistaken. We want to assist the law like all Englishmen,
and we don't want scondard Yard to be making fools of themselves. That's
so uncle. Certainly, Bob, the old fellow seemed to be recovering his
voice. Certainly will do anything in our power to assist the authorities. But
but this is a bit too much. I can't get over it. How
Nellie will chuckle, said the plump man. She always said that you would
die of boredom because nothing ever happened to you, And now you've got it
thick and strong, and he began to laugh very pleasantly. By jove,
yes, just think of it. What a story to tell at the club,
really, mister Hannay, I suppose I should be angry to show my
innocence, but it's too funny. I almost forgive you the fright you gave
me. You looked so glum. I thought I might have been walking in
my sleep and killing people. It couldn't be acting. It was too confoundedly
genuine. My heart went into my boots, and my first impulse was to
apologize and clear out. But I told myself I must see it through,
even though I was to be the laughing stock of Britain. The light from
the dinner table candlesticks was not very good, and to cover my confusion,
I got up, walked to the door and switched on the electric light.
The sudden glare made them blink, and I stood scanning the three faces.
Well, I made nothing of it. One was old and bald, one
was stout, one was dark and thin. There was nothing in their appearance
to prevent them being the three who had hunted me in Scotland, But there
was nothing to identify them. I simply can't explain why I, who as
a roadman had looked into two pairs of eyes, and as ned Ainsley,
into another pair, Why I, who have a good memory and reasonable powers
of observation, could find no satisfaction. They seemed exactly what they professed to
be, and I could not have sworn to one of them. There in
that pleasant dining room, with etchings on the walls and a picture of an
old lady in a bib above the mantelpiece, I could see nothing to connect
and with the Moorland desperadoes. There was a silver cigarette box beside me,
and I saw that it had been won by Percival Appleton, Esquire of the
Saint Bede's Club, in a golf tournament. I had to keep a firm
hold of Peter Piano to prevent myself bolting out of that house. Well,
said the old man politely. Are you reassured by your scrutiny, sir?
I couldn't find a word. I hope you'll find it consistent with your duty
to drop this ridiculous business. I make no complaint, but you'll see how
annoying it must be too respectable people. I shook my head. Oh lord,
said the young man, this is a bit too thick. Do you
propose to march us off to the police station, ask the plump one.
That might be the best way out of it. But I suppose you won't
be content with the local branch. I have the right to ask to see
your warrant, but I don't wish to cast any aspersions upon you. You
are only doing your duty, But you'll admit it's horrible, awkward. What
do you propose to do? There was nothing to do except to call in
my men and have them arrested, or to confess my blunder and clear out.
I felt mesmerized by the whole place, by the air of obvious innocence,
not innocence merely, but frank, honest, bewilderment and concern in the
three faces. Oh Peter Piana, I groaned inwardly, and for a moment
I was very near damning myself for a fool and asking their pardon. Meantime,
I vote, we have a game of bridge, said the plump one.
ED will give mister Hannay, time to think over things. And you
know we have been wanting a fourth player. Do you play, sir?
I accepted as if it had been an ordinary invitation at the club. The
whole business had mesmerized me. We went into the smoking room, where a
card table was set out, and I was offered things to smoke and drink.
I took my place at the table in a kind of dream. The
window was open, and the moon was adding the cliffs and sea with a
great tide of yellow light. There was Moonshine two in my head. The
three had recovered their composure and were talking easily, just the kind of slangy
talk you will hear in any golf clubhouse. I must have cut a rum
figure sitting there, knitting my brows with my eyes wandering. My partner was
the young dark one. I play a fair hand at bridge, but I
must have been ranked bad that night. They saw that they had got me
puzzled, and that put them more than ever at their ease. I kept
looking at their faces, but they conveyed nothing to me. It was not
that they looked different, they were different. I clung desperately to the words
of Peter piano. Then something awoke me. The old man laid down his
hand to light his cigar. He didn't pick it up at once, but
sat back for a moment in his chair with his fingers tapping on his knees.
It was the movement I remembered when I had stood before him in the
Morland, with the pistols off, his servants behind me. A little thing
lasting only a second, and the odds were a thousand to one that I
might have had my eyes on my cards at the time and missed it.
But I didn't, And in a flash, the air seemed to clear,
Some shadow lifted from my brain, and I was looking at the three men
with full and absolute recognition. The clock on the mantelpiece struck ten o'clock.
The three faces seemed to change before my eyes and reveal their secrets. The
young one was the murderer. Now I saw cruelty and ruthlessness, where before
I had only seen good humor. His knife, I made certain, had
skewered Scudder to the floor. His kind had put the bullet in Karilidi's The
plump man's features seemed to dislim and form again as I looked at them.
He hadn't a face, only a hundred masks that he could assume when he
pleased. That Chap must have been a superb actor. Perhaps he had been
lord, a lower of the night before, perhaps not. It didn't matter.
I wondered if he was the fellow who had first tracked Scudder and left
his card on him. Scudder had said he lisped, and I could imagine
how the adoption of a lisp might add terror. But the old man was
the pick of the lot. He was sheer, brain, icy cool,
calculating, as ruthless as a steam hammer. Now that my eyes were opened,
I wondered where I had seen the benevolence. His jaw was like chilled
steel, and his eyes had the inhuman luminosity of birds. I went on
playing. In every second, a greater hate welled up in my heart.
It almost choked me, and I couldn't answer. When my partner spoke.
Only a little longer could I endure their company? Phew, Bob, look
at the time, said the old man. You'd better think about catching your
train. Bob's got to go to town to night, he added, turning
to me. The voice rang now false as hell. I looked at the
clock, and it was nearly half past ten. I'm afraid he must put
off his journey, I said. Oh damn, said the young man.
I thought you had dropped that rot. I simply got to go. You
can have my address, and I'll give any security you like. No,
I said, you must stay at that. They must have realized that the
game was desperate. Their only chance had been to convince me that I was
playing the fall, and that had failed. But the old man spoke again,
I'll go bail for my nephew. That ought to content you, mister
Hannay. Was it fancy or did I detect some halt in the smoothness of
that voice? There must have been, for as I glanced at him,
his eyelids fell in that hawk like hood which fear had stamped on my memory.
I blew my whistle. In an instant, the lights were out.
A pair of strong arms gripped me round the waist, covering the pockets in
which a man might be expected to carry a pistol. Schnell Franz cried a
voice, dust boot, dust boot. As it spoke, I saw two
of my fellows emerge on the moonlit lawn. The young dark man leaped for
the window, was through it and over the low fence before a hand could
touch him. I grappled the old chap and the room seemed to fill with
figures. I saw the plump one collared, but my eyes were all for
the out of doors, where Franz spread over the road towards the railed entrance
to the beach stairs. One man followed him, but he had no chance.
The gate of the stairs locked behind the fugitive, and I stood staring
with my hands on the old boy's throat for such a time as a man
might take to descend those steps to the sea. Suddenly my prisoner broke from
me and flung himself on the wall. There was a click, as if
a lever had been pulled. Then came a low rumbling far below the ground,
and through the window I saw a cloud of chalky dust pouring out of
the shaft of the stairway. Someone switched on the light. The old man
was looking at me with blazing eyes. He is safe, he cried,
You cannot follow in time. He is gone. He has triumphed. Dur
schwartzstein is dur sigurd scrun. There was more in those eyes than any common
triumph. They had been hooded like a bird of prey, and now they
flamed with a hawk's pride. A white, fanatic heat burned in them,
and I realized for the first time the terrible thing I had been up against.
This man was more than a spy in his foul way, he had
been a patriot. As the handcuffs clinked on his wrists, I said my
last word to him, I hope Franz will bear his triumph. Well,
I ought to tell you that the Ariadne for the last hour has been in
our hands. Seven weeks later, as all the world knows, we went
to war. I joined the new army the first week, and, owing
to my matter barely experienced, got a captain's commission straight off. But I
had done my best service, I think, before I put on khaki.
End of The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buckan. Thank you for listening.