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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Thirty-Nine Steps</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: John Buchan</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June, 1996 [eBook #558]<br /> +[Most recently updated: October 11, 2020]</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Jo Churcher. HTML version by Al Haines. Corrections by Menno de Leeuw.</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:65%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + +<h1>The Thirty-Nine Steps</h1> + +<h2>by John Buchan</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap01">Chapter I </a></td> +<td>The Man Who Died</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap02">Chapter II </a></td> +<td>The Milkman Sets Out on his Travels</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap03">Chapter III </a></td> +<td>The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap04">Chapter IV </a></td> +<td>The Adventure of the Radical Candidate</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap05">Chapter V </a></td> +<td>The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap06">Chapter VI </a></td> +<td>The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap07">Chapter VII </a></td> +<td>The Dry-Fly Fisherman</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap08">Chapter VIII </a></td> +<td>The Coming of the Black Stone</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap09">Chapter IX </a></td> +<td>The Thirty-Nine Steps</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#chap10">Chapter X </a></td> +<td>Various Parties Converging on the Sea</td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +TO<br /> +THOMAS ARTHUR NELSON<br /> +(LOTHIAN AND BORDER HORSE) +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +My Dear Tommy, +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +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. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +J.B. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Sept. 1915 +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>Chapter I.<br /> +The Man Who Died</h2> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last +years in Buluwayo. I had got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good +enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My +father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been +home since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on +stopping there for the rest of my days. +</p> + +<p> +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 to 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +About six o’clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Café 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is the door locked?” he asked feverishly, and he fastened the +chain with his own hand. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Pardon,” he said, “I’m a bit rattled tonight. You see, +I happen at this moment to be dead.” +</p> + +<p> +I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe. +</p> + +<p> +“What does it feel like?” I asked. I was pretty certain that I had +to deal with a madman. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get on with your yarn,” I said, “and I’ll tell +you.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you wonder?” he cried. “For three hundred years they have +been persecuted, and this is the return match for the <i>pogroms</i>. 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 <i>von und zu</i> 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 Tsar, +because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location +on the Volga.” +</p> + +<p> +I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left behind +a little. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I thought you were dead,” I put in. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Mors janua vitæ</i>,” 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?” +</p> + +<p> +I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that very afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was getting +interested in the beggar. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s simple enough, anyhow,” I said. “You can warn +him and keep him at home.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Where did you find out this story?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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 Leipsig. 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....” +</p> + +<p> +The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down some more whisky. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How did you manage it?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“My hat! Mr Scudder—” I stammered. +</p> + +<p> +“Not Mr Scudder,” he corrected; “Captain Theophilus Digby, of +the 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I’ll thank you to remember +that, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and went down to the City +till luncheon. When I got back the liftman had an important face. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +My guest was lying sprawled on his back. There was a long knife through his +heart which skewered him to the floor. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>Chapter II.<br /> +The Milkman Sets Out on his Travels</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +As I poked into the tobacco my fingers touched something hard, and I drew out +Scudder’s little black pocket-book.... +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come in here a moment,” I said. “I want a word with +you.” And I led him into the dining-room. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +His eyes opened at the sight of the gold, and he grinned broadly. +“Wot’s the gyme?”he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Right-o!” he said cheerily. “I ain’t the man to spoil +a bit of sport. ’Ere’s the rig, guv’nor.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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’.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>Chapter III.<br /> +The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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”. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, so 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +In a roadside planting I cut a walking-stick of hazel, and presently struck off +the highway up a by-path which followed the glen of a brawling stream. I +reckoned that I was still far ahead of any pursuit, and for that night might +please myself. It was some hours since I had tasted food, and I was getting +very hungry when I came to a herd’s cottage set in a nook beside a +waterfall. A brown-faced woman was standing by the door, and greeted me with +the kindly shyness of moorland places. When I asked for a night’s lodging +she said I was welcome to the “bed in the loft”, and very soon she +set before me a hearty meal of ham and eggs, scones, and thick sweet milk. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Scotsman</i>. Eagerly I seized on it, +for I fancied it would tell me something. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what comes o’ bein’ a teetotaller,” he +observed in bitter regret. +</p> + +<p> +I expressed my surprise that in him I should have met a blue-ribbon stalwart. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He swung his heels up on the seat, and burrowed a frowsy head into the +cushions. +</p> + +<p> +“And that’s a’ I get,” he moaned. “A heid better +than hell fire, and twae een lookin’ different ways for the +Sabbath.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did it?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +As when a Gryphon through the wilderness<br /> +With wingèd step, o’er hill and moory dale<br /> +Pursues the Arimaspian. +</p> + +<p> +He jumped round as my step rung on the keystone, and I saw a pleasant sunburnt +boyish face. +</p> + +<p> +“Good evening to you,” he said gravely. “It’s a fine +night for the road.” +</p> + +<p> +The smell of peat smoke and of some savoury roast floated to me from the house. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that place an inn?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +I pulled myself up on the parapet of the bridge and filled my pipe. I began to +detect an ally. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re young to be an innkeeper,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which was?” +</p> + +<p> +He actually blushed. “I want to write books,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Chambers’s +Journal</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +I looked at the inn standing golden in the sunset against the brown hills. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what Kipling says,” he said, his eyes brightening, +and he quoted some verse about “Romance brings up the 9.15.” +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s a true tale for you then,” I cried, “and a +month from now you can make a novel out of it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“By God!” he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply, “it is +all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.” +</p> + +<p> +“You believe me,” I said gratefully. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He was very young, but he was the man for my money. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He came back at midday with the <i>Scotsman</i>. 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 <i>Times</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 U=XXI, and so on. “Czechenyi’ gave me the +numerals for the principal consonants. I scribbled that scheme on a bit of +paper and sat down to read Scudder’s pages. +</p> + +<p> +In half an hour I was reading with a whitish face and fingers that drummed on +the table. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Ten minutes later the innkeeper slipped into the room, his eyes bright with +excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I took a bit of paper and wrote these words in German as if they were part of a +letter— +</p> + +<p class="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....” +</p> + +<p> +I manufactured it rather neatly, so that it looked like a loose page of a +private letter. +</p> + +<p> +“Take this down and say it was found in my bedroom, and ask them to +return it to me if they overtake me.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>Chapter IV.<br /> +The Adventure of the Radical Candidate</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +About midday I entered a long straggling village, and had a mind to stop and +eat. Half-way down was the Post Office, and on the steps of it stood the +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s in my pocket,” I said, brandishing a toothbrush. +“I’m a colonial and travel light.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am,” said I, without the foggiest notion of what he meant. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +I had a cup of coffee and some cold ham, while he yarned away on the +hearthrug. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” I said. “I’m not much good as a speaker, +but I’ll tell them a bit about Australia.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +As we passed through a little town two policemen signalled us to stop, and +flashed their lanterns on us. +</p> + +<p> +“Beg pardon, Sir Harry,” said one. “We’ve got +instructions to look out for a car, and the description’s no unlike +yours.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Progressive +Magazine</i> and pamphlets that agent chap of mine keeps sending me. But you +surely don’t think Germany would ever go to war with us?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 hearthrug. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He was looking at me with bright steady eyes. “What was your job in +Rhodesia, Mr Hannay?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Mining engineer,” I said. “I’ve made my pile cleanly +and I’ve had a good time in the making of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a profession that weakens the nerves, is it?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He watched me with a smile. “I don’t want proofs. I may be an ass +on the platform, but I can size up a man. You’re no murderer and +you’re no fool, and I believe you are speaking the truth. I’m going +to back you up. Now, what can I do?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>bona +fides</i> by passing the word “Black Stone” and whistling +“Annie Laurie”. +</p> + +<p> +“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 Kennet. That’s done. Now, what’s the next +thing?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>Chapter V.<br /> +The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman</h2> + +<p> +I sat down on the very crest of the pass and took stock of my position. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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.<br /> +<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap of stones, I found the roadman. +</p> + +<p> +He had just arrived, and was wearily flinging down his hammer. He looked at me +with a fishy eye and yawned. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I canna dae’t,” he cried again. “The Surveyor maun +just report me. I’m for my bed.” +</p> + +<p> +I asked him what was the trouble, though indeed that was clear enough. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +I agreed with him about bed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Then I had an inspiration. “Does the new Surveyor know you?” I +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where’s your house?” I asked, and was directed by a wavering +finger to the cottage by the stream. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, back to your bed,” I said, “and sleep in peace. +I’ll take on your job for a bit and see the Surveyor.” +</p> + +<p> +He stared at me blankly; then, as the notion dawned on his fuddled brain, his +face broke into the vacant drunkard’s smile. +</p> + +<p> +“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 Trummle, 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 midday.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 midday +leisure. I did up the bundle again, and put the paper conspicuously beside it. +</p> + +<p> +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 footgear. 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. +</p> + +<p> +My toilet complete, I took up the barrow and began my journeys to and from the +quarry a hundred yards off. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>it</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“In bed wi’ the colic,” I replied, and the herd passed on.... +</p> + +<p> +Just about midday a big car stole down the hill, glided past and drew up a +hundred yards beyond. Its three occupants descended as if to stretch their +legs, and sauntered towards me. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Morning,” said the last. “That’s a fine easy job +o’ yours.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The bright-eyed man was looking at the newspaper lying beside Turnbull’s +bundle. +</p> + +<p> +“I see you get your papers in good time,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +I glanced at it casually. “Aye, in gude time. Seein’ that that +paper cam’ out last Setterday I’m just sax days late.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve a fine taste in boots,” he said. “These were +never made by a country shoemaker.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +They asked one last question. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you see anyone pass early this morning? He might be on a bicycle or +he might be on foot.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“My name’s Hannay,” I said. “From Rhodesia, you +remember.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good God, the murderer!” he choked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He did as he was bid, for he was blind with terror. Over my dirty trousers and +vulgar shirt I put on his smart driving-coat, which buttoned high at the top +and thereby hid the deficiencies of my collar. I stuck the cap on my head, and +added his gloves to my get-up. The dusty roadman in a minute was transformed +into one of the neatest motorists in Scotland. On Mr Jopley’s head I +clapped Turnbull’s unspeakable hat, and told him to keep it there. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. <i>Savez?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“A thousand thanks,” I said. “There’s more use in you +than I thought. Now be off and find the police.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>Chapter VI.<br /> +The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You seem in a hurry, my friend,” he said slowly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I see,” he said, and took up a pair of field-glasses through +which he patiently scrutinized the figures. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +And this extraordinary man took up his pen again. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Have they gone?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He knew my name, but he had never seen me before. And as the reflection darted +across my mind I saw a slender chance. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what you mean,” I said roughly. “And who +are you calling Richard Hannay? My name’s Ainslie.” +</p> + +<p> +“So?” he said, still smiling. “But of course you have others. +We won’t quarrel about a name.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +He spoke with assurance, but I could see the dawning of a doubt in his mind. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +I could see that the doubt was gaining. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you oblige me with the story of your recent doings?” he +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re a good liar, Hannay,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He rang a bell, and a third servant appeared from the veranda. +</p> + +<p> +“I want the Lanchester in five minutes,” he said. “There will +be three to luncheon.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest ordeal of all. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll know me next time, guv’nor,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +I was marched out of the room with a pistol at each ear. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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 this jolly old country. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And then I think I became unconscious. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But I did not stop till I had put half a dozen miles between me and that +accursed dwelling. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>Chapter VII.<br /> +The Dry-Fly Fisherman</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Whae are ye that comes stravaigin’ here on the Sabbath +mornin’?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +I had lost all count of the days. So the Sabbath was the reason for this +strange decorum. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hae ye got my specs?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +I fetched them out of my trouser pocket and gave him them. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>Scotsman</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +He never even sought my name. I asked him if anybody had been around making +inquiries subsequent to my spell at the road-making. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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’ anitherv” You would have thought from our +leave-taking that we had parted in disgust. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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”. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Clear, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly. “I back our +Kennet 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see him,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“Look! There! A yard from the reeds just above that stickle.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got him now. You might swear he was a black stone.” +</p> + +<p> +“So,” he said, and whistled another bar of “Annie +Laurie”. +</p> + +<p> +“Twisdon’s the name, isn’t it?” he said over his +shoulder, his eyes still fixed on the stream. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said. “I mean to say, Yes.” I had forgotten all +about my <i>alias</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +I noticed with a start that he called me by my proper name. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got them here?” he asked sharply, and drew a long +breath when I whipped the little book from my pocket. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But the old man in the moorland house solemnized him. Again I had to describe +every detail of his appearance. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +hearthrug. +</p> + +<p> +“You may dismiss the police from your mind,” he said. +“You’re in no danger from the law of this land.” +</p> + +<p> +“Great Scot!” I cried. “Have they got the murderer?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. But for the last fortnight they have dropped you from the list of +possibles.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” I asked in amazement. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he had been dead a week by then.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did he say?” I stammered. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now let us have the little note-book,” said Sir Walter. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“The Black Stone,” he repeated. “<i>Der Schwarze Stein</i>. +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Just then the butler entered the room. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a trunk-call from London, Sir Walter. It’s Mr +’Eath, and he wants to speak to you personally.” +</p> + +<p> +My host went off to the telephone. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>Chapter VIII.<br /> +The Coming of the Black Stone</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Sous-chef +d’État Major-General</i> should be ‘Porker.’” +</p> + +<p> +He directed me to the hot dishes and went on. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +While I ate he continued to talk, making me to my surprise a present of his +full confidence. +</p> + +<p> +“Can the dispositions not be changed?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve brought you the Portland Place murderer,” was Sir +Walter’s introduction. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“We may want your assistance later on, MacGillivray,” Sir Walter +said as we left. +</p> + +<p> +Then he turned me loose. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He saw me and stopped short. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He didn’t delay. I had scarcely rung before the door opened. +</p> + +<p> +“I must see Sir Walter,” I panted. “My business is +desperately important.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +I hadn’t waited long till there came another ring at the bell. The butler +made no bones about admitting this new visitor. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is his Lordship at home?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Not a moment could be lost, so I marched boldly to the door of that back room +and entered without knocking. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Walter’s face showed surprise and annoyance. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord Alloa,” Sir Walter said, reddening with anger. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who—who—” someone stammered. +</p> + +<p> +“The Black Stone,” I cried, and I sat down in the chair so recently +vacated and looked round at five badly scared gentlemen. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>Chapter IX.<br /> +The Thirty-Nine Steps</h2> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” said the official from the Admiralty. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Then the Frenchman spoke, very slowly and in good English. +</p> + +<p> +“The young man is right. His psychology is good. Our enemies have not +been foolish!” +</p> + +<p> +He bent his wise brows on the assembly. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +He paused and looked round. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What happened?” I asked. I was enough of a hunter to know a true +yarn when I heard it. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Walter nodded. No one was ready to gainsay him. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +I remembered the First Sea Lord’s reputation for taciturnity and +shortness of temper. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to change the plans,” +said Sir Walter ruefully. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good God,” I cried, “and we have not a rag of a clue.” +</p> + +<p> +“Besides,” said Whittaker, “there is the post. By this time +the news will be on its way.” +</p> + +<p> +“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, <i>mes amis</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Then suddenly I had an inspiration. +</p> + +<p> +“Where is Scudder’s book?” I cried to Sir Walter. +“Quick, man, I remember something in it.” +</p> + +<p> +He unlocked the door of a bureau and gave it to me. +</p> + +<p> +I found the place. “<i>Thirty-nine steps</i>,” I read, and again, +“<i>Thirty-nine steps—I counted them—High tide</i>, 10.17 +p.m.” +</p> + +<p> +The Admiralty man was looking at me as if he thought I had gone mad. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“They may have gone tonight,” someone said. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Whittaker brightened up. “It’s a chance,” he said. +“Let’s go over to the Admiralty.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +So I set out all my conclusions on a bit of Admiralty paper. They ran like +this: +</p> + +<p class="center"> +FAIRLY CERTAIN. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +(1) Place where there are several sets of stairs; one that matters +distinguished by having thirty-nine steps.<br /> +(2) Full tide at 10.17 p.m. Leaving shore only possible at full tide.<br /> +(3) Steps not dock steps, and so place probably not harbour.<br /> +(4) No regular night steamer at 10.17. Means of transport must be tramp +(unlikely), yacht, or fishing-boat.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +There my reasoning stopped. I made another list, which I headed +“Guessed”, but I was just as sure of the one as the other. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +GUESSED. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +(1) Place not harbour but open coast.<br /> +(2) Boat small—trawler, yacht, or launch.<br /> +(3) Place somewhere on East Coast between Cromer and Dover.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Then an idea struck me. “Is there no Inspector of Coastguards or some +fellow like that who knows the East Coast?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Arthur looked towards me. “We mean regular staircases,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s not it,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then there are plenty of Marine Parades, if that’s what you mean. +Every seaside resort has them.” +</p> + +<p> +I shook my head. “It’s got to be more retired than that,” I +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, gentlemen, I can’t think of anywhere else. Of course, +there’s the Ruff—” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +I tore open the Tide Tables and found Bradgate. High tide there was at 10.27 +p.m. on the 15th of June. +</p> + +<p> +“We’re on the scent at last,” I cried excitedly. “How +can I find out what is the tide at the Ruff?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +I closed the book and looked round at the company. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +By half-past three I was tearing past the moonlit hedgerows of Kent, with +MacGillivray’s best man on the seat beside me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>Chapter X.<br /> +Various Parties Converging on the Sea</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 seagulls. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Her name was the <i>Ariadne</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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”. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>it</i>.” 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Ariadne</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I think we have met before,” I said, “and I guess you know +my business.” +</p> + +<p> +The light in the room was dim, but so far as I could see their faces, they +played the part of mystification very well. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Arrest,” said the old man, and he looked really shocked. +“Arrest! Good God, what for?” +</p> + +<p> +“For the murder of Franklin Scudder in London on the 23rd day of last +month.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never heard the name before,” said the old man in a dazed voice. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Scotland Yard,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then the plump one spoke up. He stammered a little, like a man picking his +words. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the old man politely, “are you reassured by your +scrutiny, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +I couldn’t find a word. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +I shook my head. +</p> + +<p> +“O Lord,” said the young man. “This is a bit too +thick!” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Peter Pienaar,” I groaned inwardly, and for a moment I was +very near damning myself for a fool and asking their pardon. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>were</i> +different. I clung desperately to the words of Peter Pienaar. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Then something awoke me. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It was the movement I remembered when I had stood before him in the moorland +farm, with the pistols of his servants behind me. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The clock on the mantelpiece struck ten o’clock. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid he must put off his journey,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said, “you must stay.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I blew my whistle. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Schnell, Franz,</i>’ cried a voice, “<i>das Boot, das +Boot!</i>” As it spoke I saw two of my fellows emerge on the moonlit +lawn. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Someone switched on the light. +</p> + +<p> +The old man was looking at me with blazing eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“He is safe,” he cried. “You cannot follow in time.... He is +gone.... He has triumphed.... <i>Der Schwarze Stein ist in der +Siegeskrone.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +As the handcuffs clinked on his wrists I said my last word to him. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope Franz will bear his triumph well. I ought to tell you that the +<i>Ariadne</i> for the last hour has been in our hands.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Seven 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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS ***</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 558-h.htm or 558-h.zip</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/558/</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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