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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS by JOHN BUCHAN

28 Oct 1993

Scanned and proofread by Kirk Robinson
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Version used David R.Godine-Publisher 1990 softcover edition


Copyright 1915 by The Curtis Publishing Company

Transcription notes:

Italics thus _i_ italics _i_

Bold thus _b_ bold _b_

Underscore thus _u_ underscore _u_  accent
aigu thus Rene'

accent grave thus Se`vres

accent circonflex thus cha^teau

diaresis thus Ko"nigstrasse



The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan



1   The Man Who Died

I returned from the City about three o'clock on that
May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had
been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up
with it. If any one had told me a year ago that I would
have been feeling like that I should have laughed at
him; but there was the fact. The weather made me
liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me
sick, I couldn't get enough exercise, and the
amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water
that has been standing in the sun. "Richard Hannay," I
kept telling myself, "you have got into the wrong ditch,
my friend, and you had better climb out."

It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had
been building up those last years in Bulawayo. I had
got my pile--not one of the big ones, but good enough
for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of
enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from
Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home
since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me,
and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my
days.

But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a
week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a
month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres
and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go about with,
which probably explains things. Plenty of people
invited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much
interested in me. They would fling me a question or
two about South Africa, and then get on 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 dismallest business
of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind
and limb, with enough money to have a good time,
yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to
clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the best
bored man in the United Kingdom.

That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about
investments to give my mind something to work on,
and on my way home I turned into my club--rather a
pot-house, which took in Colonial members. I had a
long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full
of the row in the Near East, and there was an article
about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I rather fancied the
chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in
the show; and he played a straight game too, which
was more than could be said for most of them. I
gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin
and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and
one paper said that he was the only barrier between
Europe and Armageddon. I remember wondering if I
could get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania
was the sort of place that might keep a man from
yawning.

About six o'clock I went home, dressed, dined at the
Cafe' Royal, and turned into a music-hall. It was a silly
show, all capering women and monkey-faced men, and
I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear as I
walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place.
The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy
and chattering, and I envied the people for having
something to do. These shop-girls and clerks and
dandies and policemen had some interest in life that
kept them going. I gave half a crown to a beggar
because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer. At
Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I
made a vow. I would give the Old Country another day
to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I would
take the next boat for the Cape.

My flat was the first floor in a new block behind
Langham Place. There was a common staircase, with a
porter and a lift man at the entrance, but there was no
restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was
quite shut off from the others. I hate servants on the
premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came
in by the day. He arrived before eight o'clock every
morning and used to depart at seven, for I never dined
at home.

I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a
man at my elbow. I had not seen him approach, and
the sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim
man, with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue
eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of a flat on the
top floor, with whom I had passed the time of day on
the stairs.

"Can I speak to you?" he said. "May I come in for a
minute?" He was steadying his voice with an effort, and
his hand was pawing my arm.

I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner
was he over the threshold than he made a dash for my
back room, where I used to smoke and write my
letters. Then he bolted back.

"Is the door locked?" he asked feverishly, and he
fastened the chain with his own hand.

"I am very sorry," he said humbly. "It's a mighty liberty,
but you look the kind of man who would understand.
I've had you in my mind all this week when things got
troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?"

"I'll listen to you," I said. "That's all I'll promise." I was
getting worried by the antics of this nervous little chap.

There was a tray of drinks on the table beside him,
from which he filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He
drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he
set it down.

"Pardon," he said, "I'm a bit rattled to-night. You see, I
happen at this moment to be dead."

I sat down in an arm-chair and lit my pipe.

"What does it feel like?" I asked. I was pretty certain
that I had to deal with a madman.

A smile flickered over his drawn face. "I'm not mad--
yet. Say, sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon
you're a cool customer. I reckon, too, you're an honest
man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I'm going
to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever
needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in."

"Get on with your yam," I said, "and I'll tell you."

He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then
started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it
at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But
here is the gist of it:--

He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college,
being pretty well off, he had started out to see the
world. He wrote a bit, and acted as war correspondent
for a Chicago paper, and spent a year or two in South-
Eastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine linguist,
and had got to know pretty well the society in those
parts. He spoke familiarly of many names that I
remembered to have seen in the newspapers.

He had played about with politics, he told me, at first
for the interest of them, and then because he couldn't
help himself. I read him as a sharp, restless fellow, who
always wanted to get down to the roots of things. He
got a little further down than he wanted.

I am giving you what he told me as well as I could
make it out. Away behind all the Governments and the
armies there was a big subterranean movement going
on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had
come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went
further, and then he got caught. I gathered that most of
the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists
that make revolutions, but that beside them there were
financiers who were playing for money. A clever man
can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited
the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.

He told me some queer things that explained a lot that
had puzzled me--things that happened in the Balkan
War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why
alliances were made and broken, why certain men
disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from.
The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and
Germany at loggerheads.

When I asked Why, he said that the anarchist lot
thought it would give them their chance. Everything
would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a
new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the
shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage.
Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland.
Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated
Russia worse than hell.

"Do you wonder?" he cried. "For three hundred years
they have been persecuted, and this is the return
match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but
you have to go far down the backstairs to find him.
Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have
dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von
und zu Something, an elegant young man who talks
Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your
business is big, you get behind him and find a
prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and
the manners of a hog. He is the German business man
that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're
on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the
real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little
white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a
rattlesnake. Yes, sir, he is the man who is ruling the
world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of
the Tsar, because his aunt was outraged and his father
flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga."

I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed
to have got left behind a little.

"Yes and no," he said. "They won up to a point, but they
struck a bigger thing than money, a thing that couldn't
be bought, the old elemental fighting instincts of man.
If you're going to he killed you invent some kind of flag
and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to
love the thing. Those foolish devils of soldiers have
found something they care for, and that has upset the
pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends
haven't played their last card by a long sight. They've
gotten the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can keep
alive for a month they are going to play it and win."

"But I thought you were dead," I put in.

"_i_ Mors janua  vitae _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?"

I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that
very afternoon.

"He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is
the one big brain in the whole show, and he happens
also to be an honest man. Therefore he has been
marked down these twelve months past. I found that
out--not that it was difficult, for any fool could guess as
much. But I found out the way they were going to get
him, and that knowledge was deadly. That's why I have
had to decease."

He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for
I was getting interested in the beggar.

"They can't get him in his own land, for he has a
bodyguard of Epirotes that would skin their
grandmothers. But on the 15th day of June he is
coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken
to having international tea-parties, and the biggest of
them is due on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned
the principal guest, and if my friends have their way he
will never return to his admiring countrymen."

"That's simple enough, anyhow," I said. "You can warn
him and keep him at home."

"And play their game?" he asked sharply. "If he does
not come they win, for he's the only man that can
straighten out the tangle. And if his Government are
warned he won't come, for he does not know how big
the stakes will be on June the 15th."

"What about the British Government?" I said. "They're
not going to let their guests be murdered. Tip them the
wink, and they'll take extra precautions."

"No good. They might stuff this city with plain-clothes
detectives and double the police and Constantine
would still he a doomed man. My friends are not
playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion
for the taking off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He'll
be murdered by an Austrian, and there'll be plenty of
evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in
Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course,
but the case will look black enough to the world. I'm
not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every
detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will
be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the
Borgias. But it's not going to come off if there's a
certain man who knows the wheels of the business
alive right here in London on the 15th day of June. And
that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P.
Scudder."

I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like
a rat-trap, and there was the fire of battle in his gimlety
eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn he could act up to it.

"Where did you find out this story?" I asked.

"I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol.
That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in
a fur-shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a
Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little book shop off
the Racknitzstrasse in Leipzig. 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 muddled my trail some, and
was feeling pretty happy. Then..."

The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped
down more whisky.

"Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this
block. I used to stay close in my room all day, and only
slip out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for
a bit from my window, and I thought I recognized him
.... He came in and spoke to the porter  ....  When I came
back from my walk last night I found a card in my
letterbox. It bore the name of the man I want least to
meet on God's earth."

I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer
naked scare on his face, completed my conviction of
his honesty. My own voice sharpened a bit as I asked
him what he did next.

"I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled
herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to
die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to
sleep again."

"How did you manage it?"

"I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty
bad, and I got myself 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 to-
morrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are
no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk
it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas
with a revolver lying on the bed-clothes and a
considerable mess around. Then I got into a suit of
clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies. I didn't
dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides, it
wasn't any kind of use my trying to get into the streets.
I had had you in my mind all day, and there seemed
nothing to do but to make an appeal to you. I watched
from my window till I saw you come home, and then
slipped down the stair to meet you  ....  There, sir, I
guess you know about as much as me of this business."

He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and
yet desperately determined. By this time I was pretty
well convinced that he was going straight with me. It
was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my
time many steep tales which had turned out to be true,
and I had made a practice of judging the man rather
than the story. If he had wanted to get a location in my
flat, and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a
milder yarn.

"Hand me your key," I said, "and I'll take a look at the
corpse. Excuse my caution, but I'm bound to verify a
bit if I can."

He shook his head mournfully. "I reckoned you'd ask
for that, but I haven't got it. It's on my chain on the
dressing-table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn't
leave any clues to breed suspicions. The gentry who
are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You'll have
to take me on trust for the night, and to-morrow you'll
get proof of the corpse business right enough."

I thought for an instant or two. "Right. I'll trust you for
the night. I'll lock you into this room and keep the key.
Just one word, Mr. Scudder. I believe you're straight,
but if so be you are not I should warn you that I'm a
handy man with a gun."

"Sure," he said, jumping up with some briskness. "I
haven't the privilege of your name, sir, but let me tell
you that you're a white man. I'll thank you to lend me a
razor."

I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In
half an hour's time a figure came out that I scarcely
recognized. Only his gimlety hungry eyes were the
same. He was shaved dean, his hair was parted in the
middle, and he had cut his eyebrows. Further, he
carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the
very model, even to the brown complexion, of some
British officer who had had a long spell in India. He
had a monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and
every trace of the American had gone out of his
speech.

"My hat! Mr. Scudder--" I stammered.

"Not Mr. Scudder," he corrected; "Captain Theophilus
Digby, of the 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave.
I'll thank you to remember that, sir."

I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought
my own couch, more cheerful than I had been for the
past month. Things did happen occasionally, even in
this God-forgotten metropolis.

I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making
the deuce of a row at the smoking-room door.
Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on
the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him as my servant as
soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of
the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand
at valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty.

"Stop that row, Paddock," I said. "There's a friend of
mine, Captain-Captain" (I couldn't remember the
name) "dossing down in there. Get breakfast for two
and then come and speak to me."

I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a
great swell, with his nerves pretty bad from overwork,
who wanted absolute rest and peace. Nobody had got
to know he was here, or he would be besieged by
communications from the India Office and the Prime
Minister and his cure would be ruined. I am bound to
say Scudder played up splendidly when he came to
breakfast. He fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just like
a British officer, asked him about the Boer War, and
slung out at me a lot of stuff about imaginary pals.
Paddock couldn't learn to call me "sir," but he "sirred"
Scudder as if his life depended on it.

I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and
went down to the City fill luncheon. When I got back
the lift man had an important face.

"Nawsty business 'ere this morning, sir. Gent in No. 15
been and shot 'isself. They've just took 'im to the
mortuary. The police are up there now."

I ascended to No. 15, and found a couple of bobbies
and an inspector busy making an examination. I asked
a few idiotic questions, and they soon kicked me out.
Then I found the man that had valeted Scudder, and
pumped him, but I could see he suspected nothing. He
was a whining fellow with a churchyard face, and half a
crown went far to console him.

I attended the inquest next day. A partner of some
publishing firm gave evidence that the deceased had
brought him wood-pulp propositions, and had been,
he believed, an agent of an American business. The
jury found it a case of suicide while of unsound mind,
and the few effects were handed over to the American
Consul to deal with. I gave Scudder a full account of
the affair, and it interested him greatly. He said he
wished he could have attended the inquest, for he
reckoned it would be about as spicy as to read one's
own obituary notice.

The first two days he stayed with me in that back room
he was very peaceful. He read and smoked a bit, and
made a heap of jottings in a note-book, and every night
we had a game of chess, at which he beat me hollow. I
think he was nursing his nerves back to health, for he
had had a pretty trying time. But on the third day I
could see he was beginning to get restless. He fixed up
a list of the days fill June 15th, and ticked each off with
a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand against
them. I would find him sunk in a brown study, with his
sharp eyes abstracted, and after those spells of
meditation he was apt to be very despondent.

Then I could see that he began to get edgy again. He
listened for little noises, and was always asking me if
Paddock could be trusted. Once or twice he got very
peevish, and apologized for it. I didn't blame him. I
made every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly stiff
job.

It was not the safety of his own skin that troubled him,
but the success of the scheme he had planned. That
little man was clean grit all through, without a soft spot
in him. One night he was very solemn.

"Say, Hannay," he said, "I judge I should let you a bit
deeper into this business. I should hate to go out
without leaving somebody else to put up a fight." And
he began to tell me in detail what I had only heard
from him vaguely.

I did not give him very close attention. The fact is, I was
more interested in his own adventures than in his high
politics. I reckoned that Karolides and his affairs were
not my business, leaving all that to him. So a lot that he
said slipped clean out of my memory. I remember that
he was very clear that the danger to Karolides would
not begin till he had got to London, and would come
from the very highest quarters, where there would be
no thought of suspicion. He mentioned the name of a
woman--Julia Czechenyi--as having something to do
with the danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to
get Karolides out of the care of his guards. He talked,
too, about a Black Stone and a man that lisped in his
speech, and he described very particularly somebody
that he never referred to without a shudder--an old
man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a
hawk.

He spoke a good deal about death, too. He was
mortally anxious about winning through with his job,
but he didn't care a rush for his life.

"I reckon it's like going to sleep when you are pretty
well tired out, and waking to find a summer day with
the scent of hay coming in at the window. I used to
thank God for such mornings way back in the Blue-
Grass country, and I guess I'll thank Him when I wake
up on the other side of Jordan."

Next day he was much more cheerful, and read the life
of Stonewall Jackson most of the time. I went out to
dinner with a mining engineer I had got to see on
business, and came back about half-past ten in time for
our game of chess before turning in.

I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as I pushed
open the smoking room door. The lights were not lit,
which struck me as odd. I wondered if Scudder had
turned in already.

I snapped the switch, but there was nobody there.
Then I saw something in the far corner which made me
drop my cigar and fall into a cold sweat.

My guest was lying sprawled on his back. There was a
long knife through his heart which skewered him to the
floor.


2. The Milkman Sets Out on His Travels

I sat down in an arm-chair and felt very sick.

That lasted for maybe five minutes, and was
succeeded by a fit of the horrors. The poor staring
white face on the floor was more than I could bear,
and I managed to get a table-cloth and cover it. Then I
staggered to a cupboard, found the brandy and
swallowed several mouthfuls. I had seen men die
violently before; indeed I had killed a few myself in the
Matabele War; but this cold-blooded indoor business
was different. Still I managed to pull myself together. I
looked at my watch, and saw that it was half-past ten.

An idea seized me, and I went over the flat with a
small-tooth comb. There was nobody there, nor any
trace of anybody, but I shuttered and bolted all the
windows and put the chain on the door.

By this time my wits were coming back to me, and I
could think again. It took me about an hour to figure
the thing out; and I did not hurry, for, unless the
murderer came back, I had till about six o'clock in the
morning for my cogitations.

I was in the soup--that was pretty clear. Any shadow of
a doubt I might have had about the truth of Scudder's
tale was now gone. The proof of it was lying under the
table-cloth. The men who knew that he knew what he
knew had found him, and had taken the best way to
make certain of his silence. Yes; but he had been in my
rooms four days, and his enemies must have reckoned
that he had confided in me. So I would be the next to
go. It might be that very night, or next day, or the day
after, but my number was up all right.

Then suddenly I thought of another probability.
Supposing I went out now and called in the police or
went to bed and let Paddock find the body and call
them in the morning. What kind of a story was I to tell
about Scudder? I had lied to Paddock about him, and
the whole thing looked desperately fishy. If I made a
clean breast of it and told the police everything he had
told me, they would simply laugh at me. The odds
were a thousand to one that I would be charged with
the murder, and the circumstantial evidence was
strong enough to hang me. Few people knew me in
England; I had no real pal who could come forward
and swear to my character. Perhaps that was what
those secret enemies were playing for. They were
clever enough for anything, and an English prison was
as good a way of getting rid of me till after June 15th as
a knife in my chest.

Besides, if I told the whole story, and by any miracle
was believed, I should be playing their game. Karolides
would stay at home, which was what they wanted.
Somehow or other the sight of Scudder's dead face
had made me a passionate believer in his scheme. He
was gone, but he had taken me into his confidence, and
I was pretty well bound to carry on his work.

You may think this ridiculous for a man in danger of his
life, but that was the way I looked at it. I am an
ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people,
but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long
knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play
the game in his place.

It took me an hour or two to think this out, and by that
time I had come to a decision. I must vanish somehow,
and keep vanished fill the end of the second week in
June. Then I must somehow find a way to get in touch
with the Government people and tell them what
Scudder had told me. I wished to heaven he had told
me more, and that I had listened more carefully to the
little he had told me. I knew nothing but the barest
facts. There was a big risk that, even if I weathered the
other dangers, I would not be believed in the end. I
must take my chance of that, and hope that something
might happen which would confirm my tale in the eyes
of the Government.

My first job was to keep going for the next three weeks.
It was now the 24th day of May, and that meant twenty
days of hiding before I could venture to approach the
powers that be. I reckoned that two sets of people
would be looking for me--Scudder's enemies to put me
out of existence, and the police, who would want me
for Scudder's murder. It was going to be a giddy hunt,
and it was queer how the prospect comforted me. I
had been slack so long that almost any chance of
activity was welcome. When I had to sit alone with that
corpse and wait on fortune I was no better than a
crushed worm, but if my neck's safety was to hang on
my own wits I was prepared to be cheerful about it.

My next thought was whether Scudder had any papers
about him to give me a better clue to the business. I
drew back the table-cloth and searched his pockets, for
I had no longer any shrinking from the body. The face
was wonderfully calm for a man who had been struck
down in a moment. There was nothing in the breast-
pocket, and only a few loose coins and a cigar holder
in the waistcoat. The trousers held a little penknife and
some saver, and the side-pocket of his jacket contained
an old crocodile-skin cigar-case. There was no sign of
the little black book in which I had seen him making
notes. That had no doubt been taken by his murderer.

But as I looked up from my task I saw that some
drawers had been pulled out in the writing-table.
Scudder would never have left them in that state, for
he was the tidiest of mortals. Someone must have
been searching for something--perhaps for the pocket-
book.

I went round the flat, and found that everything had
been ransacked--the inside of books, drawers,
cupboards, boxes, even the pockets of the clothes in
my wardrobe, and the sideboard in the dining-room.
There was no trace of the book. Most likely the enemy
had found it, but they had not found it on Scudder's
body.

Then I got out an atlas and looked at a big map of the
British Isles. My notion was to get off to some wild
district, where my veldcraft would be of some use to
me, for I would be like a trapped rat in a city. I
considered that Scotland would be best, for my people
were Scotch and I could pass anywhere as an ordinary
Scotsman. I had had 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
to. It was the nearest wild part of Scotland, so far as I
could figure it out, and from the look of the map was
not over thick with population.

A search in Bradshaw informed me that a train left St.
Pancras at 7.10, which would land me at any Galloway
station in the late afternoon. That was well enough, but
a more important matter was how I was to make my
way to St. Pancras, for I was pretty certain that
Scudder's friends would be watching outside. This
puzzled me for a bit; then I had an inspiration, on
which I went to bed and slept for two troubled hours.

I got up at four and opened my bedroom shutters. The
faint light of a fine summer morning was flooding the
skies, and the sparrows had begun to chatter. I had a
great revulsion of feeling, and felt a God-forgotten fool.
My inclination was to let things slide, and trust to the
British police taking a reasonable view of my case. But
as I reviewed the situation I could find no arguments
to bring against my decision of the previous night, so
with a wry mouth I resolved to go on with my plan. I
was not feeling in any particular funk; only disinclined
to go looking for trouble, if you understand me.

I hunted out a well-used tweed suit, a pair of strong
nailed boots, and a flannel shirt with a collar. Into my
pockets I stuffed a spare shirt, a cloth cap, some
handkerchiefs, and a toothbrush. I had drawn a good
sum in gold from the bank two days before, in case
Scudder should want money, and I took fifty pounds of
it 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 stubby fringe.

Now came the next step. Paddock used to arrive
punctually at 7.30 and let himself in with a latch-key.
But about twenty minutes to seven, as I knew from
bitter experience, the milkman turned up with a great
clatter of cans, and deposited my share outside my
door. I had seen that milkman sometimes when I had
gone out for an early ride. He was a young man about
my own height, with an ill-nourished moustache, and
he wore a white overall. On him I staked all my
chances.

I went into the darkened smoking-room where the rays
of morning light were beginning to creep through the
shutters. There I breakfasted off a whisky-and-soda
and some biscuits from the cupboard. By this time it
was getting on for six o'clock. I put a pipe in my pocket
and filled my pouch from the tobacco jar on the table
by the fireplace.

As I poked into the tobacco my fingers touched
something hard, and I drew out Scudder's little black
pocket-book  ....

That seemed to me a good omen. I lifted the cloth
from the body, and was amazed at the peace and
dignity of the dead face. "Good-bye, old chap," I said: "I
am going to do my best for you. Wish me well,
wherever you are."

Then I hung about in the hall waiting for the milkman.
That was the worst part of the business, for I was fairly
choking to get out of doors. Six-thirty passed, then six-
forty, but still he did not come. The fool had chosen
this day of all days to be late.

At one minute after the quarter to seven I heard the
rattle of the cans outside. I opened the front door, and
there was my man, singling out my cans from a bunch
he carried and whistling through his teeth. He jumped
a bit at the sight of me.

"Come in here a moment," I said. "I want a word with
you." And I led him into the dining-room.

"I reckon you're a bit of a sportsman," I said, "and I
want you to do me a service. Lend me your cap and
overall for ten minutes, and here's a sovereign for you."

His eyes opened at the sight of the gold, and he
grinned broadly. "Wot's the gyme?" he asked.

"A bet," I said. "I haven't time to explain, but to win it
I've got to be a milkman for the next ten minutes. All
you've got to do is to stay here till I come back. You'll
be a bit late, but nobody will complain, and you'll have
that quid for yourself."

"Right-o!" he said cheerily. "I ain't the man to spoil a bit
of sport. 'Ere's the rig, guv'nor."

I stuck on his flat blue hat and his white overall, picked
up the cans, banged my door, and went whistling
downstairs. The porter at the foot told me to shut my
jaw, which sounded as if my make-up was adequate.

At first I thought there was nobody in the street. Then I
caught sight of a policeman a hundred yards down,
and a loafer shuffling past on the other side. Some
impulse made me raise my eyes to the house opposite,
and there at a first-floor window was a face. As the
loafer passed he looked up, and I fancied a signal was
exchanged.

I crossed the street, whistling gaily and imitating the
jaunty swing of the milkman. Then I took the first side-
street, and went up a left-hand turning which led past a
bit of vacant ground. There was no one in the little
street, so I dropped the milk-cans inside the hoarding
and sent the hat and overall after them. I had only just
put on my cloth cap when a postman came round the
comer. I gave him good-morning and he answered me
unsuspiciously. At the moment the clock of a
neighbouring church struck the hour of seven.

There was not a second to spare. As soon as I got to
Euston Road I took to my heels and ran. The clock at
Euston Station showed five minutes past the hour. At
St. Pancras I had no time to take a ticket, let alone that I
had not settled upon my destination. A porter told me
the platform, and as I entered it I saw the train already
in motion. Two station officials blocked the way, but I
dodged them and clambered into the last carriage.

Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the
northern tunnels, an irate guard interviewed me. He
wrote out for me a ticket to Newton-Stewart, a name
which had suddenly come back to my memory, and he
conducted me from the first-class compartment where
I had ensconced myself to a third-class smoker,
occupied by a sailor and a stout woman with a child.
He went off grumbling, and as I mopped my brow I
observed to my companions in my broadest Scots that
it was a sore job catching trains. I had already entered
upon my part.

"The impidence o' that gyairdl" said the lady bitterly.
"He needit a Scots tongue to pit him in his place. He
was complainin' o' this wean no haein' a ticket and her
no fower fill August twalmonth, and he was objectin' to
this gentleman spittin'."

The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life
in an atmosphere of protest against authority. I
reminded myself that a week ago I had been finding
the world dull.


3 The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper

I had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was
fine May weather, with the hawthorn flowering on
every hedge, and I asked myself why, when I was still a
free man, I had stayed on in London and not got the
good of this heavenly country. I didn't dare face the
restaurant car, but I got a luncheon basket at Leeds
and shared it with the fat woman. Also I got the
morning's papers, with news about starters for the
Derby and the beginning of the cricket season, and
some paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were
settling down and a British squadron was going to Kiel.

When I had done with them I got out Scudder's little
black pocket-book and studied it. It was pretty well
filled with jottings, chiefly figures, though now and then
a name was printed in. For example, I found the words
"Hofgaard," "Luneville," and "Avocado" pretty often,
and especially the word "Pavia."'

Now I was certain that Scudder never did anything
without a reason, and I was pretty sure that there was
a cipher in all this. That is a subject which has always
interested me, and I did a bit at it myself once as
intelligence officer at Delagoa Bay during the Boer
War. I have a head for things like chess and puzzles,
and I used to reckon myself pretty good at finding out
ciphers. 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 cipher if you have a key word
which gives you the sequence of the letters.

I tried for hours, but none of the words answered. Then
I fell asleep and woke at Dumfries just in time to
bundle out and get into the slow Galloway train. There
was a man on the platform whose looks I didn't like,
but he never glanced at me, and when I caught sight of
myself in the mirror of an automatic machine I didn't
wonder. With my brown face, my old tweeds, and my
slouch, I was the very model of one of the hill farmers
who were crowding into the third-class carriages.

I 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.

About five o'clock the carriage emptied, and I was left
alone as I had hoped. I got out at the next station, a
little place whose name I scarcely noted, set right in the
heart of a bog. It reminded me of one of those
forgotten little stations in the Karroo. An old station-
master was digging in his garden, and with his spade
over his shoulder sauntered to the train, took charge of
a parcel, and went back to his potatoes. A child of ten
received my ticket, and I emerged on a white road that
straggled over the brown moor.

It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill
showing as clear as a cut amethyst. The air had the
queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as mid-
ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits. I
actually felt light-hearted. I might have been a boy out
for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-
seven very much wanted by the police. I felt just as I
used to feel when I was starting for a big trek on a
frosty morning on the high veld. If you believe me, I
swung along that road whistling. There was no plan of
campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this
blessed, honest smelling hill country, for every mile put
me in better humour with myself. In a roadside
planting I cut a walking-stick of hazel, and presently
struck off the highway up a by-path which followed the
glen of a brawling stream. I reckoned that I was still far
ahead of any pursuit, and for that right might please
myself. It was some hours since I had tasted food, and
I was getting very hungry when I came to a herd's
cottage set in a nook beside a waterfall. A brown-faced
woman was standing by the door, and greeted me with
the kindly shyness of moorland places. When I asked
for a night's lodging she said I was welcome to the
"bed in the loft," and very soon she set before me a
hearty meal of ham and eggs, scones, and thick sweet
milk.

At the darkening her man came in from the hills, a lean
giant, who in one step covered as much ground as
three paces of ordinary mortals. They asked no
questions, for they had the perfect breeding of all
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 agoing once more.

They refused any payment, and by six I had
breakfasted and was striding southwards again. My
notion was to return to the railway line a station or two
farther on than the place where I had alighted
yesterday and to double back. I reckoned that that was
the safest way, for the police would naturally assume
that I was always making farther from London in the
direction of some western port. I thought I had a good
bit of a start, for, as I reasoned, it would take some
hours to fix the blame on me, and several more to
identify the fellow who got on board the train at St.
Pancras.

It was the same jolly, clear spring weather, and I simply
could not contrive to feel careworn. Indeed I was in
better spirits than I had been for months. Over a long
ridge of moorland I took my road, skirting the side of a
high hill which the herd had called Cairnsmore of Fleet.
Nesting curlews and plovers were crying everywhere,
and the links of green pasture by the streams were
dotted with young lambs. All the slackness of the past
months was slipping from my bones, and I stepped
out like a four-year-old. By-and-by I came to a swell of
moorland which dipped to the vale of a little river, and
a mile away in the heather I saw the smoke of a train.

The station, when I reached it, proved to be ideal for
my purpose. The moor surged up around it and left
room only for the single line, the slender siding, a
waiting-room, an office, the station-master's cottage,
and a tiny yard of gooseberries and sweet-william.
There seemed no road to it from anywhere, and to
increase the desolation the waves of a tarn lapped on
their grey granite beach half a mile away. I waited in
the deep heather till I saw the smoke of an east-going
train on the horizon. Then I approached the tiny
booking-office and took a ticket for Dumfries.

The only occupants of the carriage were an old
shepherd and his dog--a wall-eyed brute that I
mistrusted. The man was asleep, and on the cushions
beside him was that morning's _i_ Scotsman _i_.
Eagerly I seized on it, for I fancied it would tell me
something.

There were two columns about the Portland Place
Murder, as it was called. My man Paddock had given
the alarm and had the milkman arrested. Poor devil, it
looked as if the latter had earned his sovereign hardly,
but for me he had been cheap at the price, for he
seemed to have occupied the police the better part of
the day. In the latest news I found a further instalment
of the story. The milkman had been released, I read,
and the true criminal, about whose identity the police
were reticent, was believed to have got away from
London by one of the northern lines. There was a short
note about me as the owner of the flat. I guessed the
police had stuck that in, as a clumsy contrivance to
persuade me that I was unsuspected.

There was nothing else in the paper, nothing about
foreign politics or Karolides, or the things that had
interested Scudder. I laid it down, and found that we
were approaching the station at which I had got out
yesterday. The potato-digging station-master had been
gingered into some activity, for the west-going train
was waiting to let us pass, and from it had descended
three men who were asking him questions, I supposed
that they were the local police, who had been stirred
up by Scotland Yard, and had traced me as far as this
one-horse siding. Sitting well back in the shadow I
watched them carefully. One of them had a book, and
took down notes. The old potato digger seemed to
have turned peevish, but the child who had collected
my ticket was talking volubly. All the party looked out
across the moor where the white road departed, I
hoped they were going to take up my tracks there.

As we moved away from that station my companion
woke up, He fixed me with a wandering glance, kicked
his dog viciously, and inquired where he was, clearly he
was very drunk.

"That's what comes o' bein' a teetotaller," he observed
in bitter regret.

I expressed my surprise that in him I should have met
a blue-ribbon stalwart.

"Ay, but I'm a strong teetotaller," he said pugnaciously.
"I took the pledge last Martinmas, and I have na
touched a drop o' whisky sinsyne. No even at
Hogmanay, though I was sair temptit."

He swung his heels up on the seat, and burrowed a
frowsy head into the cushions.

"And that's a' I get," he moaned. "A heid hetter than
hell fire, and twae een lookin' different ways for the
Sabbath."

"What did it?" I asked.

"A drink they ca' brandy. Bein' a teetotaller I keepit off
the whisky, but I was nip-nippin' a' day at this brandy,
and I doubt I'll no be weel for a fortnicht." His voice
died away into a stutter, and sleep once more laid its
heavy hand on him.

My plan had been to get out at some station down the
line, but the train suddenly gave me a better chance,
for it came to a standstill at the end of a culvert which
spanned a brawling porter-coloured river. I looked out
and saw that every carriage window was closed and
no human figure appeared in the landscape. So I
opened the door, and dropped quickly into the tangle
of hazels which edged the line.

It would have been all right but for that infernal dog.
Under the impression that I was decamping with its
master's belonging, it started to bark, and all but got
me by the trousers. This woke up the herd, who stood
bawling at the carriage door in the belief that I had
committed suicide. I crawled through the thicket,
reached the edge of the stream, and in cover of the
bushes put a hundred yards or so behind me. Then
from my shelter I peered back, and saw the guard and
several passengers gathered round the open carriage
door and staring in my direction. I could not have
made a more public departure if I had left with a
bugler and a brass band.

Happily the drunken herd provided a diversion. He
and his dog, which was attached by a rope to his waist,
suddenly cascaded out of the carriage, landed on their
heads on the track, and rolled some way down the
bank towards the water. In the rescue which followed
the dog bit somebody, for I could hear the sound of
hard swearing. Presently they had forgotten me, and
when after a quarter of a mile's crawl I ventured to
look back, the train had started again and was
vanishing in the cutting.

I was in a wide semicircle of moorland, with the brown
river as radius, and the high hills forming the northern
circumference. There was not a sign or sound of a
human being, only the plashing water and the
interminable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly enough, for
the first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me. It
was not the police that I thought of, but the other folk,
who knew that I knew Scudder's secret and dared not
let me live. I was certain that they would pursue me
with a keenness and vigilance unknown to the British
law, and that once their grip closed on me I should find
no mercy.

I looked back, but there was nothing in the landscape.
The sun glinted on the metals of the line and the wet
stones in the stream, and you could not have found a
more peaceful sight in the world. Nevertheless I
started to run. Crouching low in the runnels of the bog,
I ran fill the sweat blinded my eyes. The mood did not
leave me till I had reached the rim of mountain and
flung myself panting on a ridge high above the young
waters of the brown river.

>From my vantage-ground I could scan the whole moor
right away to the railway line and to the south of it
where green fields took the place of heather. I have
eyes like a hawk, but I could see nothing moving in the
whole countryside. Then I looked east beyond the
ridge and saw a new kind of landscape--shallow green
valleys with plentiful fir plantations and the faint lines
of dust which spoke of highroads. Last of all I looked
into the blue May sky, and there I saw that which set
my pulses racing  ....

Low down in the south a monoplane was climbing into
the heavens. I was as certain as if I had been told that
that aeroplane was looking for me, and that it did not
belong to the police. For an hour or two I watched it
from a pit of heather. It flew low along the hilltops, and
then in narrow circles over the valley up which I had
come. Then it seemed to change its mind, rose to a
great height, and flew away back to the south.

I did not like this espionage from the air, and I began
to think less well of the countryside I had chosen for a
refuge. These heather hills were no sort of cover if my
enemies were in the sky, and I must find a different
kind of sanctuary. I looked with more satisfaction to
the green country beyond the ridge, for there I should
find woods and stone houses.

About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to
a white ribbon of road which wound up the narrow
vale of a lowland stream. As I followed it, fields gave
place to bent, the glen became a plateau, and presently
I had reached a kind of pass where a solitary house
smoked in the twilight. The road swung over a bridge,
and leaning on the parapet was a young man.

He was smoking a long clay pipe and studying the
water with spectacled eyes. In his left hand was a small
book with a finger marking the place. Slowly he
repeated--

"As when a Gryphon through the wilderness

With winge`d step, o'er hill and moory dale

Pursues the Arimaspian."

He jumped round as my step rung on the keystone,
and I saw a pleasant sunburnt boyish face.

"Good-evening to you," he said gravely. "It's a fine fight
for the road."

The smell of peat smoke and of some savoury roast
floated to me from the house.

"Is that place an inn?" I asked.

"At your service," he said politely. "I am the landlord,
sir, and I hope you will stay the night, for to tell you the
truth I have had no company for a week."

I pulled myself up on the parapet of the bridge and
filled my pipe. I began to detect an ally.

"You're young to be an innkeeper," I said.

"My father died a year ago and left me the business. I
live there with my grandmother. It's a slow job for a
young man, and it wasn't my choice of profession."

"Which was?"

He actually blushed. "I want to write books," he said.

"And what better chance could you ask?" I cried. "Man,
I've often thought that an innkeeper should make the
best story-teller in the world."

"Not now," he said eagerly. "Maybe in the old days
when you had pilgrims and ballad-makers and
highwaymen and mail-coaches on the road. But not
now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of fat
women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two in
the spring, and the shooting tenants in August. There is
not much material to be got out of that. I want to see
life, to travel the world, and write things like Kipling and
Conrad. But the most I've done yet is to get some
verses printed in _i_ Chambers's  Journal _i_."

! looked at the inn standing golden in the sunset against
the brown hills.

"I've knocked a bit about the world, and I wouldn't
despise such a hermitage. D'you think that adventure is
found only in the tropics or among gentry in red shirts?
Maybe you're rubbing shoulders with it at this
moment."

"That's what Kipling says," he said, his eyes brightening,
and he quoted some verse about "Romance brings up
the 9.15."

"Here's a true tale for you then," I cried, "and a month
from now you can make a novel out of it."

Sitting on the bridge in the soft May gloaming I pitched
him a lovely yarn. It was true in essentials, too, though I
altered the minor details. I made out that I was a
mining magnate from Kimberley, who had had a lot of
trouble with I.D.B. and had shown up a gang. They had
pursued me across the ocean, and had killed my best
friend, and were now on my tracks.

I told the story well, though I say it who shouldn't. I
pictured a flight across the Kalahari to German Africa,
the crackling, parching days, the wonderful blue-velvet
nights. I described an attack on my life on the voyage
home, and I made a really horrid affair of the Portland
Place murder. "You're looking for adventure," I cried;
"well, you've found it here. The devils are after me, and
the police are after them. It's a race that I mean to win."

"By God!" he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply,
"it is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle."

"You believe me," I said gratefully.

"Of course I do," and he held out his hand. "I believe
everything out of the common. The only thing to
distrust is the normal."

He was very young, but he was the man for my money.

"I think they're off my track for the moment, but I must
lie close for a couple of days. Can you take me in?"

He caught my elbow in his eagerness and drew me
towards the house. "You can lie as snug here as if you
were in a moss-hole. I'll see that nobody blabs, either.
And you'll give me some more material about your
adventures?"

As I entered the inn porch I heard from far off the beat
of an engine. There silhouetted against the dusky West
was my friend, the monoplane.

He gave me a room at the back of the house, with a
fine outlook over the plateau, and he made me free of
his own study, which was stacked with cheap editions
of his favourite authors. I never saw the grandmother,
so I guessed she was bedridden. An old woman called
Margit brought me my meals, and the innkeeper was
around me at all hours. I wanted some time to myself,
so I invented a job for him. He had a motor-bicycle,
and I sent him off next morning for the daily paper,
which usually arrived with the post in the late
afternoon. I told him to keep his eyes skinned, and
make note of any strange figures he saw, keeping a
special sharp look-out for motors and aeroplanes.
Then I sat down in real earnest to Scudder's note-
book.

He came back at midday with the _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
after the cipher.

As I told you, it was a numerical cipher, and by an
elaborate system of experiments I had pretty well
discovered what were the nulls and stops. The trouble
was the key word, and when I thought of the odd
million words he might have used I felt pretty
hopeless. But about three o'clock I had a sudden
inspiration.

The name Julia Czechenyi flashed across my memory.
Scudder had said it was the key to the Karolides
business, and it occurred to me to try it on his cipher.

It worked. The five letters of "Julia" gave me the
position of the vowels. A was J, the tenth letter of the
alphabet, and so represented by X in the cipher. E was
XXI, and so on. "Czechenyi" gave me the numerals
for the principal consonants. I scribbled that scheme
on a bit of paper and sat down to read Scudder's
pages.

In half an hour I was reading with a whitish face and
fingers that drummed on the table.

I glanced out of the window and saw a big touring car
coming up the glen towards the inn. It drew up at the
door, and there was the sound of people alighting.
There seemed to be two of them, men in aquascutums
and tweed caps.

Ten minutes later the innkeeper slipped into the room,
his eyes bright with excitement.

"There's two chaps below looking for you," he
whispered. "They're in the dining-room having whiskys-
and-sodas. They asked about you and said they had
hoped to meet you here. Oh! and they described you
jolly well, down to your boots and shirt. I told them
you had been here last night and had gone off on a
motor-bicycle this morning, and one of the chaps
swore like a navvy.

I made him tell me what they looked like. One was a
dark-eyed thin fellow with bushy eyebrows, the other
was always smiling and lisped in his talk. Neither was
any kind of foreigner; on this my young friend was
positive.

I took a bit of paper and wrote these words in German
as if they were part of a letter:--

... "Black Stone. Scudder had got on to this, but he could
not act for a fortnight. I doubt if I can do any good
now, especially as Karolides is uncertain about his
plans. But if Mr. T. advises I will do the best I ..."

I manufactured it rather neatly, so that it looked like a
loose page of a private letter.

"Take this down and say it was found in my bedroom,
and ask them to return it to me if they overtake me."

Three minutes later I heard the car begin to move, and
peeping from behind the curtain caught sight of the
two figures. One was slim, the other was sleek; that was
the most I could make of my reconnaissance.

The innkeeper appeared in great excitement. "Your
paper woke them up," he said gleefully. "The dark
fellow went as white as death and cursed like blazes,
and the fat one whistled and looked ugly. They paid for
their drinks with half a sovereign and wouldn't wait for
change."

"Now I'll tell you what I want you to do," I said. "Get on
your bicycle and go off to Newton-Stewart to the Chief
Constable. Describe the two men, and say you suspect
them of having had something to do with the London
murder. You can invent reasons. The two will come
back, never fear. Not to-night, for they'll follow me forty
miles along the road, but first thing to-morrow
morning. Tell the police to be here bright and early."

He set off like a docile child, while I worked at
Scudder's notes. When he came back we dined
together, and in common decency I let him pump me. I
gave him a lot of stuff about lion hunts and the
Matabele War, thinking all the while what tame
businesses these were compared to this I was now
engaged in. When he went to bed I sat up and finished
Scudder. I smoked in a chair till daylight, for I could not
sleep.

About eight next morning I witnessed the arrival of
two constables and a sergeant. They put their car in a
coach-house under the innkeeper's instructions, and
entered the house. Twenty minutes later I saw from my
window a second car come across the plateau from
the opposite direction. It did not come up to the inn,
but stopped two hundred yards off in the shelter of a
patch of wood. I noticed that its occupants carefully
reversed it before leaving it. A minute or two later I
heard their steps on the gravel outside the window.

My plan had been to lie hid in my bedroom and see
what happened. I had a notion that, if I could bring the
police and my other more dangerous pursuers
together, something might work out of it to my
advantage. But now I had a better idea. I scribbled a
line of thanks to my host, opened the window, and
dropped quietly into a gooseberry bush. Unobserved I
crossed the dyke, crawled down the side of a tributary
burn, and won the highroad on the far side of the patch
of trees. There stood the car, very spick and span in the
morning sunlight, but with the dust on her which told
of a long journey. I started her, jumped into the
chauffeur's seat, and stole gently out on to the plateau.

Almost at once the road dipped so that I lost sight of
the inn, but the wind seemed to bring me the sound of
angry voices.


4 The Adventure of the Radical  Candidate

You may picture me driving that 40 h.p. car for all she
was worth over the crisp moor roads on that shining
May morning; glancing back at first over my shoulder,
and looking anxiously to the next turning; then driving
with a vague eye, just wide enough awake to keep on
the highway. For I was thinking desperately of what I
had found in Scudder's pocket-book.

The little man had told me a pack of lies. All his yarns
about the Balkans and the Jew-Anarchists and the
Foreign Office Conference were eyewash, and so was
Karolides. And yet not quite, as you shall hear. I had
staked everything on my belief in his story, and had
been let down; here was his book telling me a different
tale and instead of being once-bit-twice-shy, I believed
it absolutely.

Why, I don't know. It rang desperately true, and the
first yarn, if you understand me, had been in a queer
way true also in spirit. The 15th day of June was going
to be a day of destiny, a bigger destiny than the killing
of a Dago. It was so big that I didn't blame Scudder for
keeping me out of the game and wanting to play a lone
hand. That, I was pretty clear, was his intention. He had
told me something which sounded big enough, but the
real thing was so immortally big that he, the man who
had found it out, wanted it all for himself. I didn't blame
him. It was risks after all that he was chiefly greedy
about.

The whole story was in the notes--with gaps, you
understand, which he would have filled up from his
memory. He stuck down his authorities, too, and had
an odd trick of giving them all a numerical value and
then striking a balance, which stood for the reliability of
each stage in the yarn. The four names he had printed
were authorities, and there was a man, Ducrosne, who
got five out of a possible five; and another fellow,
Ammersfoort, who got three. The bare bones of the
tale were all that was in the book--these, and one queer
phrase which occurred half a dozen times inside
brackets. ("Thirty-nine steps") was the phrase; and at its
last time of use it ran--("Thirty-nine steps, I counted
them--high tide 10.17 p.m.?'). I could make nothing of
that.

The first thing I learned was that it was no question of
preventing war. That was coming, as sure as Christmas:
had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since February
1912. Karolides was going to be the occasion. He was
booked all right, and was to hand in his checks on June
14th, two weeks and four days from that May morning.
I gathered from Scudder's notes that nothing on earth
could prevent that. His talk of Epirote guards that
would skin their own grandmothers was all billy-o.

The second thing was that this war was going to come
as a mighty surprise to Britain. Karolides' death would
set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would
chip in with an ultimatum. Russia wouldn't like that,
and there would be high words. But Berlin would play
the peacemaker, and pour oil on the waters, fill
suddenly she would find a good cause for a quarrel,
pick it up, and in five hours let fly at us. That was the
idea, and a pretty good one too. Honey and fair
speeches, and then a stroke in the dark. While we were
talking about the goodwill and good intentions of
Germany our coast would be silently ringed with
mines, and submarines would be waiting for every
battleship.

But all this depended upon the third thing, which was
due to happen on June 15th. I would never have
grasped this if I hadn't once happened to meet a
French staff officer, coming back from West Africa,
who had told me a lot of things. One was that, in spite
of all the nonsense talked in Parliament, there was a
real working alliance between France and Britain, and
that the two General Staffs met every now and then,
and made plans for joint action in case of war. Well, in
June a very great swell was coming over from Paris,
and he was going to get nothing less than a statement
of the disposition of the British Home Fleet on
mobilization. At least I gathered it was something like
that; anyhow, it was something uncommonly
important.

But on the 15th day of June there were to be others in
London--others, at whom I could only guess. Scudder
was content to call them collectively the "Black Stone."
They represented not our Allies, but our deadly foes;
and the information, destined for France, was to be
diverted to their pockets. And it was to be used,
remember--used a week or two later, with great guns
and swift torpedoes, suddenly in the darkness of a
summer night.

This was the story I had been deciphering in a back
room of a country inn, overlooking a cabbage garden.
This was the story that hummed in my brain as I
swung in the big touring car from glen to glen.

My first impulse had been to write a letter to the Prime
Minister, but a little reflection convinced me that it
would be useless. Who would believe my tale? I must
show a sign, some token in proof, and Heaven knew
what that could be. Above all, I must keep going
myself, ready to act when things got riper, and that was
going to be no light job with the police of the British
Isles in full cry after me and the watchers of the Black
Stone running silently and swiftly on my trail.

I had no very clear purpose in my journey, but I
steered east by the sun, for I remembered from the
map that if I went north I would come into a region of
coal pits and industrial towns. Presently I was down
from the moorlands and traversing the broad haugh of
a river. For miles I ran alongside a park wall, and in a
break of the trees I saw a great castle. I swung through
little old thatched villages, and over peaceful lowland
streams, and past gardens blazing with hawthorn and
yellow laburnum. The land was so deep in peace that I
could scarcely believe that somewhere behind me
were those who sought my life; ay, and that in a
month's time, unless I had the almightiest of luck, these
round country faces would be pinched and staring, and
men would be lying dead in English fields.

About midday I entered a long straggling village, and
had a mind to stop and eat. Half-way down was the
Post Office, and on the steps of it stood the post-
mistress and a policeman hard at work conning a
telegram. When they saw me they wakened up, and
the policeman advanced with raised hand, and cried
on me to stop.

I nearly was fool enough to obey. Then it flashed upon
me that the wire had to do with me; that my friends at
the inn had come to an understanding, and were
united in desiring to see more of me, and that it had
been easy enough for them to wire the description of
me and the car to thirty villages through which I might
pass. I released the brakes just in time. As it was, the
policeman made a claw at the hood, and only dropped
off when he got my left in his eye.

I saw that main roads were no place for me, and
turned into the byways. It wasn't an easy job without a
map, for there was the risk of getting on to a farm road
and ending in a duck pond or a stable-yard, and I
couldn't afford that kind of delay. I began to see what
an ass I had been to steal the car. The big green brute
would be the safest kind of clue to me over the
breadth of Scotland. If I left it and took to my feet, it
would be discovered in an hour or two and I would get
no start in the race.

The immediate thing to do was to get to the loneliest
roads. These I soon found when I struck up a tributary
of the big river, and got into a glen with steep hills all
about me, and a corkscrew road at the end which
climbed over a pass. Here I met nobody, but it was
taking me too far north, so I slewed east along a bad
track and finally struck a big double-line railway. Away
below me I saw another broadish valley, and it
occurred to me that if I crossed it I might find some
remote inn to pass the night. The evening was now
drawing in, and I was furiously hungry, for I had eaten
nothing since breakfast except a couple of buns I had
bought from a baker's cart.

Just then I heard a noise in the sky, and lo and behold
there was that infernal aeroplane, flying low, about a
dozen miles to the south and rapidly coming towards
me.

I had the sense to remember that on a bare moor I
was at the aeroplane's mercy, and that my only chance
was to get to the leafy cover of the valley. Down the hill
I went like blue lightning, screwing my head round,
whenever I dared, to watch that damned flying
machine. Soon I was on a road between hedges, and
dipping to the deep-cut glen of a stream. Then came a
bit of thick wood where I slackened speed.

Suddenly on my left I heard the hoot of another car,
and realized to my horror that I was almost upon a
couple of gateposts through which a private road
debouched on the highway. My horn gave an agonized
roar, but it was too late. I clapped on my brakes, but
my impetus was too great, and there before me a car
was sliding athwart my course. In a second there
would have been the deuce of a wreck. I did the only
thing possible, and ran slap into the hedge on the right,
trusting to find something soft beyond.

But there I was mistaken. My car slithered through the
hedge like butter, and then gave a sickening plunge
forward. I saw what was coming, leapt on the seat and
would have jumped out. But a branch of hawthorn got
me in the chest, lifted me up and held me, while a ton
or two of expensive metal slipped below me, bucked
and pitched, and then dropped with an almighty
smash fifty feet to the bed of the stream.

Slowly that thorn let me go. I subsided first on the
hedge, and then very gently on a bower of nettles. As I
scrambled to my feet a hand took me by the arm, and
a sympathetic and badly scared voice asked me if I
were hurt.

I found myself looking at a tan young man in goggles
and a leather ulster, who kept on blessing his soul and
whinnying apologies. For myself, once I got my wind
back, I was rather glad than otherwise. This was one
way of getting rid of the car.

"My blame, sir," I answered him. "It's lucky that I did
not add homicide to my follies. That's the end of my
Scotch motor tour, but it might have been the end of
my life."

He plucked out a watch and studied it. "You're the right
sort of fellow," he said. "I can spare a quarter of an
hour, and my house is two minutes off. I'll see you
clothed and fed and snug in bed. Where's your kit, by
the way? Is it in the burn along with the car?"
"It's in my pocket," I said, brandishing a toothbrush,
"I'm a colonial and travel light."

"A colonial," he cried. "By Gad, you're the very man I've
been praying for. Are you by any blessed chance a
Free Trader?"

"I am," said I, without the foggiest notion of what he
meant.

He patted my shoulder and hurried me into his car.
Three minutes later we drew up before a comfortable-
looking shooting-box set among pine trees, and he
ushered me indoors. He took me first to a bedroom
and flung half a dozen of his suits before me, for my
own had been pretty well reduced to rags. I selected a
loose blue serge, which of the lot differed most
conspicuously from my former garments, and
borrowed a linen collar. Then he haled me to the
dining-room, where the remnants of a meal stood on
the table, and announced that I had just five minutes to
feed. "You can take a snack in your pocket, and we'll
have supper when we get back. I've got to be at the
Masonic Hall at eight o'clock, or my agent will comb
my hair."

I had a cup of coffee and some cold ham, while he
yarned away on the hearthrug.

"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 to-night 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 to-night, and had the thing
tremendously billed and the whole place ground-
baited. This afternoon I had a wire from the ruffian
saying he had got influenza at Blackpool, and here am I
left to do the whole thing myself. I had meant to speak
for ten minutes and must now go on for forty, and,
though I've been racking my brains for three hours to
think of something, I simply cannot last the course.
Now you've got to be a good chap and help me.
You're a Free Trader, and can tell our people what a
wash-out Protection is in the Colonies. All you fellows
have the gift of the gab--I wish to heaven I had it. I'll be
for evermore in your debt."

I had very few notions about Free Trade one way or
the other, but I saw no other chance to get what I
wanted. My young gentleman was far too absorbed in
his own difficulties to think how odd it was to ask a
stranger who had just missed death by an ace and had
lost a 1,000-guinea car to address a meeting for him on
the spur of the moment. But my necessities did not
allow me to contemplate oddnesses or to pick and
choose my supports.

"All right," I said. "I'm not much good as a speaker, but
I'll tell them a bit about Australia."

At my words the cares of the ages slipped from his
shoulders, and he was rapturous in his thanks. He lent
me a big driving coat--and never troubled to ask why I
had started on a motor tour without possessing an
ulster--and, as we slipped down the dusty roads,
poured into my ears the simple facts of his history. He
was an orphan, and his uncle had brought him up--I've
forgotten the uncle's name, but he was in the Cabinet,
and you can read his speeches in the papers. He had
gone round the world after leaving Cambridge, and
then, being short of a job, his uncle had advised
politics. I gathered that he had no preference in parties.
"Good chaps in both," he said cheerfully, "and plenty of
blighters, too. I'm Liberal, because my family have
always been Whigs." But if he was lukewarm politically
he had strong views on other things. He found out I
knew a bit about horses, and jawed away about the
Derby entries; and he was full of plans for improving
his shooting. Altogether, a very clean, decent, callow
young man.

As we passed through a little town two policemen
signalled us to stop, and fished their lanterns on us.
"Beg pardon, Sir Harry," said one. "We've got
instructions to look out for a cawr, and the
description's no unlike yours."

"Right-o," said my host, while I thanked Providence for
the devious ways I had been brought to safety. After
that he spoke no more, for his mind began to labour
heavily with his coming speech. His lips kept muttering,
his eye wandered, and I began to prepare myself for a
second catastrophe. I tried to think of something to say
myself, but my mind was dry as a stone. The next thing
I knew we had drawn up outside a door in a street, and
were being welcomed by some noisy gentlemen with
rosettes.

The hall had about five hundred in it, women mostly, a
lot of bald heads, and a dozen or two young men. The
chairman, a weaselly minister with a reddish nose,
lamented Crumpleton's absence, soliloquized on his
influenza, and gave me a certificate as a "trusted leader
of Australian thought." There were two policemen at
the door, and I hoped they took note of that
testimonial. Then Sir Harry started.

I never heard anything like it. He didn't begin to know
how to talk. He had about a bushel of notes from
which he read, and when he let go of them he fell into
one prolonged stutter. Every now and then he
remembered a phrase he had learned by heart,
straightened his back, and gave it off like Henry Irving,
and the next moment he was bent double and
crooning over his papers. It was the most appalling rot,
too. He talked about the "German menace," and said it
was all a Tory invention to cheat the poor of their
rights and keep back the great flood of social reform,
but that "organized labour" realized this and laughed
the Tories to scorn. He was all for reducing our Navy
as a proof of our good faith, and then sending
Germany an ultimatum telling her to do the same or
we would knock her into a cocked hat. He said that, but
for the Tories, Germany and Britain would be fellow-
workers in peace and reform. I thought of the little
black book in my pocket! A giddy lot Scudder's friends
cared for peace and reform.

Yet in a queer way I liked the speech. You could see
the niceness of the chap shining out behind the muck
with which he had been spoon-fed. Also it took a load
off my mind. I mightn't be much of an orator, but I was
a thousand per cent. better than Sir Harry.

I didn't get on so badly when it came to my turn. I
simply told them all I could remember about Australia,
praying there should be no Australian there--all about
its labour party and emigration and universal service. I
doubt if I remembered to mention Free Trade, but I
said there were no Tories in Australia, only Labour and
Liberals. That fetched a cheer, and I woke them up a
bit when I started in to tell them the kind of glorious
business I thought could be made out of the Empire if
we really put our backs into it.

Altogether I fancy I was rather a success. The minister
didn't like me, though, and when he proposed a vote of
thanks, spoke of Sir Harry's speech as "statesmanlike"
and mine as having "the eloquence of an emigration
agent."

When we were in the car again my host was in wild
spirits at having got his job over. "A ripping speech,
Twisdon," he said. "Now, you're coming home with me.
I'm all alone, and if you'll stop a day or two I'll show
you some very decent fishing."

We had a hot supper--and I wanted it pretty badly--
and then drank grog in a big cheery smoking-room
with a crackling wood fire. I thought the time had come
for me to put my cards on the table. I saw by this
man's eye that he was the kind you can trust.

"Listen, Sir Harry," I said. "I've something pretty
important to say to you. You're a good fellow, and I'm
going to be frank. Where on earth did you get that
poisonous rubbish you talked to-night?"

His face fell. "Was it as bad as that?" he asked ruefully.
"It did sound rather thin. I got most of it out of the
_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?"

"Ask that question in six weeks and it won't need an
answer" I said. "if you'll give me your attention for half
an hour I am going to tell you a story."

I can see yet that bright room with the deers' heads
and the old prints on the walls, Sir Harry standing
restlessly on the stone curb of the hearth, and myself
lying back in an arm-chair, 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 any one the
exact truth, so far as I understood it, and it did me no
end of good, for it straightened out the thing in my own
mind. I blinked no detail. He heard all about Scudder,
and the milkman, and the note-book, and my doings in
Galloway. Presently he got very excited and walked up
and down the hearthrug.

"So you see," I concluded, "you have got here in your
house the man that is wanted for the Portland Place
murder. Your duty is to send your car for the police
and give me up. I don't think I'll get very far. There'll be
an accident and I'll have a knife in my ribs an hour or
so after arrest. Nevertheless it's your duty, as a law-
abiding citizen. Perhaps in a month's time you'll be
sorry, but you have no cause to think of that."

He was looking at me with bright steady eyes. "What
was your job in Rhodesia, Mr. Hannay?" he asked.

"Mining engineer," I said. "I've made my pile cleanly
and I've had a good time in the making of it."

"Not a profession that weakens the nerves, is it?"

I laughed. "Oh, as to that, my nerves are good enough."
I took down a hunting-knife from a stand on the wall,
and did the old Mashona trick of tossing it and
catching it in my lips. That wants a pretty steady heart.

He watched me with a smile. "I don't want proofs. I
may be an ass on the platform, but I can size up a man.
You're no murderer and you're no fool, and I believe
you are speaking the truth. I'm going to back you up.
Now, what can I do?"

"First, I want you to write a letter to your uncle. I've got
to get in touch with the Government people sometime
before the 15th of June."

He pulled his moustache. "That won't help you. This is
Foreign Office business, and my uncle would have
nothing to do with it. Besides, you'd never convince
him. No, I'll go one better. I'll write to the Permanent
Secretary at the Foreign Office. He's my godfather, and
one of the best going. What do you want?"

He sat down at a table and wrote to my dictation. The
gist of it was that if a man called Twisdon (1 thought I
had better stick to that name) turned up before June
15th he was to entreat him kindly. He said Twisdon
would prove his bona fides by passing the word "Black
Stone" and whistling "Annie Laurie."

"Good," said Sir Harry. "That's the proper style. By the
way, you'll find my godfather--his name's Sir Walter
Bullivant--down at his country cottage for Whitsuntide.
It's close to Artinswell on the Kennet. That's done.
Now, what's the next thing?"

"You're about my height. Lend me the oldest tweed
suit you've got. Anything will do, so long as the colour
is the opposite of the clothes I destroyed this
afternoon. Then show me a map of the neighbourhood
and explain to me the lie of the land. Lastly, if the police
come seeking me, just show them the car in the glen. If
the other lot turn up, tell them I caught the south
express after your meeting."

He did, or promised to do, all these things. I shaved off
the remnants of my moustache, and got inside an
ancient suit of what I believe is called heather mixture.
The map gave me some notion of my whereabouts,
and told me the two things I wanted to know--where
the main railway to the south could be joined, and
what were the wildest districts near at hand.

At two o'clock he wakened me from my slumbers in
the smoking-room arm-chair, and led me blinking into
the dark starry night. An old bicycle was found in a
tool-shed and handed over to me.

"First turn to the right up by the long fir wood," he
enjoined. "By daybreak you'll be well into the hills.
Then I should pitch the machine into a bog and take to
the moors on foot. You can put in a week among the
shepherds, and be as safe as if you were in New
Guinea."

I pedalled diligently up the 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.



5--The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman



I sat down on the very crest of the pass and took stock
of my position.

Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft
in the hills, which was the upper glen of some notable
river. In front was a flat space of maybe a mile, all
pitted with bog-holes and rough with tussocks, and
then beyond it the road fell steeply down another glen
to a plain whose blue dimness melted into the
distance. To left and right were round-shouldered
green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to the south--
that is, the left hand--there was a glimpse of high
heathery mountains, which I remembered from the
map as the big knot of hill which I had chosen for my
sanctuary. I was on the central boss of a huge upland
country, and could see everything moving for miles. In
the meadows below the road half a mile back a
cottage smoked, but it was the only sign of human life.
Otherwise there was only the calling of plovers and the
tinkling of little streams.

It was now about seven o'clock, and as I waited I
heard once again that ominous beat in the air. Then I
realized that my vantage-ground might be in reality a
trap. There was no cover for a tomtit in those bald
green places.

I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat grew
louder. Then I saw an aeroplane coming up from the
east. It was flying high, but as I looked it dropped
several hundred feet and began to circle round the
knot of hill in narrowing circles, just as a hawk wheels
before it pounces. Now it was flying very low, and now
the observer on board caught sight of me. I could see
one of the two occupants examining me through
glasses.

Suddenly it began to rise in swift whorls, and the next I
knew it was speeding eastward again till it became a
speck in the blue morning.

That made me do some savage thinking. My enemies
had located me, and the next thing would be a cordon
round me. I didn't know what force they could
command, but I was certain it would be sufficient. The
aeroplane had seen my bicycle, and would conclude
that I would try to escape by the road. In that case
there might be a chance on the moors to the right or
left. I wheeled the machine a hundred yards from the
highway and plunged it into a moss-hole, where it sank
among pond-weed and water-buttercups. Then I
climbed to a knoll which gave me a view of the two
valleys. Nothing was stirring on the long white ribbon
that threaded them.

I have said there was not cover in the whole place to
hide a rat. As the day advanced it was flooded with
soft fresh fight 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
moor lands were prison walls, and the keen hill air was
the breath of a dungeon.

I tossed a coin--heads right, tails left--and it fell heads,
so I turned to the north. In a little I came to the brow of
the ridge which was the containing wall of the pass. I
saw the highroad for maybe ten miles, and far down it
something that was moving, and that I took to be a
motor-car. Beyond the ridge I looked on a rolling green
moor, which fell away into wooded glens. Now my life
on the veld has given me the eyes of a kite, and I can
see things for which most men need a telescope  ....
Away down the slope, a couple of miles away, men
were advancing like a row of beaters at a shoot.

I dropped out of sight behind the skyline. That way
was shut to me, and I must try the bigger hills to the
south beyond the 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 imagination, or did I
see figures--one, two, perhaps more--moving in a glen
beyond the stream?

If you are hemmed in on all sides in a patch of land
there is only one chance of escape. You must stay in
the patch, and let your enemies search it and not find
you. That was good sense, but how on earth was I to
escape notice in that table-cloth of a place? I would
have buried myself to the neck in mud or lain below
water or climbed the tidiest tree. But there was not a
stick of wood, the bog-holes were little puddles, the
stream was a slender trickle. There was nothing but
short heather, and bare hill bent, and the white
highway.



Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap of stones, I
found the Roadman.

He had just arrived, and was wearily flinging down his
hammer. He looked at me with a fishy eye and
yawned.

"Confoond the day I ever left the herdin'!" he said, as if
to the world at large. "There I was my ain maister. Now
I'm a slave to the Goavernment, tethered to the
roadside, wi' sair een, and a back like a suckle."

He took up the hammer, struck a stone, dropped the
implement with an oath, and put both hands to his
ears. "Mercy on me! My heid's burstin'!" he cried.

He was a wild figure, about my own size but much
bent, with a week's beard on his chin, and a pair of big
horn spectacles.

"I canna dae't," he cried again. "The Surveyor maun just
report me. I'm for my bed."

I asked him what was the trouble, though indeed that
was clear enough.

"The trouble is that I'm no sober. Last nicht my dochter
Merran was waddit, and they danced till lower in the
byre. Me and some ither chiels sat down to the drinkin',
and here I am. Peety that I ever lookit on the wine
when it was red!"

I agreed with him about bed.

"It's easy speakin," he moaned. "But I got a postcaird
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 door
that'il no help me, for they ken my kind o' no-weel-
ness."

Then I had an inspiration. "Does the new Surveyor
know you?'' I asked.

"No him. He's just been a week at the job. He rins
about in a wee motor-cawr, and wad speir the inside
oot o' a whelk."

"Where's your house?" I asked, and was directed by a
wavering finger to he cottage by the stream.

"Well, back to your bed," I said, "and sleep in peace. I'll
take on your job   for a bit and see the Surveyor."

He stared at me blankly; then, as the notion dawned on
his fuddled brain, his face broke into the vacant
drunkard's smile.

"You're the billy," he cried. "It'll be easy eneuch
managed. I've finished  that bing o' stanes, so you
needna chap ony mair this forenoon. Just take the
lorry, 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 weak i' the sicht. Just you speak the
Surveyor fair, and ca' him Sir, and he'll be fell pleased.
I'll be back or midday."

I borrowed his speetacles 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
tnink there was also something left in the foot of a
bottle. I prayed that he might be safe under cover
before my friends arrived on the scene.

Then I set to work to dress for the part. I opened the
collar of my shirt--itwas 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 watermark round my neck,
the place where Mr. Tumbull's Sunday ablutions might
be expected to stop. I rubbed a good deal of dirt also
into the sunburn of my cheeks. A roadman's eyes
would no doubt be a little inflamed, so I contrived to
get some dust in both of mine; and by dint of vigorous
rubbing produced a bleary effect.

The sandwiches Sir Harry had given me had gone off
with my coat, but the roadman's lunch, tied up in a red
handkerchief, was at my disposal. I ate with great relish
several of the thick slabs of scone and cheese and
drank a little of the cold tea. In the handkerchief was a
local paper tied with string and addressed to Mr.
Turnbull--obviously meant to solace his midday
leisure. I did up the bundle again, and put the paper
conspicuously beside it.

My boots did not satisfy me, but by dint of kicking
among the stones I reduced them to the granite-like
surface which marks a road man'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 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.

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.

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 heavt 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 until evening should put a limit to Mr. Turnbull's
monotonous toil.

Suddenly a crisp voice spoke from the road, and
looking up I saw a little Ford two-seater, and a round-
faced young man in a bowler hat.

"Are you Alexander Turnbull?" he asked. "I am the new
County Road Surveyor. You live in Blackhopefoot, and
have charge of the section from Laidlaw-byres to the
Riggs? Good! A fair bit of road, Turnbull, and not badly
engineered. A bit soft about a mile off, and the edge
wants cleaning. See you look after that. Good-morning.
You'll know me the next time you see me."

Clearly my get-up was good enough for the dreaded
Surveyor. I went on with my work, and as the morning
grew towards noon I was cheered by a little traffic. A
baker's van breasted the hill, and sold me a bag of
ginger biscuits which I stowed in my trousers pocket
against emergencies. Then a herd passed with sheep,
and disturbed me somewhat by asking loudly, "What
had become o'Specky?"

"In bed wi' the colic," I replied, and the herd passed on
....

Just about 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.

Two of the men I had seen before from the window of
the Galloway inn--one lean, sharp, and dark, the other
comfortable. The third had the look of a countryman--a
vet, perhaps, or a small farmer. He was dressed in ill-
cut knickerbockers, and the eye in his head was as
bright and wary as a hen's.

" 'Morning," said the last. "That's a fine easy job o'
yours."

I had not looked up on their approach, and now, when
accosted, I slowly and painfully straightened my back,
after the manner of road men; spat vigorously, after the
manner of the low Scot, and regarded them steadily
before replying. I confronted three pairs of eyes that
missed nothing.

"There's waur jobs and there's better," I said
sententiously. "I wad rather hae yours, sittin' a' day on
your hinderlands on thae cushions. it's you and your
muckle cawrs that wreck my roads! If we a' had oor
richts, ye sud be made to mend what ye break."

The bright-eyed man was looking at the newpaper
lying beside Turnbull's bundle.

"I see you get tyour paper in good time," he said.

I glanced at it casually. "Ay, in gude time. Seein' that
that paper cam out Setterday I'm just sax days late."

He picked it up, glanced at the superscription, and laid
it down again. One of the others had been looking at
my boots, and a word in German called the speaker's
attenttion to them.

"You've a fine taste in boots," he said. "Those were
never made by a country shoemaker."

"They were not," I said readily. "they were made in
London. I got them frae the gentleman that was here
last year for the shootin'. What was his name now?"
And I scratched a forgetful head.

Again the sleek one spoke in German. "Let us get on,"
he said. "This fellow is all right."

They asked one last question.

"Did you see any one pass early this morning? He
might be on a bicycle or he might be on foot."

I very nearly fell into the trap and told a story of a
bicyclist hurrying past in the grey dawn. But I had the
sense to see my danger. I pretended to consider very
deeply.

"I wasna up very early," I said. "Ye see, my dochter was
merrit last nicht, and we keepit up late. I opened the
house door about seeven and there was naebody on
the road then. Since I cam up here there has just been
the baker and the Ruchill herd, besides you
gentlemen."

One of them gave me a cigar, which I smelt gingerly
and stuck in Turnbull's bundle. They got into their car
and were out of sight in three minutes.

My heart leaped with an enormous relief, but I went on
wheeling my stones. It was as well, for ten minutes later
the car returned, one of the occupants waving a hand
to me. Those gentry left nothing to chance.

I finished Turnbull's bread and cheese, and pretty soon
I had finished the stones. The next step was what
puzzled me. I could not keep up this road-making
business for long. A merciful Providence had kept Mr.
Turnbull indoors but if he appeared on the scene there
would be trouble. I had a notion that the cordon was
still tight round the glen, and that if I walked in any
direction I should meet with questioners. But get out I
must. No man's nerve could stand more than a day of
being spied on.

I stayed at my post till about five o'clock. By that time I
had resolved to go down to Turnbull's cottage at
nightfall and take my chance of getting over hills in the
darkness. But suddenly a new car came up the road,
and slowed down a yard or two from me. A fresh wind
had risen, and the occupant wanted to light a cigarette.

It was a touring car, with the tonneau full of an
assortment of baggage. One man sat in it, and by an
amazing chance I knew him. His name was
Marmaduke Jopley, and he was an offence to creation.
He was a sort of blood stockbroker, who did his
business by toadying eldest sons and rich young peers
and foolish old ladies. "Marmie" was a familiar figure, I
understood, at balls and polo-weeks and country
houses. He was an adroit scandal-monger, and would
crawl a mile on his belly to anything that had a title or a
million. I had a business introduction to his firm when I
came to London, and he was good enough to ask me
to dinner at his club. There he showed off at a great
rate, and pattered about his duchesses till the
snobbery of the creature turned me sick. I asked a man
afterwards why nobody kicked him, and was told that
Englishmen reverenced the weaker sex.

Anyhow there he was now, nattily dressed, in a fine
new car, obviously on his way to visit some of his
smart friends. A sudden daftness took me, and in a
second I had jumped into the tonneau and had him by
the shoulder.

"Hullo, Jopley," I sang out. "Well met, my lad!"

He got a horrid fright. His chin dropped as he stared at
me. "Who the devil are you?" he gasped.

"My name's Hannay," I said. "From Rhodesia, you
remember."

"Good God, the murderer!" he choked.

"Just so. And there'll be a second murder, my dear, if
you don't do as I tell you. Give me that coat of yours.
That cap, too."

He did as 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 nearest motorists in Scotland. On Mr.
Jopley's head I clapped Turnbull's unspeakable hat,
and told him to keep it there.

Then with some difficulty I turned the car. My plan was
to go back the road he had come, for the watchers,
having seen it before, would probably let it pass
unremarked, and Marmie's figure was in no way like
mine.

"Now, my child," I said, "sit quite still and be a good
boy. I mean you no harm. I'm only borrowing your car
for an hour or two. But if you play me any tricks, and
above all if you open your mouth, as sure as there's a
God above me I'll wring your neck. _i_ Savez? _i_"

I enjoyed that evening's ride. We ran eight miles down
the valley, through a village or two, and I could not
help noticing several strange-looking folk lounging by
the roadside. These were the watchers who would
have had much to say to me if I had come in other
garb or company. As it was, they looked incuriously
on. One touched his cap in salute, and I responded
graciously.

As the dark fell I turned up a side glen which, as I
remember from the map, led into an unfrequented
corner of the hills. Soon the villages were left behind,
then the farms, and then even the wayside cottages.
Presently we came to a lonely moor where the night
was blackening the sunset gleam in the bog pools.
Here we stopped, and I obligingly reversed the car and
restored to Mr. Jopley his belongings.

"A thousand thanks," I said. "There's more use in you
than I thought. Now be off and find the police."

As I sat on the hillside, watching the tail lights 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.



6. The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist



I spent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a
boulder where the heather grew long and soft. It was a
cold business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat.
These were in Mr. Turnbull's keeping, as was Scudder's
little book, my watch and--worst of all--my pipe and
tobacco pouch. Only my money accompanied me in
my belt, and about half a pound of ginger biscuits in
my trousers pocket.

I supped off half those biscuits, and by worming myself
deep into the heather got some kind of warmth. My
spirits had risen, and I was beginning to enjoy this
crazy game of hide-and-seek. So far I had been
miraculously lucky. The milkman, the literary innkeeper,
Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic Marmie, were
all pieces of undeserved good fortune. Somehow the
first success gave me a feeling that I was going to pull
the thing through.

My chief trouble was that I was desperately hungry.
When a Jew shoots himself in the City and there is an
inquest, the newspapers usually report that the
decedent 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 porter-house
steak and a quart of bitter with a welsh rabbit to follow.
In longing hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep. I
woke very cold and stiff about an hour 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 blueberry bush. I raised myself on my arms and
looked down into the valley, and that one look set me
lacing tap my boots in mad haste.

For there were men below, not more than a quarter of
a mile off, spaced out on the hillside like a fan, and
beating the heather. Marmie had not been slow in
looking for his revenge.

I crawled out of my shelf into the cover of a boulder,
and from it gained a shallow trench which slanted up
the mountain face. This led me presently into the
narrow gully of a burn, by way of which I scrambled to
the top of the ridge. From there I looked back, and saw
that I was still undiscovered. My pursuers were
patiently quartering the hillside and moving upwards.

Keeping behind the skyline I ran for maybe half a mile,
till I judged I was above the uppermost end of the glen.
Then I showed myself, and was instantly noted by one
of the tankers, who passed the word to the others. I
heard cries coming up from below, and saw that the
line of search had changed its direction. I pretended to
retreat over the skyline, but instead went back the way
I had come, and in twenty minutes was behind the
ridge overlooking my sleeping place. From that
viewpoint I had the satisfaction of seeing the pursuit
streaming up the hill at the top of the glen on a
hopelessly false scent.

I had before me a choice of routes, and I chose a ridge
which made an angle with the one I was on, and so
would soon put a deep glen between me and my
enemies. The exercise had warmed my blood, and I
was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly. As I went I
breakfasted on the dusty remnants of the ginger
biscuits.

I knew very little about the country, and I hadn't a
notion what I was going to do. I trusted to the strength
of my legs, but I was well aware that those behind me
would be familiar with the lie of the land, and that my
ignorance would be a heavy handicap. I saw in front of
me a sea of hills, rising very high towards the south, but
northwards breaking down into broad ridges which
separated wide and shallow dales. The ridge I had
chosen seemed to sink after a mile or two to a moor
which lay like a pocket in the uplands. That seemed as
good a direction to take as any other.

My stratagem had given me a fair start--call it twenty
minutes--and I had the width of a glen behind me
before I saw the first heads of the pursuers. The police
had evidently called in local talent to their aid, and the
men I could see had the appearance of herds or
gamekeepers. They hallooed at the sight of me, and I
waved my hand. Two dived into the glen and began to
climb my ridge, while the others kept their own side of
the hill. I felt as if I were taking part in a schoolboy
game of hare and hounds.

But very soon it began to seem less of a game. Those
fellows behind me were hefty men on their native
heath. Looking back I saw that only three were
following direct, and I guessed that the others had
fetched a circuit to cut me off. My lack of local
knowledge might very well be my undoing, and I
resolved to get out of this tangle of glens to the pocket
of moor I had seen from the tops. I must so increase
my distance as to get clear away from them, and I
believed I could do this if I could find the right ground
for it. If there had been cover I would have tried a bit
of stalking, but on these bare slopes you could see a fly
a mile off. My hope must be in the length of my legs
and the soundness of my wind, but I needed easier
ground for that, for I was not bred a mountaineer. How
I longed for a good Afrikander pony!

I put on a great spurt and got off my ridge and down
into the moor before any figures appeared on the
skyline behind me. I crossed a burn, and came out on a
highroad which made a pass between two glens. All in
front of me was a big field of heather sloping up to a
crest which was crowned with an odd feather of trees.
In the dyke by the roadside was a gate, from which a
grass-grown track led over the first wave of the moor.

I jumped the dyke and followed it, and after a few
hundred yards--as soon as it was out of sight of the
highway--the grass stopped and it became a very
respectable road, which was evidently kept with some
care. Clearly it ran to a house, and I began to think of
doing the same. Hitherto my luck had held, and it
might be that my best chance would be found in this
remote dwelling. Anyhow there were trees there, and
that meant cover.

I did not follow the road, but the burnside which
flanked it on the right, where the bracken grew deep
and the high banks made a tolerable screen. It was well
I did so, for no sooner had I gained the hollow than,
looking back, I saw the pursuit topping the ridge from
which I had descended.

After that I did not look back; I had no time. I ran up
the burnside, crawling over the open places, and for a
large part wading in the shallow stream. I found a
deserted cottage with a row of phantom peat-stacks
and an overgrown garden. Then I was among young
hay, and very soon had come to the edge of a
plantation of wind-blown firs. From there I saw the
chimneys of the house smoking a few hundred yards
to my left. I forsook the burnside, crossed another
dyke, and almost before I knew was on a rough lawn.
A glance back told me that I was well out of sight of
the pursuit, which had not yet passed the first lift of the
moor.

The lawn was a very rough place, cut with a scythe
instead of a mower, and planted with beds of scrubby
rhododendrons. A brace of black game, which are not
usually garden birds, rose at my approach. The house
before me was the ordinary moorland farm, with a
more pretentious whitewashed wing added. Attached
to this wing was a glass veranda, and through the glass
I saw the face of an elderly gentleman meekly watching
me.

I stalked over the border of coarse hill gravel and
entered the open veranda door. Within was a pleasant
room, glass on one side, and on the other a mass of
books. More books showed in an inner room. On the
floor, instead of tables, stood cases such as you see in
a museum, filled with coins and queer stone
implements.

There was a knee-hole desk in the middle, and seated
at it, with some papers and open volumes before him,
was the benevolent old gentleman. His face was round
and shiny, like Mr. Pickwick's, big glasses were stuck on
the end of his nose, and the top of his head was as
bright and bare as a glass bottle. He never moved
when I entered, but raised his placid eyebrows and
waited on me to speak.

It was not an easy job, with about five minutes to
spare, to tell a stranger who I was and what I wanted,
and to win his aid. I did not attempt it. There was
something about the eye of the man before me,
something so keen and knowledgeable, that I could
not find a word. I simply stared at him and stuttered.

"You seem in a hurry, my friend," he said, slowly.

I nodded towards the window. It gave a prospect
across the moor through a gap in the plantation, and
revealed certain figures half a mile off straggling
through the heather.

"Ah, I see," he said, and took up a pair of field-glasses
through which he patiently scrutinzed the figures.

"A fugitive from justice, eh? Well, we'll go into the
matter at our leisure. Meantime I object to my privacy
being broken in upon by the clumsy rural policeman.
Go into my study, and you will see two doors facing
you. Take the one on the left and close it behind you.
You will be perfectly safe." And this extraordinary man
took up his pen again.

I did as I was bid, and found myself in a little dark
chamber which smelt of chemicals, and was lit only by
a tiny window high up in the wall. The door had swung
behind me with a click like the door of a safe. Once
again I had found an unexpected sanctuary.

All the same I was not comfortable. There was
something about the old gentleman which puzzled and
rather terrified me. He had been too easy and ready,
almost as if he had expected me. And his eyes had
been horribly intelligent.

No sound came to me in that dark place. For all I knew
the police might be searching the house, and if they did
they would want to know what was behind this door. I
tried to possess my soul in patience, and to forget how
hungry I was.

Then I took a more cheerful view. The old gentleman
could scarcely refuse me a meal, and I fell to
reconstructing my breakfast. Bacon and eggs would
content me, but I wanted the better part of a flitch of
bacon and half a hundred eggs. And then, while my
mouth was watering in anticipation, there was a click
and the door stood open.

I emerged into the sunlight to find the master of the
house sitting in a deep arm-chair in the room he called
his study, and regarding me with curious eyes.

"Have they gone?" I asked.

"They have gone. I convinced them that you had
crossed the hill. I do not choose that the police should
come between me and one whom I am delighted to
honour. This is a lucky morning for you, Mr. Richard
Hannay."

As he spoke his eyelids seemed to tremble and to fall a
little over his keen grey eyes. In a flash the phrase of
Scudder's came back to me, when he had described
the man he most dreaded in the world. He said that he
"could hood his eyes like a hawk." Then I saw that I had
walked straight into the enemy's headquarters.

My first impulse was to throttle the old ruffian and
make for the open air. He seemed to anticipate my
intention, for he smiled gently, and nodded to the door
behind me. I turned, and saw two men-servants who
had me covered with pistols.

He knew my name, but had never seen me before. And
as the reflectiondated across my mind I saw a slender
chance.

"I don't know what you mean," I said roughly. "And
who are you calling Richard Hannay. My name's
Ainslie."

"So?" he said, still smiling. "But of course you have
others. We won't quarrel about a name."

I was pulling myself together now, and I reflected that
my garb, lacking coat and waistcoat and collar, would
at any rate not betray me. I put on my surliest face and
shrugged my shoulders.

"I suppose you're going to give me up after all, and I
call it a damned dirty trick. My God, I wish I had never
seen that cursed motor-car! Here's the money and be
damned to you," and I flung four sovereigns on the
table.

He opened his eyes a little. "Oh no, I shall not give you
up. My friends and I will have a little private settlement
with you, that is all. You know a little too much, Mr.
Hannay. You are a clever actor, but not quite clever
enough."

He spoke with assurance, but I could see the dawning
of a doubt in his mind.

"Oh, for God's sake stop jawing!" I cried. "Everything's
against me. I haven't had a bit of luck since I came on
shore at Leith. What's the harm in a poor devil with an
empty stomach picking up some money he finds in a
bust-up motor-car? That's all I done, and for that I've
been chivied for two days by those blasted bobbies
over those blasted hills. I tell you I'm fair sick of it. You
can do what you like, old boy! Ned Ainslie's got no
fight left in him."

I could see that the doubt was gaining.

"Will you oblige me with the story of your recent
doings?" he asked.

"I can't, guv'nor," I said in a real beggar's whine. "I've
not had a bite to eat for two days. Give me a mouthful
of food, and then you'll hear God's truth."

I must have showed my hunger in my face, for he
signalled to one of the men in the doorway. A bit of
cold pie was brought and a glass of beer, and I wolfed
them down like a pig--or rather, like Ned Ainslie, for I
was keeping up my character. In the middle of my
meal he spoke suddenly to me in German, but I turned
on him a face as blank as a stone wall.

Then I told him my story--how I had come off an
Archangel ship at Leith a week ago, and was making
my way overland to my brother at Wigtown. I had run
short of cash--l hinted vaguely at a spree--and I was
pretty well on my uppers when I had come on a hole
in a hedge, and, looking through, had seen a big motor-
car lying in the burn. I had poked about to see what
had happened, and had found three sovereigns lying
on the seat and one on the floor. There was nobody
there or any sign of an owner, so I had pocketed the
cash. But somehow the law had got after me. When I
had tried to change a sovereign in a baker's shop, the
woman had cried on the police, and a little later, when
I was washing my face in a burn, I had been nearly
gripped, and had only got away by leaving my coat
and waistcoat behind me.

"They can have the money back," I cried, "for a fat lot of
good it's done me. Those perishers are all down on a
poor man. Now, if it had been you, guv'nor, that had
found the quids, nobody would have troubled you."

"You're a good liar, Hannay," he said.

I flew into a rage. "Stop fooling, damn you! I tell you my
name's Ainslie, and I never heard of any one called
Hannay in my born days. I'd sooner have the police
than you with your Hannays and your monkey-faced
pistol tricks  .... No, guv'nor, I beg pardon, I don't mean
that. I'm much obliged to you for the grub, and I'll
thank you to let me go now the coast's clear."

It was obvious that he was badly puzzled. You see he
had never seen me, and my appearance must have
altered considerably from my photographs, if he had
got one of them. I was pretty smart and well dressed in
London, and now I was a regular tramp.

"I do not propose to let you go. If you are what you
say you are, you will soon have a chance of clearing
yourself. If you are what I believe you are, I do not
think you will see the light much longer."

He rang a bell, and a third servant appeared from the
veranda.

"I want the Lanchester in five minutes," he said. "There
will be three to luncheon."

Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the
hardest ordeal of all. There was something weird and
devilish in those eyes, cold, malignant, unearthly, and
most hellishly clever. They fascinated me like the bright
eyes of a snake. I had a strong impulse to throw myself
on his mercy and offer to join his side, and if you
consider the way I felt about the whole thing you will
see that that impulse must have been purely physical,
the weakness of a brain mesmerized and mastered by
a stronger spirit. But I managed to stick it out and even
to grin.

"You'll know me next time, guv'nor," I said.

"Karl," he spoke in German to one of the men in the
doorway, "you will put this fellow in the storeroom till I
return, and you will be answerable to me for his
keeping."

I was marched out of the room with a pistol at each
ear.



The storeroom was a damp chamber in what had been
the old farmhouse. There was no carpet on the uneven
floor, and nothing to sit down on but a school form. It
was black as pitch, for the windows were heavily
shuttered. I made out by groping that the walls were
lined with boxes and barrels and sacks of some heavy
stuff. The whole place smelt of mould and disuse. My
gaolers turned the key in the door, and I could hear
them shifting their feet as they stood on guard outside.

I sat down in that chilly darkness in a very miserable
frame of mind. The old boy had gone off in a motor to
collect the two ruffians who had interviewed me
yesterday. Now, they had seen me as the roadman,
and they would remember me, for I was in the same
rig. What was a roadman doing twenty miles from his
beat, pursued by the police? A question or two would
put them on the track. Probably they had seen Mr.
Turnbull, probably Marmie too; most likely they could
link me up with Sir Harry, and then the whole thing
would be crystal clear. What chance had I in this
moorland house with three desperadoes and their
armed servants?

I began to think wistfully of the police, now plodding
over the hills after my wraith. They at any rate were
fellow-countrymen and honest men, and their tender
mercies would be kinder than these ghoulish aliens.
But they wouldn't have listened to me. That old devil
with the eyelids had not taken long to get rid of them. I
thought he probably had some kind of graft with the
constabulary. Most likely he had letters from Cabinet
Ministers saying he was to be given every facility for
plotting against Britain. That's the sort of owlish way
we run our politics in this jolly old country.

The three would be back for lunch, so I hadn't more
than a couple of hours to wait. It was simply waiting on
destruction, for I could see no way out of this mess. I
wished that I had Scudder's courage, for I am free to
confess I didn't feel any great fortitude. The only thing
that kept me going was that I was pretty furious. It
made me boil with rage to think of those three spies
getting the pull on me like this. I hoped that at any rate
I might be able to twist one of their necks before they
downed me.

The more I thought of it the angrier I grew, and I had
to get up and move about the room. I tried the
shutters, but they were the kind that lock with a key,
and I couldn't move them. From the outside came the
faint clucking of hens in the warm sun. Then I groped
among the sacks and boxes. I couldn't open the latter,
and the sacks seemed to be full of things like dog-
biscuits that smelt of cinnamon. But, as I
circumnavigated the room, I found a handle in the wall
which seemed worth investigating.

It was the door of a wall cupboard--what they call a
"press" in Scotland, and it was locked. I shook it, and it
seemed rather flimsy. For want of something better to
do I put out my strength on that door, getting some
purchase on the handle by looping my braces round it.
Presently the thing gave with a crash which I thought
would bring in my warders to inquire. I , waited for a
bit, and then started to explore the cupboard shelves.

There was a multitude of queer things there. I found an
odd vesta or two in my trouser pockets and struck a
light, It went out in a second, but showed me one thing.
There was a little stock of electric torches on one shelf.
I picked up one, and found it was in working order.

With the torch to help me I investigated further. There
were bottles and cases of queer-smelling stuffs,
chemicals no doubt for experiments, and there were
coils of fine copper wire and yanks and yanks of a thin
oiled silk. There was a box of detonators, and a lot of
cord for fuses. Then away at the back of a shelf I found
a stout brown cardboard box, and inside it a wooden
case. I managed to wrench it open, and within by half a
dozen little grey bricks, each a couple of inches square.

I took up one, and found that it crumbled easily in my
hand. Then I smelt it and put my tongue to it. After that
I sat down to think. I hadn't been a mining engineer for
nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it.

With one of these bricks I could blow the house to
smithereens. I had used the stuff in Rhodesia and knew
its power. But the trouble was that my knowledge
wasn't exact. I had forgotten the proper charge and the
right way of preparing it, and I wasn't sure about the
timing. I had only a vague notion, too, as to its power,
for though I had used it I had not handled it with my
own fingers.

But it was a chance, the only possible chance. It was a
mighty risk, but against it was an absolute black
certainty. If I used it the odds were, as I reckoned,
about five to one in favour of my blowing myself into
the tree-tops; but if I didn't I should certainly be
occupying a six-foot hole in the garden by the evening.
That was the way I had to look at it. The prospect was
pretty dark either way, but anyhow there was a chance,
both for myself and for my country.

The remembrance of little Scudder decided me. It was
about the beastliest moment of my life, for I'm no good
at these cold-blooded resolutions. Still I managed to
rake up the pluck to set my teeth and choke back the
horrid doubts that flooded in on me. I simply shut off
my mind and pretended I was doing an experiment as
simple as Guy Fawkes fireworks.

I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of inches 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 of 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 the surrounding country. There was also the
risk that the detonation might set off the other bricks in
the cupboard, for I had forgotten most that I knew
about lentonite. But it didn't do to begin thinking about
the possibilities. The odds were horrible, but I had to
take them.

I ensconced myself just below the sill of the window,
and lit the fuse. Then I waited for a moment or two.
There was dead silence--only a shuffle of heavy boots
in the passage, and the peaceful cluck of hens from the
warm out-of-doors. I commended my soul to my
Maker, and wondered where I would be in five
seconds  ....

A great wave of heat seemed to surge upwards from
the floor, and hang for a blistering instant in the air.
Then the wall opposite me flashed into a golden
yellow and dissolved with a rending thunder that
hammered my brain into a pulp. Something dropped
on me, catching the point of my left shoulder.

And then I think I became unconscious.

My stupor can scarcely have lasted beyond a few
seconds. I felt myself being choked by thick yellow
fumes, and struggled out of the debris to my feet.
Somewhere behind me I felt fresh air. The jambs of the
window had fallen, and through the ragged rent the
smoke was pouring out to the summer noon. I stepped
over the broken lintel, and found myself standing in a
yard in a dense and acrid fog. I felt very sick and ill, but
I could move my limbs, and I staggered blindly
forward away from the house.

A small mill lade ran in a wooden aqueduct at the
other side of the yard, and into this I fell. The cool
water revived me, and I had just enough wits left to
think of escape. I squirmed up the lade among the
slippery green slime till I reached the mill wheel. Then I
wriggled through the axle hole into the old mill and
tumbled on to a bed of chaff. A nail caught the seat of
my trousers, and I left a wisp of heather mixture
behind me.

The mill had been long out of use. The ladders were
rotten with age, and in the loft the rats had gnawed
great holes in the floor. Nausea shook me, and a wheel
in my head kept turning, while my left shoulder and
arm seemed to be stricken with the palsy. I looked out
of the window and saw a fog still hanging over the
house and smoke escaping from an upper window.
Please God I had set the place on fire, for I could hear
confused cries coming from the other fide.

But I had no time to finger, since this mill was
obviously a bad hiding place. Any one looking for me
would naturally follow the lade, and I made certain the
search would begin as soon as they found that my
body was not in the storeroom. From another window
I saw that on the far side of the mill stood an old stone
dovecot. If I could get there without leaving tracks I
might find a hiding-place, for I argued that my enemies,
if they thought I could move, would conclude I had
made for open country, and would go seeking me on
the moor. I crawled down the broken ladder, scattering
chaff behind me to cover my footsteps. I did the same
on the mill floor, and on the threshold where the door
hung on broken hinges. Peeping out, I saw that
between me and the dovecot was a piece of bare
cobbled ground, where no foot marks would allow.
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 selected a way of
ascent.

That was one of the hardest jobs I ever took on. My
shoulder and arm ached like hell, and I was so sick and
giddy that I was always on the verge of fainting. But I
managed it somehow. By the use of out-jutting stones
and gaps in the masonry and a tough ivy root I got to
the top in the end. There was a little parapet behind
which I found space to lie down. Then I proceeded to
go off into an old-fashioned swoon.

I woke with a burning head and the sun glaring in my
face. For a long time I lay motionless, for those horrible
fumes seemed to have loosened my joints and dulled
my brain. Sounds came to me from the house--men
speaking throatily and the throbbing of a stationary
car. There was a little gap in the parapet to which I
wriggled, and from which I had some sort of prospect
of I the yard. I saw figures come out--a servant with his
head bound up, and then a younger man in
knickerbockers. They were looking for something, and
moved towards the mill. Then one of them caught sight
of the wisp of cloth on the nail, and cried out to the
other. They both went back to the house, and brought
two more to look at it. I saw the rotund figure of my
late captor, and I thought I made out the man with the
lisp. I noticed that all had pistols. For half an hour they
ransacked the mill. I could hear them kicking over the
barrels and pulling up the rotten planking. Then they
came outside, and stood just below the dovecot,
arguing fiercely. The servant with the bandage was
being soundly rated. I heard them fiddling with the
door of the dovecot,


52


and for one horrid moment I fancied they were coming
up. Then they thought better of it, and went back to the
house.

All that long blistering afternoon I lay baking on the
roof-top. Thirst was my chief torment. My tongue was
like a stick, and to make it worse I could hear the cool
drip of water from the mill lade. I watched the course
of the little stream as it came in from the moor, and my
fancy followed it to the top of the glen, where it must
issue from an icy fountain fringed with ferns and
mosses. I would have given a thousand pounds to
plunge my face into that.

I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland. I
saw the car speed away with two occupants, and a
man on a hill pony riding east. I judged they were
looking for me, and I wished them joy of their quest.

But I saw something else more interesting. The house
stood almost on the summit of a swell of moorland
which crowned a sort of plateau, and there was no
higher point nearer than the big hills six miles off. The
actual summit, as I have mentioned, was a biggish
clump of trees--firs mostly, with a few ashes and
beeches. On the dovecot I was almost on a level with
the tree-tops, and could see what lay beyond. The
wood was not solid, but only a ring, and inside was an
oval of green turf, for all the world like a big cricket
field.

I didn't take long to guess what it was. It was an
aerodrome, and a secret one. The place had been most
cunningly chosen. For suppose any one were watching
an aeroplane descending here, he would think it had
gone over the hill beyond the trees. As the place was
on the top of a rise in the midst of a big amphitheatre,
any observer from any direction would conclude it had
passed out of view behind the hill. Only a man very
close at hand would realize that the aeroplane had not
gone over but had descended in the midst of the
wood. An observer with a telescope on one of the
higher hills might have discovered the truth, but only
herds went there, and herds do not carry spy-glasses.
When I looked from the dovecot I could see far away
a blue line which I knew was the sea, and I grew furious
to think that our enemies had this secret conning-
tower to rake our waterways.

Then I reflected that if that aeroplane came back the
chances were ten to one that I would be discovered.
So through the afternoon I lay and prayed for the
coming of darkness, and glad I was when the sun went
down over the big western hills and the twilight haze
crept over the moor. The aeroplane was late. The
gloammg was far advanced when I heard the beat of
wings and saw it volplaning downward to its home in
the wood. Lights twinkled for a bit and there was much
coming and going from the house. Then the dark fell,
and silence.

Thank God it was a black night. The moon was well on
its last quarter and would not rise till late. My thirst was
too great to allow me to tarry, so about nine o'clock, so
far as I could judge, I started to descend. It wasn't easy,
and half-way down I heard the back door of the house
open, and saw the gleam of a lantern against the mill
wall. For some agonizing minutes I hung by the ivy and
prayed that whoever it was he would not come round
by the dovecot. Then the light disappeared, and I
dropped as softly as I could on to the hard soil of the
yard.



I crawled on my belly in the lee of a stone dyke till I
reached the fringe of trees which surrounded the
house. If I had known how to do it I would have tried
to put that aeroplane out of action, but I realized that
any attempt would probably be futile. I was pretty
certain that there would be some kind of defence
round the house, so I went through the wood on hands
and knees, feeling carefully every inch before me. It
was as well, for presently I came on a wire about two
feet from the ground. If I had tripped over that, it
would doubtless have rung some bell in the house and
I would have been captured. A hundred yards farther
on I found another wire cunningly placed on the edge
of a small stream. Beyond that lay the moor, and in five
minutes I was deep in bracken and heather. Soon I was
round the shoulder of the rise, in the little glen from
which the mill lade flowed. Ten minutes later my face
was in the spring, and I was soaking down pints of the
blessed water.

But I did not stop till I had put half a dozen miles
between me and that accursed dwelling.



7--The Dry-Fly Fisherman



I rat down on a hill-top and took stock of my position. I
wasn't feeling very happy, for my natural thankfulness
at my escape was clouded by my severe bodily
discomfort. Those lentonite fumes had fairly poisoned
me, and the baking hours on the dovecot hadn't
helped matters. I had a crushing headache, and felt as
sick as a cat. Also my shoulder was in a bad way. At
first I thought it was only a bruise, but it seemed to be
swelling, and I had no use of my left arm.

My plan was to seek Mr. Turnbull's cottage, recover my
garments, and especially Scudder's note-book, and
then make for the main line and get back to the south.
It seemed to me that the sooner I got in touch with the
Foreign Office man, Sir Walter Bullivant, the better. I
didn't see how I could get more proof than I had got
already. He must just take or leave my story, and,
anyway, with him I would be in better hands than
those devilish Germans. I had begun to feel quite
kindly towards the British police.

It was a wonderful starry night, and I had not much
difficulty about the road. Sir Harry's map had given me
the lie of the land, and all I had to do was to steer a
point or two west of south-west to come to the stream
where I had met the roadman. In all these travels I
never knew the names of the places, but I believe that
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



54

was too outrageous a figure to be seen in the sunlight. I
had neither coat, waistcoat, collar, nor hat, my trousers
were badly torn, and my face and hands were black
with the explosion, I daresay I had other beauties, for
my eyes felt as if they were furiously bloodshot.
Altogether I was no spectacle for God-fearing citizens
to see on a highroad,

Very soon after daybreak I made an attempt to clean
myself in a hill burn, and then approached a herd's
cottage, for I was feeling the need of food. The herd
was away from home, and his wife was alone, with no
neighbour for five miles. She was a decent old body,
and a plucky one, for though she got a fright when she
saw me, she had an axe handy, and would have used it
on any evil-doer. I told her that I had had a fall--l didn't
say how--and she saw by my looks that I was pretty
sick. Like a true Samaritan she asked no questions, but
gave me a bowl of milk with a dash of whisky in it, and
let me sit for a little by her kitchen fire. She would have
bathed my shoulder, but it ached so badly that I would
not let her touch it,

I don't know what she took me for--a repentant
burglar, perhaps; for when I wanted to pay her for the
milk and tendered a sovereign, which was the smallest
coin I had, she shook her head and said something
about "giving it to them that had a right to it." At this I
protested so strongly that I think she believed me
honest, for she took the money and gave me a warm
new plaid for it, and an old hat of her man's. She
showed me how to wrap the plaid round my
shoulders, and when I left the cottage I was the living
image of the kind of Scotsman you see in the
illustrations to Burns's poems. But at any rate I was
more or less clad.

It was as well, for the weather changed before midday
to a thick drizzle of rain. I found shelter below an
overhanging rock in the crook of a burn, where a drift
of dead brackens made a tolerable bed. There I
managed to sleep till nightfall, waking very cramped
and wretched, with my shoulder gnawing like a
toothache. I ate the oatcake and cheese the old wife
had given me, and set out again just before the
darkening.

I pass over the miseries of that night among the wet
hills. There were no stars to steer by, and I had to do
the best I could from my memory of the map. Twice I
lost my way, and I had some nasty falls into peat bogs.
I had only about ten miles to go as the crow flies, but
my mistakes made it nearer twenty. The last bit was
completed with set teeth and a very light and dizzy
head. But I managed it, and in the early dawn I was
knocking at Mr. Turnbull's door. The mist lay close and
thick, and from the cottage I could not see the
highroad.

Mr. Turnbull himself opened to me--sober and
something more than sober. He was primly dressed in
an ancient but well-tended suit of black; he had been
shaved not later than the night before; he wore a linen
collar; and in his left hand he carried a pocket Bible. At
first he did not recognize me.

"Whae are  e that comes stravaigin' here on the
Sabbath mornin'?" he asked

I had lost all count of the days. So the Sabbath was the
reason for his strange decorum.

My head was swimming so wildly that I copuld not
frame a coherent answer. But he recoegnized me and
saw that I was ill.

"Hae ye got my specs?" he asked.


I fetched them out of my trouser pocket and gave him
them.

"Ye'll hae come for your jaicket and westcoat," he said.
"Come in-bye.  Losh, man, ye're terrible dune i' the legs.
Haud up till I get ye to a chair."

I perceived I was in for a bout of malaria. I had a good
deal of fever in my  bones and the wet night had
brought it out, while my shoulder and the effects  of the
fumes combined to make me feel pretty bad. Before I
knew, Mr.  Turnbull was helping me off with my
clothes, and putting me to bed in one of  the two
cupboards that lined the kitchen walls.

He was a true friend in need, that old road man. His
wife was dead years  ago, and since his daughter's
marriage he lived alone. For the better part of  ten days
he did all the rough nursing I needed. I simply wanted
to be left in  peace while the fever took its course, and
when my skin was cool again I  found that the bout
had more or less cured my shoulder. But it was a
baddish  go, and though I was out of bed in five days, it
took me some time to get my  legs again.

He went out each morning, leaving me milk for the day,
and locking the  door behind him; and came in in the
evening to sit silent in the chimney  comer. 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 Phce murder
seemed  to have died down. There was no mention of
it, and I could find very little  about anything except a
thing called the General Assembly--some ecclesiastical
spree, I gathered.

One day he produced my belt from a lockfast drawer.
"There's a terrible  heap o' siller in't," he said. "Ye'd
better cooat it to see it's a' there."

He never even sought my name. I asked him if
anybody had been around  making inquiries
subsequent to my spell at the roadmaking.

"Ay, there was a man in a motor-cawr. He speired
whae had ta'en my place  that day, and I let on I thocht
him daft. But he keepit on at me, and syne I  said he
maun be thinkin' o' my gude-brither frae the Cleuch
that whiles lent  me a haun'. He was a wersh-lookin'
sowl, and I couldna understand the half  o' his English
tongue."  I

 was getting pretty restless those last days, and as soon
as I felt myself fit I  decided to be off. That was not till
the 12th day of June, and as luck would  have it a
drover went past that morning taking some cattle to
Moffat. He was  a man named Hislop, a friend of
Turnbull's, and he came in to his breakfast  with us and
offered to take me with him.

I made Turnbull accept five pounds for my lodging,
and a hard job I had of  it. There never was a more
independent being. He grew positively rude when  I
pressed him, and shy and red, and took the money at
last without a thank  you. When I told him how much I
owed him, he grunted something about  "ae guid turn
deservin' anither." You would have thought from our
leave taking that we had parted in disgust.




Hislop was a cheery soul, who chattered all the way
over the pass and down the sunny vale of Annan. I
talked of Galloway markets and sheep prices, and he
made up his mind I was a "pack-shepherd" from those
parts--whatever that may be. My plaid and my old hat,
as I have said, gave me a fine theatrical Scots look. But
driving cattle is a mortally slow job, and we took the
better part of the day to cover a dozen miles.

If I had not had such an anxious heart I would have
enjoyed that time. It was shining blue weather, with a
constantly changing prospect of brown hills and far
green meadows, and a continual sound of larks and
curlews and falling streams. But I had no mind for the
summer, and little for Hislop's conversation, for as the
fateful 15th of June drew near I was overweighed with
the hopeless difficulties of my enterprise.

I got some dinner in a humble Moffat public-house,
and walked the two miles to the junction on the main
line. The night express for the south was not due till
near midnight, and to fill up the time I went up on the
hillside and fell asleep, for the walk had tired me. I all
but slept too long, and had to run to the station and
catch the train with two minutes to spare. The feel of
the hard third-class cushions and the smell of stale
tobacco cheered me up wonderfully. At any rate, I felt
now that I was getting to grips with my job.

I was decanted at Crewe in the small hours, and had to
wait till six to get a train for Birmingham. In the
afternoon I got to Reading, and changed into a local
train which journeyed into the deeps of Berkshire.
Presently I was in a land of lush water-meadows and
slow reedy streams. About eight o'clock in the evening,
a weary and travel-stained being--a cross between a
farm labourer and a vet--with a checked black-and-
white plaid over his arm (for I did not dare to wear it
south of the Border), descended at the little station of
Artinswell. There were several people on the platform,
and I thought I had better wait to ask my way till I was
clear of the place.

The road led through a wood of great beeches and
then into a shallow valley, with the green backs of
downs peeping over the distant trees. After Scotland
the air smelt heavy and flat, but infinitely sweet, for the
chestnuts and lilac bushes were domes of blossom.
Presently I came to a bridge, below which a clear slow
stream flowed between snowy beds of water-
buttercups. A little above it was a mill; and the lasher
made a pleasant cool sound in the scented dusk.
Somehow the place soothed me and put me at my
ease. I fell to whistling as I looked into the green
depths, and the tune which came to  my lips was
"Annie Laurie."

A fisherman, came up from the water-side, and as he
neared me he too began to whistle. The tune was
infectious, for he followed my suit. He was a huge man
in untidy old flannels and a wide-brimmed hat, with a
canvas bag slung on his shoulder. He nodded to me,
and I thought I had never seen a shrewder or better-
tempered face. He leaned his delicate ten-foot split-
cane rod against the bridge, and looked with me at the
water.

"Clear, isn't it?" he said pleasantly. "I back our 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."



"I don't see him," said I.

"Look! There! A yard from the reeds just above that
stickle."

"I've got him now. You might swear he was a black
stone."

"So," he said, and whistled another bar of "Annie
Laurie."

"Twisdon's the name, isn't it?" he said over his shoulder,
his eyes still fixed on the stream.

"No," I said. "I mean to say, Yes." I had forgotten all
about my alias.

"It's a wise conspirator that knows his own name," he
observed, grinning broadly at a moorhen that emerged
from the bridge's shadow.

I stood up and looked at him, at the square, cleft jaw
and broad, lined brow and the firm folds of cheek, and
began to think that here at last was an ally worth
having. His whimsical blue eyes seemed to go very
deep.

Suddenly he frowned. "I call it disgraceful," he said,
raising his voice. "Disgraceful that an able-bodied man
like you should dare to beg. You can get a meal from
my kitchen, but you'll get no money from me."

A dog-cart was passing, driven by a young man who
raised his whip to salute the fisherman. When he had
gone, he picked up his rod.

"That's my house," he said, pointing to a white gate a
hundred yards on. "Wait five minutes and then go
round to the back door." And with that he left me.

I did as I was bidden. I found a pretty cottage with a
lawn running down to the stream, and a perfect jungle
of guelder-rose and lilac flanking the path. The back
door stood open, and a grave butler was awaiting me.

"Come this way, sir," he said, and he led me along a
passage and up a back staircase to a pleasant
bedroom looking towards the river. There I found-a
complete outfit laid out for me--dress clothes with all
the fixings, a brown flannel suit, shirts, collars, ties,
shaving things and hair-brushes, even a pair of patent
shoes.

"Sir Walter thought as how Mr. Reggie's things would
fit you, sir," said the butler. "He keeps some clothes 'ere,
for he comes regular on the week-ends. There's a
bathroom next door, and I've prepared a 'ot hath.
Dinner in 'alf an hour, sir. You'll 'ear the gong."

The grave being withdrew, and I sat down in a chintz-
covered easy-chair and gaped. It was like a pantomime
to come suddenly out of beggardom into this orderly
comfort. Obviously Sir Walter believed in me, though
why he did I could not guess. I looked at myself in the
mirror and saw a wild, haggard brown fellow, with a
fortnight's ragged beard, and dust in ears and eyes,
collarless, vulgarly shirred, with shapeless old tweed
clothes, and boots that had not been cleaned for the
better part of a month. I made a fine tramp and a fair
drover; and here I was ushered by a prim butler into
this temple of gracious ease. And the best of it was that
they did not even know my name.

I resolved not to puzzle my head, but to take the gifts
the gods had provided. I shaved and bathed
luxuriously, and got into the dress clothes and clean
crackling shirt, which fitted me not so badly. By the
time I had finished the looking-glass showed a not
unpersonable young man.

Sir Walter awaited me in a dusky dining-room where a
little round table was lit with silver candles. The sight of
him--so respectable and established    and secure, the
embodiment of law and government and all the
conventions--took me aback and made me feel an
interloper. He couldn't know the    truth about me, or
he wouldn't treat me like this. I simply could not accept
his hospitality on false pretences.

"I'm more obliged to you than I can say, but I'm bound
to make things    clear," I said. "I'm an innocent man,
but I'm wanted by the police. I've got    to tell you this,
and I won't be surprised if you kick me out."

He smiled. "That's all right. Don't let that interfere with
your appetite.    We can talk about these things after
dinner."

I never ate a meal with greater relish, for I had had
nothing all day but    railway sandwiches. Sir Walter did
me proud, for we drank a good champagne and had
some uncommon fine port afterwards. It made me
almost    hysterical to be sitting there, waited on by a
footman and a sleek butler, and remember that I had
been living for three weeks like a brigand, with every
man's hand against me. I told Sir Walter about tiger-
fish in the Zambesi that    bite off your fingers if you
give them a chance, and we discussed sport up and
down the globe, for he had hunted a bit in his day.

We went to his study for coffee, a jolly room full of
books and trophies and    untidiness and comfort. I
made up my mind that if ever I got rid of this
business and had a house of my own I would create
just such a room. Then    when the coffee-cups were
cleared away, and we had got our cigars alight, my
host swung his long legs over the side of his chair and
bade me get started    with my yarn.

"I've obeyed Harry's instructions," he said, "and the
bribe he offered me    was that you would tell me
something to wake me  up.

I'm ready, Mr. Hannay."

I noticed with a start that he called me by my proper
name.

I began at the very beginning. I told of my boredom in
London, and the  night I had come back to find
Scudder gibbering on my doorstep. I told him  all
Scudder had told me about Karolides and the Foreign
Office conference, ,  and that made him purse his lips
and grin. Then I got to the murder, and  he grew
solemn again. He heard all about the milkman and my
time in  Galloway, and my deciphering Scudder's notes
at the inn.

"You've got them here?" he asked sharply, and drew a
long breath when I  whipped the little book from my
pocket.

I said nothing of the contents. Then I described my
meeting with Sir  Harry, and the speeches at the hall.
At that he laughed uproariously.

"Harry talked dashed nonsense, did he? I quite believe
it. He's as good a  chap as ever breathed, but his idiot
of an uncle has stuffed his head with  maggots. Go on,
Mr. Hannay."

My day as roadman excited him a bit. He made me
describe the two fellows  in the car very closely, and
seemed to be raking back in his memory. He grew
merry again when he heard of the fate of that ass
Jopley.

But the old man in the moorland house solemnized
him. Again I had to  describe every detail of his
appearance.



"Bland and bald-headed and hooded his eyes like a
bird  ....  He sounds a sinister wild-fowl! And you
dynamited his hermitage, after he had saved you from
the police. Spirited piece of work, that!"

Presently I reached the end of my wanderings. He got
up slowly, and looked down at me from the hearthrug.

"You may dismiss the police from your mind," he said.
"You're in no danger from the law of this land."

"Great Scot!" I cried. "Have they got the murderer?"

"No. But for the last fortnight they have dropped you
from the list of possibles."

"Why?" I asked in amazement.

"Principally because I received a letter from Scudder. I
knew something of the man, and he did several jobs
for me. He was half crank, half genius, but he was
wholly honest. The trouble about him was his partiality
for playing a lone hand. That made him pretty well
useless in any Secret Service--a pity, for he had
uncommon gifts. I think he was the bravest man in the
world, for he was always shivering with fright, and yet
nothing would choke him off. I had a letter from him
on the 31st of May."

"But he had been dead a week by then."

"The letter was written and posted on the 23rd. He
evidently did not anticipate an immediate decease. His
communications usually took a week to reach me, for
they were sent under cover to Spain and then to
Newcastle. He had a mania, you know, for concealing
his tracks."

"What did he say?" I stammered.

"Nothing. Merely that he was in danger, but had found
shelter with a good friend, and that I would hear from
him before the 15th of June. He gave me no address,
but said he was living near Portland Place. I think his
object was to clear you if anything happened. When I
got it I went to Scotland Yard, went over the details of
the inquest, and concluded that you were the friend.
We made inquiries about you, Mr. Hannay, and found
you were respectable. I thought I knew the motives for
your disappearance--not only the police, the other one
too--and when I got Harry's scrawl I guessed at the
rest. I have been expecting you any time this past
week."

You can imagine what a load this took off my mind. I
felt a free man once more, for I was now up against my
country's enemies only, and not my country's law.

"Now let us have the little note-book," said Sir Waiter.

It took us a good hour to work through it. I explained
the cipher, and he was jolly quick at picking it up. He
attended my reading of it on several points, but I had
been fairly correct on the whole. His face was very
grave before he had finished, and he sat silent for a
while.

"I don't know what to make of it," he said at last. "He is
right about one thing--what is going to happen the day
after to-morrow. How the devil can it have got known?
That is ugly enough in itself. But all this about war and
the Black Stone,--it reads like some wild melodrama. If
only I had more confidence in Scudder's judgment.
The trouble about him was that he was too romantic.
He had the artistic temperament, and wanted a story
to be better than God meant it to be. He had a lot of
odd biases too. Jews, for example, made him see red.
Jews and the high finance.

"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."

Just then the butler entered the room.

"There's a trunk call from London, Sir Walter. It's Mr.
'Eath, and he wants to speak to you personally."

My host went off to the telephone.

He returned in five minutes with a whitish face. "I
apologize to the shade of Scudder," he said. "Karolides
was shot dead this evening at a few minutes after
seven."



8. The Coming of the Black Stone



I came down to breakfast next morning, after eight
hours of blessed dreamless sleep, to find Sir Walter
decoding a telegram in the midst of muffins and
marmalade. His fresh rosiness of yesterday seemed a
thought tarnished.

"I had a busy hour on the telephone after you went to
bed," he said. "I got my Chief to speak to the First Lord
and the Secretary for War, and they are bringing Royer
over a day sooner. This wire clinches it. He will be in
London at five. Odd that the code word for a _i_ Sous-
chef d'Etat Major-General _i_ should be "Porker."

He directed me to the hot dishes and went on.

"Not that I think it will do much good. If your friends
were clever enough to find out the first arrangement,
they are clever enough to discover the  change. I
would give my head to know where the leak is. We
believed there were only five men in England who
knew about Royer's visit, and you may be certain there
were fewer in France, for they manage these things
better there."

While I ate he continued to talk, making me to my
surprise a present of his full confidence.

"Can the dispositions not be changed?" I asked.

"They could," he said. "But we want to avoid that if
possible. They are the result of immense thought, and
no alteration would be as good. Besides, on one or two
points change is simply impossible. Still, something
could be done, I suppose, if it were absolutely
necessary. But you see the difficulty, Hannay. Our
enemies are not going to be such fools as to pick
Royer's pocket or any childish game like that. They
know that would mean a row and put us on our guard.
Their aim is to get the details without any one of us
knowing, so that Royer will go back to Paris in the
belief that the whole business is still deadly secret. If
they can't do that they fail, for, once we suspect, they
know that the whole thing must be altered."

"Then we must stick by the Frenchman's side till he is
home again," I said. "If they thought they could get the
information in Paris they would try there. It means that
they have some deep scheme on foot in London which
they reckon is going to win out."

"Royer dines with my Chief, and then comes to my
house, where four people will see him--Whittaker from
the Admiralty, myself, Sir Arthur Drew, and General
Winstanley. The First Lord is ill, and has gone to
Sherringham. At my house he will get a certain
document from Whittaker, and after that he will be
motored to Portsmouth, where a destroyer will take
him to Havre. His journey is too important for the
ordinary boat-train. He will never be left unattended
for a moment till he is safe on French soil. The same
with Whittaker till he meets Royer. That is the best we
can do, and it's hard to see how there can be any
miscarriage. But I don't mind admitting that I'm
horribly nervous. This murder of Karolides will play the
deuce in the chancelleries of Europe."

After breakfast he asked me if I could drive a car.

"Well, you'll be my chauffeur to-day and wear
Hudson's rig. You're about his size. You have a hand in
this business and we are taking no risks. There are
desperate men against us, who will not respect the
country retreat of an overworked official."

When I first came to London I had bought a car and
amused myself with running about. the south of
England, so I knew something of the geography. I took
Sir Walter to town by the Bath Road and made good
going. It was a soft breathless June morning, with a
promise of sultriness later, but it was delicious enough
swinging through the little towns with their freshly
watered streets, and past the summer gardens of the
Thames Valley. I landed Sir Walter at his house in
Queen Anne's Gate punctually by half-past eleven. The
butler was coming up by train with the luggage.

The first thing he did was to take me round to Scotland
Yard. There we saw a prim gentleman, with a clean-
shaven, lawyer's face.

"I've brought you the Portland Place murderer," was Sir
Walter's introduction.

The reply was a wry smile. "It would have been a
welcome present, Bullivant. This, I presume, is Mr.
Richard Hannay, who for some days greatly interested
my department."

"Mr. Hannay will interest it again. He has much to tell
you, but not to-day. For certain grave reasons his tale
must wait for twenty-four hours. Then, I can promise
you, you will be entertained and possibly edified. I
want you to assure Mr. Hannay that he will suffer no
further inconvenience."

This assurance was promptly given. "You can take up
your life where you left off," I was told. "Your flat, which
probably you no longer wish to occupy, is waiting for
you, and your man is still there. As you were never
publicly accused, we considered that there was no
need of a public exculpation. But on that, of course,
you must please yourself."

"We may want your assistance later on, Macgillivray,"
Sir Walter said as we left.

Then he turned me loose.

"Come and see me to-morrow, Hannay. I needn't tell
you to keep deadly quiet. If I were you I would go to
bed, for you must have considerable arrears of sleep to
overtake. You had better lie low, for if one of your
Black Stone friends saw you there might be trouble."

I felt curiously at a loose end. At first it was very
pleasant to be a free man, able to go where I wanted
without fearing anything. I had only been a month
under the ban of the law, and it was quite enough for
me. I went to the Savoy and ordered very carefully a
very good luncheon, and then smoked the best cigar
the house could provide. But I was still feeling nervous.
When I saw anybody look at me in the lounge, I grew
shy, and wondered if they were thinking about the
murder.

After that I took a taxi and drove miles away up into
North London. I walked back through fields and lines
of villas and terraces and then slums and mean streets,
and it took me pretty nearly two hours. All the while
my restlessness was growing worse. I felt that great
things, tremendous things, were happening or about to
happen, and I, who was the cog-wheel of the whole
business, was out of it. Royer would be landing at
Dover, Sir Walter would be making plans with the few
people in England who were in the secret, and
somewhere in the darkness the Black Stone would be
working. I felt the sense of danger and impending
calamity, and I had the curious feeling, too, that I alone
could avert it, alone could grapple with it. But I was out
of the game now. How could it be otherwise? It was
not likely that Cabinet Ministers and Admiralty Lords
and Generals would admit me to their councils.

I actually began to wish that I could run up against one
of my three enemies. That would lead to
developments. I felt that I wanted enormously to have
a vulgar scrap with those gentry, where I could hit out
and flatten something. I was rapidly getting into a very
bad temper.

I didn't feel like going back to my flat. That had to be
faced some time, but as I still had sufficient money I
thought I would put it off fill next morning, and go to a
hotel for the night.

My irritation lasted through dinner, which I had at a
restaurant in Jermyn Street. I was no longer hungry,
and let several courses pass untasted. I drank the best
part of a bottle of Burgundy, but it did nothing to cheer
me. An abominable restlessness had taken possession
of me. Here was I, a very ordinary fellow, with no
particular brains; and yet I was convinced that
somehow I was needed to help this business through--
that without me it would all go to blazes. I told myself
it was sheer silly conceit, that four or five of the
cleverest people living, with all the might of the British
Empire at their back, had the job in hand. Yet I couldn't
be convinced. It seemed as if a voice kept speaking in
my ear, telling me to be up and doing, or I would never
sleep again.

The upshot was that about half-past nine I made up
my mind to go to Queen Anne's Gate. Very likely I
would not be admitted, but it would ease my
conscience to try.

I walked down Jermyn Street, and at the corner of
Duke Street passed a group of young men. They were
in evening dress, had been dining some" where, and
were going on to a music-hall. One of them was Mr.
Marmaduke Jopley.

He saw me and stopped short.

"By God, the murderer?" he cried. "Here, you fellows;
hold him! That's Hannay, the maln who did the
Portland Place murder!" He gripped me by the arm,
and the others crowded round.

I wasn't looking for any trouble, but my ill-temper
made me play the fool. A policeman came up, and I
should have told him the truth, and, if he didn't believe
it, demanded to be taken to Scotland Yard, or for that
matter to the nearest police station. But a delay at that
moment seemed to me unendurable, and the sight of
Marmie's imbecile face was more than I could bear. I
let out with my left, and had the satisfaction of seeing
him measure his length in the gutter.

Then began an unholy row. They were all on me at
once, and the policeman took me in the rear. I got in
one or two good blows, for I think, with fair play, I
could have licked the lot of them, but the policeman
pinned me behind, and one of them got his fingers on
my throat.

Through a black crowd of rage I heard the officer of
the law asking what was the matter, and Marmie,
between his broken teeth, declaring that I was Hannay
the murderer.

"Oh, damn it all," I cried, "make the fellow. shut up. I
advise you to leave me alone, constable. Scotland Yard
knows all about me, and you'll get a proper wigging if
you interfere with me."

"You've got to come along of me, young man," said the
policeman. "I saw you strike that gentleman crool 'ard.
You begun it too, for he wasn't doing nothing. I seen
you. Best go quietly or I'll have to fix you up."

Exasperation and an overwhelming sense that at no
cost must I delay gave me the strength of a bull
elephant. I fairly wrenched the constable off his feet,


I have a very fair turn of speed, and that night I had
wings. In a jiffey I was in Pall Mall and had turned
down towards St. James's Park. I dodged the
policeman at the Palace gates, dived through a press of
carriages at the entrance to the Mall, and was making
for the bridge before my pursuers had crossed the
roadway. In the open ways of the Park I put on a spurt.
Happily there were few people about, and no one tried
to stop me. I was staking all on getting to Queen
Anne's Gate.

When I entered that quiet thoroughfare it seemed
deserted. Sir Walter's house was in the narrow part,
and outside it three or four motor-cars were drawn up.
I slackened speed some yards off and walked briskly
to the door. If the butler refused me admission, or if he
even delayed to open the door, I was done.

He didn't delay. I had scarcely rung before the door
opened.

"I must see Sir Walter," I panted. "My business is
desperately important." That butler was a great man.
Without moving a muscle he held the door open, and
then shut it behind me. "Sir Walter is engaged, sir, and I
have orders to admit no one. Perhaps you will wait."

The house was of the old-fashioned kind, with a wide
hall and rooms on both sides of it. At the far end was
an alcove with a telephone and a couple of chairs, and
there the butler offered me a seat.

"See here," I whispered. "There's trouble about and I'm
in it. But Sir Walter knows, and I'm working for him. If
any one comes and asks if I am here, tell him a lie."

He nodded, and presently there was a noise of voices
in the street, and a furious ringing at the bell. I never
admired a man more than that butler. He opened the
door, and with a face like a graven image waited to be
questioned. Then he gave them it. He told them whose
house it was, and what his orders were, and simply
froze them off the doorstep. I could see it all from my
alcove, and it was better than any play.



I hadn't waited long rill there came another ring at the
bell. The butler made no bones about admitting this
new visitor.

While he was taking off his coat I saw who it was. You
couldn't open a newspaper or a magazine without
seeing that face--the grey beard cut like a spade, the
firm fighting mouth, the blunt square nose, and the
keen blue eyes. I recognized the First Sea Lord, the
man, they say, that made the modern British Navy.

He passed my alcove and was ushered into a room at
the back of the hall. As the door opened I could hear
the sound of low voices. It shut, and I was left alone
again.

For twenty minutes I sat there, wondering what I was
to do next. I was still perfectly convinced that I was
wanted, but when or how I had no notion. I kept
looking at my watch, and as the time crept on to half-
past ten I began to



COMING OF THE BLACK STONE               65



think that the conference must soon end. In a quarter
of an hour Royer should be speeding along the road to
Portsmouth  ....

Then I heard a bell ring, and the butler appeared. The
door of the back room opened, and the First Sea Lord
came out. He walked past me, and in passing he
glanced in my direction, and for a second we looked
each other in the face.

Only for a second, but it was enough to make my heart
jump. I had never seen the great man before, and he
had never seen me. But in that fraction of time
something sprang into his eyes, and that something
was recognition. You can't mistake it. It is a flicker, a
spark of light, a minute shade of difference which
means one thing and one thing only. It came
involuntarily, for in a moment it died, and he passed
on. In a maze of wild fancies I heard the street door
close behind him.

I picked up the telephone book and looked up the
number of his house.

We were connected at once, and I heard a servant's
voice. "Is his Lordship at home?" I asked.

"His Lordship returned half an hour ago," said the
voice, "and has gone to bed. He is not very well to-
night. Will you leave a message, sir?"

I rung off and almost tumbled into a chair. My part in
this business was not yet ended. It had been a close
shave, but I had been in time.

Not a moment could be lost, so I marched boldly to
the door of that back room and entered without
knocking. Five surprised faces looked up from a round
table. There was Sir Walter, and Drew the War
Minister, whom I knew from his photographs. There
was a slim elderly man, who was probably Whittaker,
the Admiralty official, and there was General
Winstanley, conspicuous from the long scar on his
forehead. Lastly, there was a short stout man with an
iron-grey moustache and bushy eyebrows, who had
been arrested in the middle of a sentence.

Sir Walter's face showed surprise and annoyance.

"This is Mr. Hannay, of whom I have spoken to you," he
said apologetically to the company. "I'm afraid,
Hannay, this visit is ill-timed."

I was getting back my coolness. "That remains to be
seen, sir," I said; "but I think it may be in the nick of
time. For God's sake, gentlemen, tell me who went out
a minute ago?"

"Lord Alloa," Sir Walter said, reddening with anger.

"It was not," I cried; "it was his living image, but it was
not Lord Alloa. It was some one who recognized me,
some one I have seen in the last month. He had
scarcely left the doorstep when I rang up Lord Alloa's
house and was told

he had come in half an hour before and had gone to
bed."

"Who---what--" someone stammered.

"The Black Stone," I cried, and I sat down in the chair
so recently vacated and looked round at five badly
scared gentlemen.





"Nonsense!" said the official from the Admiralty.

Sir Walter got up and left the room while we looked
blankly at the table. He came back in ten minutes with
a long face. "I have spoken to Alloa," he said. "Had him
out of bed--very grumpy. He went straight home after
Mulross's dinner."

"But it's madness," broke in General Winstanley. "Do
you mean to ten me that that man came here and sat
beside me for the best part of half an hour and that I
didn't detect the imposture? Alloa must be out of his
mind."

"Don't you see the cleverness of it?" I said. "You were
too interested in other things to have any eyes. You
took Lord Alloa for granted. If it had been anybody
else you might have looked more closely, but it was
natural for him to be here, and that put you all to
sleep."

Then the Frenchman spoke, very slowly and in good
English.

"The young man is right. His psychology is good. Our
enemies have not been foolish!"

He bent his wise brows on the assembly.

"I will tell you something," he said. "It happened many
years ago in Senegal. I was quartered in a remote
station, and to pass the time used to go fishing for big
barbel in the river. A little Arab mare used to carry my
luncheon basket--one of the salted dun breed you got
at Timbuctoo in the old days. Well, one morning I had
good sport, and the mare was unaccountably restless. I
could hear her whinnying and squealing and stamping
her feet, and I kept soothing her with my voice while
my mind was intent on fish. I could see her all the time,
as I thought, out of a corner of my eye, tethered to a
tree twenty yards away  ....  After a couple of hours I
began to think of food. I collected my fish in a tarpaulin
bag, and moved down the stream towards the mare,
trolling my line. When I got up to her I flung the
tarpaulin on her back  ....  "

He paused and looked round.

"It was the smell that gave me warning. I turned my
head and found myself looking at a lion three feet off....
An old man-eater, that was the terror of the village  ....
What was left of the mare, a mass of blood and bones
and hide, was behind him."

"What happened?" I asked. I was enough of a hunter to
know a true yarn when I heard it.

"I stuffed my fishing-rod into his jaws, and I had a
pistol. Also my servants



THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS                  67



came presently with rifles. But he left his mark on me."
He held up a hand which lacked three fingers.

"Consider," he said. "The mare had been dead more
than an hour, and the brute had been patiently
watching me ever since. I never saw the kill, for I was
accustomed to the mare's fretting, and I never marked
her absence, for my consciousness of her was only of
something tawny, and the lion filled that part. If I could
blunder thus, gentlemen, in a land where men's senses
are

keen, why should we busy preoccupied urban folk not
err also?" Sir Walter nodded. No one was ready to
gainsay him.

"But I don't see," went on Winstanley. "Their object was
to get these dispositions without our knowing it. Now
it only required one of us to mention to Alloa our
meeting to-night for the whole fraud to be exposed."

Sir Walter laughed dryly. "The selection of Alloa shows
their acumen. Which of us was likely to speak to him
about to-night? Or was he likely to open the subject?"

I remembered the First Sea Lord's reputation for
taciturnity and shortness of temper.

"The one thing that puzzles me," said the General, "is
what good his visit here would do that spy fellow? He
could not carry away several pages of ?figures and
strange names in his head."

"That is not difficult," the Frenchman replied. "A good
spy is trained to have a photographic memory. Like
your own Macaulay. You noticed he said nothing, but
went through these papers again and again. I think we
may assume that he has every detail stamped on his
mind. When I was younger I could do the same trick."

"Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to change
the plans," said Sir Walter ruefully.

Whittaker was looking very glum. "Did you tell Lord
Alloa what has happened?" he asked. "No? Well, I can't
speak with absolute assurance, but I'm nearly certain
we can't make any serious change unless we alter the
geography of England."

"Another thing must be said," it was Royer who spoke.
"I talked freely when that man was here. I told
something of the military plans of my Government. I
was permitted to say so much. But that information
would be worth many millions to our enemies. No, my
friends, I see no other way. The

man who came here and his confederates must be
taken, and taken at once." "Good God," I cried, "and we
have not a rag of a clue."

"Besides," said Whittaker, "there is the post. By this time
the news will be on its way."

"No," said the Frenchman. "You do not understand the
habits of the spy. He receives personally his reward,
and he delivers personally his intelligence. We in
France know something of the breed. There is still a
chance, mes amis. These men must cross the sea, and
there are ships to be searched and ports to be
watched. Believe me, the need is desperate for both
France and Britain."

Royer's grave good sense seemed to pull us together.
He was the man of



.action among fumblers. But I saw no hope in any face,
and I felt none. Where among the fifty millions of these
islands and within a dozen hours were we to lay hands
on the three cleverest rogues in Europe?



Then suddenly I had an inspiration.

"Where is Scudder's book?" I cried to Sir Walter.
"Quick, man, I remember something in it."

He unlocked the door of a bureau and gave it to me.

I found the place. "Thirty-nine steps," I read, and again,
"Thirty-nine steps--l counted them--High tide, 10.17
p.m."

The Admiralty man was looking at me as if he thought
I had gone mad. "Don't you see it's a clue," I shouted.
"Scudder knew where these fellows laired--he knew
where they were going to leave the country, though he
kept the name to himself. To-morrow was the day, and
it was some place where high tide was at 10.17."

"They may have gone to-night," some one said.

"Not they. They have their own mug secret way, and
they won't be hurried. I know Germans, and they are
mad about working to a plan. Where the devil can I get
a book of Tide Tables?"

Whittaker brightened up. "It's a chance," he said. "Let's
go over to the Admiralty."

We got into two of the waiting motor-cars--all but Sir
Walter, who went off to Scotland Yard--to "mobilize
Macgillivray," so he said.

We marched through empty corridors and big bare
chambers where the charwomen were busy, till we
reached a little room lined with books and maps. A
resident clerk was unearthed, who presently fetched
from the library the Admiralty Tide Tables. I sat at the
desk and the others stood round, for somehow or
other I had got charge of rhj.~ expedition.

It was no good. There were hundreds of entries, and so
far as I could see 10.17 might cover fifty places. We had
to find some way of narrowing the possibilities.

I took my head in my hands and thought. There must
be some way of reading this riddle. What did Scudder
mean by steps? I thought of dock steps, but if he had
meant that I didn't think he would have mentioned the
number. It must be some place where there were
several staircases, and one marked out from the others
by having thirty-nine steps.

Then I had a sudden thought, and hunted up all the
steamer sailings. There was no boat which left for the
Continent at 10.17 p.m.

Why was high tide important? If it was a harbour it
must be some little phce where the tide mattered, or
else it was a heavy-draught boat. But there was no
regular steamer sailing at that hour, and somehow I
didn't think they would travel by a big boat from a
regular harbour. So it must be some little harbour
where the tide was important, or perhaps no harbour
at all.

But if it was a little port I couldn't see what the steps
signified. There were no sets of staircases on any
harbour that I had ever seen. It must be some place
which a particular staircase identified, and where the
tide was full at



,    .     n     e W  0 e 1   seem       0 coast. But the
staircases kept puzzling me.

Then I went back to wider considerations.
Whereabouts would a man be likely to leave for
Germany, a man in a hurry, who wanted a speedy and
a secret passage? Not from any of the big harbours.
And not from the Channel or the West Coast or
Scotland, for, remember, he was starting from London.
I measured the distance on the map, and tried to put
myself in the enemy's shoes. I should try for Ostend or
Antwerp or Rotterdam, and I should sail from
somewhere on the East Coast between Cromer and
Dover.

All this was very loose guessing, and I don't pretend it
was ingenious or scientific. I wasn't any kind of
Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a
kind of instinct about questions like this. I don't know if
I can explain myself, but I used to use my brains as far
as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I
guessed, and I usually found my guesses pretty right.

So I set out all my conclusions on a bit of Admiralty
paper. They ran like this:--



FAIRLY CERTAIN



(1) Place where there are several sets of stairs; one that
matters distinguished by having thirty-me steps.  (2)
Full tide at 10.17 p.m. Leaving shore only possible at full
tide.  (3) Steps not dock steps, and so phce probably
not harbour.  (4) No regular night steamer at 10.17.
Means of transport must be tramp   Orelikely), yacht,
or fishing-boat.



There my reasoning stopped. I made another list,
which I headed "Guessed," but I was just as sure of the
one as the other.







(1) Phce not harbour but open coast.

(2) Boat--trawler, yacht, or hunch.

(3) Phce somewhere on East Coast between Cromer
and Dover.



It struck me as odd that I should be sitting at that desk
with a Cabinet Minister, a Field-Marshal, two high
Government officials, and a French General watching
me, while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying
to drag a secret which meant life or death for us.

Sir Walter had joined us, and presently Macgillivray
arrived. He had sent out instructions to watch the ports
and railway stations for the three men whom I had
described to Sir Walter. Not that he or anybody else
thought that that would do much good.

"Here's the most I can make of it," I said. "We have got
to find a place




where there are several staircases down to the beach,
one of which has thirty-nine steps. I think it's a piece of
open coast with biggish cliffs, somewhere between the
Wash and the Channel. Also it's a place where full tide
is at 10,17 to-morrow night."

Then an idea struck me. "Is there no Inspector of
Coastguards or some fellow like that who knows the
East Coast?"

Whittaker said there was, and that he lived in Clapham.
He went off in a car to fetch him, and the rest of us sat
about the little room and talked of anything that came
into our heads. I lit a pipe and went over the whole
thing again till my brain grew weary.

About one in the morning the coastguard man arrived.
He was a fine old fellow, with the look of a naval officer,
and was desperately respectful to the company. I left
the War Minister to cross-examine him, for I felt he
would think it cheek in me to talk.

"We want you to tell us the places you know on the
East Coast where there are cliffs, and where several
sets of steps run down to the beach."

He thought for a bit. "What kind of steps do you mean,
sir? There are plenty of places with roads cut down
through the cliffs, and most roads have a step or two in
them. Or do you mean regular staircases--all steps, so
to speak?"

Sir Arthur looked towards me. "We mean regular
staircases," I said. He reflected a minute or two. "I don't
know that I can think of any. Wait a second. There's a
place in Norfolk--Brattlesham--beside a golf course,
where there are a couple of staircases to let the
gentlemen get a lost ball."

"That's not it" I said.

~J

"Then there are plenty of Marine Parades, if that's what
you mean. Every

seaside resort has them."             I shook my head.

"It's got to be more retired than that," I said.

"Well, gentlemen, I can't think of anywhere else. Of
course, there's the Ruff--"

"What's that?" I asked.

"The big chalk headland in Kent, close to Bradgate. It's
got a lot of villas on the top, and some of the houses
have staircases down to a private beach. It's a very
high-toned sort of place, and the residents there like to
keep by themselves."

I tore open the Tide Tables and found Bradgate. High
tide there was at 10.27 p.m. on the 15th of June.

"We're on the scent at last," I cried excitedly. "How can
I find out what is the tide at the Ruff?"

"I can tell you that, sir," said the coastguard man. "I
once was lent a house there in this very month, and I
used to go out at fight to the deep-sea fishing. The
tide's ten minutes before Bradgate."

I closed the book and looked round at the company.

"If one of those staircases has thirty-me steps we have
solved the mystery, gentlemen," I said. "I want the loan
of your car, Sir Walter, and a map of the



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 m
see it. It was General Royer who gave me my
commission. "I for  one," he said, "am content to leave
the matter in Mr. Hannay's hands."



By half-past three I was tearing past the moonlit
hedgerows of Kent, with Macgillivray's best man on
the seat beside me.



Various Parties Converging on the Sea



A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate
looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the
lightship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a
bell-buoy. A couple of miles farther south and much
nearer the shore a small destroyer was anchored.
Scaffe, Macgillivray's man, who had been in the Navy,
knew the boat, and told me her name and her
commander's, so I seat off a wire to Sir Walter.

After breakfast Scaffe 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 ~ 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.

It. took him more than an hour to do the job, and when
I saw him coming towards me, coming a bit of paper, I
can tell you my heart was in my mouth. Everything
depended, you see, on my guess proving fight.

He read aloud the number of steps in the different
stairs. "Thirty-four,  thirty-five, thirty-me, forty-two,
forty-seven," and "twenty-one" where the cliffs grew
lower. I almost got up and shouted.

We hurried back to the town and sent a wire to
Macgillivray. I wanted half a dozen men, and I directed
them to divide themselves among different specified
hotels. Then Scaife set out to prospect the house at the
head of the thirty-me steps.

He came back with news that both puzzled and
reassured me. The house was called Trafalgar Ledge,
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


72

that he was a decent old fellow, who paid his bills
regularly, and was always good for a fiver for a local
charity. Then Scaife seems to have penetrated to the
back door of the house, 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 Seaire said he was positive she knew
nothing. Next door there was a new house building
which would give good cover for observation, and the
villa on the other side was to let, and its garden was
rough and shrubby.

I borrowed Scaife's telescope, and before lunch went
for a walk along the Ruff. I kept well behind the rows of
villas, and found a good observation point on the edge
of the golf course. There I had a view of the line of turf
along the cliff top, with seats placed at intervals, and
the little square plots, rafted 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 flag staff from which
an enormous Union Jack hung limply in the still air.

Presently I observed someone leave the house and
saunter along the cliff. When I got my glasses on him I
saw it was an old man, wearing white flannel trousers, a
blue serge jacket, and a straw hat. He carried field-
glasses and a newspaper, and sat down on one of the
iron seats and began to read. Sometimes he would lay
down the paper and turn his glasses on the sea. He
looked for a long time at the destroyer. I watched him
for half an hour, till he got up and went back to the
house for his luncheon, when I returned to the hotel for
mine.

I wasn't feeling very confident. This decent
commonplace dwelling was not what I had expected.
The man might be the bald archaeologist of that
horrible moorland farm, or he might not. He was
exactly the kind of satisfied old bird you will find in
every suburb and every holiday place. If you wanted a
type of the perfectly harmless person you would
probably pitch on that.

But after lunch, as I sat in the hotel porch, I perked up,
for I saw the thing I had hoped for and had dreaded to
miss. A yacht came up from the south and dropped
anchor pretty well opposite the Ruff. She seemed
about a hundred and fifty tons, and I saw she belonged
to the Squadron from the white ensign. So Scaffe and I
went down to the harbour and hired a boatman for an
afternoon's fishing.

I spent a warm and peaceful afternoon. We caught
between us about twenty pounds of cod and lythe, and
out in that dancing blue sea I took a cheerier view of
things. Above the white cliffs of the Ruff I saw the
green and red of the villas, and especially the great flag
staff 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. Scaffe said she must be a fast boat
from her build, and that she was pretty heavily
engined.



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.

Then the men suddenly disregarded us and bent their
heads to their work  as an officer came along the deck.
He was a pleasant, clean-looking young  fellow, and he
put a question to us about our fishing in very good
English.  But there could be no doubt about him. His
close-cropped head and the cut  of his collar and tie
never came out of England.

That did something to reassure me, but as we rowed
back to Bradgate my  obstinate doubts would not be
dismissed. The thing that worried me was the
reflection that my enemies knew that I had got my
knowledge from Scudder,  and it was Scudder who had
given me the clue to this place. If they knew that
Scudder had this clue, would they not be certain to
change their plans? Too  much depended on their
success for them to take any risks. The whole  question
was how much they understood about Scudder's
knowledge. I had  talked confidently last night about
Germans always sticking to a scheme, but  if they had
any suspicions that I was on their track they would be
fools not to  cover it. I wondered if the man last night
had seen that I recognized him.  Somehow I did not
think he had, and to that I clung. But the whole
business  had never seemed so difficult as that
afternoon when by all calculations I  should have been
rejoicing in assured success.

In the hotel I met the commander of the destroyer, to
whom Scaife  introduced me, and with whom I had a
few words. Then I thought I would  put in an hour or
two watching Trafalgar Lodge.

I found a place farther up the hill, in the garden of an
empty house. From  there I had a full view of the court,
on which two figures were having a game  of tennis.
One was the old man whom I had already seen; the
other was a  younger fellow, wearing some club
colours in the scarf round his middle.  They played
with tremendous zest, like two city gents who wanted
hard  exercise to open their pores. You couldn't
conceive a more innocent spectacle. They shouted and
laughed and stopped for drinks, when a maid brought
out two tankards on a salver. I rubbed my eyes and
asked myself if I was not  the most immortal fool on
earth. Mystery and darkness had hung about the  men
who hunted me over the Scotch moor in aeroplane
and motor-car, and  notably about that infernal
antiquarian. It was easy enough to connect these  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 10  and behold! two plump thrushes had
blundered into it.

Presently a third figure arrived, a young man on a
bicycle, with a bag of  golf clubs slung on his back. He
strolled round to the tennis lawn and was welcomed
riotously by the players. Evidently they were chaffing
him, and their chaff sounded horribly English. Then the
plump man, mopping his brow with a silk handkerchief,
announced that he must have a tub. I heard his very
words--"I've got into a proper lather," he said. "This will
bring down my weight and my handicap, Bob. I'll rake
you on to-morrow and give you a stroke a hole." You
couldn't find anything much more English than that.

They all went into the house, and left me feeling a
precious idiot. I had been barking up the wrong tree
this time. These men might be acting; but if they were,
where was their audience? They didn't know I was
sitting thirty yards off in a rhododendron. It was simply
impossible to believe that these three hearty fellows
were anything but what they seemed--three ordinary,
game-playing, suburban Englishmen, wearisome, if you
like, but sordidly innocent.

And yet there were three of them; and one was old,
and one was plump, and one was lean and dark; and
their house chimed in with Scudder's notes; and half a
mile off was lying a steam yacht with at least one
German officer. I thought of Karolides lying dead and
all Europe trembling on the edge of earthquake, and
the men I had left behind me in London who were
waiting anxiously for the events of the next hours.
There was no doubt that hell was afoot somewhere.
The Black Stone had won, and if it survived this June
night would bank its winnings.

There seemed only one thing to do--go forward as if I
had no doubts, and if I was going to make a fool of
myself to do it handsomely. Never in my life have I
faced a job with greater disinclination. I would rather in
my then mind have walked into a den of anarchists,
each with his Browning handy, or faced a charging lion
with a popgun, than enter that happy home of three
cheerful Englishmen and tell them that their game was
up. How they would laugh at me!

But suddenly I remembered a thing I heard once 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 finger-prints, mere
physical traits were very little use for identification if
the fugitive really knew his business. He laughed at
things like dyed hair and false beards and such childish
follies. The only thing that mattered was what Peter
called "atmosphere."

If a man could get into perfectly different surroundings
from those in which he had been first observed, and--
this is the important part--really play up to these
surroundings and behave as if he had never been out
of them, he would puzzle the cleverest detectives on
earth. And he used to tell a story of how he once
borrowed a black coat and went to church and shared
the same hymn-book with the man that was looking
for him. If that man had seen him in decent company
before he would have recognized him; but he had only
seen him snuffing the lights in a public-house with a
revolver.

The recollection of Peter's talk gave me the first real
comfort I had had that day. Peter had been a wise old
bird, and these fellows I was after were about the pick
of the aviary. What if they were playing Peter's game?
A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the
same and is different.

Again, there was that other maxim of Peter's which had
helped me when I had been a roadman. "If you are
playing a part, you will never keep it up unless you
convince yourself that you are/t." That would explain
the game of tennis. Those chaps didn't need to act,
they just tamed a handle and passed into another life,
which came as naturally to them as the first. It sounds
a platitude, but Peter used to say that it was the big
secret of all the famous criminals.

It was now getting on for eight o'clock, and I went back
and saw Scaife to give him his instructions. I arranged
with him how to phce 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, to a point on the cliffs farther
north beyond the line of the villas. On the little trim
newly made roads I met people in flannels coming
back from tennis and the beach, and a coastguard from
the wireless station, and donkeys and pierrots padding
homewards. Out at sea in the blue dusk I saw lights
appear on the Ariadne and on the destroyer away to
the south, and beyond the Coek sands the bigger lights
of steamers making for the Thames. The whole scene
was so peaceful and ordinary that I got more dashed
in spirits every second. It took all my resolution to
stroll towards Trafalgar Lodge about half-past nine.

On the way I got a piece of solid comfort from the
sight of a greyhound that was swinging along at a
nursemaid's heds. 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 night, and my eyes are good
enough, but that buck simply leaked out of the
landscape. Afterwards I found out how it managed it.
Against the grey rock of the kopjes it showed no more
than a crow against a thundercloud. It didn't need to
run away; all it had to do was to stand still and melt
into the background.

Suddenly as these memories chased across my brain I
thought of my present case and applied the moral. The
Black Stone didn't need to bolt. It was quietly
absorbed into the landscape. I was on the right track,
and I jammed that down in my mind and vowed never
to forget it. The last word was with Peter Pienaar.

Scaife's men would be posted now, but there was no
sign of a soul. The house stood as open as a market-
phce for anybody to observe. A three-foot railing
separated it from the cliff road; the windows on the
ground floor were all open, and shaded lights and the
low sound of voices revealed where the occupants
were finishing dinner. Everything was as public and
above-board as a charity bazaar. Feeling the greatest
fool-on earth, I opened the gate and rang the bell.



A man of my sort, who has travelled about the world
in rough places, gets on perfectly well with two classes,
what you may call the upper and the lower.

He understands them and they understand him, I was
at home with herds and tramps and road men, and I
was sufficiently at my ease with people like Sir Walter
and the men I had met the night before, I can't explain
why, but it is a fact, But what fellows like me don't
understand is the great comfortable, satisfied middle-
class world, the folk that live in villas and suburbs, He
doesn't know how they look at things, he doesn't
understand their conventions, and he is as shy of them
as of a black mamba, When a trim parlour-maid
opened the door, I could hardly find my voice,

I asked for Mr., Appleton, and was ushered in, My plan
had been to walk straight into the dining-room, and by
a sudden appearance wake in the men that start of
recognition which would confirm my theory, But when
I found myself in that neat hill the place mastered me,
There were the golf clubs and tennis rackets, the straw
hats and caps, the rows of gloves, the sheaf of walking-
sticks, which you will find in ten thousand British
homes, A stack of neatly folded coats and waterproofs
covered the top of an old oak chest; there was a
grandfather clock ticking; and some polished brass
warming-pans on the walls, and a barometer, and a
print of Chiltern winning the St. Leger. The place was as
orthodox as an Anglican Church. When the maid
asked me for my name I gave it automatically, and was
shown into the smoking-room, on the right side of the
hall.

That room was even worse. I hadn't time to examine it,
but I could see some framed group photographs
above the mantelpiece, and I could have sworn they
were English public school or college. I had only one
glance, for I managed to pull myself together and go
after the maid. But I was too late. She had already
entered the dining-room and given my name to her
master, and I had missed the chance of seeing how the
three took it.

When I walked into the room the old man at the head
of the table had risen and turned round to meet me.
He was in evening dress--a short coat and black tie, as
was the other whom I called in my own mind the
plump one. The third, the dark fellow, wore a blue
serge suit and a soft white collar, and the colours of
some club or school.

The old man's manner was perfect. "Mr. Hannay?" he
said hesitatingly. "Did you wish to see me? One
moment, you fellows, and I'll rejoin you. We had better
go to the smoking-room."

Though I hadn't an ounce of confidence in me, I forced
myself to play the game. I pulled up a chair and sat
down on it.

"I think we have met before," I said, "and I guess you
know my business." The light in the room was dim, but
so far as I could see their faces, they played the part of
mystification very well.

"Maybe, maybe," said the old man. "I haven't a very
good memory, but I'm afraid you must tell me your
errand, sir, for I really don't know it."

"Well, then," I said, and all the time I seemed to myself
to be talking pure foolishness--"I have come to tell you
that the game's up. I have here a warrant for the arrest
of you three gentlemen."

"Arrest," said the old man, and he looked really
shocked. "Arrest! Good God, what for?"

 "For the murder of Franklin Scudder in London on the
23rd day of last   month."

"I never heard the name before," said the old man in a
dazed voice.

One of the others spoke up. "That was the Portland
Place murder. I read   about it. Good heavens, you
must be mad, sir! Where do you come from?

"Scotland Yard," I said.

After that for a minute there was utter silence. The old
man was staring at   his plate and fumbling with a nut,
the very model of innocent bewilderment.

Then the plump one spoke up. He stammered a little,
like a man picking   his words.

"Don't get flustered, uncle," he said. "It is all a ridiculous
mistake; but   these things happen sometimes, and we
can easily set it right. It won't be   hard to prove our
innocence. I can show that I was out of the country on
the   23rd of May, and Bob was in a nursing home. You
were in London, but you   can explain what you were
doing."

"Right, Percy! Of course that's easy enough. The 23rd!
That was the day   after Agatha's wedding. Let me see.
What was I doing? I came up in the  morning from
Woking, and lunched at the club with Charlie Symons.
Then--oh yes, I dined with the Fishmongers. I
remember, for the punch didn't   agree with me, and I
was seedy next morning. Hang it all, there's a cigar box
I brought back from the dinner." He pointed to an
object on the table, and   laughed nervously.

"I think, sir," said the young man, addressing me
politely, "you will see   you are mistaken. We want to
assist the law like all Englishmen, and we   don't want
Scotland Yard to be making fools of themselves. That's
so,  uncle?"

"Certainly, Bob." The old fellow seemed to be
recovering his voice. "Certainly, we'll do anything in our
power to assist the authorities. But- but this is a bit too
much. I can't get over it."

"How Nellie will chuckle," said the plump man. "She
always said that you would die of boredom because
nothing ever happened to you. And now   you've got it
thick and strong," and he began to laugh very
pleasantly.

"By Jove, yes. Just think of it! What a story to tell at the
club. Really,   Mr. Hannay, I suppose I should be angry,
to show my innocence, but   it's too funny! I almost
forgive you the fright you gave me! You looked  so
glum, I thought I might have been walking in my sleep
and killing   people."

It couldn't be acting, it was too confoundedly genuine.
My heart went into   my boots, and my first impulse
was to apologize and clear out. But I told   myself I
must see it through, even though I was to be the
laughing-stock of   Britain. The light from the dinner-
table candlesticks was not very good, and   to cover
my confusion I got up, walked to-the door and
switched on the   electric light. The sudden glare made
them blink, and I stood scanning the   three faces.

Well, I made nothing of it. One was old and bald, one
was stout, one was   dark and thin. There was nothing
in their appearance to prevent them being the three
who had hunted me in Scotland, but there was nothing
to identify them. I simply can't explain why I who, as a
roadman, had looked into two pairs of eyes and as
Ned Ainslie into another pair, why I, who have a good
memory and reasonable powers of observation, could
find no satisfaction. They seemed exactly what they
professed to be, and I could not have sworn to one of
them.

There in that pleasant dining-room, with etchings on
the walls, and a picture of an old lady in a bib above
the mantelpiece, I could see nothing to connect them
with the moorland desperadoes. There was a silver
cigarette box beside me, and I saw that it had been
won by Percival Appleton, Esq., of the St. Bede's Club,
in a golf tournament. I had to keep firm hold of Peter
Pienaar to prevent myself bolting out of that house.

"Well," said the old man politely, "are you reassured by
your scrutiny, Sir?"

I couldn't find a word.

"I hope you'll find it consistent with your duty to drop
this ridiculous business. I make no complaint, but you
see how annoying it must be to respectable people."

I shook my head.

"O Lord," said the young man. "This is a bit too thick!"

"Do you propose to march us off to the police station?"
asked the plump one. "That might be the best way out
of it, but I suppose you won't be content with the local
branch. I have the right to ask to see your warrant, but
I don't wish to cast any aspersions upon you. You are
only doing your duty. But you'll admit it's horribly
awkward. What do you propose to do?"

There was nothing to do except to call in my men and
have them arrested, or to confess my blunder and dear
out. I felt mesmerized by the whole place, by the air of
obvious innocence--not innocence merely, but frank
honest bewilderment and concern in the three faces.

"Oh, Peter Pienaar," I groaned inwardly, and for a
moment I was very near damning myself for a fool and
asking their pardon.

"Meantime I vote we have a game of bridge,,, said the
plump one. "It will give Mr. Hannay time to think over
things, and you know we have been wanting a fourth
player. Do you play, sir?"

I accepted as if it had been an ordinary invitation at the
club. The whole business had mesmerized me. We
went into the smoking-room where a card table was
set out, and I was offered things to smoke and drink. I
took my phce 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, m my head. The three had recovered
their composure, and were talking easily--just the kind
of slangy talk you will hear in any golf club-house. I
must have cut a rum figure, sitting there knitting my
brows, with my eyes wandering.

My partner was the young dark one. I play a fair hand
at bridge, but I must have been rank bad that night.
They saw that they had got me puzzled, and that put
them more than ever at their ease. I kept looking at
their faces, but they conveyed nothing to me. It was
not that they looked different; they were different. i
clung desperately to the words of Peter Pienaar.

Then something awoke me.

The old man laid down his hand to light a cigar. He
didn't pick it up at once, but sat back for a moment in
his chair, with his fingers tapping on his knees.

It was the movement I remembered when I had stood
before him in the moorland farm, with the pistols of his
servants behind me.

A little thing, lasting only a second, and the odds were
a thousand to one that I might have had my eyes on
my cards at the time and missed it. But I didn't, and, in
a flash, the air seemed to clear. Some shadow lifted
from my brain, and I was looking at the three men with
full and absolute recognition. The clock on the
mantelpiece struck ten o'clock.

The three faces seemed to change before my eyes and
reveal their secrets. The young one was the murderer.
Now I saw cruelty and ruthlessness, where before I
had only seen good-humour. His knife, I made certain,
had skewered Scudder to the floor. His kind had put
the bullet in Karolides.

The plump man's features seemed to dissolve, and
form again, as I looked at them. He hadn't a face, only a
hundred masks that he could assume when he pleased.
That chap must have been a superb actor. Perhaps he
had been Lord Alloa of the night before; perhaps not; it
didn't matter. I wondered if he was the fellow who had
first tracked Scudder, and left his card on him. Scudder
had said he lisped, and I could imagine how the
adoption of a lisp might add terror.

But the old man was the pick of the lot. He was sheer
bnin, icy, cool, calculating, as ruthless as a steam
hammer. Now that my eyes were opened I wondered
where I had seen the benevolence. His jaw was like
chilled steel, and his eyes had the inhuman luminosity
of a bird's. I went on playing, and every second a
greater hate welled up in my heart. It almost choked
me, and I couldn't answer when my partner spoke.
Only a little longer could I endure their company.

"Whew! Bob! Look at the time," said the old man.
"You'd better think about catching your train. Bob's got
to go to town to-night," he added, turning to me. The
voice rang now as false as hell.

I looked at the clock, and it was nearly half-past ten.

"I am afraid he must put off his journey," I said.

"Oh, damn," said the young man, "I thought you had
dropped that rot. I've simply got to go. You can have
my address, and I'll give any security you like."

"No," I said, "you must stay."

At that I think they must have realized that the game
was desperate. Their only chance had been to
convince me that I was playing the fool, and that had
failed. But the old man spoke again.

"I'll go bad for my nephew. That ought to content you,
Mr. Hannay." Was it fancy, or did I detect some halt in
the smoothness of that voice?

There must have been, for as I glanced at him, his
eyelids fell in that hawk-like hood which fear had
stamped on my memory.

I blew my whistle.



In an instant the lights were out. A pair of strong arms
gripped me round the waist, covering the pockets in
which a man might be expected to carry a pistol.

"Schnell, Franz," cried a voice, "das Boot, das Boot!" As
it spoke I saw two of my fellows emerge on the
moonlit lawn.

The young dark man leapt for the window, was
through it, and over the low fence before a hand could
touch him. I grappled the old chap, and the room
seemed to fill with figures. I saw the plump one
collared, but my eyes were all for the out-of-doors,
where Franz sped on over the road towards the railed
entrance to the beach stairs. One man followed him,
but he had no chance. The gate of the stairs locked
behind the fugitive, and I stood staring, with my hands
on the old boy's throat, for such a time as a man might
take to descend those steps to the sea.

Suddenly my prisoner broke from me and flung
himself on the wall. There was a click as if a lever had
been pulled. Then came a low rumbling far, far below
the ground, and through the window I saw a cloud of
chalky dust pouring out of the shaft of the stairway.
Some one switched on the lights.

The old man was looking at me with blazing eyes.

 "He is safe," he cried. "You cannot follow in time  .... He
is gone  .... He has triumphed  .... Der schwarze Stein ist
in der Siegeskrone."

There was more in those eyes than any common
triumph. They had been hooded like a bird of prey, and
now they flamed with a hawk's pride. A white fanatic
heat burned in them, and I realized for the first time the
terrible thing, I had been up against. This man was
more than a spy; in his foul way he had been a patriot.

As the handcuffs clinked on his wrists I said my last
word to him.

"I hope Franz will bear his triumph well. I ought to tell
you that the Ariadne for the last hour has been in our
hands."



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.


[End.]