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+*****The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Thirty-Nine Steps*****
+#1 in our series by John Buchan
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+The Thirty-nine Steps
+
+by John Buchan
+
+June, 1996  [Etext #558]
+[Date last updated: May 14, 2004]
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
+
+by JOHN BUCHAN
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+THOMAS ARTHUR NELSON
+
+(LOTHIAN AND BORDER HORSE)
+
+My Dear Tommy,
+
+You and I have long cherished an affection for that
+elemental type of tale which Americans call the
+'dime novel' and which we know as the 'shocker'--the
+romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and
+march just inside the borders of the possible.  During
+an illness last winter I exhausted my store of those
+aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for
+myself.  This little volume is the result, and I should
+like to put your name on it in memory of our long
+friendship, in the days when the wildest fictions are so
+much less improbable than the facts.
+
+J.B.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+1.   The Man Who Died
+2.   The Milkman Sets Out on his Travels
+3.   The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper
+4.   The Adventure of the Radical Candidate
+5.   The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman
+6.   The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist
+7.   The Dry-Fly Fisherman
+8.   The Coming of the Black Stone
+9.   The Thirty-Nine Steps
+10.  Various Parties Converging on the Sea
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+The Man Who Died
+
+
+I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon
+pretty well disgusted with life.  I had been three months in the Old
+Country, and was fed up with it.  If anyone had told me a year ago
+that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at
+him; but there was the fact.  The weather made me liverish, the talk
+of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough
+exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-
+water that has been standing in the sun.  'Richard Hannay,' I kept
+telling myself, 'you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and
+you had better climb out.'
+
+It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building
+up those last years in Bulawayo.  I had got my pile--not one of the
+big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds
+of ways of enjoying myself.  My father had brought me out from
+Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so
+England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on
+stopping there for the rest of my days.
+
+But from the first I was disappointed with it.  In about a week I
+was tired of seeing sights, 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 probably explains things.  Plenty of
+people invited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much
+interested in me.  They would fling me a question or two about
+South Africa, and then get on their own affairs.  A lot of Imperialist
+ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand
+and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of
+all.  Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb,
+with enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all
+day.  I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld,
+for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom.
+
+That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about
+investments to give my mind something to work on, and on my
+way home I turned into my club--rather a pot-house, which took
+in Colonial members.  I had a long drink, and read the evening
+papers.  They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was
+an article about Karolides, the Greek Premier.  I rather fancied the
+chap.  From all accounts he seemed the one big man in the show;
+and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be
+said for most of them.  I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly
+in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and
+one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and
+Armageddon.  I remember wondering if I could get a job in those
+parts.  It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might
+keep a man from yawning.
+
+About six o'clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Cafe Royal,
+and turned into a music-hall.  It was a silly show, all capering
+women and monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long.  The night
+was fine and clear as I walked back to the flat I had hired near
+Portland Place.  The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy
+and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to
+do.  These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had
+some interest in life that kept them going.  I gave half-a-crown to a
+beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer.  At Oxford
+Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow.  I would
+give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if
+nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape.
+
+My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langham Place.
+There was a common staircase, with a porter and a liftman at the
+entrance, but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and
+each flat was quite shut off from the others.  I hate servants on the
+premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came in by the
+day.  He arrived before eight o'clock every morning and used to
+depart at seven, for I never dined at home.
+
+I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at
+my elbow.  I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance
+made me start.  He was a slim man, with a short brown beard and
+small, gimlety blue eyes.  I recognized him as the occupant of a flat
+on the top floor, with whom I had passed the time of day on the
+stairs.
+
+'Can I speak to you?' he said.  'May I come in for a minute?'  He
+was steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was 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.
+
+'Is the door locked?' he asked feverishly, and he fastened the
+chain with his own hand.
+
+'I'm very sorry,' he said humbly.  'It's a mighty liberty, but you
+looked the kind of man who would understand.  I've had you in my
+mind all this week when things got troublesome.  Say, will you do
+me a good turn?'
+
+'I'll listen to you,' I said.  'That's all I'll promise.'  I was getting
+worried by the antics of this nervous little chap.
+
+There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he
+filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda.  He drank it off in three
+gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.
+
+'Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight.  You see, I happen at
+this moment to be dead.'
+
+I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.
+
+'What does it feel like?' I asked.  I was pretty certain that I had to
+deal with a madman.
+
+A smile flickered over his drawn face.  'I'm not mad--yet.  Say,
+Sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer.  I
+reckon, too, you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold
+hand.  I'm going to confide in you.  I need help worse than any man
+ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in.'
+
+'Get on with your yarn,' I said, 'and I'll tell you.'
+
+He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on
+the queerest rigmarole.  I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to
+stop and ask him questions.  But here is the gist of it:
+
+He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college, being
+pretty well off, he had started out to see the world.  He wrote a bit,
+and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a
+year or two in South-Eastern Europe.  I gathered that he was a fine
+linguist, and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts.
+He spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen
+in the newspapers.
+
+He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the
+interest of them, and then because he couldn't help himself.  I read
+him as a sharp, restless fellow, who always wanted to get down to
+the roots of things.  He got a little further down 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 he got caught.  I gathered that most of the people
+in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but
+that beside them there were financiers who were playing for money.
+A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited
+the book of both classes to set Europe by the 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 where the sinews of war
+came from.  The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and
+Germany at loggerheads.
+
+When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it
+would give them their chance.  Everything would be in the melting-
+pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge.  The capitalists
+would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage.
+Capital, he said, had no conscience and no 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 backstairs 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 elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English.
+But he cuts no ice.  If your business is big, you get behind him and
+find a prognathous 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-anarchists 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
+survive you get to love the thing.  Those foolish devils of soldiers
+have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty
+plan laid in Berlin and Vienna.  But my friends haven't played their
+last card by a long sight.  They've gotten the ace 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 recognized 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 decease.'
+
+He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was
+getting interested in the beggar.
+
+'They can't get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of
+Epirotes that would skin their grandmothers.  But on the 15th day of
+June he is coming to this city.  The British Foreign Office has taken
+to having International tea-parties, and the biggest of them is due
+on that date.  Now Karolides is reckoned the principal guest, and if
+my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring
+countrymen.'
+
+'That's simple enough, anyhow,' I said.  'You can warn him and
+keep him at home.'
+
+'And play their game?' he asked sharply.  'If he does not come
+they win, for he's the only man that can straighten out the tangle.
+And if his Government are warned he won't come, for he does not
+know how big the stakes will be on June the 15th.'
+
+'What about the British Government?' I said.  'They're not going
+to let their guests be murdered.  Tip them the wink, and they'll take
+extra precautions.'
+
+'No good.  They might stuff your city with plain-clothes detectives
+and double the police and Constantine would still be a
+doomed man.  My friends are not playing this game for candy.  They
+want a big occasion for the taking off, with the eyes of all Europe
+on it.  He'll be murdered by an Austrian, and there'll be plenty of
+evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and
+Berlin.  It will all be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will look
+black enough to the world.  I'm not talking hot air, my friend.  I
+happen to know every detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can
+tell you it will be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the
+Borgias.  But it's not going to come off if there's a certain man who
+knows the wheels of the business alive right here in London on the
+15th day of June.  And that man is going to be your servant,
+Franklin P.  Scudder.'
+
+I was getting to like the little chap.  His jaw had shut like a rat-
+trap, and there was the fire 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 Achensee 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
+bookshop 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 thought I had
+muddied my trail some, and was feeling pretty happy.  Then ...'
+
+The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down some
+more whisky.
+
+'Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this block.  I
+used to stay close in my room all day, and only slip out after dark
+for an hour or two.  I watched him for a bit from my window, and I
+thought I recognized him ...  He came in and spoke to the porter
+...  When I came back from my walk last night I found a card in
+my letter-box.  It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on
+God's earth.'
+
+I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked
+scare on his face, completed my conviction of his honesty.  My own
+voice sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next.
+
+'I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that
+there was only one way out.  I had to die.  If my pursuers knew I
+was dead they would go to sleep again.'
+
+'How did you manage it?'
+
+'I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I
+got myself up to look like death.  That wasn't difficult, for I'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 daresay there will be
+somebody tomorrow 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-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 a look at the corpse.
+Excuse my caution, but I'm bound to verify a bit if I can.'
+
+He shook his head mournfully.  'I reckoned you'd ask for that,
+but I haven't got it.  It's on my chain on the dressing-table.  I had to
+leave it behind, for I couldn't leave any clues to breed suspicions.
+The gentry who are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens.  You'll
+have to take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you'll get
+proof of the corpse business right enough.'
+
+I thought for an instant or two.  'Right.  I'll trust you for the
+night.  I'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 recognized.  Only his
+gimlety, hungry eyes were the same.  He was shaved clean, his hair
+was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows.  Further, he
+carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model,
+even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had
+had a long spell in India.  He had a monocle, 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 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave.  I'll thank you to
+remember that, Sir.'
+
+I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought my own
+couch, more cheerful than I had been for the past month.  Things
+did happen occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis.
+
+I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce
+of a row at the smoking-room door.  Paddock was a fellow I had
+done a good turn to out on the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him
+as my servant as soon as I got to England.  He had about as much
+gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at
+valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty.
+
+'Stop that row, Paddock,' I said.  'There's a friend of mine,
+Captain--Captain' (I couldn't remember the name) 'dossing down
+in there.  Get breakfast for two and then come and speak to me.'
+
+I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a great
+swell, with his nerves pretty bad from overwork, who wanted
+absolute rest and stillness.  Nobody had got to know he was here,
+or he would be besieged by communications from the India Office
+and the Prime Minister and his cure would be ruined.  I am bound
+to say Scudder played up splendidly when he came to breakfast.  He
+fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just like a British officer, asked
+him about the Boer War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about
+imaginary 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 luncheon.  When I got back the lift-man had an
+important face.
+
+'Nawsty business 'ere this morning, Sir.  Gent in No.  15 been and
+shot 'isself.  They've just took 'im to the mortiary.  The police are
+up there now.'
+
+I ascended to No.  15, and found a couple of bobbies and an
+inspector busy making an examination.  I asked a few idiotic questions,
+and they soon kicked me out.  Then I found the man that had
+valeted Scudder, and pumped him, but I could see he suspected
+nothing.  He was a whining fellow with a churchyard face, and half-
+a-crown went far to console him.
+
+I attended the inquest next day.  A partner of some publishing firm
+gave evidence that the deceased had brought him 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 beginning 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, and after those spells
+of meditation he was apt to be very despondent.
+
+Then I could see that he began to get edgy again.  He listened for
+little noises, and was always asking me if Paddock could be trusted.
+Once or twice he got very peevish, and apologized for it.  I didn't
+blame him.  I made every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly
+stiff job.
+
+It was not the safety of his own skin that troubled him, but the
+success of the scheme he had planned.  That little man was clean grit
+all through, without a soft spot in him.  One night he was very solemn.
+
+'Say, Hannay,' he said, 'I judge I should let you a bit deeper into
+this business.  I should hate to go out without leaving somebody
+else to put up a fight.'  And he began to tell me in detail what I had
+only heard from him vaguely.
+
+I did not give him very close attention.  The fact is, I was more
+interested in his own adventures than in his high politics.  I reckoned
+that Karolides and his affairs were not my business, leaving all that to
+him.  So a lot that he said slipped clean out of my memory.  I remember
+that he was very clear that the danger to 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 mentioned
+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 referred to without a shudder--
+an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk.
+
+He spoke a good deal about death, too.  He was mortally anxious
+about winning through with his job, but he didn't care a rush for
+his life.
+
+'I reckon it's like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired
+out, and waking to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming
+in at the window.  I used to thank God for such mornings way back
+in the Blue-Grass country, and I guess I'll thank Him when I wake
+up on the other side of Jordan.'
+
+Next day he was much more cheerful, and read the life of Stonewall
+Jackson much of the time.  I went out to dinner with a mining
+engineer I had got to see on business, and came back about half-past
+ten in time for our game of chess before turning in.
+
+I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as I pushed open the
+smoking-room door.  The lights were not lit, which struck me as
+odd.  I wondered if 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.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+The Milkman Sets Out on his Travels
+
+
+I sat down in an armchair and felt very sick.  That lasted for maybe
+five minutes, and was succeeded by a fit of the horrors.  The poor
+staring white face on the floor was more than I could bear, and I
+managed to get a table-cloth and cover it.  Then I staggered to a
+cupboard, found the brandy and swallowed several mouthfuls.  I
+had seen men die violently before; indeed I had killed a few myself
+in the 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.
+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 table-cloth.  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 probability.  Supposing I
+went out now and called in the police, or went to bed and let
+Paddock find the body and call them in the morning.  What kind of
+a story was I to tell about Scudder?  I had lied to Paddock about
+him, and the whole thing looked desperately fishy.  If I made a clean
+breast of it and told the police everything he had told me, they
+would simply laugh at me.  The odds were a thousand to one that I
+would be charged with the murder, and the circumstantial evidence
+was strong enough to hang me.  Few people knew me in England; I
+had no real pal who could come forward and swear to my character.
+Perhaps that was what those secret enemies were playing for.  They
+were clever enough for anything, and an English prison was as
+good a way of getting rid of me 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 confidence, and
+I was pretty well bound to carry on his work.
+
+You may think this ridiculous for a man in danger of his life, but
+that was the way I looked at it.  I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not
+braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man 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 in June.  Then I must somehow find
+a way to get in touch with the Government people and tell them
+what Scudder had told me.  I wished to Heaven he had told me
+more, and that I had listened more carefully to the little he had told
+me.  I knew nothing but the barest facts.  There was a big risk that,
+even if I weathered the other dangers, I would not be believed in
+the end.  I must take my chance of that, and hope that something
+might happen which would confirm my tale in the eyes of the Government.
+
+My first job was to keep going for the next three weeks.  It was
+now the 24th day of May, and that meant twenty days of hiding
+before I could venture to approach the powers that be.  I reckoned
+that two sets of people would be looking for me--Scudder's
+enemies to put me out of existence, and the police, who would
+want me for Scudder's murder.  It was going to be a giddy hunt,
+and it was queer how the prospect comforted me.  I had been 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 table-cloth
+and searched his pockets, for I had no longer any shrinking from
+the body.  The face was wonderfully calm for a man who had been
+struck down in a moment.  There was nothing in the breast-pocket,
+and only a few loose coins and a cigar-holder in the waistcoat.  The
+trousers held a little penknife and some silver, and the side pocket
+of his jacket contained an old crocodile-skin cigar-case.  There was
+no sign of the little black book in which I had seen him making
+notes.  That had no doubt been taken by his murderer.
+
+But as I looked up from my task I saw that some drawers had
+been pulled out in the writing-table.  Scudder would never have left
+them in that state, for he was the tidiest of mortals.  Someone must
+have been searching for something--perhaps for the pocket-book.
+
+I went round the flat and found that everything had been ransacked
+--the inside of books, drawers, cupboards, boxes, even the
+pockets of the clothes in my wardrobe, and the sideboard in the
+dining-room.  There was no trace of the book.  Most likely the enemy
+had found it, but they had not found it on Scudder's body.
+
+Then I got out an atlas and looked at a big map of the British
+Isles.  My notion was to get off to some wild district, where my
+veldcraft would be of some use to me, for I would be like a trapped
+rat in a city.  I considered that Scotland would be best, for my
+people were Scotch and I could pass anywhere as an ordinary
+Scotsman.  I had half an idea at first to be a German tourist, for my
+father had had German partners, and I had been brought up to
+speak the tongue pretty fluently, not to mention having put in
+three years prospecting for copper in German Damaraland.  But I
+calculated that it would be less conspicuous to be a Scot, and less in
+a line with what the police might know of my past.  I fixed on
+Galloway as the best place to go.  It was the nearest wild part of
+Scotland, so far as I could figure it out, and from the look of the
+map was not over thick with population.
+
+A search in Bradshaw informed me that a train left St Pancras at
+7.10, which would land me at any Galloway station in the late
+afternoon.  That was well enough, but a more important matter was
+how I was to make my way to St Pancras, for I was pretty certain
+that Scudder's friends would be watching outside.  This puzzled me
+for a bit; then I had an inspiration, on which I went to bed and
+slept for two troubled hours.
+
+I got up at four and opened my bedroom shutters.  The faint
+light of a fine summer morning was flooding the skies, and the
+sparrows had begun to chatter.  I had a great revulsion of feeling,
+and felt a God-forgotten fool.  My inclination was to let things
+slide, and trust to the British police taking a reasonable view of my
+case.  But as I reviewed the situation I could find no arguments to
+bring against my decision of the previous night, so with a 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
+Scudder should want money, and I took fifty 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 drooping, into a short stubbly fringe.
+
+Now came the next step.  Paddock used to arrive punctually at
+7.30 and let himself in with a latch-key.  But about twenty minutes
+to seven, as I knew from bitter experience, the milkman turned up
+with a great clatter of cans, and deposited my share outside my
+door.  I had seen that milkman sometimes when I had gone out for
+an early ride.  He was a young man about my own height, with an
+ill-nourished moustache, and he wore a white overall.  On him I
+staked all my chances.
+
+I went into the darkened smoking-room where the rays of morning
+light were beginning to creep through the shutters.  There I
+breakfasted off a whisky-and-soda and some biscuits from the cupboard.
+By this time it was getting on for six o'clock.  I put a pipe in
+My Pocket and filled my pouch from the tobacco jar on the table by
+the fireplace.
+
+As I poked into the tobacco my fingers touched something hard,
+and I drew out Scudder's little black 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.  'Goodbye,
+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.
+
+'I reckon you're a bit of a sportsman,' I said, 'and I want you to
+do me a service.  Lend me your cap and overall for ten minutes, and
+here's a sovereign for you.'
+
+His eyes opened at the sight of the gold, and he grinned broadly.
+'Wot's the gyme?'he asked.
+
+'A bet,' I said.  'I haven't time to explain, but to win it I've got to
+be a milkman for the next ten minutes.  All you've got to do is to
+stay here till I come back.  You'll be a bit late, but nobody will
+complain, and you'll have that quid for yourself.'
+
+'Right-o!' he said cheerily.  'I ain't the man to spoil a bit of sport.
+'Ere's the rig, guv'nor.'
+
+I stuck on his flat blue hat and his white overall, picked up the
+cans, banged my door, and went whistling downstairs.  The porter
+at the foot told me to shut my jaw, which sounded as if my make-up
+was adequate.
+
+At first I thought there was nobody in the street.  Then I caught
+sight of a policeman a hundred yards down, and a loafer shuffling
+past on the other side.  Some impulse made me raise my eyes to the
+house opposite, and there at 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 imitating the jaunty
+swing of the milkman.  Then I took the first side street, and went
+up a left-hand turning which led past a bit of vacant ground.  There
+was no one in the little street, so I dropped the milk-cans inside the
+hoarding and sent the cap and overall after them.  I had only just
+put on my cloth cap when a postman came round the corner.  I gave
+him good morning and he answered me unsuspiciously.  At the
+moment the clock of a 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 Station
+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 destination.  A
+porter told me the platform, and as I entered it I saw the train
+already in motion.  Two station officials blocked the way, but I
+dodged them and clambered into the last carriage.
+
+Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the northern
+tunnels, an irate guard interviewed me.  He wrote out for me a
+ticket to Newton-Stewart, a name which had suddenly come back
+to my memory, and he conducted me from the first-class compartment
+where I had ensconced myself to a third-class smoker,
+occupied by a sailor and a stout woman with a child.  He went off
+grumbling, and as I mopped my brow I observed to my companions
+in my broadest Scots that it was a sore job catching trains.  I had
+already entered upon my part.
+
+'The impidence o' that gyaird!' 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 twalmonth,
+and he was objectin' to this gentleman spittin'.'
+
+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.
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper
+
+
+I 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 going 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 jottings,
+chiefly figures, though now and then a name was printed in.  For
+example, I found 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 cypher 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 puzzles, and I
+used to reckon myself pretty good at finding out cyphers.  This one
+looked like the numerical kind where sets of figures correspond to
+the letters of the alphabet, but any fairly shrewd man can find the
+clue to that sort after an hour or two's work, and I didn't think
+Scudder would have been content with anything so easy.  So I
+fastened on the printed words, for you can make a pretty good
+numerical cypher if you have a key word which gives you the
+sequence of the letters.
+
+I tried for hours, but none of the words answered.  Then I fell
+asleep and woke at Dumfries just in time to bundle out and get into
+the slow Galloway train.  There was a man on the platform whose
+looks I didn't like, but he never glanced at me, and when I caught
+sight of myself in the mirror of an automatic machine I didn't
+wonder.  With my brown face, my old tweeds, and my slouch, I was
+the very model of one of the hill farmers who were crowding into
+the third-class carriages.
+
+I travelled with half a dozen in an atmosphere of shag and clay
+pipes.  They had come from the weekly market, and their mouths
+were full of prices.  I heard accounts of how the lambing had gone
+up 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 slowly
+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 emptied, and I was left alone
+as I had hoped.  I got out at the next station, a little place whose
+name I scarcely noted, set right in the heart of a bog.  It reminded
+me of one of those forgotten little stations in the Karroo.  An old
+station-master was digging in his garden, and with his spade over
+his shoulder sauntered to the train, took charge of a parcel, and
+went back to his potatoes.  A child of ten received my ticket, and I
+emerged on a white road that straggled over the brown moor.
+
+It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as
+clear as a cut amethyst.  The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs,
+but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on
+my spirits.  I actually felt 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 country, for every mile put me in better humour
+with myself.
+
+In a roadside planting I cut a walking-stick of hazel, and presently
+struck off the highway up a bypath which followed the glen of a
+brawling stream.  I reckoned that I was still far ahead of any pursuit,
+and for that night might please myself.  It was some 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 me no questions, for they had the perfect
+breeding of all dwellers in the wilds, but I could see they set me
+down as a kind of dealer, and I took some trouble to confirm their
+view.  I spoke a lot about cattle, of which my host knew little, and I
+picked up from him a good deal about the local Galloway markets,
+which I tucked away in my memory for future use.  At ten I was
+nodding in my chair, and the 'bed in the loft' received a weary man
+who never opened his eyes till five o'clock set the little homestead
+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 farther on than the place where I had alighted
+yesterday and to double back.  I reckoned that that was the safest
+way, for the police would naturally assume that I was always making
+farther from London in the direction of some western port.  I
+thought I had still a good bit of a start, for, as I reasoned, it would
+take some hours to fix the blame on me, and several more to
+identify the fellow who got on board the train at St Pancras.
+
+It was the same jolly, clear spring weather, and I simply could
+not contrive to feel careworn.  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
+Cairnsmore of Fleet.  Nesting curlews and plovers were crying everywhere,
+and the links of green pasture by the streams were dotted
+with young lambs.  All the slackness of the past months was slipping
+from my bones, and I stepped out like a four-year-old.  By-and-by I
+came to a swell of moorland which dipped to the vale of a little
+river, and a mile away in the heather I saw the smoke of a train.
+
+The station, when I reached it, proved to be ideal for my purpose.
+The moor surged up around it and left room only for the single
+line, the slender siding, a waiting-room, an office, the station-
+master's cottage, and a tiny yard of gooseberries and sweet-william.
+There seemed no road to it from anywhere, and to increase the
+desolation the waves of a tarn lapped on their grey granite beach
+half a mile away.  I waited in the deep heather till I saw the smoke
+of an east-going train on the horizon.  Then I approached the tiny
+booking-office and took a ticket for Dumfries.
+
+The only occupants of the carriage were an old shepherd and his
+dog--a 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 fancied it would tell me something.
+
+There were two columns about the Portland Place Murder, as it
+was called.  My man Paddock had given the alarm and had the milkman
+arrested.  Poor devil, it looked as if the latter had earned his
+sovereign hardly; but for me he had been cheap at the price, for he
+seemed to have occupied the police for the better part of the day.  In
+the latest news I found a further instalment of the story.  The milkman
+had been released, I read, and the true criminal, about whose identity
+the police were reticent, was believed to have got away from London
+by one of the northern lines.  There was a short note about me as the
+owner of the flat.  I guessed the police had stuck that in, as a clumsy
+contrivance to persuade me that I was unsuspected.
+
+There was nothing else in the paper, nothing about foreign
+politics or 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.
+
+As we moved away from that station my companion woke up.
+He fixed me with a wandering glance, kicked his dog viciously, and
+inquired where he was.  Clearly he was very drunk.
+
+'That's what comes o' bein' a teetotaller,' he observed in bitter
+regret.
+
+I expressed my surprise that in him I should have met a blue-
+ribbon stalwart.
+
+'Ay, but I'm a strong teetotaller,' he said pugnaciously.  'I took
+the pledge last Martinmas, and I havena touched a drop o' whisky
+sinsyne.  Not even at Hogmanay, though I was sair temptit.'
+
+He swung his heels up on the seat, and burrowed a frowsy head
+into the cushions.
+
+'And that's a' I get,' he moaned.  'A heid better than hell fire, and
+twae een lookin' different ways for the Sabbath.'
+
+'What did it?' I asked.
+
+'A drink they ca' brandy.  Bein' a teetotaller I keepit off the
+whisky, but I was nip-nippin' a' day at this brandy, and I doubt I'll
+no be weel for a fortnicht.'  His voice died away into a splutter, 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 saw that every carriage window was closed
+and no human figure appeared in the landscape.  So I opened the
+door, and dropped quickly into the tangle of hazels which edged
+the line.
+
+it would have been all right but for that infernal dog.  Under the
+impression that I was decamping with its master's belongings, it
+started to bark, and all 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 the
+guard and several passengers gathered round the open carriage
+door and staring in my direction.  I could not have made a more
+public departure if I had left with a bugler and a brass band.
+
+Happily the drunken herd provided a diversion.  He and his dog,
+which was attached by a rope to his waist, suddenly cascaded out of
+the carriage, landed on their heads on the track, and rolled some
+way down the bank towards the water.  In the rescue which followed
+the dog bit somebody, 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 semicircle of moorland, with the brown river as
+radius, and the high hills forming the northern circumference.  There
+was not a sign or sound of a human being, only the plashing water
+and the interminable crying of curlews.  Yet, oddly enough, for the
+first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me.  It was not the police
+that I thought of, but the other folk, who knew that I knew
+Scudder's secret and dared not let me live.  I was certain that they
+would pursue me with a keenness and vigilance unknown to the
+British law, and that once their grip closed on me I should find
+no mercy.
+
+I looked back, but there was nothing in the landscape.  The sun
+glinted on the metals of the line and the wet stones in the stream,
+and you could not have found a more peaceful sight in the world.
+Nevertheless I started to run.  Crouching low in the runnels of the
+bog, I ran till the sweat blinded my eyes.  The mood did not leave
+me till I had reached the rim of mountain and flung myself panting
+on a ridge high above the young waters of the brown river.
+
+From my vantage-ground I could scan the whole moor right
+away to the railway line and to the south of it where green fields
+took the place of heather.  I have eyes like a hawk, but I could see
+nothing moving in the whole countryside.  Then I looked east
+beyond the ridge and saw a new kind of landscape--shallow green
+valleys with plentiful fir plantations and the faint lines of dust
+which spoke of highroads.  Last of all I looked into the blue May
+sky, and there I saw that which set my pulses racing ...
+
+Low down in the south a monoplane was climbing into the
+heavens.  I was as certain as if I had been told that that aeroplane
+was looking for me, and that it did not belong to the police.  For an
+hour or two I watched it from a pit of heather.  It flew low along
+the hill-tops, and then in narrow circles over the valley up which I
+had come' Then it seemed to change its mind, rose to a great
+height, and flew away back to the south.
+
+I did not like this espionage from the air, and I began to think
+less well of the countryside I had chosen for a refuge.  These
+heather hills were no sort of cover if my enemies were in the sky,
+and I must find a different kind of sanctuary.  I looked with more
+satisfaction to the green country beyond the ridge, for there I
+should find woods and stone houses.
+
+About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to a white
+ribbon of road which wound up the narrow vale of a lowland
+stream.  As I followed it, fields gave place to bent, the glen became
+a plateau, and presently I had reached a kind of pass where a
+solitary house smoked in the twilight.  The road swung over a
+bridge, and leaning on the parapet was a young man.
+
+He was smoking a long clay pipe and studying the water with
+spectacled eyes.  In 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 boyish face.
+
+'Good evening to you,' he said gravely.  'It's a fine night for
+the road.'
+
+The smell of peat smoke and of some savoury 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 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 innkeeper would make the best story-teller in the world.'
+
+'Not now,' he said eagerly.  'Maybe in the old days when you had
+pilgrims and ballad-makers and highwaymen and mail-coaches on
+the road.  But not now.  Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of
+fat women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two in the
+spring, and the shooting tenants in August.  There is not much
+material to be got out of that.  I want to see life, to travel the world,
+and write things like Kipling and Conrad.  But the most I've done
+yet is to get some verses printed in CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL.'
+I looked at the inn standing golden in the sunset against the
+brown 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 tropics
+or among gentry in red shirts?  Maybe you're rubbing shoulders
+with it at this moment.'
+
+'That's what Kipling says,' he said, his eyes brightening, and he
+quoted some verse about 'Romance bringing up the 9.15'.
+
+'Here's a true tale for you then,' I cried, 'and a month from now
+you can make a novel out of it.'
+
+Sitting on the bridge in the soft May gloaming I pitched him a
+lovely yarn.  It was true in essentials, too, though I altered the
+minor details.  I made out that I was a mining magnate from Kimberley,
+who had had a lot of trouble 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 Haggard 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.'
+
+He was very young, but he was the man for my money.
+
+'I think they're off my track for the moment, but I must lie close
+for a couple of days.  Can you take me in?'
+
+He caught my elbow in his eagerness and drew me towards the
+house.  'You can lie 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 adventures?'
+
+As I entered the inn porch I heard from far off the beat of an
+engine.  There silhouetted against the dusky West was my friend,
+the monoplane.
+
+He gave me a room at the back of the house, with a fine outlook
+over the plateau, and he made me free of his own study, which was
+stacked with cheap editions of his favourite authors.  I never saw the
+grandmother, so I guessed she was bedridden.  An old woman called
+Margit brought me my meals, and the innkeeper was around me at
+all hours.  I wanted some time to myself, so I invented a job for him.
+He had a motor-bicycle, and I sent him off next morning for the daily
+paper, which usually arrived with the post in the late afternoon.  I
+told him to keep his eyes skinned, and make note of any strange
+figures he saw, keeping a special sharp look-out 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 Balkans, though there was no
+mention of any visit to England.  I got rid of the innkeeper for the
+afternoon, for I was getting very warm in my search for the cypher.
+
+As I told you, it was a numerical cypher, 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 when I thought
+of the odd million words he might have used I felt pretty hopeless.
+But about three o'clock I had a sudden inspiration.
+
+The name Julia 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 cypher.
+
+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 cypher.  E was 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 whitish face and fingers that
+drummed on the table.
+
+I glanced out of the window and saw a big touring-car coming
+up the glen towards the inn.  It drew up at the door, and there was
+the sound of people alighting.  There seemed to be two of them,
+men in aquascutums and tweed caps.
+
+Ten minutes later the innkeeper slipped into the room, his eyes
+bright with excitement.
+
+'There's two chaps below looking for you,' he whispered.
+'They're in the dining-room having whiskies-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 ...'
+
+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 excitement.  '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 Newton-Stewart to the Chief Constable.  Describe
+the two men, and say you suspect them of having had something to do
+with the London murder.  You can invent reasons.  The two will come back,
+never fear.  Not tonight, for they'll follow me forty miles along the
+road, but first thing tomorrow morning.  Tell the police to be here
+bright and early.'
+
+He set off like a docile child, while I worked at Scudder's notes.
+When he came back we dined together, and in common decency I
+had to let him pump me.  I gave him a lot of stuff about lion hunts
+and the 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
+innkeeper's instructions, and entered the house.  Twenty minutes
+later I saw from my window a second car come across the plateau
+from the opposite direction.  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 their steps on the gravel outside the window.
+
+My plan had been to lie hid in my bedroom, and see what
+happened.  I had a notion that, if I could bring the police and my
+other more 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.  Unobserved I crossed the dyke, 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.
+
+Almost at once the road dipped so that I lost sight of the inn,
+but the wind seemed to bring me the sound of angry voices.
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+The Adventure of the Radical Candidate
+
+You may picture me driving that 40 h.p.  car for all she was worth
+over the crisp moor roads on that shining May morning; glancing
+back at first over my shoulder, and looking anxiously to the next
+turning; then driving with a vague eye, just wide enough awake to
+keep on the highway.  For I was thinking desperately of what I had
+found in Scudder's 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 eyewash, 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-bitten-twice-shy, I believed it absolutely.
+
+Why, I don't know.  It rang desperately true, and the first yarn, if
+you understand me, had been in a queer way true also in spirit.  The
+fifteenth day of June was going to be a day of destiny, a bigger
+destiny than the killing of a 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 intention.  He had told me
+something which sounded big enough, but the real thing was so
+immortally big that he, the man who had found it out, wanted it all
+for himself.  I didn't blame him.  It was risks after all that he was
+chiefly greedy about.
+
+The whole story was in the notes--with gaps, you understand,
+which he would have filled up from his memory.  He stuck down
+his authorities, too, and had an odd trick of giving them all a
+numerical value and then striking a balance, which stood for the
+reliability of each stage in the yarn.  The four names he had printed
+were authorities, and there was a man, 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--these,
+and one queer phrase which occurred half a dozen times inside
+brackets.  '(Thirty-nine steps)' was the phrase; and at its last time of
+use it ran--'(Thirty-nine steps, I counted them--high tide 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 coming, 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 grandmothers was all billy-o.
+
+The second thing was that this war was going to come as a
+mighty surprise to Britain.  Karolides' death would set the Balkans
+by the ears, and then Vienna would chip in with an ultimatum.
+Russia wouldn't like that, and there would be high words.  But
+Berlin would play the peacemaker, and pour oil on the waters, till
+suddenly she would find a good cause for a quarrel, pick it up, and
+in five hours let fly at us.  That was the idea, and a pretty good one
+too.  Honey and fair speeches, and then a stroke in the dark.  While
+we were talking about the goodwill and good intentions of Germany
+our coast would be silently ringed with mines, and submarines
+would be waiting for every battleship.
+
+But all this depended upon the third thing, which was due to
+happen on June 15th.  I would never have grasped this if I hadn't
+once happened to meet a French staff officer, coming back from
+West Africa, who had told me a lot of things.  One was that, in
+spite of all the nonsense talked in Parliament, there was a real
+working alliance between France and Britain, and that the two
+General Staffs met every now and then, and made plans for joint
+action in case of war.  Well, in June a very great swell was coming
+over from Paris, and he was going to get nothing less than a
+statement of the disposition of the British Home Fleet on mobilization.
+At least I gathered it was something like that; anyhow, it was
+something uncommonly important.
+
+But on the 15th day of June there were to be others in London--
+others, at whom I could only guess.  Scudder was content to call
+them collectively the 'Black Stone'.  They represented not our Allies,
+but our deadly foes; and the information, destined for France, was
+to be diverted to their pockets.  And it was to be used, remember--
+used a week or two later, with great guns and swift torpedoes,
+suddenly in the darkness of a summer night.
+
+This was the story I had been deciphering in a back room of a
+country inn, overlooking a cabbage garden.  This was the story that
+hummed in my brain as I swung in the big touring-car from glen to glen.
+
+My first impulse had been to write a letter to the Prime Minister,
+but a little reflection convinced me that that would be useless.  Who
+would believe my tale?  I must show a sign, some token in proof,
+and Heaven knew what that could be.  Above all, I must keep going
+myself, ready to act when things got riper, and that was going to be
+no light job with the police of the British Isles in full cry after me
+and the watchers of the Black Stone running silently and swiftly on
+my trail.
+
+I had no very clear purpose in my journey, but I steered east by
+the sun, for I remembered from the map that if I went north I
+would come into a region of coalpits and industrial towns.  Presently
+I was down from the moorlands and traversing the broad haugh of
+a river.  For miles I ran alongside a park wall, and in a break of the
+trees I saw a great castle.  I swung through little old thatched
+villages, and over peaceful lowland streams, and past gardens blazing
+with hawthorn and yellow laburnum.  The land was so deep in
+peace that I could scarcely believe that somewhere behind me were
+those who sought my 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 mid-day 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 postmistress and a policeman hard at work
+conning a telegram.  When they saw me they wakened up, and the
+policeman advanced with raised hand, and cried on me to stop.
+
+I nearly was 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.
+
+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 on to a farm road and ending in a duck-pond or a stable-
+yard, and I couldn't afford that kind of delay.  I began to see what
+an ass I had been to steal the car.  The big green brute would be the
+safest kind of clue to me over the breadth of Scotland.  If I left it
+and took to my feet, it would be discovered in an hour or two and
+I would get no start in the race.
+
+The immediate thing to do was to get to the loneliest roads.
+These I soon found when I struck up a tributary of the big river,
+and got into a glen with steep hills all about me, and a corkscrew
+road at the end which climbed over a pass.  Here I 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 railway.  Away below me I saw
+another broadish valley, and it occurred to me that if I crossed it I
+might find some remote inn to pass the night.  The evening was now
+drawing in, and I was furiously hungry, for I had eaten nothing since
+breakfast except a couple of buns I had bought from a baker's cart.
+just then I heard a noise in the sky, and lo and behold there was
+that infernal aeroplane, flying low, about a dozen miles to the south
+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 realized
+to my horror that I was almost up on a couple of gate-posts through
+which a private road debouched on the highway.  My horn gave an
+agonized roar, but it was too late.  I clapped on my brakes, but my
+impetus was too great, and there before me a car was sliding
+athwart my course.  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, leapt 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.  For myself, once I got my wind back, I was rather glad
+than otherwise.  This was one way of getting rid of the car.
+
+'My blame, Sir,' I answered him.  'It's lucky that I did not add
+homicide to my follies.  That's the end of my Scotch motor tour,
+but it might have been the end of my life.'
+
+He plucked out a watch and studied it.  'You're the right sort of
+fellow,' he said.  'I can spare a quarter of an hour, and my house is
+two minutes off.  I'll see you clothed and fed and snug in bed.
+Where's your kit, by the way?  Is it in the burn along with the car?'
+
+'It's in my pocket,' I said, brandishing a toothbrush.  'I'm a
+Colonial and travel light.'
+
+'A Colonial,' he cried.  'By Gad, you're the very man I've been
+praying for.  Are you by any blessed chance a Free Trader?'
+
+'I am,' said I, without the foggiest notion of what he meant.
+
+He patted my shoulder and hurried me into his car.  Three minutes
+later we drew up before a comfortable-looking shooting box set
+among pine-trees, and he ushered me indoors.  He took me first to a
+bedroom and flung half a dozen of his suits before me, for my own
+had been pretty well reduced to rags.  I selected a loose blue serge,
+which differed most conspicuously from my former garments, and
+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.  Twisdon?  Any relation of old Tommy
+Twisdon of the Sixtieth?  No?  Well, you see I'm Liberal Candidate
+for this part of the world, and I had a meeting on tonight at
+Brattleburn--that's my chief town, and an infernal Tory stronghold.
+I had got the Colonial ex-Premier fellow, Crumpleton, coming to
+speak for me tonight, and had the thing tremendously billed and
+the whole place ground-baited.  This afternoon I had a wire from
+the ruffian saying he had got influenza at Blackpool, and here 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 a 1,000-guinea car to address a meeting for him on the spur
+of the moment.  But my necessities did not allow me to contemplate
+oddnesses or to pick and choose my supports.
+
+'All right,' I said.  'I'm not much good as a speaker, but I'll tell
+them a bit about Australia.'
+
+At my words the cares of the ages slipped from his shoulders,
+and he was rapturous in his thanks.  He lent me a big driving coat--
+and never troubled to ask why I had started on a motor tour
+without possessing an ulster--and, as we slipped down the dusty
+roads, poured into my ears the simple facts of his history.  He was
+an orphan, and his uncle had brought him up--I've forgotten the
+uncle's name, but he was in the Cabinet, and you can read his
+speeches in the papers.  He had gone round the world after leaving
+Cambridge, and then, being short of a job, his uncle had advised
+politics.  I gathered that he had no preference in parties.  'Good
+chaps in both,' he said cheerfully, 'and plenty of blighters, too.  I'm
+Liberal, because my family have always been Whigs.'  But if he was
+lukewarm politically he had strong views on other things.  He
+found out I knew a bit about horses, and jawed away about the
+Derby entries; and he was full of plans for improving his shooting.
+Altogether, a very clean, decent, callow young man.
+
+As we passed through a little town two policemen 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 no unlike yours.'
+
+'Right-o,' said my host, while I thanked Providence for the
+devious ways I had been brought to safety.  After that he spoke no
+more, for his mind began to labour heavily with his coming speech.
+His lips kept muttering, his eye wandered, and I began to prepare
+myself for a second catastrophe.  I tried to think of something to say
+myself, but my mind was dry as a stone.  The next thing I knew we
+had drawn up outside a door in a street, and were being welcomed
+by some noisy 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 Crumpleton's absence,
+soliloquized on his influenza, and gave me a certificate as a
+'trusted leader of Australian thought'.  There were two policemen at
+the door, and I hoped they took note of that testimonial.  Then Sir
+Harry started.
+
+I never heard anything like it.  He didn't begin to know how to
+talk.  He had about a bushel of notes from which he read, and when
+he let go of them he fell into one prolonged stutter.  Every now and
+then he remembered a phrase he had learned by heart, straightened
+his back, and gave it off like Henry Irving, and the next moment he
+was bent double and crooning over his papers.  It was the most
+appalling rot, too.  He talked about the 'German menace', and said
+it was all a Tory invention to cheat the poor of their rights and
+keep back the great flood of social reform, but that 'organized
+labour' realized 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 telling her to do the same or we would
+knock her into a cocked hat.  He said that, but for the Tories,
+Germany and Britain would be fellow-workers in peace and reform.
+I thought of the little black book in my pocket!  A giddy lot Scudder's
+friends cared for peace and reform.
+
+Yet in a queer way I liked the speech.  You could see the niceness
+of the chap shining out behind the muck with which he had been
+spoon-fed.  Also it took a load off my mind.  I mightn't be much of
+an orator, but I was a thousand 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 remember 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 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, Twisdon,' he said.
+'Now, you're coming home with me.  I'm all alone, and if you'll
+stop a day or two I'll show you some very decent fishing.'
+
+We had a hot supper--and I wanted it pretty badly--and then
+drank grog in a big cheery smoking-room with a crackling wood
+fire.  I thought the time had come for me to put my cards on the
+table.  I saw by this man's eye that he was the kind you can trust.
+
+'Listen, Sir Harry,' I said.  'I've something pretty important to
+say to you.  You're a good fellow, and I'm going to be frank.
+Where on earth did you get that poisonous rubbish you talked tonight?'
+
+His face fell.  'Was it as bad as that?' he asked ruefully.  'It did
+sound rather thin.  I got most of it out of the PROGRESSIVE MAGAZINE
+and pamphlets that agent chap of mine keeps sending me.  But you
+surely don't think Germany would ever go to war with us?'
+
+'Ask that question in six weeks and it won't need an answer,' I
+said.  'If you'll give me your attention for half an hour I am going
+to tell you a story.'
+
+I can see yet that bright room with the deers' heads and the old
+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 anyone the exact truth, so far as I
+understood it, and it did me no end of good, for it straightened out
+the thing in my own mind.  I blinked no detail.  He heard all about
+Scudder, and the milkman, and the note-book, and my doings in
+Galloway.  Presently he got very excited and walked up and down
+the hearth-rug.
+
+'So you see,' I concluded, 'you have got here in your house the
+man that 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.  Perhaps in a month's time you'll be sorry, but you have no
+cause to think of that.'
+
+He was looking at me with bright steady eyes.  'What was your
+job in Rhodesia, 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.'
+
+'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 proof.  I may be an ass
+on the platform, but I can size up a man.  You're no murderer and
+you're no fool, and I believe you are speaking the truth.  I'm going
+to back you up.  Now, what can I do?'
+
+'First, I want you to write a letter to your uncle.  I've got to get
+in touch with the Government people sometime before the 15th of June.'
+
+He pulled his moustache.  'That won't help you.  This is Foreign
+Office business, and my uncle would have nothing to do with it.
+Besides, you'd never convince him.  No, I'll go one better.  I'll write
+to the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office.  He's my godfather,
+and one of the best going.  What do you want?'
+
+He sat down at a table and wrote to my dictation.  The gist of it
+was that if a man called Twisdon (I thought I had better stick to
+that name) turned up before June 15th he was to entreat him
+kindly.  He said Twisdon 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 Whitsuntide.  It's close to Artinswell on
+the Kenner.  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 seeking me, just show them the car in the glen.  If
+the other lot turn up, tell them I caught the south express after your
+meeting.'
+
+He did, or promised to do, all these things.  I shaved off the
+remnants of my moustache, and got inside an ancient suit of what I
+believe is called heather mixture.  The map gave me some notion of
+my whereabouts, and told me the two things I wanted to know--
+where the main railway to the south could be joined and what were
+the wildest districts near at hand.
+At two o'clock he wakened me from my slumbers in the
+smoking-room armchair, and led me blinking into the dark starry
+night.  An old bicycle was found in a tool-shed and handed over to me.
+
+'First turn to the right up by the long fir-wood,' he enjoined.  'By
+daybreak you'll be well into the hills.  Then I should pitch the
+machine into a bog and take to the moors on foot.  You can put in a
+week among the shepherds, and be as safe as if you were in New
+Guinea.'
+
+I pedalled diligently up steep roads of hill gravel till the skies
+grew pale with morning.  As the mists cleared before the sun, I
+found myself in a wide green world with glens falling on every side
+and a far-away blue horizon.  Here, at any rate, I could get early
+news of my enemies.
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman
+
+
+I sat down on the very crest of the pass and took stock of my position.
+
+Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the
+hills, which was the upper 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 beyond 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 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 tinkling of little streams.
+
+It was now about seven o'clock, and as I waited I heard once
+again that ominous beat in the air.  Then I realized that my vantage-
+ground might be in reality a trap.  There was no cover for a tomtit
+in those bald green places.
+
+I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat grew louder.  Then I
+saw an aeroplane coming up from the east.  It was flying high, but
+as I looked it dropped several hundred feet and began to circle
+round the knot of hill in narrowing circles, just as a hawk wheels
+before it pounces.  Now it was flying very low, and now the observer
+on board caught sight of me.  I could see one of the two occupants
+examining me through glasses.
+
+Suddenly it began to rise in swift whorls, and the next I knew
+it was speeding eastward again till it became a speck in the
+blue morning.
+
+That made me do some savage thinking.  My enemies had located
+me, and the next thing would be a cordon round me.  I didn't know
+what force they could command, but I was certain it would be
+sufficient.  The aeroplane had seen my bicycle, and would conclude
+that I would try to escape by the road.  In that case there might be a
+chance on the moors to the right or left.  I wheeled the machine a
+hundred yards from the highway, and plunged it into a moss-hole,
+where it sank among pond-weed and water-buttercups.  Then I
+climbed to a knoll which gave me a view of the two valleys.
+Nothing was stirring on the long white ribbon that threaded them.
+
+I have said there was not cover in the whole place to hide a rat.
+As the day advanced it was flooded with soft fresh light till it had
+the fragrant sunniness of the South African veld.  At other times I
+would have liked the place, but now it seemed to suffocate me.  The
+free moorlands were prison walls, and the keen hill air was the
+breath of a dungeon.
+
+I tossed a coin--heads right, tails left--and it fell heads, so I
+turned to the north.  In a little I came to the brow of the ridge
+which was the containing wall of the pass.  I saw the 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 sky-line.  That way was shut to
+me, and I must try the bigger hills to the south beyond the highway.
+The car I had noticed was getting nearer, but it was still a long way
+off with some very steep gradients before it.  I ran hard, crouching
+low except in the hollows, and as I ran I kept scanning the brow of
+the hill before me.  Was it imagination, or did I see figures--one,
+two, perhaps more--moving in a glen beyond the stream?
+
+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
+enemies search it and not find you.  That was good sense, but how
+on earth was I to escape notice in that table-cloth of a place?  I
+would have buried myself to the neck in mud or lain below water
+or climbed the tallest tree.  But there was not a stick of wood, the
+bog-holes were little puddles, the stream was a slender trickle.  There
+was nothing but short heather, and bare 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 flinging 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
+Goavernment, tethered to the roadside, wi' sair een, and a back like
+a suckle.'
+
+He took up the hammer, struck a stone, dropped the implement
+with an oath, and put both hands to his ears.  'Mercy on me!  My
+heid's burstin'!' 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 Surveyor 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!'
+
+I agreed with him about bed.
+'It's easy speakin',' he moaned.  'But I got a postcard yestreen
+sayin' that the new Road Surveyor would be round the day.  He'll
+come and he'll no find me, or else he'll find me fou, and either way
+I'm a done man.  I'll awa' back to my bed and say I'm no weel, but
+I doot that'll no help me, for they ken my kind o' no-weel-ness.'
+
+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-cawr, 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
+forenoon.  Just take the barry, and wheel eneuch metal frae yon
+quarry doon the road to mak anither bing the morn.  My name's
+Alexander Turnbull, and I've been seeven year at the trade, and
+twenty afore that herdin' on Leithen Water.  My freens ca' me Ecky,
+and whiles Specky, for I wear glesses, being waik i' the sicht.  Just
+you speak the Surveyor fair, and ca' him Sir, and he'll be fell
+pleased.  I'll be back or mid-day.'
+
+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 ploughmen
+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 blacksmith's,
+sunburnt and rough with old scars.  I got my boots and trouser-legs
+all white from the dust of the road, and hitched up my trousers, 
+tying them with string below the knee.  Then I set to work on my face.
+With a handful of dust I made a water-mark round my neck, the place
+where Mr Turnbull's Sunday ablutions might be expected to stop.
+I rubbed a good deal of dirt also into the sunburn of my cheeks.  
+A roadman's eyes would no doubt be a little inflamed, so I contrived
+to get some dust in both of mine, and by dint of vigorous rubbing
+produced a bleary effect.
+
+The sandwiches Sir Harry had given me 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 handkerchief
+was a local paper tied with string and addressed to Mr Turnbull--
+obviously meant to solace his mid-day 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 the granite-like surface which marks a
+roadman'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 bootlaces 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 remember an old scout in Rhodesia, who had done many queer
+things in his day, once telling me that the secret of playing a part
+was to think yourself into it.  You could never keep it up, he said,
+unless you could manage to convince yourself that you were it.  So I
+shut off all other thoughts and switched them on to the road-
+mending.  I thought of the little white cottage as my home, I
+recalled the years I had spent herding on Leithen Water, I made my
+mind dwell lovingly on sleep in a box-bed and a bottle of cheap
+whisky.  Still nothing appeared on that long white road.
+
+Now and then a sheep wandered off the heather to stare at me.  A
+heron flopped down to a pool in the stream and started to fish,
+taking no more notice of me than if I had been a milestone.  On I
+went, trundling my loads of stone, with the heavy step of the
+professional.  Soon I grew warm, and the dust on my face changed
+into solid and abiding grit.  I was already counting the hours till
+evening should put a limit to Mr Turnbull's monotonous 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 look after that.  Good morning.
+You'll know me the next time you see me.'
+
+Clearly my get-up was good enough for the dreaded Surveyor.  I
+went on with my work, and as the morning grew towards noon I
+was cheered by a little traffic.  A baker's van breasted the hill, and
+sold me a bag of ginger biscuits which I stowed in my trouser-
+pockets against emergencies.  Then a herd passed with sheep, and
+disturbed me somewhat by asking loudly, 'What had become o' Specky?'
+
+'In bed wi' the colic,' I replied, and the herd passed on ...
+just about mid-day 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 towards me.
+
+Two of the men I had seen before from the window of the
+Galloway inn--one lean, sharp, and dark, the other comfortable
+and smiling.  The third had the look of a countryman--a vet,
+perhaps, or a small farmer.  He was dressed in ill-cut knickerbockers,
+and the eye 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, ye 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 time.  Seein' that that paper
+cam' out last Setterday I'm just Sax days late.'
+
+He picked it up, glanced at the superscription, and laid it down
+again.  One of the others had been looking at my boots, and a word
+in German called the speaker's attention to them.
+
+'You've a fine taste in boots,' he said.  'These were never made
+by a country shoemaker.'
+
+'They were not,' I said readily.  'They were made in London.  I
+got them frae the gentleman that was here last year for the shootin'.
+What was his name now?'  And I scratched a forgetful head.
+Again the sleek one spoke in German.  'Let us get on,' he said.
+'This fellow is all right.'
+
+They asked one last question.
+
+'Did you see anyone pass early this morning?  He might be on a
+bicycle or he might be on foot.'
+
+I very nearly fell into the trap and told a story of a bicyclist
+hurrying past in the grey 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 just been the baker and the Ruchill herd, besides you
+gentlemen.'
+
+One of them gave me a cigar, which I smelt 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.  Those gentry left nothing
+to chance.
+
+I finished Turnbull's bread and cheese, and pretty soon I had
+finished the stones.  The next step was what puzzled me.  I could not
+keep up this roadmaking business for long.  A merciful Providence
+had kept Mr Turnbull indoors, but if he appeared on the scene
+there would be trouble.  I had a notion that the cordon was still
+tight round the glen, and that if I walked in any direction I should
+meet with questioners.  But get out I must.  No man's nerve could
+stand more than a day of being spied on.
+
+I stayed at my post till five o'clock.  By that time I had resolved
+to go down to Turnbull's cottage at nightfall and take my chance
+of getting over the hills in the darkness.  But suddenly a new car
+came up the road, and slowed down a yard or two from me.  A
+fresh wind had risen, and the occupant wanted to light a cigarette.
+It was a touring car, with the tonneau full of 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 understood, at balls and polo-
+weeks and country houses.  He was an adroit scandal-monger, and
+would crawl a mile on his belly to anything that had a title or a
+million.  I had a business introduction to his firm when I came to
+London, and he was good enough to ask me to dinner at his club.
+There he showed off at a great rate, and 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 smart friends.  A sudden
+daftness took me, and in a second I had jumped into the tonneau
+and had him by the shoulder.
+
+'Hullo, jopley,' I sang out.  'Well met, my lad!'  He got a horrid
+fright.  His chin dropped as he stared at me.  'Who the devil are
+YOU?' he gasped.
+
+'My name's Hannay,' I said.  'From Rhodesia, you remember.'
+
+'Good God, the murderer!' he choked.
+
+'Just so.  And there'll be a second murder, my dear, if you don't
+do as I tell you.  Give me that coat of yours.  That cap, too.'
+
+He did as bid, for he was blind with terror.  Over my dirty
+trousers and vulgar shirt I put on his smart driving-coat, which
+buttoned high at the top and thereby hid the deficiencies of my
+collar.  I stuck the cap on my head, and added his gloves to my get-
+up.  The dusty roadman in a minute was transformed into one of
+the neatest motorists in Scotland.  On 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 Marmie's figure was in
+no way like mine.
+
+'Now, my child,' I said, 'sit quite still and be a good boy.  I mean
+you no harm.  I'm only borrowing your car for an hour or two.  But
+if you play me any tricks, and above all if you open your mouth, as
+sure as there's a God above me I'll wring your neck.  SAVEZ?'
+
+I enjoyed that evening's ride.  We ran eight miles down the
+valley, through a village or two, and I could not help noticing
+several strange-looking folk lounging by the roadside.  These were
+the watchers who would have had much to say to me if I had come
+in other garb or company.  As it was, they looked incuriously on.
+One touched his cap in salute, and I responded graciously.
+
+As the dark fell I turned up a side glen which, as I remember
+from the map, led into an unfrequented corner of the hills.  Soon
+the villages were left behind, then the farms, and then even the
+wayside cottage.  Presently we came to a lonely moor where the
+night was blackening the sunset gleam in the bog pools.  Here we
+stopped, and I obligingly reversed the car and restored to Mr
+jopley his belongings.
+
+'A thousand thanks,' I said.  'There's more use in you than I
+thought.  Now be off and find the police.'
+
+As I sat on the hillside, watching the 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 impostor, and a highwayman with a marked taste
+for expensive motor-cars.
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist
+
+
+I spent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a boulder
+where the heather grew long and soft.  It was a cold business, for I
+had neither coat nor waistcoat.  These were in Mr Turnbull's keeping,
+as was Scudder's little book, my watch and--worst of all--my
+pipe and tobacco pouch.  Only my money accompanied me in my
+belt, and about half a pound of ginger biscuits in my trousers pocket.
+
+I supped off half those biscuits, and by worming myself deep
+into the heather got some kind of warmth.  My spirits had risen,
+and I was beginning to enjoy this crazy game of hide-and-seek.  So
+far I had been miraculously lucky.  The milkman, the literary
+innkeeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic Marmie, were all
+pieces of undeserved good fortune.  Somehow the first success gave
+me a feeling that I was going to pull the thing through.
+
+My chief trouble was that I was desperately hungry.  When a Jew
+shoots himself in the City and there is an inquest, the newspapers
+usually report that the deceased was 'well-nourished'.  I remember
+thinking that they would not call me well-nourished if I broke my
+neck in a bog-hole.  I lay and tortured myself--for the ginger
+biscuits merely emphasized the aching void--with the memory of
+all the good food I had thought so little of in London.  There were
+Paddock's crisp sausages and fragrant shavings of bacon, and
+shapely poached eggs--how often I had turned up my nose at
+them!  There were the cutlets they did at the club, and a particular
+ham that stood on the cold table, for which my soul lusted.  My
+thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal edible, and finally
+settled on a porterhouse steak and a 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 after dawn.  It took me
+a little while to remember where I was, for I had been very weary
+and had slept heavily.  I saw first the pale blue sky through a net of
+heather, then a big shoulder of hill, and then my own boots placed
+neatly in a blaeberry bush.  I raised myself on my arms and looked
+down into the valley, and that one look set me lacing up my boots
+in mad haste.
+
+For there were men below, not more than a quarter of a mile off,
+spaced out on the hillside like a fan, and beating the heather.
+Marmie had not been slow in looking for his revenge.
+
+I crawled out of my shelf into the cover of a boulder, and from it
+gained a shallow trench which slanted up the mountain face.  This led
+me presently into the narrow gully of a burn, by way of which I
+scrambled to the top of the ridge.  From there I looked back, and
+saw that I was still undiscovered.  My pursuers were patiently quartering
+the hillside and moving upwards.
+
+Keeping behind the skyline I ran for maybe half a mile, till I
+judged I was above the uppermost end of the glen.  Then I showed
+myself, and was instantly noted by one of the flankers, who passed
+the word to the others.  I heard cries coming up from below, and
+saw that the line of search had changed its direction.  I pretended to
+retreat over the skyline, but instead went back the way I had come,
+and in twenty minutes was behind the ridge overlooking my sleeping
+place.  From that viewpoint I had the satisfaction of seeing the
+pursuit streaming up the hill at the top of the glen on a hopelessly
+false scent.
+
+I had before 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 ginger biscuits.
+
+I knew very little about the country, and I hadn't a notion what I
+was going to do.  I trusted to the strength of my legs, but I was
+well aware that those behind me would be familiar with the lie of
+the land, and that my ignorance would be a heavy handicap.  I saw
+in front of me a sea of hills, rising very high towards the south, but
+northwards breaking down into broad ridges which separated wide
+and shallow dales.  The ridge I had chosen seemed to sink after a
+mile or two to a moor which lay like a pocket in the uplands.  That
+seemed as good a direction to take as any other.
+
+My stratagem had given me a fair start--call it twenty minutes--
+and I had the width of a glen behind me before I saw the first heads
+of the pursuers.  The police had evidently called in local talent to
+their aid, and the men I could see had the appearance of herds or
+gamekeepers.  They hallooed at the sight of me, and I waved my
+hand.  Two dived into the glen and began to climb my ridge, while
+the others kept their 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
+that only three were following direct, and I guessed that the others
+had fetched a circuit to cut me off.  My lack of local knowledge
+might very well be my undoing, and I resolved to get out of this
+tangle of glens to the pocket of 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 feather of
+trees.  In the dyke by the roadside was a gate, from which a grass-
+grown track led over the first wave of the moor.
+
+I jumped the dyke and followed it, and after a few hundred yards
+--as soon as it was out of sight of the highway--the grass stopped
+and it became a very respectable road, which was evidently kept
+with some care.  Clearly it ran to a house, and I began to think of
+doing the same.  Hitherto my luck had held, and it might be that my
+best chance would be found in this remote dwelling.  Anyhow there
+were trees there, and that meant cover.
+
+I did not follow the road, but the burnside which flanked it on
+the right, where the bracken grew deep and the high banks made a
+tolerable screen.  It was well I did so, for no sooner had I gained the
+hollow than, looking back, I saw the pursuit topping the ridge
+from which I had descended.
+
+After that I did not look back; I had no time.  I ran up the
+burnside, crawling over the open places, and for a large part wading
+in the shallow stream.  I found a deserted cottage with a row of
+phantom peat-stacks and an overgrown garden.  Then I was among
+young hay, and very soon had come to the edge of a plantation of
+wind-blown firs.  From there I saw the chimneys of the house smoking
+a few hundred yards to my left.  I forsook the burnside, crossed
+another dyke, and almost before I knew was on a rough lawn.  A
+glance back told me that I was well out of sight of the pursuit,
+which had not yet passed the first lift of the moor.
+
+The lawn was a very rough place, cut with a scythe instead of a
+mower, and planted with beds of scrubby rhododendrons.  A brace
+of black-game, which are not usually garden birds, rose at my
+approach.  The house before me was the ordinary moorland farm,
+with a more pretentious whitewashed wing added.  Attached to this
+wing was a glass veranda, and through the glass I saw the face of
+an elderly gentleman meekly watching me.
+
+I stalked over the border of coarse hill gravel and entered the
+open veranda door.  Within was a pleasant room, glass on one side,
+and on the other a mass of books.  More books showed in an inner
+room.  On the floor, instead of tables, stood cases such as you see in
+a museum, filled with coins and queer stone implements.
+
+There was a knee-hole desk in the middle, and seated at it, with
+some papers and open volumes before him, was the benevolent old
+gentleman.  His face was round and shiny, like 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 minutes to spare, to tell a
+stranger who I was and what I wanted, and to win his aid.  I did not
+attempt it.  There was something about the eye of the man before
+me, something so keen and knowledgeable, that I could not find a
+word.  I simply stared at him and stuttered.
+
+'You seem in a hurry, my friend,'he said slowly.
+
+I nodded towards the window.  It gave a prospect across the
+moor through a gap in the plantation, and revealed certain figures
+half a mile off straggling through the heather.
+
+'Ah, I see,' he said, and took up a pair of field-glasses through
+which he patiently scrutinized the figures.
+
+'A fugitive from justice, eh?  Well, we'll go into the matter at our
+leisure.  Meantime I object to my privacy being broken in upon by
+the clumsy rural policeman.  Go into my study, and you will see
+two doors facing you.  Take the one on the left and close it behind
+you.  You will be perfectly safe.'
+
+And this extraordinary man took up his pen again.
+
+I did as I was bid, and found myself in a little dark chamber
+which smelt of chemicals, and was lit only by a tiny window high
+up in the wall.  The door had swung behind me with a click like the
+door of a safe.  Once again I had found an unexpected sanctuary.
+
+All the same I was not comfortable.  There was something about
+the old gentleman which puzzled and rather terrified me.  He had
+been too easy and ready, almost as if he had expected me.  And his
+eyes had been horribly intelligent.
+
+No sound came to me in that dark place.  For all I knew the
+police might be searching the house, and if they did they would
+want to know what was behind this door.  I tried to possess my soul
+in patience, and to forget how hungry I was.
+
+Then I took a more cheerful view.  The old gentleman could scarcely
+refuse me a meal, and I fell to reconstructing my breakfast.  Bacon
+and eggs would content me, but I wanted the better part of a flitch
+of bacon and half a hundred eggs.  And then, while my mouth was
+watering in anticipation, there was a click and the door stood open.
+
+I emerged into the sunlight to find the master of the house
+sitting in a deep 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 the police should come between me and one
+whom I am delighted to honour.  This is a lucky morning for you,
+Mr Richard Hannay.'
+
+As he spoke his eyelids seemed to tremble and to fall a little over
+his keen grey eyes.  In a flash the phrase of Scudder's came back to
+me, when he had described the man he most dreaded in the world.
+He had said that he 'could hood his eyes like a hawk'.  Then I saw
+that I had walked straight into the enemy's headquarters.
+
+My first impulse was to throttle the old ruffian and make for the
+open air.  He seemed to anticipate my intention, for he smiled
+gently, and nodded to the door behind me.
+
+I turned, and saw two men-servants who had me covered with pistols.
+
+He knew my name, but he had never seen me before.  And as the
+reflection darted across my mind I saw a slender chance.
+
+'I don't know what you mean,' I said roughly.  'And who are you
+calling Richard Hannay?  My name's Ainslie.'
+
+'So?' he said, still smiling.  'But of course you have others.  We
+won't quarrel about a name.'
+
+I was pulling myself together now, and I reflected that my garb,
+lacking coat and waistcoat and collar, would at any rate not betray
+me.  I put on my surliest face and shrugged my shoulders.
+
+'I suppose you're going to give me up after all, and I call it a
+damned dirty trick.  My God, I wish I had never seen that cursed
+motor-car!  Here's the money and be damned to you,' and I flung four
+sovereigns on the table.
+
+He opened his eyes a little.  'Oh no, I shall not give you up.  My
+friends and I will have a little private settlement with you, that is
+all.  You know a little too much, Mr Hannay.  You are a clever
+actor, but not quite clever enough.'
+
+He spoke with assurance, but I could see the dawning of a doubt
+in his mind.
+
+'Oh, for God's sake stop jawing,' I cried.  'Everything's against
+me.  I haven't had a 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 doorway.  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, 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 Wigtown.  I had run short of cash--I hinted vaguely at a
+spree--and I was pretty well on my uppers when I had come on a
+hole in a hedge, and, looking through, had seen a big motor-car
+lying in the burn.  I had poked about to see what had happened, and
+had found three sovereigns lying on the seat and one on the floor.
+There was nobody there or any sign of an owner, so I had pocketed
+the cash.  But somehow the law had got after me.  When I had tried
+to change a sovereign in a baker's shop, the woman had cried on
+the police, and a little later, when I was washing my face in a burn,
+I had been nearly gripped, and had only got away by leaving my
+coat and waistcoat behind me.
+
+'They can have the money back,' I cried, 'for a fat lot of good
+it's done me.  Those perishers are all down on a poor man.  Now, if
+it had been you, 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 anyone 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 beg pardon, I
+don't mean that.  I'm much obliged to you for the grub, and I'll
+thank you to let me go now the coast's clear.'
+
+It was obvious that he was badly puzzled.  You see he had never
+seen me, and my appearance must have altered considerably from
+my photographs, if he had got one of them.  I was pretty smart and
+well dressed in London, and now I was a regular tramp.
+
+'I do not propose to let you go.  If you are what you say you are,
+you will soon have a chance of clearing yourself.  If you are what I
+believe you are, I do not think you will see the light much longer.'
+
+He rang a bell, and a third servant appeared from the veranda.
+
+'I want the Lanchester in five minutes,' he said.  'There will be
+three to luncheon.'
+
+Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest ordeal
+of all.
+
+There was something weird and devilish in those eyes, cold,
+malignant, unearthly, and most hellishly clever.  They fascinated me
+like the bright eyes of a snake.  I had a strong impulse to throw
+myself on his mercy and offer to join his side, and if you consider
+the way I felt about the whole thing you will see that that impulse
+must have been purely physical, the weakness of a brain mesmerized
+and mastered by a stronger spirit.  But I managed to stick it out and
+even to grin.
+
+'You'll know me next time, guv'nor,' I said.
+
+'Karl,' he spoke in German to one of the men in the doorway,
+'you will put this fellow in the storeroom till I return, and you will
+be answerable to me for his keeping.'
+
+I was marched out of the room with a pistol at each ear.
+
+The storeroom 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 shuttered.  I made out by groping that the
+walls were lined with boxes and barrels and sacks of some heavy
+stuff.  The whole place smelt of mould and disuse.  My gaolers
+turned the key in the door, and I could hear them shifting their feet
+as they stood on guard outside.
+
+I sat down in that chilly darkness 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, probably Marmie too;
+most likely they could link me up with Sir Harry, and then the
+whole thing would be crystal clear.  What chance had I in this
+moorland house with three desperadoes and their armed servants?
+
+I began to think wistfully of the police, now plodding over the
+hills after my wraith.  They at any rate were fellow-countrymen and
+honest men, and their tender mercies would be kinder than these
+ghoulish aliens.  But they wouldn't have listened to me.  That old
+devil with the eyelids had not taken long to get rid of them.  I
+thought he probably had some kind of graft with the constabulary.
+Most likely he had letters from Cabinet Ministers saying he was to
+be given every facility for plotting against Britain.  That's the sort
+of owlish way we run our politics in the Old Country.
+
+The three would be back for lunch, so I hadn't more than a
+couple of hours to wait.  It was simply waiting on destruction, for I
+could see no way out of this mess.  I wished that I had Scudder's
+courage, for I am free to confess I didn't feel any great fortitude.
+The only thing that kept me going was that I was pretty furious.  It
+made me boil with rage to think of those three spies getting the
+pull on me like this.  I hoped that at any rate I might be able to
+twist one of their necks before they downed me.
+
+The more I thought of it the angrier I grew, and I had to get up
+and move about the room.  I tried the shutters, but they were the
+kind that 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 smelt of
+cinnamon.  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 purchase 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 then started to explore the cupboard shelves.
+
+There was a multitude of queer things there.  I found an odd
+vesta or two in my trouser pockets and struck a light.  It was out in
+a second, but it showed me one thing.  There was a little stock of
+electric torches on one shelf.  I picked up one, and found it was in
+working order.
+
+With the torch to help me I investigated further.  There were
+bottles and cases of queer-smelling stuffs, chemicals no doubt for
+experiments, and there were coils of fine copper wire and yanks and
+yanks of thin oiled silk.  There was a box of detonators, and a lot of
+cord for fuses.  Then away at the back of the shelf I found a stout
+brown cardboard box, and inside it a wooden case.  I managed to
+wrench it open, and within lay half a dozen little grey bricks, each a
+couple of inches square.
+
+I took up one, and found that it crumbled easily in my hand.  Then I
+smelt it and put my tongue to it.  After that I sat down to think.
+I hadn't been a mining engineer for nothing, and I knew 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
+trouble was that my knowledge wasn't exact.  I had forgotten the
+proper charge and the right way of preparing it, and I wasn't sure
+about the timing.  I had only a vague notion, too, as to its power,
+for though I had used it I had not handled it with my own fingers.
+
+But it was a chance, the 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 decided me.  It was about the
+beastliest moment of my life, for I'm no good at these cold-blooded
+resolutions.  Still I managed to rake up the pluck to set my teeth
+and choke back the horrid doubts that flooded in on me.  I simply
+shut off my mind and pretended I was doing an experiment as
+simple as Guy Fawkes fireworks.
+
+I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of feet of fuse.  Then I
+took a quarter of a lentonite 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 servants and about an acre of surrounding country.  There
+was also the risk that the detonation might set off the other bricks
+in the cupboard, for I had forgotten most that I knew about
+lentonite.  But it didn't do to begin thinking about the possibilities.
+The odds were horrible, but I had to take them.
+
+I ensconced myself just below the sill of the window, and lit the
+fuse.  Then I waited for a moment or two.  There was dead silence--
+only a shuffle of heavy boots in the passage, and the peaceful cluck
+of hens from the warm out-of-doors.  I commended my soul to my
+Maker, and wondered where I would be in five seconds ...
+
+A great wave of heat seemed to surge upwards from the floor,
+and hang for a blistering instant in the air.  Then the wall opposite
+me flashed into a golden yellow and dissolved with a rending
+thunder that hammered my brain into a pulp.  Something dropped
+on me, catching the point of my left shoulder.
+
+And then I think I became unconscious.
+
+My stupor can scarcely have lasted beyond a few seconds.  I felt
+myself being choked by thick yellow fumes, and struggled out of
+the debris to my feet.  Somewhere behind me I felt fresh air.  The
+jambs of the window had fallen, and through the ragged rent the
+smoke was pouring out to the summer noon.  I stepped over the
+broken lintel, and found myself standing in a yard in a dense and
+acrid fog.  I felt very sick and ill, but I could move my limbs, and I
+staggered blindly forward away from the house.
+
+A small mill-lade ran in a wooden aqueduct at the other side of
+the yard, and into this I fell.  The cool water revived me, and I had
+just enough wits left to think of escape.  I squirmed up the lade
+among the slippery green slime till I reached the mill-wheel.  Then I
+wriggled through the axle hole into the old mill and tumbled on to
+a bed of chaff.  A nail caught the seat of my trousers, and I left a
+wisp of heather-mixture behind me.
+
+The mill had been long out of use.  The ladders were rotten with
+age, and in the loft the rats had gnawed great holes in the floor.
+Nausea shook me, and a wheel in my head kept turning, while my
+left shoulder and arm seemed to be stricken with the palsy.  I looked
+out of the window and saw a fog still hanging over the house and
+smoke escaping from an upper window.  Please God I had set the
+place on fire, for I could hear confused cries coming from the
+other side.
+
+But I had no time to linger, since this mill was obviously a bad
+hiding-place.  Anyone looking for me would naturally follow the
+lade, and I made certain the search would begin as soon as they
+found that my body was not in the storeroom.  From another
+window I saw that on the far side of the mill stood an old stone
+dovecot.  If I could get there without leaving tracks I might find a
+hiding-place, for I argued that my enemies, if they thought I could
+move, would conclude I had made for open country, and would go
+seeking me on the moor.
+
+I crawled down the broken ladder, scattering chaff behind me to
+cover my footsteps.  I did the same on the mill floor, and on the
+threshold 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 buildings from any view from the house.  I slipped
+across the space, got to the back of the dovecot and prospected a
+way of ascent.
+
+That was one of the hardest jobs I ever took on.  My shoulder
+and arm ached like hell, and I was so sick and giddy that I was
+always on the verge of falling.  But I managed it somehow.  By the
+use of out-jutting stones and gaps in the masonry and a tough ivy
+root I got to the top in the end.  There was a little parapet behind
+which I found space to lie down.  Then I proceeded to go off into
+an old-fashioned swoon.
+
+I woke with a burning head and the sun glaring in my face.  For a
+long time I lay motionless, for those horrible fumes seemed to have
+loosened my joints and dulled my brain.  Sounds came to me from
+the house--men speaking throatily and the throbbing of a stationary
+car.  There was a little gap in the parapet to which I wriggled, and
+from which I had some sort of prospect of the yard.  I saw figures
+come out--a servant with his head bound up, and then a younger
+man in knickerbockers.  They were looking for something, and
+moved towards the mill.  Then one of them caught sight of the wisp
+of cloth on the nail, and cried out to the other.  They both went
+back to the house, and brought two more to look at it.  I saw the
+rotund figure of my late captor, and I thought I made out the man
+with the lisp.  I noticed that all had pistols.
+
+For half an hour they ransacked the mill.  I could hear them
+kicking over the barrels and pulling up the rotten planking.  Then
+they came outside, and stood just below the dovecot arguing
+fiercely.  The servant with the bandage was being soundly rated.  I
+heard them fiddling with the door of the dovecote and for one
+horrid moment I fancied they were coming up.  Then they thought
+better of it, and went back to the house.
+
+All that long blistering afternoon I lay baking on the rooftop.
+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 fountain fringed with cool ferns and mosses.
+I would have given a thousand pounds to plunge my face into that.
+
+I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland.  I saw the
+car speed away with two occupants, and a man on a hill pony
+riding east.  I judged they were looking for me, and I wished them
+joy of their quest.
+
+But I saw something else more interesting.  The house stood
+almost on the summit of a swell of moorland which crowned a sort
+of plateau, and there was no higher point nearer than the big hills
+six miles off.  The actual summit, as I have mentioned, was a
+biggish clump of trees--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 anyone were watching an aeroplane 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 direction would conclude it had passed out of
+view behind the hill.  Only a man very close at hand would realize
+that the aeroplane had not gone over but had descended in the
+midst of the wood.  An observer with a telescope on one of the
+higher hills might have discovered the truth, but only herds went
+there, and herds do not carry 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 waterways.
+
+Then I reflected that if that aeroplane came back the chances
+were ten to one that I would be discovered.  So through the afternoon
+I lay and prayed for the coming of darkness, and glad I was
+when the sun went down over the big western hills and the twilight
+haze crept over the moor.  The aeroplane was late.  The gloaming
+was far advanced when I heard the beat of wings and saw it volplaning
+downward to its home in the wood.  Lights twinkled for a
+bit and there was much coming and going from the house.  Then
+the dark fell, and silence.
+
+Thank God it was a black night.  The moon was well on its last
+quarter and would not rise till late.  My thirst was too great to allow
+me to tarry, so about nine o'clock, so far as I could judge, I started
+to descend.  It wasn't easy, and half-way down I heard the back door
+of the house open, and saw the gleam of a lantern against the mill
+wall.  For some agonizing minutes I hung by the ivy and prayed
+that whoever it was would not come round by the dovecot.  Then
+the light disappeared, and I dropped as softly as I could on to the
+hard soil of the yard.
+
+I crawled on my belly in the lee of a stone dyke till I reached the
+fringe of trees which surrounded the house.  If I had known how to
+do it I would have tried to put that aeroplane out of action, but I
+realized that any attempt would probably be futile.  I was pretty
+certain that there would be some kind of defence round the house,
+so I went through the wood on hands and knees, feeling carefully
+every inch before me.  It was as well, for presently I came on a wire
+about two feet from the ground.  If I had tripped over that, it
+would doubtless have rung some bell in the house and I would
+have been captured.
+
+A hundred yards farther on I found another wire cunningly
+placed on the edge of a small stream.  Beyond that lay the moor, and
+in five minutes I was deep in bracken and heather.  Soon I was
+round the shoulder of the rise, in the little glen from which the
+mill-lade flowed.  Ten minutes later my face was in the spring, and I
+was soaking down pints of the blessed water.
+
+But I did not stop till I had put half a dozen miles between me
+and that accursed dwelling.
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+The Dry-Fly Fisherman
+
+
+I sat down on a hill-top and took stock of my position.  I wasn't
+feeling very happy, for my natural thankfulness at my escape was
+clouded by my severe bodily discomfort.  Those lentonite fumes had
+fairly poisoned me, and the baking hours on the dovecot hadn't
+helped matters.  I had a crushing headache, and felt as sick as a cat.
+Also my shoulder was in a bad way.  At first I thought it was only a
+bruise, but it seemed to be swelling, and I had no use of my left arm.
+
+My plan was to seek Mr Turnbull's cottage, 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 Bullivant, the
+better.  I didn't see how I could get more proof than I had got
+already.  He must just take or leave my story, and anyway, with him
+I would be in better hands than those devilish Germans.  I had
+begun to feel quite kindly towards the British police.
+
+It was a wonderful starry night, and I had not much difficulty
+about the road.  Sir Harry'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 south-west
+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
+daresay I had other beauties, for my eyes felt as if they were
+furiously bloodshot.  Altogether I was no spectacle for God-fearing
+citizens to see on a highroad.
+
+Very soon after daybreak I made an attempt to clean myself in a
+hill burn, and then approached a herd's cottage, for I was feeling
+the need of food.  The herd was away from home, and his wife was
+alone, with no 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 axe handy, and would have used it on any evil-doer.  I told
+her that I had had a fall--I didn't say how--and she saw by my
+looks that I was pretty sick.  Like a true Samaritan she asked no
+questions, but gave me a bowl of milk with a dash of whisky in it,
+and let me sit for a little by her kitchen fire.  She would have bathed
+my shoulder, but it ached so badly that I would not let her touch it.
+
+I don't know what she took me for--a repentant burglar,
+perhaps; for when I wanted to pay her for the milk and tendered a
+sovereign which was the smallest coin I had, she shook her head
+and said something about 'giving it to them that had a right to it'.
+At this I protested so strongly that I think she believed me honest,
+for she took the money and gave me a warm new plaid for it, and
+an old hat of her man's.  She showed me how to wrap the plaid
+around my shoulders, and when I left that cottage I was the living
+image of the kind of Scotsman you see in the illustrations to
+Burns's poems.  But at any rate I was more or less clad.
+
+It was as well, for the weather changed before midday to a thick
+drizzle of rain.  I found shelter below an overhanging rock in the
+crook of a burn, where a drift of dead brackens made a tolerable
+bed.  There I managed to sleep till nightfall, waking very cramped
+and wretched, with my shoulder gnawing like a toothache.  I ate the
+oatcake and cheese the old wife had given me and set out again just
+before the darkening.
+
+I 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, 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 recognize 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 this strange decorum.
+
+My head was swimming so wildly that I could not frame a
+coherent answer.  But he recognized me, and he saw that I was ill.
+
+'Hae ye got my specs?' he asked.
+
+I fetched them out of my trouser pocket and gave him them.
+
+'Ye'll hae come for your jaicket and westcoat,' 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 combined 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 roadman.  His wife was
+dead years ago, and since his daughter's marriage he lived alone.
+
+For the better part of ten days he did all the rough nursing I
+needed.  I simply wanted to be left in peace while the fever took its
+course, and when my skin was cool again I found that the bout had
+more or less cured my shoulder.  But it was a baddish go, and
+though I was out of bed in five days, it took me some time to get
+my legs again.
+
+He went out each morning, leaving me milk for the day, and
+locking the door behind him; and came in in the evening to sit
+silent in the chimney corner.  Not a soul came near the place.  When
+I was getting better, he never bothered me with a question.  Several
+times he fetched me a two days' old SCOTSMAN, and I noticed 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
+ecclesiastical spree, I gathered.
+
+One day he produced my belt from a lockfast drawer.  'There's a
+terrible heap o' siller in't,' he said.  'Ye'd better coont it to see
+it's a' there.'
+
+He never even sought my name.  I asked him if anybody had
+been around making inquiries subsequent to my spell at the road-making.
+
+'Ay, there was a man in a motor-cawr.  He speired whae had ta'en
+my place that day, and I let on I thocht him daft.  But he keepit on
+at me, and syne I said he maun be thinkin' o' my gude-brither frae
+the Cleuch that whiles lent me a haun'.  He was a wersh-lookin'
+sowl, and I couldna understand the half o' his English tongue.'
+
+I was getting restless those last days, and as soon as I felt myself
+fit I decided to be off.  That was not till the twelfth day of June,
+and as luck would have it a drover went past that morning taking
+some cattle to Moffat.  He was a man named Hislop, a friend of
+Turnbull's, and he came in to his breakfast with us and offered to
+take me with him.
+
+I made Turnbull accept five pounds for my lodging, and a hard
+job I had of it.  There never was a more independent being.  He
+grew positively rude when I pressed him, and shy and red, and
+took the money at last without a thank you.  When I told him how
+much I owed him, he grunted something about 'ae guid turn
+deservin' anither'.  You would have thought from our leave-taking
+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
+sound 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 fifteenth of June drew near I was overweighed with the
+hopeless difficulties of my enterprise.
+
+I got some dinner in a humble Moffat public-house, and walked
+the two miles to the junction on the main line.  The night express
+for the south was not due till near midnight, and to fill up the time
+I went up on the hillside and fell asleep, for the walk had tired me.
+I all but slept too long, and had to run to the station and catch the
+train with two minutes to spare.  The feel of the hard third-class
+cushions and the smell of stale tobacco cheered me up wonderfully.
+At any rate, I felt now that I was getting to grips with my job.
+
+I was decanted at Crewe in the small hours and had to wait till six to
+get a train for Birmingham.  In the afternoon I got to Reading, and
+changed into a local train which journeyed into the deeps of Berkshire.
+Presently I was in a land of lush water-meadows and slow
+reedy streams.  About eight o'clock in the evening, a weary and
+travel-stained being--a cross between a farm-labourer and a vet--
+with a checked black-and-white plaid over his arm (for I did not
+dare to wear it south of the Border), descended at the little station
+of Artinswell.  There were several people on the platform, and I
+thought I had better wait to ask my way till I was clear of the place.
+
+The road led through a wood of great beeches and then into a
+shallow valley, with the green backs of downs peeping over the
+distant trees.  After Scotland the air smelt heavy and flat, but
+infinitely sweet, for the limes and 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-buttercups.  A little
+above it was a mill; and the lasher made a pleasant cool sound in
+the scented dusk.  Somehow the place soothed me and put me at my
+ease.  I fell to whistling as I looked into the green depths, and the
+tune which came to my lips was 'Annie 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 flannels and a wide-brimmed
+hat, with a canvas bag slung on his shoulder.  He nodded to me,
+and I thought I had never seen a shrewder or better-tempered face.
+He leaned his delicate ten-foot split-cane rod against the bridge,
+and looked with me at the water.
+
+'Clear, isn't it?' he said pleasantly.  'I back our Kenner any day
+against the Test.  Look at that big fellow.  Four pounds if he's an
+ounce.  But the evening rise is over and you can't tempt 'em.'
+
+'I don't see him,' said I.
+
+'Look!  There!  A yard from the reeds just above that stickle.'
+
+'I've got him now.  You might swear he was a black stone.'
+
+'So,' he said, and whistled another bar of 'Annie Laurie'.
+
+'Twisdon's the name, isn't it?' he said over his shoulder, his eyes
+still fixed on the stream.
+
+'No,' I said.  'I mean to say, Yes.'  I had forgotten all about
+my alias.
+
+'It's a wise conspirator that knows his own name,' he observed,
+grinning broadly at a moor-hen that emerged from the bridge's shadow.
+
+I stood up and looked at him, at the square, 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 whimsical blue eyes
+seemed to go very deep.
+
+Suddenly he frowned.  'I call it disgraceful,' he said, raising his
+voice.  'Disgraceful that an able-bodied man like you should dare to
+beg.  You can get a meal from my kitchen, but you'll get no money
+from me.'
+
+A dog-cart was passing, driven by a young man who raised his
+whip to salute the fisherman.  When he had gone, he picked up his rod.
+
+'That's my house,' he said, pointing to a white gate a hundred
+yards on.  'Wait five minutes and then go round to the back door.'
+And with that he left me.
+
+I did as I was bidden.  I found a pretty cottage with a lawn
+running down to the stream, and a perfect jungle of guelder-rose
+and lilac flanking the path.  The back door stood open, and a grave
+butler was awaiting me.
+
+'Come this way, Sir,' he said, and he led me along a passage and
+up a back staircase to a pleasant bedroom looking towards the
+river.  There I found a complete outfit laid out for me--dress
+clothes with all the fixings, a brown flannel suit, shirts, collars, ties,
+shaving things and hair-brushes, even a pair of patent shoes.  'Sir
+Walter thought as how Mr Reggie'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 bathroom 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, haggard 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 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
+respectable and established and secure, the embodiment of law and
+government and all the conventions--took me aback and made me
+feel an interloper.  He couldn't know the truth about me, or he
+wouldn't treat me like this.  I simply could not accept his hospitality
+on false pretences.
+
+'I'm more obliged to you than I can say, but I'm bound to make
+things clear,' I said.  'I'm an innocent man, but I'm wanted by the
+police.  I've got to tell you this, and I won't be surprised if you kick
+me out.'
+
+He smiled.  'That's all right.  Don't let that interfere with your
+appetite.  We can talk about these things after dinner.'
+I never ate a meal with greater relish, for I had had nothing all
+day but railway sandwiches.  Sir Walter did me proud, for we drank
+a good champagne and had some uncommon fine port afterwards.
+it made me almost hysterical to be sitting there, waited on by a
+footman and a sleek butler, and remember that I had been living
+for three weeks like a brigand, with every man's hand against me.  I
+told Sir Walter about tiger-fish in the Zambesi 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 untidiness and comfort.  I made up my mind that if
+ever I got rid of this business and had a house of my own, I would
+create just such a room.  Then when the coffee-cups were cleared
+away, and we had got our cigars alight, my host swung his long
+legs over the side of his chair and bade me get started with my yarn.
+
+'I've obeyed Harry's instructions,' he said, 'and the bribe he
+offered me was that you would tell me something to wake me up.
+I'm ready, Mr Hannay.'
+
+I noticed with a start that he called me by my proper name.
+
+I began at the very beginning.  I told of my boredom in London,
+and the night I had come back to find Scudder gibbering on my
+doorstep.  I told him all Scudder had told me about Karolides and
+the Foreign Office conference, and that made him purse his lips and grin.
+
+Then I got to the murder, and he grew solemn again.  He heard
+all about the milkman and my time in Galloway, and my deciphering
+Scudder's notes at the inn.
+
+'You've got them here?' he asked sharply, and drew a long
+breath when I whipped the little book from my pocket.
+
+I said nothing of the contents.  Then I described my meeting
+with Sir Harry, and the speeches at the hall.  At that he laughed
+uproariously.
+
+'Harry talked dashed nonsense, did he?  I quite believe it.  He's as
+good a chap as ever breathed, but his idiot of an uncle has stuffed
+his head with maggots.  Go on, Mr Hannay.'
+
+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 solemnized him.  Again I
+had to describe every detail of his appearance.
+
+'Bland and bald-headed and hooded his eyes like a bird ...  He
+sounds a sinister wild-fowl!  And you dynamited his hermitage,
+after he had saved you from the police.  Spirited piece of work, that!'
+Presently I reached the end of my wanderings.  He got up slowly,
+and looked down at me from the hearth-rug.
+
+'You may dismiss the police from your mind,' he said.  'You're in
+no danger from the law of this land.'
+
+'Great Scot!' 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 usually
+took a week to reach me, for they were sent under cover to Spain
+and then to Newcastle.  He had a mania, you know, for concealing
+his tracks.'
+
+'What did he say?' I stammered.
+
+'Nothing.  Merely that he was in danger, but had found shelter
+with a good friend, and that I would hear from him before the 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.
+
+'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 emended my
+reading of it on several points, but I had been fairly correct, on the
+whole.  His face was very grave before he had finished, and he sat
+silent for a while.
+
+'I don't know what to make of it,' he said at last.  'He is right
+about one thing--what is going to happen the day after tomorrow.
+How the devil can it have got known?  That is ugly enough in itself.
+But all this about war and the Black Stone--it reads like some wild
+melodrama.  If only I had more confidence in Scudder's judgement.
+The trouble about him was that he was too romantic.  He had the
+artistic temperament, and wanted a story to be better than God
+meant it to be.  He had a lot of odd biases, too.  Jews, for example,
+made him see red.  Jews and the high finance.
+
+'The Black Stone,' he repeated.  'DER 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 Europe
+that wants him gone.  Besides, he has just been playing up to Berlin
+and Vienna and giving my Chief some uneasy moments.  No!  Scudder has
+gone off the track there.  Frankly, 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
+piecework her blackguards are not likely to stick at a murder or two.
+They want our naval dispositions for their collection at the Marineamt;
+but they will be pigeon-holed--nothing more.'
+
+Just then the butler entered the room.
+
+'There's a trunk-call from London, Sir 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 apologize to
+the shade of Scudder,' he said.  'Karolides was shot dead this evening
+at a few minutes after seven.'
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+The Coming of the Black Stone
+
+
+I came down to breakfast next morning, after eight hours of blessed
+dreamless sleep, to find Sir Walter decoding a telegram in the midst
+of muffins and marmalade.  His fresh rosiness of yesterday seemed a
+thought tarnished.
+
+'I had a busy hour on the telephone after you went to bed,' he
+said.  'I got my Chief to speak to the First Lord and the Secretary
+for War, and they are bringing Royer over a day sooner.  This wire
+clinches it.  He will be in London at five.  Odd that the code word
+for a SOUS-CHEF D/ETAT MAJOR-GENERAL should be "Porker".'
+
+He directed me to the hot dishes and went on.
+
+'Not that I think it will do much good.  If your friends were
+clever enough to find out the first arrangement they are clever
+enough to discover the change.  I would give my head to know
+where the leak is.  We believed there were only five men in England
+who knew about Royer's visit, and you may be certain there were
+fewer in France, for they manage these things better there.'
+
+While I ate he continued to talk, making me to my surprise a
+present of his full confidence.
+
+'Can the dispositions not be changed?' I asked.
+
+'They could,' he said.  'But we want to avoid that if possible.
+They are the result of immense thought, and no alteration would be
+as good.  Besides, on one or two points change is simply impossible.
+Still, something could be done, I suppose, if it were absolutely
+necessary.  But you see the difficulty, Hannay.  Our enemies are not
+going to be such fools as to pick Royer's pocket or any childish
+game like that.  They know that would mean a row and put us on
+our guard.  Their aim is to get the details without any one of us
+knowing, so that Royer will go back to Paris in the belief that the
+whole business is still deadly secret.  If they can't do that they fail,
+for, once we suspect, they know that the whole thing must be altered.'
+
+'Then we must stick by the Frenchman's side till he is home
+again,' I said.  'If they thought they could get the information in
+Paris they would try there.  It means that they have some deep
+scheme on foot in London which they reckon is going to win out.'
+
+'Royer dines with my Chief, and then comes to my house where
+four people will see him--Whittaker from the Admiralty, myself,
+Sir Arthur Drew, and General Winstanley.  The First Lord is ill,
+and has gone to Sheringham.  At my house he will get a certain
+document from Whittaker, and after that he will be motored to
+Portsmouth where a destroyer will take him to Havre.  His journey
+is too important for the ordinary boat-train.  He will never be left
+unattended for a moment till he is safe on French soil.  The same
+with Whittaker till he meets Royer.  That is the best we can do, and
+it's hard to see how there can be any miscarriage.  But I don't mind
+admitting that I'm horribly nervous.  This murder of Karolides will
+play the deuce in the chancelleries of Europe.'
+
+After breakfast he asked me if I could drive a car.
+'Well, you'll be my chauffeur today 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 overworked 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 Anne's Gate punctually by half-past
+eleven.  The butler was coming up by train with the luggage.
+
+The first thing he did was to take me round to Scotland Yard.
+There we saw a prim gentleman, with a clean-shaven, lawyer's face.
+
+'I've brought you the Portland Place murderer,' was Sir Walter's
+introduction.
+
+The reply was a wry smile.  'It would have been a welcome
+present, Bullivant.  This, I presume, is Mr Richard Hannay, who for
+some days greatly interested my department.'
+
+'Mr Hannay will interest it again.  He has much to tell you, but
+not today.  For certain grave reasons his tale must wait for
+four hours.  Then, I can promise you, you will be entertained and
+possibly edified.  I want you to assure Mr Hannay that he will suffer
+no further inconvenience.'
+
+This assurance was promptly given.  'You can take up your life
+where you left off,' I was told.  'Your flat, which probably you no
+longer wish to occupy, is waiting for you, and your man is still
+there.  As you were never publicly accused, we considered that there
+was no need of a public exculpation.  But on that, of course, you
+must please yourself.'
+
+'We may want your assistance later on, MacGillivray,' Sir Walter
+said as we left.
+
+Then he turned me loose.
+
+'Come and see me tomorrow, Hannay.  I needn't tell you to keep
+deadly quiet.  If I were you I would go to bed, for you must have
+considerable arrears of sleep to overtake.  You had better lie low,
+for if one of your Black Stone friends saw you there might be trouble.'
+
+I felt curiously at a loose end.  At first it was very pleasant to be a
+free man, able to go where I wanted without fearing anything.  I
+had only been a month under the ban of the law, and it was quite
+enough for me.  I went to the Savoy and ordered very carefully a
+very good luncheon, and then smoked the best cigar the house
+could provide.  But I was still feeling nervous.  When I saw anybody
+look at me in the lounge, I grew shy, and wondered if they were
+thinking about the murder.
+
+After that I took a taxi and drove miles away up into North
+London.  I walked back through fields and lines of villas and terraces
+and then slums and mean streets, and it took me pretty nearly two
+hours.  All the while my restlessness was growing worse.  I felt that
+great things, tremendous things, were happening or about to
+happen, and I, who was the cog-wheel of the whole business, was
+out of it.  Royer would be landing at Dover, Sir Walter would be
+making plans with the few people in England who were in the
+secret, and somewhere in the darkness the Black Stone would be
+working.  I felt the sense of danger and impending calamity, and I
+had the curious feeling, too, that I alone could avert it, alone could
+grapple with it.  But I was out of the game now.  How could it be
+otherwise?  It was not likely that Cabinet Ministers and Admiralty
+Lords and Generals would admit me to their councils.
+
+I actually began to wish that I could run up against one of my
+three enemies.  That would lead to developments.  I felt that I
+wanted enormously to have a vulgar scrap with those gentry, where
+I could hit out and flatten something.  I was rapidly getting into a
+very bad temper.
+
+I didn't feel like going back to my flat.  That had to be faced
+some time, 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
+possession of me.  Here was I, a very ordinary fellow, with no
+particular brains, and yet I was convinced that somehow I was
+needed to help this business through--that without me it would all
+go to blazes.  I told myself it was sheer silly conceit, that four or
+five of the cleverest people living, with all the might of the British
+Empire at their back, had the job in hand.  Yet I couldn't be
+convinced.  It seemed as if a voice kept speaking in my ear, telling
+me to be up and doing, or I would never sleep again.
+
+The upshot was 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 Marmaduke jopley.
+
+He saw me and stopped short.
+
+'By God, the murderer!' he cried.  'Here, you fellows, hold him!
+That's Hannay, the man who did the Portland Place murder!'  He
+gripped me by the arm, and the others crowded round.
+I wasn't looking for any trouble, but my ill-temper made me play
+the fool.  A policeman came up, and I should have told him the
+truth, and, if he didn't believe it, demanded to be taken to Scotland
+Yard, or for that matter to the nearest police station.  But a delay at
+that moment seemed to me unendurable, and the sight of Marmie's
+imbecile face was more than I could bear.  I let out with my left,
+and had the satisfaction of seeing him measure his length in the
+gutter.
+
+Then began an unholy row.  They were all on me at once, and
+the policeman took me in the rear.  I got in one or two good blows,
+for I think, with fair play, I could have licked the lot of them, but
+the policeman pinned me behind, and one of them got his fingers
+on my throat.
+
+Through a black cloud of rage I heard the officer of the law
+asking what was the matter, and Marmie, between his broken teeth,
+declaring that I was Hannay the murderer.
+
+'Oh, damn it all,' I cried, 'make the fellow shut up.  I advise you
+to leave me alone, constable.  Scotland Yard knows all about me,
+and you'll get a proper wigging if you interfere with me.'
+
+'You've got to come along 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 behind me.
+
+I have a very fair turn of speed, and that night I had wings.  In a
+jiffy I was in Pall Mall and had turned down towards St James's
+Park.  I dodged the policeman at the Palace gates, dived through a
+press of carriages at the entrance to the Mall, and was making for
+the bridge before my pursuers had crossed the roadway.  In the
+open ways of the Park I put on a spurt.  Happily there were few
+people about and no one tried to stop me.  I was staking all on
+getting to Queen Anne's Gate.
+
+When I entered that quiet thoroughfare it seemed deserted.  Sir
+Walter's house was in the narrow part, and outside it three or four
+motor-cars were drawn up.  I slackened speed some yards off and
+walked briskly up to the door.  If the butler refused me admission,
+or if he even delayed to open the door, I was done.
+
+He didn't delay.  I had scarcely rung before 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 engaged,
+Sir, and I have orders to admit no one.  Perhaps you will wait.'
+
+The house was of the old-fashioned kind, with a wide hall and
+rooms on both sides of it.  At the far end was an alcove with a
+telephone and a couple of chairs, and there the butler offered me a seat.
+
+'See here,' I whispered.  'There's trouble about and I'm in it.  But
+Sir Walter knows, and I'm working for him.  If anyone comes and
+asks if I am here, tell him a lie.'
+
+He nodded, and presently there was a noise of voices in the
+street, and a furious ringing at the bell.  I never admired a man
+more than that butler.  He opened the door, and with a face like a
+graven image waited to be questioned.  Then he gave them it.  He
+told them whose house it was, and what his orders were, and
+simply froze them off the doorstep.  I could see it all from my
+alcove, and it was better than any play.
+
+I hadn't waited long till there came another ring at the bell.  The
+butler made no bones about admitting this new visitor.
+
+While he was taking off his coat I saw who it was.  You couldn't
+open a newspaper or a magazine without seeing that face--the grey
+beard cut like a spade, the firm fighting mouth, the blunt square
+nose, and the keen blue eyes.  I recognized the First Sea Lord, the
+man, they say, that made the new British Navy.
+
+He passed my alcove and was ushered into a room at the back of
+the hall.  As the door opened I could hear the sound of low voices.
+It shut, and I was left alone again.
+
+For twenty minutes I sat there, wondering what I was to do
+next.  I was still perfectly convinced that I was wanted, but when or
+how I had no notion.  I kept looking at my watch, and as the time
+crept on to half-past ten I began to think that the conference must
+soon end.  In a quarter of an hour Royer should be speeding along
+the road to Portsmouth ...
+
+Then I heard a bell ring, and the butler appeared.  The door of
+the back room opened, and the First Sea Lord came out.  He walked
+past me, and in passing he glanced in my direction, and for a
+second we looked each other in the face.
+
+Only for a second, but it was enough to make my heart jump.  I
+had never seen the great man before, and he had never seen me.
+But in that fraction of time something sprang into his eyes, and that
+something was recognition.  You can't mistake it.  It is a flicker, a
+spark of light, a minute shade of difference which means one thing
+and one thing only.  It came involuntarily, for in a moment it died,
+and he passed on.  In a maze of wild fancies I heard the street door
+close behind him.
+
+I picked up the telephone book and looked up the number of his
+house.  We were connected at once, and I heard a servant's voice.
+
+'Is his Lordship at home?' I asked.
+
+'His Lordship returned half an hour ago,' said the voice, 'and has
+gone to bed.  He is not very well tonight.  Will you leave a
+message, Sir?'
+
+I rang off and almost tumbled into a chair.  My part in this
+business was not yet ended.  It had been a close shave, but I had
+been in time.
+
+Not a moment could be lost, so I marched boldly to the door of
+that back room and entered without knocking.
+
+Five surprised faces looked up from a round table.  There was
+Sir Walter, and Drew the War Minister, whom I knew from his
+photographs.  There was a slim elderly man, who was probably
+Whittaker, the Admiralty official, and there was General Winstanley,
+conspicuous from the long scar on his forehead.  Lastly,
+there was a short stout man with an iron-grey moustache and
+bushy eyebrows, who had been arrested in the middle of a sentence.
+
+Sir Walter's face showed surprise and annoyance.
+
+'This is Mr Hannay, of whom I have spoken to you,' he said
+apologetically to the company.  'I'm afraid, Hannay, this visit
+is ill-timed.'
+
+I was getting back my coolness.  'That remains to be seen, Sir,' I
+said; 'but I think it may be in the nick of time.  For God's sake,
+gentlemen, tell me who went out a minute ago?'
+
+'Lord Alloa,' Sir Walter said, reddening with anger.
+'It was not,' I cried; 'it was his living image, but it was not Lord
+Alloa.  It was someone who recognized me, someone I have seen in
+the last month.  He had scarcely left the doorstep when I rang up
+Lord Alloa's house and was told he had come in half an hour
+before and had gone to bed.'
+
+'Who--who--' someone stammered.
+
+'The Black Stone,' I cried, and I sat down in the chair so recently
+vacated and looked round at five badly scared gentlemen.
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+The Thirty-Nine Steps
+
+
+'Nonsense!' said the official from the Admiralty.
+
+Sir Walter got up and left the room while we looked blankly at
+the table.  He came back in ten minutes with a long face.  'I have
+spoken to Alloa,' he said.  'Had him out of bed--very grumpy.  He
+went straight home after Mulross's dinner.'
+
+'But it's madness,' broke in General Winstanley.  'Do you mean
+to tell me that that man came here and sat beside me for the best
+part of half an hour and that I didn't detect the imposture?  Alloa
+must be out of his mind.'
+
+'Don't you see the cleverness of it?' I said.  'You were too
+interested in other things to have any eyes.  You took Lord Alloa for
+granted.  If it had been anybody else you might have looked more
+closely, but it was natural for him to be here, and that put you all
+to sleep.'
+
+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!'
+
+He bent his wise brows on the assembly.
+
+'I will tell you a tale,' he said.  'It happened many years ago in
+Senegal.  I was quartered in a remote station, and to pass the time
+used to go fishing for big barbel in the river.  A little Arab mare
+used to carry my luncheon basket--one of the salted dun breed you
+got at Timbuctoo in the old days.  Well, one morning I had good
+sport, and the mare was unaccountably restless.  I could hear her
+whinnying and squealing and stamping her feet, and I kept soothing
+her with my voice while my mind was intent on fish.  I could see
+her all the time, as I thought, out of a corner of my eye, tethered
+to a tree twenty yards away.  After a couple of hours I began to
+think of food.  I collected my fish in a tarpaulin bag, and moved
+down the stream towards the mare, trolling my line.  When I got up
+to her I flung the tarpaulin on her back--'
+
+He paused and looked round.
+
+'It was the smell that gave me warning.  I turned my head and
+found myself looking at a lion three feet off ...  An old man-eater,
+that was the terror of the village ...  What was left of the mare, a
+mass of blood and bones and hide, was behind him.'
+
+'What happened?' I asked.  I was enough of a hunter to know a
+true yarn when I heard it.
+
+'I stuffed my fishing-rod into his jaws, and I had a pistol.  Also
+my servants came presently with rifles.  But he left his mark on me.'
+He held up a hand which lacked three fingers.
+
+'Consider,' he said.  'The mare had been dead more than an hour,
+and the brute had been patiently watching me ever since.  I never
+saw the kill, for I was accustomed to the mare's fretting, and I
+never marked her absence, for my consciousness of her was only of
+something tawny, and the lion filled that part.  If I could blunder
+thus, gentlemen, in a land where men's senses are keen, why should
+we busy preoccupied urban folk not err also?'
+
+Sir Walter nodded.  No one was ready to gainsay him.
+
+'But I don't see,' went on Winstanley.  'Their object was to get
+these dispositions without our knowing it.  Now it only required
+one of us to mention to Alloa our meeting tonight for the whole
+fraud to be exposed.'
+
+Sir Walter laughed dryly.  'The selection of Alloa shows their
+acumen.  Which of us was likely to speak to him about tonight?  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.'
+
+'That is not difficult,' the Frenchman replied.  'A good spy is
+trained to have a photographic memory.  Like your own Macaulay.
+You noticed he said nothing, but went through these papers again
+and again.  I think we may assume that he has every detail stamped
+on his mind.  When I was younger I could do the same trick.'
+
+'Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to change the plans,'
+said Sir Walter ruefully.
+
+Whittaker was looking very glum.  'Did you tell Lord Alloa what
+has happened?' he asked.  'No?  Well, I can't speak with absolute
+assurance, but I'm nearly certain we can't make any serious change
+unless we alter the geography of England.'
+
+'Another thing must be said,' it was Royer who spoke.  'I talked
+freely when that man was here.  I told something of the military
+plans of my Government.  I was permitted to say so much.  But that
+information would be worth many millions to our enemies.  No, my
+friends, I see no other way.  The man who came here and his
+confederates must be taken, and taken at once.'
+
+'Good God,' I cried, 'and we have not a rag of a clue.'
+
+'Besides,' said Whittaker, 'there is the post.  By this time the news
+will be on its way.'
+
+'No,' said the Frenchman.  'You do not understand the habits
+of the spy.  He receives personally his reward, and he delivers
+personally his intelligence.  We in France know something of the
+breed.  There is still a chance, MES 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?
+
+Then suddenly I had an inspiration.
+
+'Where is Scudder's book?' I cried to Sir Walter.  'Quick, man, I
+remember something in it.'
+
+He unlocked the door of a bureau and gave it to me.
+
+I found the place.  THIRTY-NINE STEPS, I read, and again, THIRTY-NINE
+STEPS--I COUNTED THEM--HIGH TIDE 10.17 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 shouted.  'Scudder knew where these
+fellows laired--he knew where they were going to leave the
+country, though he kept the name to himself.  Tomorrow was the
+day, and it was some place where high tide was at 10.17.'
+
+'They may have gone tonight,' someone said.
+
+'Not they.  They have their own snug secret way, and they won't
+be hurried.  I know Germans, and they are mad about working to a
+plan.  Where the devil can I get a book of Tide Tables?'
+
+Whittaker brightened up.  'It's a chance,' he said.  'Let's go over
+to the Admiralty.'
+
+We got into two of the waiting motor-cars--all but Sir Walter,
+who went off to Scotland Yard--to 'mobilize 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 library the Admiralty Tide Tables.  I sat
+at the desk and the others stood round, for somehow or other I had
+got charge of this expedition.
+
+It was no good.  There were hundreds of entries, and so far as I
+could see 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 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 so 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 on any harbour that I had ever
+seen.  It must be some place which a particular staircase 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.
+
+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 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 instinct about questions like
+this.  I don't know if I can explain myself, but I used to use my
+brains as far as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I
+guessed, and I usually found my guesses pretty right.
+
+So I set out all my conclusions on a bit of Admiralty paper.  They
+ran like this:
+
+               FAIRLY CERTAIN
+
+     (1)  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 possible 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 another 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 sitting 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.
+
+Sir Walter had joined us, and presently MacGillivray arrived.  He
+had sent out instructions to watch the ports and railway stations for
+the three men whom I had described to Sir Walter.  Not that he or
+anybody else thought that that would do much good.
+
+'Here's the most I can make of it,' I said.  'We have got to find a
+place where there are several staircases down to the beach, one of
+which has thirty-nine steps.  I think it's a piece of open coast with
+biggish cliffs, somewhere between the Wash and the Channel.  Also
+it's a place where full tide is at 10.17 tomorrow night.'
+
+Then an idea struck me.  'Is there no Inspector of Coastguards or
+some fellow like that who knows the East Coast?'
+
+Whittaker said there was, and that he lived in Clapham.  He went
+off in a car to fetch him, and the rest of us sat about the little room
+and talked of anything that came into our heads.  I lit a pipe and
+went over the whole thing again till my brain grew weary.
+
+About one in the morning the coastguard man arrived.  He was a
+fine old fellow, with the look of a naval officer, and was desperately
+respectful to the company.  I left the War Minister to cross-examine
+him, for I felt he would think it cheek in me to talk.
+
+'We want you to tell us the 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.'
+
+'That's not it,' I said.
+
+'Then there are plenty of Marine Parades, if that's what you
+mean.  Every seaside resort has them.'
+
+I shook my head.
+'It's got to be more retired than that,' I said.
+
+'Well, gentlemen, I can't think of anywhere else.  Of course,
+there's the Ruff--'
+
+'What's that?' I asked.
+
+'The big chalk headland in Kent, close to Bradgate.  It's got a lot
+of villas on the top, and some of the houses have staircases down to
+a private beach.  It's a very high-toned sort of place, and the residents
+there like to keep by themselves.'
+
+I tore open the Tide Tables and found Bradgate.  High tide there
+was at 10.17 P.m.  on the 15th of June.
+
+'We're on the scent at last,' I cried excitedly.  'How can I find out
+what is the tide at the Ruff?'
+
+'I can tell you that, Sir,' said the coastguard man.  'I once was lent
+a house there in this very month, and I used to go out at night to
+the deep-sea fishing.  The tide's ten minutes before Bradgate.'
+
+I closed the book and looked round at the company.
+
+'If one of those staircases has thirty-nine steps we have solved
+the mystery, gentlemen,' I said.  'I want the loan of your car, Sir
+Walter, and a map of the roads.  If Mr MacGillivray will spare me
+ten minutes, I think we can prepare something for tomorrow.'
+
+It was ridiculous in me to take charge of the business like this,
+but they didn't seem to mind, and after all I had been in the show
+from the start.  Besides, I was used to rough jobs, and these eminent
+gentlemen were too clever not to see it.  It was General Royer who
+gave me my commission.  'I for one,' he said, 'am content to leave
+the matter in Mr Hannay's hands.'
+
+By half-past three I was tearing past the moonlit hedgerows of
+Kent, with MacGillivray's best man on the seat beside me.
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+Various Parties Converging on the Sea
+
+
+A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from
+the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the lightship on the Cock
+sands which seemed the size of a bell-buoy.  A couple of miles
+farther south and much nearer the shore a small destroyer 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.
+
+It took him more than an hour to do the job, and when I saw
+him coming towards me, conning a bit of paper, I can tell you my
+heart was in my mouth.  Everything depended, you see, on my
+guess proving right.
+
+He read aloud the number of steps in the different stairs.  'Thirty-
+four, thirty-five, thirty-nine, forty-two, forty-seven,' and 'twenty-
+one' where the cliffs grew lower.  I almost got up and shouted.
+
+We hurried back to the town and sent a wire to MacGillivray.  I
+wanted half a dozen men, and I directed them to divide themselves
+among different specified hotels.  Then Scaife set out to prospect
+the house at the head of the thirty-nine steps.
+
+He came back with news that both puzzled and reassured me.
+The house was called Trafalgar Lodge, and belonged to an old
+gentleman called Appleton--a retired stockbroker, the house-agent
+said.  Mr Appleton was there a good deal in the summer time, and
+was in residence now--had been for the better part of a week.
+Scaife could pick up very little information about him, except that
+he was a decent old fellow, who paid his bills regularly, and was
+always good for a fiver for a local charity.  Then Scaife seemed to
+have penetrated to the back door of the house, pretending he was
+an agent for sewing-machines.  Only three servants were kept, a
+cook, a parlour-maid, and a housemaid, and they were just the sort
+that you would find in a respectable 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 in and planted with
+bushes, whence the staircases descended to the beach.  I saw Trafalgar
+Lodge very plainly, a red-brick villa with a veranda, a tennis
+lawn behind, and in front the ordinary seaside flower-garden full of
+marguerites and scraggy geraniums.  There was a flagstaff from
+which an enormous Union Jack hung limply in the still air.
+
+Presently I observed someone leave the house and saunter along
+the cliff.  When I got my glasses on him I saw it was an old man,
+wearing white flannel trousers, a blue serge jacket, and a straw hat.
+He carried field-glasses and a newspaper, and sat down on one of
+the iron seats and began to read.  Sometimes he would lay down the
+paper and turn his glasses on the sea.  He looked for a long time at
+the destroyer.  I watched him for half an hour, till he got up and
+went back to the house for his luncheon, when I returned to the
+hotel for mine.
+
+I wasn't feeling very confident.  This decent common-place dwelling
+was not what I had expected.  The man might be the bald
+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 had dreaded to miss.  A yacht came
+up from the south and dropped anchor pretty well opposite the
+Ruff.  She seemed about a hundred and fifty tons, and I saw she
+belonged to the Squadron from the white ensign.  So Scaife and I
+went down to the harbour and hired a boatman for an afternoon's fishing.
+
+I spent a warm and peaceful afternoon.  We caught between us
+about twenty pounds of cod and 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 made the boatman row us round the yacht, which
+lay like a delicate white bird, ready at a moment to flee.  Scaife said
+she must be a fast boat for her build, and that she was pretty
+heavily engined.
+
+Her name was the ARIADNE, as I discovered from the cap of one of
+the men who was polishing brasswork.  I spoke to him, and got an
+answer in the soft dialect of Essex.  Another hand that came along
+passed me the time of day in an unmistakable English tongue.  Our
+boatman had an argument with one of them about the weather, and
+for a few minutes we lay on our oars close to the starboard bow.
+
+Then the men suddenly disregarded us and bent their heads to
+their work as an officer came along the deck.  He was a pleasant,
+clean-looking young fellow, and he put a question to us about our
+fishing in very good English.  But there could be no doubt about
+him.  His close-cropped head and the cut of his collar and tie never
+came out of England.
+
+That did something to reassure me, but as 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 depended on their
+success for them to take any risks.  The whole question was how much
+they understood about Scudder's knowledge.  I had talked confidently
+last night about Germans always sticking to a scheme, but if they had
+any suspicions that I was on their track they would be fools not to
+cover it.  I wondered if the man last night had seen that I recognized
+him.  Somehow I did not think he had, and to that I had clung.  But the
+whole business had never seemed so difficult as that afternoon when
+by all calculations I should have been rejoicing in 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
+thought I would put in an hour or two watching Trafalgar Lodge.
+
+I found a place farther up the hill, in the garden of an empty
+house.  From there I had a full view of the court, on which two
+figures were having a game of tennis.  One was the old man, whom
+I had already seen; the other was a younger fellow, wearing some
+club colours in the scarf round his middle.  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 moor in
+aeroplane and motor-car, and notably about that infernal antiquarian.
+It was easy enough to connect those folk with the knife
+that pinned Scudder to the floor, and with fell designs on the
+world's peace.  But here were two guileless citizens taking their
+innocuous exercise, and soon about to go indoors to a humdrum
+dinner, where they would talk of market prices and the last cricket
+scores and the gossip of their native Surbiton.  I had been making a
+net to catch vultures and falcons, and 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 English.  Then
+the plump man, mopping his brow with a silk handkerchief, announced
+that he must have a tub.  I heard his very words--'I've got into
+a proper lather,' he said.  'This will bring down my weight and
+my handicap, Bob.  I'll take you on tomorrow and give you a stroke a
+hole.'  You couldn't find anything much more English than that.
+
+They all went into the house, and left me feeling a precious idiot.
+I had been barking up the wrong tree this time.  These men might
+be acting; but if they were, where was their audience?  They didn't
+know I was sitting thirty yards off in a rhododendron.  It was simply
+impossible to believe that these three hearty fellows were anything
+but what they seemed--three ordinary, game-playing, suburban
+Englishmen, wearisome, if you like, but sordidly innocent.
+
+And yet there were three of them; and one was old, and one was
+plump, and one was lean and dark; and their house chimed in with
+Scudder's notes; and half a mile off was lying a steam yacht with at
+least one German officer.  I thought of Karolides lying dead and all
+Europe trembling on the edge of earthquake, and the men I had
+left behind me in London who were waiting anxiously for the
+events of the next hours.  There was no doubt that hell was afoot
+somewhere.  The Black Stone had won, and if it survived this June
+night would bank its winnings.
+
+There seemed only one thing to do--go forward as if I had no
+doubts, and if I was going to make a fool of myself to do it
+handsomely.  Never in my life have I faced a job with greater
+disinclination.  I would rather in my then mind have walked into a
+den of anarchists, each with his Browning handy, or faced a charging
+lion with a popgun, than enter that happy home of three
+cheerful Englishmen and tell them that their game was up.  How
+they would laugh at me!
+
+But suddenly I remembered a thing I once heard in Rhodesia
+from old Peter Pienaar.  I have quoted Peter already in this narrative.
+He was the best scout I ever knew, and before he had turned
+respectable he had been pretty often on the windy side of the law,
+when he had been wanted badly by the authorities.  Peter once
+discussed with me the question of disguises, and he had a theory
+which struck me at the time.  He said, barring absolute certainties
+like fingerprints, mere physical traits were very little use for
+identification if the fugitive really knew his business.  He laughed at
+things like dyed hair and false beards and such childish follies.  The
+only thing that mattered was what Peter called 'atmosphere'.
+
+If a man could get into perfectly different surroundings from
+those in which he had been first observed, and--this is the important
+part--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 recognized him;
+but he had only seen him snuffing the lights in a public-house with
+a revolver.
+
+The recollection of Peter's talk gave me the first real comfort
+that I had had that day.  Peter had been a wise old bird, and these
+fellows I was after were about the pick of the 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 Peter's which had helped
+me when I had been a roadman.  'If you are playing a part, you
+will never keep it up unless you convince yourself that you are
+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 farther 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 ARIADNE and
+on the destroyer away to the south, and beyond the Cock sands the
+bigger lights of steamers making for the Thames.  The whole scene
+was so peaceful and ordinary that I got more dashed in spirits every
+second.  It took all my resolution to stroll towards Trafalgar Lodge
+about half-past nine.
+
+On the way I got a piece of solid comfort from the sight of a
+greyhound that was swinging along at a nursemaid's heels.  He
+reminded me of a dog I used to have in Rhodesia, and of the time
+when I took him hunting with me in the 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.  Afterwards 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.  They were quietly absorbed into the landscape.  I was on
+the right track, and I jammed that down in my mind and vowed
+never to forget it.  The last word was with Peter 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
+observe.  A three-foot railing separated it from the cliff road; the
+windows on the ground-floor were all open, and shaded lights and
+the low sound of voices revealed where the occupants were finishing
+dinner.  Everything was as public and above-board as a charity
+bazaar.  Feeling the greatest 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 before.  I can't explain why, but it is a fact.  But
+what fellows like me don't understand is the great comfortable,
+satisfied middle-class world, the folk that live in villas and suburbs.
+He doesn't know how they look at things, he doesn't understand
+their conventions, and he is as shy of them as of a black 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 mastered
+me.  There were the golf-clubs and tennis-rackets, the straw hats
+and caps, the rows of gloves, the sheaf of walking-sticks, which
+you will find in ten thousand British 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 polished 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 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 mantelpiece,
+and I could have sworn they were English public school or college.
+I had only one glance, for I managed to pull myself together and go
+after the maid.  But I was too late.  She had already entered the
+dining-room and given my name to her master, and I had missed the
+chance of seeing how the three took it.
+
+When I walked into the room the old man at the head of the
+table had risen and turned round to meet me.  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 colours 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, and I'll
+rejoin you.  We had better go to the smoking-room.'
+
+Though I hadn't an ounce of confidence in me, I forced myself
+to play the game.  I pulled up a chair and sat down on it.
+
+'I think we have met before,' I said, 'and I guess you know
+my business.'
+
+The light in the room was dim, but so far as I could see their
+faces, they played the part of mystification very well.
+
+'Maybe, maybe,' said the old man.  'I haven't a very good memory,
+but I'm afraid you must tell me your errand, Sir, for I really don't
+know it.'
+
+'Well, then,' I said, and all the time I seemed to myself to be
+talking pure foolishness--'I have come to tell you that the game's
+up.  I have a warrant for the arrest of you three gentlemen.'
+
+'Arrest,' said the old man, and he looked really shocked.  'Arrest!
+Good God, what for?'
+
+'For the murder of Franklin Scudder in London on the 23rd day
+of last month.'
+
+'I never heard the name before,' said the old man in a dazed voice.
+
+One of the others spoke up.  'That was the Portland Place murder.
+I read about it.  Good heavens, you must be mad, Sir!  Where do you
+come from?'
+
+'Scotland Yard,' I said.
+
+After that for a minute there was utter silence.  The old man was
+staring at his plate and fumbling with a nut, the very model of
+innocent bewilderment.
+
+Then the plump one spoke up.  He stammered a little, like a man
+picking his words.
+
+'Don't get flustered, uncle,' he said.  'It is all a ridiculous mistake;
+but these things happen sometimes, and we can easily set it right.  It
+won't be hard to prove our innocence.  I can show that I was out of
+the country on the 23rd of May, and Bob was in a nursing home.
+You were in London, but you can explain what you were doing.'
+
+'Right, Percy!  Of course that's easy enough.  The 23rd!  That was
+the day after Agatha's wedding.  Let me see.  What was I doing?  I
+came up in the morning from Woking, and lunched at the club with
+Charlie Symons.  Then--oh yes, I dined with the Fishmongers.  I
+remember, for the punch didn't agree with me, and I was seedy next
+morning.  Hang it all, there's the cigar-box I brought back from the
+dinner.'  He pointed to an object on the table, and laughed nervously.
+
+'I think, Sir,' said the young man, addressing me respectfully,
+'you will see you are mistaken.  We want to assist the law like all
+Englishmen, and we don't want Scotland Yard to be making fools
+of themselves.  That's so, uncle?'
+
+'Certainly, Bob.'  The old fellow seemed to be recovering his
+voice.  'Certainly, we'll do anything in our power to assist the
+authorities.  But--but this is a bit too much.  I can't get over it.'
+
+'How Nellie will chuckle,' said the plump man.  'She always said
+that you would die of boredom because nothing ever happened to
+you.  And now you've got it thick and strong,' and he began to
+laugh very pleasantly.
+
+'By Jove, yes.  Just think of it!  What a story to tell at the club.
+Really, Mr Hannay, I suppose I should be angry, to show my
+innocence, but it's too funny!  I almost forgive you the fright you
+gave me!  You looked so glum, I thought I might have been walking
+in my sleep and killing people.'
+
+It couldn't be acting, it was too confoundedly genuine.  My heart
+went into my boots, and my first impulse was to apologize and
+clear out.  But I told myself I must see it through, even though I
+was to be the laughing-stock of Britain.  The light from the dinner-
+table candlesticks was not very good, and to cover my confusion I
+got up, walked to the door and switched on the electric light.  The
+sudden glare made them blink, and I stood scanning the three faces.
+
+Well, I made nothing of it.  One was old and bald, one was stout,
+one was dark and thin.  There was nothing in their appearance to
+prevent them being the three who had hunted me in Scotland, but
+there was nothing to identify them.  I simply can't explain why I
+who, as a roadman, had looked into two pairs of eyes, and as Ned
+Ainslie into another pair, why I, who have a good memory and
+reasonable powers of observation, could find no satisfaction.  They
+seemed exactly what they professed to be, and I could not have
+sworn to one of them.
+
+There in that pleasant dining-room, with etchings on the walls,
+and a picture of an old lady in a bib above the mantelpiece, I could
+see nothing to connect 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 a 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 couldn't find a word.
+
+'I hope you'll find it consistent with your duty to drop this
+ridiculous business.  I make no complaint, but you'll see how annoying
+it must be to respectable people.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'O Lord,' said the young man.  'This is a bit too thick!'
+
+'Do you propose to march us off to the police station?' asked the
+plump one.  'That might be the best way out of it, but I suppose
+you won't be content with the local branch.  I have the right to ask
+to see your warrant, but I don't wish to cast any aspersions upon
+you.  You are only doing your duty.  But you'll admit it's horribly
+awkward.  What do you propose to do?'
+
+There was nothing to do except to call in my men and have them
+arrested, or to confess my blunder and clear out.  I felt mesmerized by
+the whole place, by the air of obvious innocence--not innocence
+merely, but frank honest bewilderment and concern in the three faces.
+
+'Oh, Peter Pienaar,' I groaned inwardly, and for a moment I was
+very near damning myself for a fool and asking their pardon.
+
+'Meantime I vote we have a game of bridge,' said the plump one.
+'It will give 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 invitation at the club.
+The whole business had mesmerized me.  We went into the
+smoking-room where a card-table was set out, and I was offered
+things to smoke and drink.  I took my place at the table in a kind of
+dream.  The window was open and the moon was 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.  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 me.
+
+A little thing, lasting only a second, and the odds were a thousand
+to one that I might have had my eyes on my cards at the time and
+missed it.  But I didn't, and, in a flash, the air seemed to clear.  Some
+shadow lifted from my brain, and I was looking at the three men
+with full and absolute recognition.
+
+The clock on the mantelpiece struck ten o'clock.
+
+The three faces seemed to change before my eyes and reveal their
+secrets.  The young one was the murderer.  Now I saw cruelty and
+ruthlessness, where before I had only seen good-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 matter.  I wondered if he was the fellow who had first
+tracked Scudder, and left his card on him.  Scudder had said he
+lisped, and I could imagine how the adoption of a lisp might add terror.
+
+But the old man was the pick of the lot.  He was sheer brain, icy,
+cool, calculating, as ruthless as a steam hammer.  Now that my eyes
+were opened I wondered where I had seen the benevolence.  His
+jaw was like chilled steel, and his eyes had the inhuman luminosity
+of a bird's.  I went on playing, and every second a greater hate
+welled up in my heart.  It almost choked me, and I couldn't answer
+when my partner spoke.  Only a little longer could I endure
+their company.
+
+'Whew!  Bob!  Look at the time,' said the old man.  'You'd better
+think about catching your train.  Bob's got to go to town tonight,'
+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 he must put off his journey,' I said.
+
+'Oh, damn,' said the young man.  'I thought you had dropped
+that rot.  I've simply got to go.  You can have my address, and I'll
+give any security you like.'
+
+'No,' I said, 'you must stay.'
+
+At that I think they must have realized 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, 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, 'DAS BOOT, DAS BOOT!'  As it spoke I
+saw two of my fellows emerge on the moonlit lawn.
+
+The young dark man leapt for the window, was through it, and
+over the low fence before a hand could touch him.  I grappled the
+old chap, and the room seemed to fill with figures.  I saw the plump
+one collared, but my eyes were all for the out-of-doors, where
+Franz sped on over the road towards the railed entrance to the
+beach stairs.  One man followed him, but he had no chance.  The
+gate of the stairs locked behind the fugitive, and I stood staring,
+with my hands on the old boy's throat, for such a time as a man
+might take to descend those steps to the sea.
+
+Suddenly my prisoner broke from me and flung himself on the
+wall.  There was a click as if a lever had been pulled.  Then came a
+low rumbling far, far below the ground, and through the window I
+saw a cloud of chalky dust pouring out of the shaft of the stairway.
+
+Someone switched on the light.
+
+The old man was looking at me with blazing eyes.
+
+'He is safe,' he cried.  'You cannot follow in time ...  He is
+gone ...  He has triumphed ...  DER SCHWARZE STEIN IST IN DER
+SIEGESKRONE.'
+
+There was more in those eyes than any common triumph.  They
+had been hooded like a bird of prey, and now they flamed with a
+hawk's pride.  A white fanatic heat burned in them, and I realized
+for the first time the terrible thing I had been up against.  This man
+was more than a spy; in his foul way he had been a patriot.
+
+As the handcuffs clinked on his wrists I said my last word to him.
+
+'I hope Franz will bear his triumph well.  I ought to tell you that
+the ARIADNE for the last hour has been in our hands.'
+
+
+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 experience
+got a captain's commission straight off.  But I had done my best
+service, I think, before I put on khaki.
+
+
+
+
+
+****End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Thirty-nine Steps****
+