||||| Harvard College Library THE THIRTY- NINE STEPS J O HN BU C HAN // ---- THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS BY JOHN BUCHAN NEW YORK || GEORGE H. DoRAN COMPANY Copyright, 1915, BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY ComPANY Copyright, 1915, By GEORGE H. DoRAN CoMPANY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE THE MAN WHo DIED . . . . . 9 II. THE MILKMAN SETs OUT ON HIS TRAVELs . . . . . . . . . 34 e III. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LITERARY INN- KEEPER . . . . . . . . . 48 IV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE RADICAL CAN- DIDATE . . . . . . . . . 73 V. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECTAcLED ROADMAN . . . . . . . . 97 VI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BALD ARCHAE- OLOGIST . . . . . . . . . II.7 VII. THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN . . . . 149 VIII. THE CoMING of THE BLAck STONE . . 172 IX. THE THIRTY-NINE STEPs . . . . . 189 X. VARIOUS PARTIES CoNVERGING ON THE SEA . . . . . . . . . . 200 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS − − −~..…–… » — - ---- ----- - ---- ~- ---- --- ！= ~-- THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS CHAPTER I THE MAN WHO DIED 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 any one 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, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough exercise, and the amuse- ments of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. "Richard Hannay," I kept telling myself, "you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.” 9 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Buluwayo. 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 stop- ping 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, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race meetings. I had no real pal to go about with, which prob- ably explains things. Plenty of people in- vited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much interested in me. They would ask me a question or two about South Africa and then get on to their own affairs. A lot of Imperi- alist ladies asked me to tea to meet school- masters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest busi- ness of all. IO THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawn- ing. 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 Port- land 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 fel- low 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 Langham Place. There was a com- mon staircase with a porter and a lift-man I2 THE MAN WHO DIED 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 recognised 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 pawing 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. I3 THE MAN WHO DIED 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 then I'll tell you." He seemed to brace himself for a great effort and then started on the queerest rig- marole. 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 lin- guist 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 I5 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPs 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 than 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 got caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolu- tions, but that beside them there were finan- ciers who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling mar- ket, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears. He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me—things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and I6 THE MAN WHO DIED 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 anar- chist 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 fatherland; 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 pogroms. 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 Und zu Something, an ele- gant 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 progna- 17 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS thous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. "He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're on 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 Tzar because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga." I could not help saying that his Jew-anar- chists seemed to have got left behind a little. "Yes and 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, and if you sur- vive, you get to love the thing. These foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid 18 THE MAN who DIED in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven't played their last card by a long sight. They've got the ace up 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. "Mors janua vitae," he smiled. (I recog- nised the quotation: it was about all the 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 Karolides?" I sat up at 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 de- cease.” I9 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPs fire of battle in his gimlety eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn, he could act up to it. "Where did you find out this story?" I asked. - “I got the first hint in an inn on the Achen- see in Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur-shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little book-shop off the Racknitzstrasse in Leipsic. 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 it my business to disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French- American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English student of Ibsen, 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 22 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS “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'm no slouch at disguises. 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-draught, 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 in 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 weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I dare say there will be somebody to-morrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas with a revolver lying on the bed- 24 THE MAN WHO DIED clothes 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 it 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 tales 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 25 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 reck- oned you'd ask for that, but I haven't got it. It's on my chain on the dressing-table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn't leave any clues to raise suspicions. The gentry who are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You'll have to take me on trust for the night, and to-morrow 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'll lock you into this room and keep the key. Just one word, Mr. 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 recognised. Only his gim- 26 THE MAN WHO DIED lety, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the mid- dle, 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, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech. "My hat! Mr. Scudder—" I stammered. "Not Mr. Scudder," he corrected, "Captain Theophilus Digby, of the Seventh Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I'll thank you to re- member that, sir." I made him 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-forgot- ten metropolis! I woke next morning to hear my man, Pad- dock, making the deuce of a row at the smok- ing-room door. 27 THE MAN WHO DIED War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about imaginary pals. Paddock couldn't learn to call me "sir," but he "sirred" 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 till lunch- eon. When I got back the porter had a weighty face. "Nawsty business 'ere this morning, sir. Gent in No. 15 been and shot 'isself. They've just took 'im to the mortuary. The police are up there now." I ascended to No. 15 and found a couple of bobbies and an inspector busy making an ex- amination. 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 church- yard face, and half a crown went far to con- sole him. I attended the inquest next day. A part- ner of some publishing firm gave evidence 29 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS that the deceased had brought him wood-pulp propositions and had been, he believed, an agent of an 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 note-book, 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 be- ginning to get restless. He fixed up a list of the days till June 15th 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, 3O THE MAN WHO DIED and after these 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 and apolo- gised 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 pluck 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 ad- ventures than in his high politics. I reckoned that Karolides and his affairs were not my 3 I THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 Karolides 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 men- tioned the name of a woman—Julia Czechenyi —as having something to do with the danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get Karolides out of the care of his guards. He talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man that lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly somebody that he never re- ferred 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 32 THE MAN WHO DIED 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 most 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 Scudder had turned in already. I snapped the 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. 33 CHAPTER II THE MILKMAN SETS OUT ON HIS TRAVELS SAT down in an armchair and felt very sick. That lasted for maybe five min- utes, 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 table-cloth and cover it. Then I staggered to a cupboard, found the brandy and swal- lowed several mouthfuls. I had seen men die violently before; indeed, I had killed a few myself in the Matabele 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 I shuttered and bolted all the windows and put the chain on the door. 34 THE MILKMAN TRAVELS 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 number was up all right. Then suddenly I thought of another proba- bility. 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 Scud- 35 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS der? 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 pal who could come forward and swear to my character. Perhaps that was what those secret enemies were play- ing for. They were clever enough for any- thing, and an English prison was as good a way of getting rid of me till after June 15th 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. Karolides 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 con- fidence, and I was pretty well bound to carry on his work. You may think this ridicu- 36 THE MILKMAN TRAVELS lous for a man in danger of his life, but that was the way I looked at it. I am an ordi- nary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, 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 of 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 dangers, I would not be believed in the end. I must take my chance of that, and hope that something might hap- pen 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 24th of May, 37 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 go- ing to be a giddy hunt, and it was queer how the prospect comforted me. I had been slack so long that almost any chance of activity was welcome. When I had to sit alone with that corpse and wait on Fortune I was no better than a crushed worm, but if my neck's 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 noth- ing in the breast pocket, and only a few loose coins and a cigar-holder in the waist- coat. The trousers held a little pen- 38 THE MILKMAN TRAVELS knife and some silver, and the side-pocket of his jacket contained an old crocodile-skin ci- gar-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 mur- derer. But as I looked up from my task I saw that some drawers had been pulled out in the writ- ing-table. Scudder would never have left them in that state, for he was the tidiest of mortals. Some one must have been searching for something—perhaps for the pocket-book. I went round the flat and found that every- thing 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 an atlas 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 39 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 Damaraland. But I calculated that it would be less con- spicuous 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 to. 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 overthick with population. A search in Bradshaw informed me that a train left St. Pancras at seven-ten, which would land me at a Galloway station in the late afternoon. That was well enough, but a more important matter was how I was to make my way to St. Pancras, for I was pretty certain that Scudder's friends would be watch- ing outside. This puzzled me for a bit; then I 4O THE MILKMAN TRAVELS 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 spar- rows had begun to chatter. I had a great re- vulsion of feeling, and felt a God-forgotten fool. My inclination was to let things slide, and trust to the British police taking a reasonable view of my case. But as I viewed the situa- tion I could find no arguments to bring against my decision of the previous night, so with a wry 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-nailed boots, and a flannel shirt with a collar. Into my pockets I stuffed a spare shirt, a cloth cap, some handkerchiefs, and a tooth-brush. I had drawn a good sum in gold from the bank two days before, in case Scud- der should want money, and I took fifty 4. I THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS pounds of it in 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 moustache, which was long and droop- ing, into a short stubbly fringe. Now came the next step. Paddock used to arrive punctually at seven-thirty and let him- self in with a latch-key. But about twenty minutes to seven, as I knew from bitter expe- rience, the milkman turned up with a great clatter of cans, and deposited my share outside my door. I had seen that milkman some- times when I had gone out for an early ride. He was a young man about my own height, with a scrubby moustache, dressed in a white overall. On him I staked all my chances. I went into the darkened smoking-room where the rays of morning light were begin- ning to creep through the shutters. There I breakfasted off a whisky-and-soda and some biscuits from the cupboard. By this time it was getting on to 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 42 THE MILKMAN TRAVELS I poked into the tobacco my fingers touched something hard, and I drew out Scudder's little black pocket-book. 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. "Good-bye, old chap," I said; "I am going to do my best for you. Wish me well wherever you are." Then I hung about in the hall waiting for the milkman. That was the worst part of the business, for I was fairly choking to get out of doors. Six-thirty passed, then six-forty, but still he did not come. The fool 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 a word with you." And I led him into the dining-room. 43 THE MILKMAN TRAVELS past on the other side. Some impulse made me raise my eyes to the house opposite, and there at a 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 imi- tating the jaunty swing of the milkman. Then I took the first side street, and turned 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 hoard- ing and sent the hat 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 un- suspiciously. At the moment the clock of a neighbouring 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 Sta- tion showed five minutes past the hour. At St. Pancras I had no time to take a ticket, let alone that I had not settled upon my destina- 45 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS tion. 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, an irate guard interviewed me. He wrote out for me a ticket to Newtown Stewart, a name which had sud- denly come back to my memory, and he con- ducted 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 grum- bling, and as I mopped my brow I ob- served to my companions in my broadest Scots that it was a sore job catching trains. I had already entered upon my part. "The impidence o' that guard," said the lady bitterly. "He needit a Scotch tongue to pit him in his place. He was complainin' o' this wean no haein' a ticket and her no fower till August twelvemonth, and he was objectin' to this gentleman spittin'.” 46 THE MILKMAN TRAVELS The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life in an atmosphere of protest against authority. I reminded myself that a week ago I had been finding the world dull. 47 CHAPTER III THE ADVENTURE OF THE LITERARY INNKEEPER HAD a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine May weather, 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 Leeds, and shared it with the fat woman. Also I got the morning's papers, with news about starters for the Derby and the beginning of the cricket season, and some paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were settling down and a British squadron was go- ing to Kiel. When I had done with them I got out Scudder's little black pocket-book and studied it. It was pretty well filled with jot- tings, chiefly figures, though now and then a name was printed in. For example, I found 48 LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE the words "Hofgaard," "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 at it myself once as intelligence- officer at Delagoa Bay during the Boer War. I have a head for things like chess and puz- zles, and I used to reckon myself pretty good at finding out ciphers. This one looked like the numerical kind where sets of figures cor- respond 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 nu- merical 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 49 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 ma- chine, 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 travelled with half a dozen in an atmos- phere 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 the Cairn and the Deuch and a dozen other mysterious waters. Above half the men had lunched heavily and were highly flavoured with whisky, but they took no notice of me. We rumbled slow- ly into a land of little wooded glens and then to a great, wide moorland place, gleaming with lochs, with high, blue hills showing northwards. About five o'clock the carriage had emp- tied and I was left alone as I had hoped. I got out at the next station, a little place whose 50 LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE name I scarcely noted, set right in the heart of a bog. It reminded me of one of those for- gotten little stations in the Karroo. An old station-master was digging in his garden, and with his spade over his shoulder saun- tered 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 In OO1. 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 light-hearted. 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 feel 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 51 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPs country, for every mile put me in better hu- mour with myself. In a roadside planting I cut a walking stick of hazel, and presently struck off the highway up a by-path 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 hours 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 moorland places. When I asked for a night's lodging she said I was welcome to the "bed in the loft," and very soon she set before me a hearty meal of ham and eggs, scones, and thick 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 no questions, for they had the perfect breeding of all dwel- lers in the wilds, but I could see they set me down as some kind of dealer, and I took some 52 LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE 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 a-going once more. They refused any payment, and by six I had breakfasted and was striding southwards again. My notion was to return to the railway line a station or two further on than the place where I had alighted yesterday and to double back. I reckoned that was the safest way, for the police would naturally assume that I was always making further from London in the direction of some western port. I thought I had still a good bit of a start, for, as I rea- soned, 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 St. Pan- eras. It was the same jolly clear spring weather 53 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 Cairns- more of Fleet. Nestling 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 grey granite beach half a mile away. I waited in the deep heather till 54 LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE I saw the smoke of an east-going train on the horizon. Then I approached the tiny booking-office and took a ticket for Dum- fries. The only occupants of the carriage were an old shepherd and his dog—a wall-eyed brute that I mistrusted. The man was asleep and on the cushions beside him was that morning's Scotsman. Eagerly I seized on it, for I fan- cied it would tell me something. There were two columns about the Portland Place murder, as it was called. My man Pad- dock had given the alarm and had the milk- man 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 the better part of the day. In the stop-press 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 55 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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, noth- ing about foreign politics or Karolides 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. 56 - -- * LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE As we moved away from that station my companion woke up. He fixed me with a wondering glance, kicked his dog viciously and inquired where he was. Clearly he was very drunk. "That's what comes o' bein' a teetotaler," he observed in bitter regret. I expressed my surprise that in him I should have met a blue-ribbon stalwart. "Aye, but I'm a strong teetotaler," he said pugnaciously. "I took the pledge last Mar- tinmass, and I havena touched a drop o' whisky sinsyne. No even at Hogmanay, though I was sair tempted." He swung his heels up on the seat and bur- rowed a frowsy head into the cushions. "And that's a' I get," he moaned. "A heid hetter than hell fire and twae een lookin' dif- ferent ways for the Sabbath." "What did it?" I asked. "A drink they ca' brandy. Bein' a teeto- taler, I keepit off the whisky, but I was nip- nippin' a' day yestereen at this brandy, and I doubt I'll no be weel for a fortnicht.” 57 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPs His voice died away into a stutter, and sleep once more laid its 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-coloured river. I looked out and £aw 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 but got me by the trousers. This woke up the herd who stood bawling 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 that the guard and sev- eral passengers gathered round the open car- riage door and stared in my direction. I l 58 LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE could not have made a more public depart- ure if I had left with a bugler and a brass band. - Happily the drunken herd provided a di- version. 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 to- wards the water. In the rescue which fol- lowed, the dog bit somebody, for 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 in the cutting. I was in a wide semi-circle 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 be- ing, only the plashing water and the inter- minable 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 59 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS wound up the narrow vale of a lowland stream. As I followed it, fields gave place to bent, the glen became a plateau, and pres- ently 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 man. He was smoking a long clay pipe and study- ing the water with spectacled eyes. In his left hand was a small book with a finger marking the place. Slowly he repeated— "As when a Gryphon through the wilderness, With winged step, o'er hill and moory dale Pursues the Arimaspian." He jumped round as my step rung on the keystone, and I saw a pleasant, sunburnt, boy- ish face. "Good evening to you," he said gravely. "It's a fine night for the road." The smell of wood smoke and of some sav- oury roast floated to me from the house. "Is that place an inn?" I asked. "At your service," he said politely. "I am the landlord, sir, and I hope you will stay the 62 LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE 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 innkeeper," I said. "My father died a year ago and left me the business. I live there 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 inn- keeper would make the best story-teller in the world." "Not now," he said eagerly. "Maybe in the old days when you had pilgrims and bal- lad-makers and highwaymen and mail- coaches on the road; but not now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of fat women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two 63 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS in the spring, and the shooting tenant in Au- gust. 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 Con- rad. But the most I've done yet is to get some verses printed in Chambers' Journal." I looked at the inn, standing golden in the sunset against the wine-red hills. "I've knocked a bit about the world and I wouldn't despise such a hermitage. D'you think that adventure is found only in the trop- ics or among gentry in red shirts? Maybe you're rubbing shoulders with it at this mo- ment." "That's what Kipling says," he said, his eyes lightening, and he quoted some verse about "Romance bringing up the nine-fif- teen." "Here's a true tale for you then," I cried, "and a month hence you can make a novel out of it." Sitting on the bridge in the soft May gloam- ing, I pitched him a lovely yarn. It was true in essentials, too, though I altered the minor 2- 64 LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE details. I made out that I was a mining mag- nate from Kimberley, who had a lot of trou- ble with I. D. B. 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, the 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 Rider Hag- gard and Conan 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 to distrust is the normal.” 65 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS He was very young, but he was the man for my money. "I think they're off my track for the mo- ment, 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 as 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 adven- tures?" 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 favourite authors. I never saw the grandmother, so I guessed she was bed-ridden. An old woman called Margit brought me my meals, and the innkeeper was around me at all hours. 66 LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE 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 note-book. 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 Karolides and the state of affairs in the Bal- kans, 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 nulls and stops. The trouble was the key word, and 67 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 inspira- tion. The name Julia Czechenyi flashed across my memory. Scudder had said it was the key to the Karolides 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 vowels. A was J, the tenth letter of the alphabet, and so represented by X in the cipher. E was U = XXI and so on. "Czechenyi" 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 whit- ish 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 inn. It drew up at the door and there was the sound of people alighting. There seemed to be two of them, men in acquascutums and tweed caps. 68 LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE Ten minutes later the innkeeper slipped into the room, his eyes bright with excite- ment. "There's two chaps below looking for you," he whispered. "They're in the dining-room having whiskys 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 navvy." I made him tell me what they looked like. One was a dark-eyed, thin fellow with bushy eyebrows, the other was always smiling and lisped 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: ". . . Black Stone. 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 Karolides is uncertain about his plans. But if Mr. T. advises I will do the best I . . .” 69 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 from 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 excite- ment: "Your paper woke them up," he said gleefully. "The dark fellow went as white as death and cursed like blazes, 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 Newtown Stewart to the chief constable. De- scribe the two men, and say you suspect them of having had something to do with the Lon- don murder. You can invent reasons. The two will come back, never fear. Not to-night, 7o LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE for they'll follow me forty miles along the road, but first thing to-morrow 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 de- cency I had to let him pump me. I gave him a lot of stuff about lion hunts and the Matabele War, thinking all the while what tame businesses these were compared to this I was now engaged in. When he went to bed I sat 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 inn- keeper'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. It 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 71 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS i their steps on the gravel outside the window. My plan had been to lie hid in my bed- room, and see what happened. I had a notion that, if I could bring the police and my other. more dangerous 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. Un- observed I crossed the dike, crawled down the side of a tributary burn, and won the highroad 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 on to the plateau. Al- most 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. 72 CHAPTER IV THE ADVENTURE OF THE RADICAL CANDIDATE OU may picture me driving that forty- horse-power car for all she was worth over the crisp moor roads on that shining May morning; glancing back at first over my shoul- der 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 pocket-book. 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 eye-wash, and so was Karolides. 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-bit- 73 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 Dago. 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 inten- tion. He had told me something which sound- ed big enough, but the real thing was so im- mortally 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 reli- ability of each stage in the yarn. The three names he had printed were authorities, and 74 ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE there was a man, Ducrosne, who got five out of a possible five, and another fellow, Ammersfoort, who got three. The bare bones of the tale were all that was in the book— that, 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 10:17 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 com- ing, as sure as Christmas, had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since February, 1912. Karolides was going to be the occasion. He was booked all right and was to hand in his checks on June 14th, 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 Epirote guards that would skin their own grand- mother was all billy-o. The second thing was that this war was go- ing to come as a mighty surprise to Britain. 75 ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE w life; ay, 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. Half- way down was the post-office, and on the steps of it stood the post-mistress 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 fool enough to obey. Then it flashed upon me that the wire had to do with me, that my friends at the inn had come to an understanding and were united in desiring to see more of me, and that it had been easy enough for them to wire 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. 79 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 Scot- land. 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 loneliest roads. These I soon found when I struck up a tributary of the big river, and got into a glen which climbed over a pass. Here I met nobody, but it was taking me too far north, so I slewed east along a bad track and finally struck a big double-line rail- way. Away below me I saw another broadish valley, and it occurred to me that if I crossed it I might find some remote hostelry to pass the night. The evening was now drawing in, and I was furiously hungry, for I had eaten 8o ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE 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 and 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 the 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 realised to my horror that I was almost upon a couple of gate-posts through which a private road debouched on the highway. My horn gave an agonised 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 81 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS their steps on the gravel outside the window. My plan had been to lie hid in my bed- room, and see what happened. I had a notion that, if I could bring the police and my other. more dangerous 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. Un- observed I crossed the dike, crawled down the side of a tributary burn, and won the highroad 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 on to the plateau. Al- most 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. 72 CHAPTER IV THE ADVENTURE OF THE RADICAL CANDIDATE OU may picture me driving that forty- horse-power car for all she was worth over the crisp moor roads on that shining May morning; glancing back at first over my shoul- der 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 pocket-book. 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 eye-wash, and so was Karolides. 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-bit- 73 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS course. In a second there would have been the deuce 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, leaped on the seat and would have jumped out. But a branch of hawthorn 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 smash 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 whinnying apologies. 82 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS fore a comfortable-looking shooting-box set among pine trees, and he ushered me in-doors. 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 se- lected a loose blue serge, which differed most conspicuously from my own garments, and borrowed a linen collar. Then he haled 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 and some cold ham, while he yarned away on the hearth-rug. "You find me in the deuce of a mess, Mr. ; by the by 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 to-night at Brattleburn—that's my chief town, and an 84 ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE infernal Tory stronghold. I had got the Colonial ex-Premier fellow, Crumpleton, coming to speak for me to-night, and had the thing tremendously billed and the whole place ground-baited. This afternoon I got a wire from the ruffian saying he has got influenza at Blackpool, and here am I left to do the whole thing myself. I had meant to speak for ten minutes and 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 is 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 85 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS a one-thousand-guinea car to address a meet- ing for him on the spur of the moment. But my necessities did not allow me to contem- plate oddnesses or to pick and choose my sup- ports. "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, 86 ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE too. I'm Liberal, because my family have al- ways 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 Inan. As we passed through a little town two po- licemen signalled us to stop, and flashed their lanterns on us. "Beg pardon, Sir Harry," said one. "We've got instructions to look out for a car and the description's not unlike yours." "Right-o," said my host, while I thanked Providence for the devious ways I had been brought to safety. After that we spoke no more, for my host's mind began to labour heavily with his coming speech. His lips kept muttering, his eyes 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 87 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS street and were being welcomed by some noisy gentlemen 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 weaselly minister with a reddish nose, lamented Crum- pleton's absence, soliloquised on his influenza, and gave me a certificate as a "trusted leader of Australian thought." There were two po- licemen 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 "Ger- man menace," and said it was all a Tory in- vention to cheat the poor of their rights and keep back the great flood of social reform, 88 ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE but that "organised labour" realised this and laughed the Tories to scorn. He was all for reducing our navy as a proof of our good faith, and then sending Germany an ultimatum tell- ing 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 per cent better than Sir Harry. I didn't get on so badly when it came to my turn. I simply told them all I could remem- ber about Australia, praying there should be no Australian there—all about its labour party and emigration and universal service. I doubt if I remembered to mention free trade, but I said there were no Tories in 89 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS Australia, only Labour 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 "statesmanlike," 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. 90 ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE “Listen, Sir Harry," I said. "I've some- thing pretty important to say to you. You're a good fellow and I'm going to be frank. Where on earth did you get that poisonous rubbish you talked to-night?" 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 Maga- zine 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 prints 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 9I THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS any one 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 is 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 arrest. Nevertheless it's your duty, as a law-abiding citizen. Per- haps 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, Mr. 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.” Q2 ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE “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 Mashona 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 a 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, I want you to write a letter to your uncle. I've got to get in touch with the gov- ernment people some time before the 15th of June." He pulled his moustache. "That won't help you. This is Foreign Of- fice business and my uncle would have noth- ing to do with it. Besides, you'd never con- vince him. No, I'll go one better. I'll write to the permanent secretary at the Foreign 93 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 dic- tation. The gist of it was that if a man called Twisden (I thought I had better stick to that name) turned up before June 15th he was to treat him kindly. He said Twisden would prove his bona fides 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 Bullivant —down at his country cottage for Whitsun- tide. It's close to Artinswell on the Ken- net. 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 colour is the opposite of the clothes I destroyed this afternoon. Then show me a map of the neighbourhood and explain to me the lie of the land. Lastly, if the police come asking about me, just show them the car in the glen. If the other lot 94. CHAPTER V THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECTACLED ROADMAN 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 glen 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 be- yond it the road fell steeply down another glen to a plain 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 97 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS miles. In the meadows below the road, half a mile back, a cottage smoked, but it was the only sign of human life. Otherwise there was only the calling of plovers and the tink- ling of little streams. It was now about seven o'clock, and as I waited I heard once again the ominous beat in the air. Then I realised that my vantage ground might be in reality a trap. There was no cover for a tomtit in those bald green places. I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat grew louder. Then I saw an aeroplane com- ing 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 be- fore 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 whorls, and the next I knew it was speeding eastward again till it became a speck in the blue morning. 98 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 highroad for maybe ten miles, and far down it 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 shoot. 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 high- way. The car I had noticed was getting near- er, but it was still a long road 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 hill before me. Was it imagination, or did I see figures —one, two, perhaps more—moving in a glen beyond the stream? IOO ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN If you are hemmed in on all sides in a patch of land—there is only one chance of escape. You must stay in the patch, and let your ene- mies 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 in mud or lain below water or climbed the tall- est 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 hill bent and the white highway. Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap of stones, I found the Roadman. He had just arrived, and was wearily fling- ing down his hammer. He looked at me with a fishy eye and yawned. "Confoond the day I ever left the herdin'!" he said as if to the world at large. "There I was my ain maister. Now I'm a slave to the government, tethered to the roadside, wi' sair een, and a back like a suckle." He took up the hammer, struck a stone, IOI THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS dropped the implement with an oath, and put both hands to his ears. "Mercy on me! My heid's burstin'l" 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 canna dae't," he cried again. "The sur- veyor maun just report me. I'm for my bed." I asked him what was the trouble, though indeed that was clear enough. "The trouble is that I'm no sober. Last nicht my dochter, Merran, was waddit, and they danced till fower in the byre. Me and some ither chiels sat down to the drinkin'— and here I am. Peety that I ever lookit on the wine when it was red l’” . I agreed with him about bed. "It's easy speakin'," he moaned. "But I got a post-caird yestereen sayin' that the new ruad surveyor would be round the day. He'll come and he'll no find me, or else he'll find me fou, and either way I'm a done man. I'll awa back to my bed and say I'm no weel, but IO2 ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN I doot that'll no help me, for they ken my kind o' no-weelness." Then I had an inspiration. "Does the new surveyor know you?" I asked. "No him. He's just been a week at the job. He rins about in a wee motor-car, and wad speir the inside oot o' a whelk." "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 drunkard's smile. "You're the billy," he cried. "It'll be easy eneuch managed. I've finished that bing o' stanes, so you needna chap ony mair this fore- noon. Just take the barry, and wheel eneuch metal frae yon quarry doon the road to make anither bing the morn. "My name's Alexander Turnbull, and I've been seeven year at this trade, and twenty IO3 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS afore that herdin' on Leithen Water. My freends ca' me Ecky, and whiles Specky, for I wear glasses, bein' weak i' the sicht. Just you speak the surveyor fair and ca' 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 bedwards. 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 plowmen wear—and revealed a neck as brown as any tinker's. I rolled up my sleeves and there was a forearm which might have been a black- smith's, sunburnt and rough with old scars. I got my boots and trouser-legs all white from IO4 ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN the dust of the road, and hitched up my trous- ers, 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 Mr. Turnbull's Sunday ablutions might be expected to stop. I rubbed a good deal of dirt also into the sun- burn 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 had 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. In the hand- kerchief was a local paper tied with string and addressed to Mr. Turnbull—obviously meant to solace his midday leisure. I did up the bundle again, and put the paper conspicuously beside it. My boots did not satisfy me, but by dint of kicking among the stones I reduced them to IO5 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS the granite-like surface which marks a road- man'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 loosed the other so that my thick grey 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 remembered an old scout in Rhodesia, who had done many queer things in his day, once telling me that the se- cret 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 the roadmend- ing. I thought of the little white cottage as my home, I recalled the years I had spent herding on Leithen Water, I made my mind dwell lovingly on sleep in a box-bed and a Ioé ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN bottle of cheap whisky. Still nothing ap- peared 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, tak- ing no more notice of me than if I had been a mile-stone. On I went trundling my loads of stone, with the heavy step of the profes- sional. 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 Mr. Turnbull's monoto- nous toil. Suddenly a crisp voice spoke from the road, and looking up I saw a little Ford 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 Blackhopefoot, and have charge of the section from Laidlawbyres to the Riggs? 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 Io'7 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 gin- ger biscuits which I stowed in my trouser- pockets against emergencies. Then a herd passed with sheep, and disturbed me some- what by asking loudly, "What had become o' Specky?" "In bed wi' the colic," I replied, and the herd passed on. Just about midday a big car stole down the hill, glided past and drew up a hundred yards beyond. Its three occupants descended as if to stretch their legs, and sauntered toward Ine. 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 coun- tryman—a vet, perhaps, or a small farmer. Io8 ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN He was dressed in ill-cut knickerbockers, and the eye in his head was as bright and wary as a hen's. "'Morning," said the last. "That's a fine easy job o' 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 waur jobs and there's better," I said sententiously. "I wad rather hae yours, sittin' a' day on your hinderlands on thae cushions. It's you and your muckle cawrs that wreck my roads! If we a' had oor richts, you sud be made to mend 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. "Aye, in gude IO9 ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN dawn. But I had the sense to see my danger. I pretended to consider very deeply. "I wasna up very early," I said. "Ye see my dochter was merrit last nicht, and we keepit it up late. I opened the house-door about seeven—and there was naebody on the road then. Since I cam up here there has been just the baker and the Ruchill herd, be- sides you gentlemen." One of them gave me a cigar, which I smelled gingerly and stuck in Turnbull's bundle. They got into their car and were out of sight in three minutes. My heart leaped with an enormous relief, but I went on wheeling my stones. It was as well, for ten minutes later the car returned, one of the occupants waving a hand to me. . These 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 Mr. Turn- bull indoors, but if he appeared on the scene III THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 about 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 dark- ness. 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 occu- pant wanted to light a cigarette. It was a touring-car, with the tonneau full of an 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 offence 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. "Marmie" was a familiar figure, I under- stood, at balls and polo-weeks and country II 2 ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN houses. He was an adroit scandalmonger, and would crawl a mile on his belly to any- thing 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 pattered about his duchesses till the snobbery of the creature turned me sick. I asked a man afterwards why nobody kicked him, and was told that Englishmen reverenced the weaker sex. Anyhow there he was now, nattily dressed, in a fine new car, obviously on his way to visit some of his fine friends. A sudden daftness took me, and in a second I had jumped into the tonneau and had him by the shoulder. "Hello, 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 Rho- desia, you remember?” III.3 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS “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. Give me that coat of yours. That cap, too." He did as he was bid, for he was blind with terror. Over my dirty trousers and vul- gar 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 Mr. 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 Mar- mie'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 II.4. THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS As I sat on the hillside, watching the tail- light dwindle, I reflected on the various kinds of crime I had now sampled. Contrary to general belief I was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless im- postor, and a highwayman with a marked taste for expensive motor-cars. I 16 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPs good fortune. Somehow the first success gave me a feeling that I should pull through. My chief trouble was that I was desperately hun- gry. 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 emphasised the aching void—with the memory of all the good food I had thought so little of in London. There were Paddock's crisp sausages and fra- grant 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 ham that stood on the cold table, for which my soul lusted. My thoughts hovered over all the varieties of mor- tal edible, and finally settled on a porter- house steak and a quart 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 I 18 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 sky- line, 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 pursuit streaming up the hill at the top of the glen on a hopelessly false scent. I had be- fore me a choice of routes, 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 gin- ger 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 I2O ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST 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 sepa- rated 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 evi- dently called in local herds or gamekeepers. They hallooed at the sight of me, and I waved my hand. Two dived into the glen and be- gan to climb my ridge, while the others kept their own 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 I2I THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 re- solved to get out of this tangle of glens to the pocket of moor 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 Afrikander 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 highroad 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 feath- er of trees. In the dike by the roadside was I22 ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST a gate, from which a grass-grown track led over the first wave of the moor. I jumped the dike and followed it, and after a few hun- dred 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 cover. I did not follow the road, but the burn- side 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, look- ing 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 I23 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS an overgrown garden. Then I was among young hay, and very soon had come to the edge of a plantation of windblown firs. 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 blackgame, which are not usually garden birds, rose at my approach. The house be- fore me was the ordinary moorland farm, with a more pretentious white-washed wing added. Attached to this wing was a glass verandah, and through the glass I saw the face of an elderly gentleman meekly watching me. I stalked over the border of coarse hill gravel and entered the verandah door. Within was a pleasant room, glass on one side, and on the other a mass of books. More I24 ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST 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-hole desk in the middle, and seated at it, with some papers and open volumes before him, was the benevo- lent old gentleman. His face was round and shiny, like Mr. 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 min- utes 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 stut- tered. "You seem in a hurry, my friend," he said slowly. I nodded towards the window. It gave a I25 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 scrutinised 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 to 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 smelled of chem- icals 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 126 ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST 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 search- ing 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 re- constructing my breakfast. Bacon and eggs would content me, but I wanted the better part of a flitch of bacon and half a hundred eggs. And then, while my mouth was water- ing in anticipation, there was a click and the door stood open. I emerged into the sunlight to find the mas- ter of the house sitting in a deep armchair in the room he called his study, and regarding me with curious eyes. "Have they gone?" I asked. "They have gone. I convinced them that you had crossed the hill. I do not choose that 127 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS bit of luck since I came on shore at Leith. 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 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, old boy! Ned Ainslie'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, guv'nor," I said in a real beggar's whine. "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 showed my hunger in my face, for he signalled to one of the men in the door- way. A bit of cold pie was brought and a glass of beer, and I wolfed them down like a pig—or rather like Ned Ainslie, for I was keeping up my character. In the middle of my meal he spoke suddenly to me in German, I3O ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST 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 ship at Leith a week ago, and was making my way overland to my brother at Wigton. I had run short of cash —I hinted vaguely at a spree—and I was pret- ty well on my uppers when I had come on a hole in a hedge, and, looking through, had seen a big motor-car lying in a 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 no- body 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 In C. “They can have the money back," I cried, "for a fat lot of good it's done me. Those I31 • THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS perishers are all down on a poor man. Now if it had been you, guv'nor, 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 Ainslie, and I never heard of any one called Hannay in my born days. I'd sooner have the police than you with your Hannays and your monkey- faced pistol tricks. No, guv'nor, I don't mean that. I'm much obliged to you for the grub. I'll thank you to let me go now the coast's clear." It was obvious that he was badly puzzled. You see he had never seen me, and my appear- ance 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.” I32 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS The store-room was a damp chamber in what had been the old farmhouse. 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 shut- tered. I made out by groping that the walls were lined with boxes and barrels and sacks of some heavy stuff. The whole place smelled of mould and disuse. My jailers turned the key in the door, and I could hear them shift- ing their feet as they stood on guard outside. I sat down in the chilly darkness in 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 roadman, and they would remember me, for I was in the same rig. What was a roadman doing twenty miles from his beat, pursued by the police? A question or two would put them on the track. Probably they had seen Mr. Turnbull, prob- ably Marmie too; most likely they could link me up with Sir Harry, and then the whole thing would be crystal clear. What chance I34. THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 lock with a 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 latter and the sacks seemed to be full of things like dog-biscuits that smelled of cin- namon. But, as I circumnavigated the room, I found a handle in the wall which seemed worth investigating. It 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 pur- chase on the handle by looping my braces round it. Presently the thing gave with a crash which I thought would bring in my warders to inquire. I waited for a bit and 136 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it. With one of these bricks I could blow the house to smithereens. I had used the stuff in Rhodesia and knew its power. But the trou- ble 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 only 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 favour 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 decid- ed me. It was about the beastliest moment of my life, for I'm no good at these cold-blooded 138 ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST resolutions. Still I managed to rake up the pluck to set my teeth and choke back the hor- rid doubts that flooded in on me. I simply shut off my mind and pretended I was doing an experiment as simple as Guy Fawkes fire- works. I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of feet of fuse. Then I took a quarter of a lento- nite brick, and buried it near the door, below one of the sacks in 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 ser- vants and about an acre of the surrounding country. There was also the risk that the de- tonation might set off the other bricks in the cupboard, for I had forgotten most that I knew about lentonite. But it didn't do to be- gin 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 I39 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 ham- mered my brain into a pulp. Something dropped on me, catching the point of my left shoulder. And then I became unconscious. My stupor can scarcely have lasted be- yond a few seconds. I felt myself being choked by thick yellow fumes, and struggled out of the debris to my feet. Somewhere be- hind me I felt fresh air. The jambs of the window had fallen, and through the ragged rent the smoke was pouring out to the sum- mer noon. I stepped over the broken lintel, and found myself standing in a yard in a dense I4O THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS I had no time to linger, since this mill was obviously a bad hiding-place. Any one look- ing for me would naturally follow the lade, and I made certain the search would begin as soon as they found that my body was not in the store-room. 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 InOOT. I crawled down the broken ladder, scatter- ing chaff behind me to cover my footsteps. I did the same on the mill floor, and on the threshold where 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 build- ings 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. I42 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 dovecot, and for one horrid moment I thought 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 roof-top. Thirst 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-lade. 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 I44 ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST 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 rid- ing 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—firs mostly, with a few ashes and beeches. On the dovecot I was almost on a level with the tree-tops, and could see what lay beyond. The wood was not solid, but only a ring, and inside was an oval of green turf, 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 any one were watching an aero- I45 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS plane descending here, he would think it had gone over the hill beyond the trees. As the place was on the top of a rise in the midst of a big amphitheatre any observer from any di- rection would conclude it had passed out of view behind the hill. Only a man very close at hand would realise 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 discov- ered the truth, but only herds went there, and herds do not carry spy-glasses. 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 this secret conning-tower to rake our water- ways. 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 146 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS attempt would probably be futile. I was pret- ty certain that there would be some kind of defence round the house, so I went through the wood on hands and knees, feeling care- fully 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 further 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, in the little glen from which the mill-lade flowed. Ten minutes later my face was deep 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 accursed dwelling. CHAPTER VII THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN SAT down on a hill-top and took stock of my position. I wasn't feeling very hap- py, for my natural thankfulness at my escape was clouded by my severe bodily discomfort. Those lentonite fumes had fairly poisoned me, and the baking hours on the dovecot hadn't helped matters. I had a crushing head- ache, and felt as sick as a cat. Also my shoul- der 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 Mr. Turnbull's cot- tage, recover my garments and especially Scudder's note-book, 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 Bul- livant, the better. I didn't see how I could I49 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPs 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. Sir Har- ry's map had given me the lie of the land, and all I had to do was to 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 this 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 lie 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. I 50 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN Altogether I was no spectacle for God-fear- ing citizens to see on a highroad. Very soon after daybreak I made an at- tempt to clean myself in a hill burn, and then approached a herd's cottage, for I was feel- ing the need of food. The herd was away from home, and his wife was alone, with no neighbour 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 ax 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 bad- ly that I would not let her touch it. I don't know what she took me for—a repentant burg- lar, perhaps; for when I wanted to pay her for the milk and tendered a sovereign, which was the smallest coin I had, she shook her head and said something about "giving it to them I 5I THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 plaid round my shoulders and when I left that cot- tage I was the living image of the kind of Scotsman you see in the illustrations to Burns's poems. But at any rate I was more or less clad. It was as well, for the weather changed be- fore 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 man- aged to sleep till nightfall, waking very cramped and wretched with my shoulder gnawing like a toothache. I ate the oat-cake and cheese the old wife had given me, and set out again just before the darkening. I pass 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, - I 52 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN 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 Mr. Turnbull's door. The mist lay close and thick, and from the cottage I could not see the highroad. Mr. Turnbull himself opened to me—sober and something more than sober. He was primly dressed in an ancient but well-tended 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 recognise me. "Whae are ye that comes stravaigin' here on the Sabbath mornin'?" he asked. I had lost all count of the days. So the Sabbath was the reason for his strange de- COTUIII]. My head was swimming so wildly that I could not frame a coherent answer. But he recognised me and he saw that I was ill. I 53 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS “Hae ye got my specs?" he asked. I fetched them out of my trousers pocket and gave him them. "Ye'll hae come for your jacket and west- coat," he said. "Come in, bye. Losh, man, ye're terrible dune i' the legs. Haud 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 com- bined to make me feel pretty bad. Before I knew, Mr. 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 road- man. 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 I54 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN 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 that 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 ecclesias- tical spree, I gathered. One day he produced my belt from a lock- fast drawer. "There's a terrible heap o' siller in't," he said. "Ye'd better count it to see it's a' there." He never even inquired my name. I asked him if anybody had been around making in- quiries subsequent to my spell at the road- making. "Aye, there was a man in a motor-cawr. He I 55 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN thought from our leavetaking that we had parted in disgust. Hislop was a cheery soul, who chattered all the way over the pass and down the sunny vale of Annan. 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 plaid and my old hat, as I have said, gave me a fine theatrical Scots 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 had 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 spund of larks and curlews and falling streams. But I had no mind for the summer, and little for Hislop's conversation, for as the fateful 15th of June grew near I was over- weighted with the hopeless difficulties of my enterprise. I got some dinner in a humble Moffat pub- lic-house, and walked the two miles to the I 57 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN 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 beeches and then into a shallow valley with the green backs of downs peeping over the distant trees. After Scotland the air smelled heavy and flat, but infinitely sweet, for the limes and chestnuts and lilac-bushes were domes of blossom. Presently I came to a bridge, below which a clear, slow stream flowed between snowy beds of water-butter- cups. A little above it was a mill; and the lasher made a pleasant cool sound in the scent- ed 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 Laurie." A fisherman came up from the waterside, 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 flan- nels 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 I 59 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN cleft jaw and broad, lined brow and the firm folds of cheek, and began to think that here at last was an ally worth having. His whim- sical blue eyes seemed to go very deep. Suddenly he frowned. "I call it disgrace- ful," 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 fisher- man. 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 Ine. "Come this way, sir," he said, and he led I6 I "THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 patent shoes. "Sir Walter thought as how Mr. Reg- gie's things would fit you, sir," said the butler. "He keeps some clothes 'ere, for he comes regular on the week-ends. There's a bath- room next door, and I've prepared a 'ot bath. Dinner in 'alf an hour, sir. You'll 'ear 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 beggardom 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, hag- gard brown fellow with a fortnight's ragged beard and dust in ears and eyes, collarless, vulgarly shirted, with shapeless old tweed clothes and boots that had not been cleaned 162 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN 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 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 respect- able and established and secure, the embodi- ment of law and government and all the con- ventions—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 am more obliged to you than I can say, but I'm bound to make things clear," I said, - 163 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS “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 but railway sand- wiches. Sir Walter did me proud, for we drank a good champagne and had some un- common fine port afterwards. It made me al- most hysterical to be sitting there, waited on by a footman and a sleek butler, and remem- ber 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 in the Zam- besi 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 study for coffee, a jolly room full of books and trophies and untidi- ness 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. 164 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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, Mr. Han- nay.” - My day as roadman excited him a bit. He made me describe the two fellows in the car very closely, and seemed to be raking back in his memory. He grew merry again when he heard of the fate of that ass, Jopley. But the old man in the moorland house solemnised 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 wild fowl! And you dynamited his hermit- age, after he had saved you from the police? Spirited piece of work, that!" Presently I reached the end of my wan- derings. He got up slowly and looked down at me from the hearth-rug. "You may dismiss the police from your I66 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN 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 31st of May." "But he had been dead a week by then." "The letter was written and posted on the 23rd. He evidently did not anticipate an immediate decease. His communications usu- ally took a week to reach me, for they were 167 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS sent under cover to Spain and then to New- castle. He had a mania, you know, for con- cealing 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 15th 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, Mr. 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. 168 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN “Now let us have the little note-book," said Sir Walter. It took us a good hour to work through it. I explained the cypher, and he was jolly quick at picking it up. He amended my reading of it on several points, but I had been fairly cor- rect, 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 to-morrow. How the devil can it have got known? That is ugly enough in itself. But all this about war and the Black Stone—it reads like some wild melodrama. If only I had more confi- dence 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 ex- ample, made him see red. Jews and the high finance." "The Black Stone," he repeated. "Der 169 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS Schwarze stein. It's like a penny novelette. And all this stuff about Karolides. That is the weak part of the tale, for I happen to know that the virtuous Karolides is likely to outlast us both. There is no state in Eu- rope 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, Hannay, 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 pays by piece-work her blackguards are not likely to stick at a murder or two. They want our naval dispositions for their col- lection at the Marinamt; but they will be pigeon-holed—nothing more." Just then the butler entered the room. "There's a trunk-call from London, Sir 170 THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN Walter. It's Mr. 'Eath, and he wants to speak to you personally." My host went off to the telephone. He returned in five minutes with a whitish face. "I apologise to the shade of Scudder," he said. "Karolides was shot dead this even- ing at a few minutes after seven!” 171 COMING OF THE BLACK STONE 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 Karolides will play the deuce in the chancellories of Europe." After breakfast he asked me if I could drive a car. "Well, you'll be my chauffeur to-day and wear 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 over-worked 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 going. 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 I75 COMING OF THE BLACK STONE 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 some- thing. 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 Jermyn Street. I was no longer hungry, and let several courses pass untasted. I drank the best part of a bottle of Burgundy, but it did nothing to cheer me. An abominable restlessness had taken posses- sion of me. Here was I, a very ordinary fel- low 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 179 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 that 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 Jermyn Street and at the corner of Duke Street passed 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 Mr. Marma- duke Jopley. He saw me and stopped short. "By God, the murderer!" he cried. "Here, you fellows, hold him! That's Han- nay, the man who did the Portland Place mur- der!" He gripped me by the arm and the others crowded around. I wasn't looking for any trouble, but my ill temper made me play the fool. A policeman came up, and I should have told him the 18O THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS “You’ve got to come along of me, young man," said the policeman. "I saw you strike that gentleman crool 'ard. You began it, too, for he wasn't doing nothing. I 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, floored 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 be- hind 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 St. James' 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 few people about and no one tried to stop me. I was staking all on getting to Queen Anne's Gate. 182 COMING OF THE BLACK STONE 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 rung be- fore the door opened. "I must see Sir Walter," I panted. "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 en- gaged, 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 tele- phone 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 183 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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-hook and looked up the number of his house. We were con- nected 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 to-night. Will you leave a mes- sage, sir?” - I rang off and sat down numbly in 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 I marched boldly to the door of that back room and en- tered 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 186 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS else you might have looked more closely, but it was natural for him to be here, and that put you all to sleep." Then the Frenchman spoke, very slowly and in good English. "The young man is right. His psychology is good. Our enemies have not been foolish!" "But I don't see," went on Winstanley. "Their object was to get these dispositions without our knowing it. Now it only re- quired one of us to mention to Alloa our meet- ing to-night for the whole fraud to be ex- posed." Sir Walter laughed drily. "The selection of Alloa 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 could not carry away several pages of figures and strange names in his head.” - 190 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 per- sonally his intelligence. We in France know something of the breed. There is still a chance, mes amis. 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." Royer'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? I92 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS Then suddenly I had an inspiration. "Where is Scudder's book?" I asked Sir , Walter. "Quick, man, I remember some- thing in it.” - He unlocked the drawer 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 Io.17 p.m." The Admiralty man was looking at me as if he thought I had gone mad. "Don't you see it's a clue," I cried. "Scud- der knew where these fellows laired—he knew where they were going to leave the country; though he kept the name to himself. To-mor- row was the day, and it was some place where high tide was at 10. 17." "They may have gone to-night," some one said. "Not them. 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?” I93 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS Whittaker brightened up. "It's a chance," he said. "Let's go over to the Admiralty." We got into two of the waiting motor-cars —all but Sir Walter, who went off to Scotland Yard—to "mobilise MacGillivray," so he said. We marched through empty corridors and big bare 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 li- brary the Admiralty Tide Tables. I sat at the desk and the others stood round, for somehow or other I had got charge of this outfit. It was no good. There were hundreds of entries, and as far as I could see 10. 17 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 I94 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 10. 17 P. M. Why was high tide important? If it was a harbour it must be some little place where the tide mattered, or else it was a heavy- draught 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 harbour. So it must be some little harbour where the tide was important, or perhaps no harbour at all. But if it was a little port I couldn't see what the steps signified. There were no sets of staircases at any harbour that I had ever seen. It must be some place which a particular stair- case identified, and where the tide was full at 10. 17. On the whole it seemed to me that the place must be a bit of open coast. But the staircases kept puzzling me. I95 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS Then I went back to 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 harbours. And not from the Channel or the west coast or the north 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 wasn't any kind of Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a kind of in- stinct 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 guesses pretty right. So I set out all my conclusions on a bit of Admiralty paper. They ran like this: 196 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS FAIRLY CERTAIN. (i) Place where there are several sets of stairs: one that matters distinguished by having thirty-nine steps. (2) Full tide at 10.17 P-M- Leaving shore only pos- sible at full tide. - (3) Steps not dock-steps and so place probably not harbour. (4) No regular night steamer at 10.17. Means of transport must be tramp (unlikely), yacht or fishing-boat. There my reasoning stopped. I made an- other list, which I headed "Guessed," but I was just as sure of the one as the other. GUESSED. (1) Place not harbour but open coast. (2) Boat small—trawler, yacht or launch. (3) Place somewhere on east coast between Cromer and Dover. It struck me as odd that I should be sit- ting at that desk with a Cabinet Minister, a Field Marshal, two high Government officials, and 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. 197 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS Sir Walter had joined us, and presently MacGillivray arrived. He had sent out in- structions to watch the ports and railway sta- tions for the three gentlemen whom I had de- scribed to Sir Walter. Not that he or any- body 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 has thirty-nine steps. I think it's a piece of open coast with biggish cliffs some- where between the Wash and the Channel. Also it's a place where full tide is at 10. 17 to- morrow night." Then an idea struck me. "Is there no In- spector 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. 198 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS Wbout one in the morning the coastguard man arrived. He was a fine old fellow with the look of a naval officer, and was desperate- ly 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 places you know 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 do 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 you 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 gentlemen get a lost ball.” I99 CHAPTER X VARIOUS PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA PINK and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the light- ship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a bell-buoy. A couple of miles further south and much nearer the shore a small de- stroyer was anchored. Scaife, MacGillivray's man, who had been in the navy, knew the boat and told me her name and her commander's, 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 Ruff. I walked with him along the sands, and sat down in a nook of 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 the sea-gulls. 2O2 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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 Scaife seems to have penetrated to the back door of the house, pre- tending he was an agent for sewing machines. Only three servants were kept, a cook, a parlour-maid, and a housemaid, and they were just the sort that you would find in a respect- able middle-class household. The cook was not the gossiping kind, and had pretty soon shut the door in his face, but Scaife 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 Scaife's telescope, and before lunch went for a walk along the Ruff. 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 2O4 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS archaeologist of that horrible moorland 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 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 white ensign. So Scaife and I went down to the harbour and hired a boatman for an afternoon's fish- ing. I spent a warm and peaceful afternoon. We caught between us about twenty pounds of cod and lythe, 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 206 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS we rowed 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 de- pended 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 Ger- mans 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 won- dered if the man last night had seen that I recognised him. Somehow I did not think he had, and to that I clung. But the whole business had never seemed so difficult as that afternoon when by all calculations I should have been rejoicing in assured 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 208 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA thought I would put in an hour or two watch- ing Trafalgar Lodge. I found a place further 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 colours in the scarf round his mid- dle. They played with tremendous zest, like two city gents who wanted hard exercise to open their pores. 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 salver. I rubbed my eyes and asked myself if I was not the most immortal fool on earth. Mystery and darkness had hung about the men who hunted me over the Scotch moors in aeroplane and motor-car, and notably about that in- fernal antiquarian. It was easy enough to connect these folk with the knife that pinned Scudder to the floor, and with fell designs on the world's peace. But here were two 209 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS guileless citizens, taking their innocuous exer- cise, and soon about to go indoors to a hum- drum dinner, where they would talk of mar- ket 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 lo 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 chaffing him, and their chaff sounded horribly Eng- lish. 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 lather,” he said. “This will bring down my weight and my handicap, Bob. I'll take you on to-morrow and give you a stroke a hole.” You couldn't find any- thing much more English than that. They all went into the house, and left me feeling a precious idiot. I had been barking 2IO PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA 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 rhododendron. It was simply impossible to believe that these three hearty fellows were anything but what they seemed—three ordinary, game-playing, sub- urban 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 in with Scudder's notes; and half a mile off was ly- ing a steam yacht with at least one German officer. I thought of Karolides lying dead and all Europe trembling on the edge of an earthquake, and the men I had left behind me in London, who were waiting anxiously on 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 for- ward as if I had no doubts, and if I was going 2 II THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS to make a fool of myself to do it handsomely. Never in my life have I faced a job with greater disinclination. I would rather in my then mind have walked into a den of anar- chists, each with his Browning handy, or faced a charging lion with a popgun, than enter the 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 Peter Pienaar. I have quoted Peter already in this narrative. He was the best scout I ever knew, and be- fore he had turned respectable he had been pretty often on the windy side of the law, when he had been wanted badly by the au- thorities. Peter once discussed with me the question of disguises, and he had a theory which struck me at the time. He said, bar- ring absolute certainties like finger-prints, mere physical traits were very little use for identification if the fugitive really knew his business. He laughed at things like dyed hair and false beards and such childish follies. 2 I2 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA of steamers making for the Thames. The whole scene was so peaceful and ordinary that I got more dashed in spirits every second. It took all my resolution to stroll towards Traf- algar Lodge about half-past nine. On the way I got a piece of solid comfort from the sight of a greyhound that was swing- ing along at a nursemaid's heels. He remind- ed me of a dog I used to have in Rhodesia, and of the time when I took him hunting with me in the Pali hills. We were after rhebok, the dun kind, 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. After- wards I found out how it managed it. Against the grey rock of the kopjes it showed no more than a crow against a thundercloud. It didn't need to run away; all it had to do was to 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. 215 CHAPTER X VARIOUS PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA PINK and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the light- ship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a bell-buoy. A couple of miles further south and much nearer the shore a small de- stroyer was anchored. Scaife, MacGillivray's man, who had been in the navy, knew the boat and told me her name and her commander's, 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 Ruff. I walked with him along the sands, and sat down in a nook of 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 the sea-gulls. 2O2 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA in and planted with bushes, whence the stair- cases descended to the beach. I saw Trafalgar Lodge very plainly, a red-brick villa with a verandah, a tennis lawn behind, and in front the ordinary seaside flower-garden full of marguerites and scraggy geraniums. There was a flagstaff from which an enormous union jack hung limply in the still air. Presently I observed some one 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. Some- times 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 de- cent commonplace dwelling was not what I had expected. The man might be the bald 2O5 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS archaeologist of that horrible moorland 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 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 white ensign. So Scaife and I went down to the harbour and hired a boatman for an afternoon's fish- ing. I spent a warm and peaceful afternoon. We caught between us about twenty pounds of cod and lythe, 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 - 206 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA thought I would put in an hour or two watch- ing Trafalgar Lodge. I found a place further 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 colours in the scarf round his mid- dle. They played with tremendous zest, like two city gents who wanted hard exercise to open their pores. 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 salver. I rubbed my eyes and asked myself if I was not the most immortal fool on earth. Mystery and darkness had hung about the men who hunted me over the Scotch moors in aeroplane and motor-car, and notably about that in- fernal antiquarian. It was easy enough to connect these folk with the knife that pinned Scudder to the floor, and with fell designs on the world's peace. But here were two 209 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS guileless citizens, taking their innocuous exer- cise, and soon about to go indoors to a hum- drum dinner, where they would talk of mar- ket 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 lo 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 chaffing him, and their chaff sounded horribly Eng- lish. 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 lather," he said. "This will bring down my weight and my handicap, Bob. I'll take you on to-morrow and give you a stroke a hole." You couldn't find any- thing much more English than that. They all went into the house, and left me feeling a precious idiot. I had been barking 2IO THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS to make a fool of myself to do it handsomely. Never in my life have I faced a job with greater disinclination. I would rather in my then mind have walked into a den of anar- chists, each with his Browning handy, or faced a charging lion with a popgun, than enter the 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 Peter Pienaar. I have quoted Peter already in this narrative. He was the best scout I ever knew, and be- fore he had turned respectable he had been pretty often on the windy side of the law, when he had been wanted badly by the au- thorities. Peter once discussed with me the question of disguises, and he had a theory which struck me at the time. He said, bar- ring absolute certainties like finger-prints, mere physical traits were very little use for identification if the fugitive really knew his business. He laughed at things like dyed hair and false beards and such childish follies. 2 I 2 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA 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—really 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 recognised 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 I had had that day. Peter had been a wise old bird, and these fellows I was after were about the pick of the aviary. 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 Pe- ter's, which had helped me when I had been 213 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPs a roadman. "If you are playing a part, you will never keep it up unless you convince yourself that you are it." That would explain the game of tennis. Those chaps didn't need to act, they just turned a handle and passed 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 further north, beyond the line of the villas. On the little, trim, newly made roads I met people in 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 Ari- adne and on the destroyer away to the south, and beyond the Cock sands the bigger lights 2I4. PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA of steamers making for the Thames. The whole scene was so peaceful and ordinary that I got more dashed in spirits every second. It took all my resolution to stroll towards Traf- algar Lodge about half-past nine. On the way I got a piece of solid comfort from the sight of a greyhound that was swing- ing along at a nursemaid's heels. He remind- ed me of a dog I used to have in Rhodesia, and of the time when I took him hunting with me in the Pali hills. We were after rhebok, the dun kind, 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. After- wards I found out how it managed it. Against the grey rock of the kopjes it showed no more than a crow against a thundercloud. It didn't need to run away; all it had to do was to 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. 215 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS They were quietly absorbed into the land- scape. I was on the right track, and I jammed that down in my mind and vowed never to for- get it. The last word was with Peter Pienaar. Scaife's men would be posted now, but there was no sign of a soul. The house stood as open as a market-place for anybody to ob- serve. A three-foot railing separated it from the cliff road; 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 fool on earth, I opened the gate and rang the bell. A man of my sort, who has travelled about the world in 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 sufficiently at my ease with people like Sir Walter and the men I had met the night be- fore. I can't explain why, but it is a fact. But what fellows like me don't understand is the 216 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA 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 mamba. When a trim parlour-maid opened the door, I could hardly find my voice. I asked for Mr. Appleton and was ushered in. My plan had been to walk straight into the dining-room and by a sudden appearance wake in the men that start of recognition which would confirm my theory. But when I found myself in that neat hall the place mas- tered me. There were the golf-clubs and ten- nis-rackets, the straw hats and caps, the rows of gloves, the sheaf of walking-sticks which you will find in ten thousand British homes. A stack of neatly folded coats and waterproofs covered the top of an old oak chest; there was a grandfather clock ticking; and some pol- ished brass warming-pans on the walls, and a barometer, and a print of Chiltern winning the St. Leger. The place was as orthodox as an Anglican Church. When the maid asked me 217 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS for my name I gave it automatically, and was 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 mantel- piece and I could have sworn they were Eng- lish 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. He was in 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 col- ours of some club or school. The old man's manner was perfect. "Mr. Hannay?" he said, hesitatingly. "Did you wish to see me? One moment, you fellows, 218 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS 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, Mr. Hannay, I suppose I should be angry, to show my inno- cence, 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 confound- edly genuine. My heart went into my boots, and my first impulse was to apologise and clear out. But I told myself I must see it through, even though I was to be the laugh- ing-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 hunt- 222 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA ed 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 Ainslie into another pair, why I, who have a good memory and reason- able powers of observation, could find no sat- isfaction. 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 pic- ture of an old lady in a bib above the mantel- piece, I could see nothing to connect them with the moorland desperadoes. There was a silver cigarette-box beside me and I saw that it had been won by Percival Appleton, Esq., of the St. Bede's Club, in a golf tournament. I had to keep firm hold of Peter Pienaar to prevent myself bolting out of that house. "Well," said the old man politely, "are you reassured by your scrutiny, sir? I hope you'll find it consistent with your duty to drop this ridiculous business. I make no com- plaint, but you see how annoying it must be to respectable people.” 223 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA Mr. 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 in- vitation at the club. The whole business had mesmerised 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 flooding the cliffs and sea with a great tide of yellow light. There was moonshine, too, 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 club-house. 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 rank 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. 225 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS It was not that they looked different; they were different. I clung desperately to the words of Peter Pienaar. Then something awoke me. The old man laid down his hand to light a 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 moorland farm with the pistols of his servants behind Ine. 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 226 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA was the murderer. Now I saw cruelty and ruthlessness where before I had only seen good-humour. His knife I made certain had skewered Scudder to the floor. His kind had put the bullet in Karolides. The plump man's features seemed to dislimn 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 Alloa of the night before; perhaps not; it didn't mat- ter. 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 im- agine 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 a bird's. I went on playing, and every second a greater hate welled up in 227 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS my heart. It almost choked me, and I couldn't answer when my partner spoke. Only a little longer could I endure their company. "Whew! Bob! Look at the time," said the old man. "You'd better think about catch- ing your train. Bob's got to go to town to- night," he added, turning to me. The voice rang now as false as hell. I looked at the clock and it was nearly half- past ten. "I am afraid you must put off your jour- ney," I said. "O damn!" said the young man. "I thought you had dropped that rot. I've sim- ply got to go. You can have my address and I'll give any security you like." "No," I said, "you must stay." At that I think they must have realised that the game was desperate. Their only chance had been to convince me that I was playing the fool, and that had failed. But the old man spoke again. "I'll go bail for my nephew. That ought to content you, Mr. Hannay." Was it fancy, 228 PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA 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." Three weeks later, as all the world knows, we went to war. I joined the New Army the first week, and owing to my Matabele expe- rience got a captain's commission straight off. But I had done my best service, I think, be- fore I put on khaki. THE END 231 . . . . . .” ‘’’, a rº 451 on 5 ~ |||||| - THE BORROWER WILL BE CHARGED An overdue. FEE if this BOOK is Not RETURNED TO THE LIBRARY on of BEFORE THE LAST DATE stamped BELOW. Non-RECEIPT OF OVERDUE NOTICES DOES NOT ExEMPT THE BORROWER FROM OVERDUE FEES. - -vº PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA 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, “der bott, der bott!” As it spoke I saw two of my fel- lows emerge on the moonlit lawn. The young dark man leaped for the win- dow, 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 sped on over the road towards the railed entrance to the beach stairs. One man followed him but he had no chance. The gate locked behind the fugitive, and I stood star- 229 THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS ing, 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, far below the ground, and through the window I saw a cloud of chalky dust pouring out of the shaft of the stairway. Some one switched on the light. The old man was looking at me with blaz- ing eyes. “He is safe!” he cried. “You cannot fol- low him in time. He is gone. He has tri- umphed! Der Schwarzestein ist in der Sie- geskrone.” There was more in those eyes than any com- mon 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 realised for the first time the ter- rible thing I had been up against. This man was more than a spy; in his foul way he had been a patriot. 230 * --~~~~- -*-º- ****--••••••••••• • • • • •æ， æ ae- → • ------- - -， -：-， --★ → — • • • • • • • • → → → → → → — • • • •- - - - - - *-- → ← → • • • • •¿•）›） - ~~~~- -*---- - ------- -------- - ------ ""|-