The Thirty-nine Steps

by John Buchan

Styled by LimpidSoft
Contents

CHAPTER ONE 4

CHAPTER TWO 25

CHAPTER THREE 36

CHAPTER FOUR 58

CHAPTER FIVE 77

CHAPTER SIX 94

2
 CONTENTS

CHAPTER SEVEN 121

CHAPTER EIGHT 140

CHAPTER NINE 154

CHAPTER TEN 168

3
The present document was derived from text
provided by Project Gutenberg (document
558) which was made available free of charge.
This document is also free of charge.
 CHAPTER ONE

T HE M AN W HO D IED

Ithreereturned from the City about three o’clock on that May

afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been
months in the Old Country, and was fed up with
it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have
been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but
there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk
of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn’t get
enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed
as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun.
‘Richard Hannay,’ I kept telling myself, ‘you have got
 CHAPTER ONE

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 prob-
ably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their
houses, but they didn’t seem much interested in me. They
would fling me a question or two about South Africa, and
then get on their own affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies
asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand
and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest
business of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound
in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good
time, yawning my head off all day. I had just about set-
tled to clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the

6
 CHAPTER ONE

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 remem-
ber 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

7
 CHAPTER ONE

to do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and po-

licemen 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 Lang-
ham Place. There was a common staircase, with a porter
and a liftman at the entrance, but there was no restaurant
or anything of that sort, and each flat was quite shut off
from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I had
a fellow to look after me who came in by the day. He
arrived before eight o’clock every morning and used to
depart at seven, for I never dined at home.
I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a
man at my elbow. I had not seen him approach, and the
sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim man,
with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue eyes. I
recognized him as the occupant of a flat on the top floor,
with whom I had passed the time of day on the stairs.
‘Can I speak to you?’ he said. ‘May I come in for a

8
 CHAPTER ONE

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 fas-
tened the chain with his own hand.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he said humbly. ‘It’s a mighty liberty,
but you looked the kind of man who would understand.
I’ve had you in my mind all this week when things got
troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?’
‘I’ll listen to you,’ I said. ‘That’s all I’ll promise.’ I was
getting worried by the antics of this nervous little chap.
There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from
which he filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank
it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it
down.
‘Pardon,’ he said, ‘I’m a bit rattled tonight. You see, I
happen at this moment to be dead.’
I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.

9
 CHAPTER ONE

‘What does it feel like?’ I asked. I was pretty certain

that I had to deal with a madman.
A smile flickered over his drawn face. ‘I’m not mad–
yet. Say, Sir, I’ve been watching you, and I reckon you’re
a cool customer. I reckon, too, you’re an honest man, and
not afraid of playing a bold hand. I’m going to confide in
you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and
I want to know if I can count you in.’
‘Get on with your yarn,’ I said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’
He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then
started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn’t get hold of it at
first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is
the gist of it:
He was an American, from Kentucky, and after col-
lege, 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

10
 CHAPTER ONE

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 rev-
olutions, but that beside them there were financiers who
were playing for money. A clever man can make big prof-
its 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 log-
gerheads.
When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot
thought it would give them their chance. Everything

11
 CHAPTER ONE

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 Teu-
tonic 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 retreat-
ing brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German
business man that gives your English papers the shakes.
But if you’re on the biggest kind of job and are bound to
get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against
a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a
rattlesnake. Yes, Sir, he is the man who is ruling the world
just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tzar,
because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in
some one-horse location on the Volga.’

12
 CHAPTER ONE

I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed

to have got left behind a little.
‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘They won up to a point, but they
struck a bigger thing than money, a thing that couldn’t
be bought, the old elemental fighting instincts of man. If
you’re going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and
country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the
thing. Those foolish devils of soldiers have found some-
thing they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid
in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven’t played their
last card by a long sight. They’ve gotten the ace up their
sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they are
going to play it and win.’
‘But I thought you were dead,’ I put in.
‘MORS JANUA VITAE,’ he smiled. (I recognized the
quotation: it was about all the Latin I knew.) ‘I’m coming
to that, but I’ve got to put you wise about a lot of things
first. If you read your newspaper, I guess you know the
name of Constantine Karolides?’
I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that
very afternoon.
‘He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is
the one big brain in the whole show, and he happens also

13
 CHAPTER ONE

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 knowl-
edge 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 body-
guard 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 admir-
ing 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

14
 CHAPTER ONE

not going to let their guests be murdered. Tip them the

wink, and they’ll take extra precautions.’
‘No good. They might stuff your city with plain-clothes
detectives and double the police and Constantine would
still be a doomed man. My friends are not playing this
game for candy. They want a big occasion for the taking
off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He’ll be murdered
by an Austrian, and there’ll be plenty of evidence to show
the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It
will all be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will look
black enough to the world. I’m not talking hot air, my
friend. I happen to know every detail of the hellish con-
trivance, and I can tell you it will be the most finished
piece of blackguardism since the Borgias. But it’s not go-
ing 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 ser-
vant, 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 gim-
lety eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn he could act up to
it.
‘Where did you find out this story?’ I asked.

15
 CHAPTER ONE

‘I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol.

That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a
fur-shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers’
Club in Vienna, and in a little bookshop off the Racknitzs-
trasse in Leipsic. I completed my evidence ten days ago
in Paris. I can’t tell you the details now, for it’s something
of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I
judged it my business to disappear, and I reached this city
by a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young
French-American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew di-
amond 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 proposi-
tions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers.
Till yesterday I thought I had muddied my trail some, and
was feeling pretty happy. Then ...’
The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped
down some more whisky.
‘Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this
block. I used to stay close in my room all day, and only
slip out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for
a bit from my window, and I thought I recognized him ...
He came in and spoke to the porter ... When I came back

16
 CHAPTER ONE

from my walk last night I found a card in my letter-box.

It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on God’s
earth.’
I think that the look in my companion’s eyes, the sheer
naked scare on his face, completed my conviction of his
honesty. My own voice sharpened a bit as I asked him
what he did next.
‘I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled her-
ring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die.
If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to sleep
again.’
‘How did you manage it?’
‘I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty
bad, and I got myself up to look like death. That wasn’t
difficult, for I’m no slouch at disguises. Then I got a
corpse–you can always get a body in London if you know
where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the
top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs
to my room. You see I had to pile up some evidence for
the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to mix me
a sleeping-draught, and then told him to clear out. He
wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I
couldn’t abide leeches. When I was left alone I started

17
 CHAPTER ONE

in to fake up that corpse. He was my size, and I judged

had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spir-
its handy about the place. The jaw was the weak point
in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I dare-
say there will be somebody tomorrow to swear to having
heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor,
and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed
dressed up in my pyjamas, with a revolver lying on the
bed-clothes and a considerable mess around. Then I got
into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies.
I didn’t dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and be-
sides, 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

18
 CHAPTER ONE

my throat, he would have pitched a milder yarn.

‘Hand me your key,’ I said, ‘and I’ll take a look at the
corpse. Excuse my caution, but I’m bound to verify a bit
if I can.’
He shook his head mournfully. ‘I reckoned you’d ask
for that, but I haven’t got it. It’s on my chain on the
dressing-table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn’t
leave any clues to breed suspicions. The gentry who are
after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You’ll have to
take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you’ll get
proof of the corpse business right enough.’
I thought for an instant or two. ‘Right. I’ll trust you for
the night. I’ll lock you into this room and keep the key.
Just one word, Mr Scudder. I believe you’re straight, but
if so be you are not I should warn you that I’m a handy
man with a gun.’
‘Sure,’ he said, jumping up with some briskness. ‘I
haven’t the privilege of your name, Sir, but let me tell
you that you’re a white man. I’ll thank you to lend me
a razor.’
I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In
half an hour’s time a figure came out that I scarcely rec-
ognized. Only his gimlety, hungry eyes were the same.

19
 CHAPTER ONE

He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the middle,

and he had cut his eyebrows. Further, he carried himself
as if he had been drilled, and was the very model, even
to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had
had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which
he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had
gone out of his speech.
‘My hat! Mr Scudder–’ I stammered.
‘Not Mr Scudder,’ he corrected; ‘Captain Theophilus
Digby, of the 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I’ll
thank you to remember that, Sir.’
I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought
my own couch, more cheerful than I had been for the past
month. Things did happen occasionally, even in this God-
forgotten metropolis.
I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, mak-
ing the deuce of a row at the smoking-room door. Pad-
dock 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

20
 CHAPTER ONE

mine, Captain–Captain’ (I couldn’t remember the name)

‘dossing down in there. Get breakfast for two and then
come and speak to me.’
I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was
a great swell, with his nerves pretty bad from overwork,
who wanted absolute rest and stillness. Nobody had got
to know he was here, or he would be besieged by com-
munications from the India Office and the Prime Minister
and his cure would be ruined. I am bound to say Scud-
der played up splendidly when he came to breakfast. He
fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just like a British officer,
asked him about the Boer War, and slung out at me a lot of
stuff about imaginary pals. Paddock couldn’t learn to call
me ‘Sir’, but he ‘sirred’ Scudder as if his life depended on
it.
I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and
went down to the City till luncheon. When I got back the
lift-man had an important face.
‘Nawsty business ‘ere this morning, Sir. Gent in No. 15
been and shot ‘isself. They’ve just took ‘im to the mor-
tiary. 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

21
 CHAPTER ONE

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 pub-
lishing 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 ef-
fects were handed over to the American Consul to deal
with. I gave Scudder a full account of the affair, and it
interested him greatly. He said he wished he could have
attended the inquest, for he reckoned it would be about
as spicy as to read one’s own obituary notice.
The first two days he stayed with me in that back room
he was very peaceful. He read and smoked a bit, and
made a heap of jottings in a note-book, and every night
we had a game of chess, at which he beat me hollow. I
think he was nursing his nerves back to health, for he had
had a pretty trying time. But on the third day I could see
he was beginning to get restless. He fixed up a list of the
days till June 15th, and ticked each off with a red pen-
cil, making remarks in shorthand against them. I would

22
 CHAPTER ONE

find him sunk in a brown study, with his sharp eyes ab-
stracted, 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 lis-
tened for little noises, and was always asking me if Pad-
dock 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

23
 CHAPTER ONE

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 mor-
tally 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 coun-
try, and I guess I’ll thank Him when I wake up on the
other side of Jordan.’
Next day he was much more cheerful, and read the life
of Stonewall Jackson much of the time. I went out to din-
ner 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.

24
 CHAPTER ONE

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.

25
 CHAPTER TWO

T HE M ILKMAN S ETS O UT ON HIS T RAVELS

Iof satthedown in an armchair and felt very sick. That lasted

for maybe five minutes, and was succeeded by a fit
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 my-
self in the Matabele War; but this cold-blooded indoor
business was different. Still I managed to pull myself to-
gether. I looked at my watch, and saw that it was half-
past ten.
 CHAPTER TWO

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. Sup-
posing I went out now and called in the police, or went
to bed and let Paddock find the body and call them in the
morning. What kind of a story was I to tell about Scud-
der? I had lied to Paddock about him, and the whole
thing looked desperately fishy. If I made a clean breast

27
 CHAPTER TWO

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. Per-
haps that was what those secret enemies were playing for.
They were clever enough for anything, and an English
prison was as good a way of getting rid of me till after
June 15th as a knife in my chest.
Besides, if I told the whole story, and by any miracle
was believed, I would be playing their game. Karolides
would stay at home, which was what they wanted. Some-
how 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 or-
dinary 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.

28
 CHAPTER TWO

It took me an hour or two to think this out, and by that

time I had come to a decision. I must vanish somehow,
and keep vanished till the end of the second week in June.
Then I must somehow find a way to get in touch with the
Government people and tell them what Scudder had told
me. I wished to Heaven he had told me more, and that
I had listened more carefully to the little he had told me.
I knew nothing but the barest facts. There was a big risk
that, even if I weathered the other dangers, I would not
be believed in the end. I must take my chance of that, and
hope that something might happen which would confirm
my tale in the eyes of the Government.
My first job was to keep going for the next three weeks.
It was now the 24th day of May, and that meant twenty
days of hiding before I could venture to approach the
powers that be. I reckoned that two sets of people would
be looking for me–Scudder’s enemies to put me out of
existence, and the police, who would want me for Scud-
der’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 wel-
come. 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 pre-

29
 CHAPTER TWO

pared 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 won-
derfully calm for a man who had been struck down in
a moment. There was nothing in the breast-pocket, and
only a few loose coins and a cigar-holder in the waistcoat.
The trousers held a little penknife and some silver, and
the side pocket of his jacket contained an old crocodile-
skin cigar-case. There was no sign of the little black book
in which I had seen him making notes. That had no doubt
been taken by his murderer.
But as I looked up from my task I saw that some draw-
ers 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

30
 CHAPTER TWO

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 dis-
trict, where my veldcraft would be of some use to me, for
I would be like a trapped rat in a city. I considered that
Scotland would be best, for my people were Scotch and I
could pass anywhere as an ordinary Scotsman. I had half
an idea at first to be a German tourist, for my father had
had German partners, and I had been brought up to speak
the tongue pretty fluently, not to mention having put in
three years prospecting for copper in German Damara-
land. But I calculated that it would be less conspicuous
to be a Scot, and less in a line with what the police might
know of my past. I fixed on Galloway as the best place
to go. It was the nearest wild part of Scotland, so far as I
could figure it out, and from the look of the map was not
over thick with population.
A search in Bradshaw informed me that a train left St
Pancras at 7.10, which would land me at any Galloway
station in the late afternoon. That was well enough, but a
more important matter was how I was to make my way to
St Pancras, for I was pretty certain that Scudder’s friends
would be watching outside. This puzzled me for a bit;
then I had an inspiration, on which I went to bed and

31
 CHAPTER TWO

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 in-
clination was to let things slide, and trust to the British
police taking a reasonable view of my case. But as I re-
viewed 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 handker-
chiefs, and a tooth-brush. I had drawn a good sum in gold
from the bank two days before, in case Scudder should
want money, and I took fifty pounds of it in sovereigns in
a belt which I had brought back from Rhodesia. That was
about all I wanted. Then I had a bath, and cut my mous-
tache, which was long and drooping, into a short stubbly
fringe.
Now came the next step. Paddock used to arrive punc-

32
 CHAPTER TWO

tually at 7.30 and let himself in with a latch-key. But about

twenty minutes to seven, as I knew from bitter experi-
ence, 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 get-
ting 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 some-
thing hard, and I drew out Scudder’s little black pocket-
book ...
That seemed to me a good omen. I lifted the cloth from
the body and was amazed at the peace and dignity of the
dead face. ‘Goodbye, old chap,’ I said; ‘I am going to do
my best for you. Wish me well, wherever you are.’
Then I hung about in the hall waiting for the milkman.

33
 CHAPTER TWO

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.’

34
 CHAPTER TWO

I stuck on his flat blue hat and his white overall, picked
up the cans, banged my door, and went whistling down-
stairs. The porter at the foot told me to shut my jaw,
which sounded as if my make-up was adequate.
At first I thought there was nobody in the street. Then
I caught sight of a policeman a hundred yards down, and
a loafer shuffling past on the other side. Some impulse
made me raise my eyes to the house opposite, and there
at a first-floor window was a face. As the loafer passed
he looked up, and I fancied a signal was exchanged.
I crossed the street, whistling gaily and imitating the
jaunty swing of the milkman. Then I took the first side
street, and went up a left-hand turning which led past a
bit of vacant ground. There was no one in the little street,
so I dropped the milk-cans inside the hoarding and sent
the cap and overall after them. I had only just put on my
cloth cap when a postman came round the corner. I gave
him good morning and he answered me unsuspiciously.
At the moment the clock of a neighbouring church struck
the hour of seven.
There was not a second to spare. As soon as I got to Eu-
ston Road I took to my heels and ran. The clock at Euston
Station showed five minutes past the hour. At St Pancras

35
 CHAPTER TWO

I had no time to take a ticket, let alone that I had not set-
tled upon my destination. A porter told me the platform,
and as I entered it I saw the train already in motion. Two
station officials blocked the way, but I dodged them and
clambered into the last carriage.
Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the
northern tunnels, an irate guard interviewed me. He
wrote out for me a ticket to Newton-Stewart, a name
which had suddenly come back to my memory, and he
conducted me from the first-class compartment where I
had ensconced myself to a third-class smoker, occupied
by a sailor and a stout woman with a child. He went off
grumbling, and as I mopped my brow I observed to my
companions in my broadest Scots that it was a sore job
catching trains. I had already entered upon my part.
‘The impidence o’ that gyaird!’ said the lady bitterly.
‘He needit a Scotch tongue to pit him in his place. He
was complainin’ o’ this wean no haein’ a ticket and her
no fower till August twalmonth, and he was objectin’ to
this gentleman spittin’.’
The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life
in an atmosphere of protest against authority. I reminded
myself that a week ago I had been finding the world dull.

36
 CHAPTER THREE

T HE A DVENTURE OF THE L ITERARY

I NNKEEPER
had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine
Ihedge,
May weather, with the hawthorn flowering on every
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 restau-
rant 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
 CHAPTER THREE

Balkan affairs were settling down and a British squadron

was going to Kiel.
When I had done with them I got out Scudder’s lit-
tle black pocket-book and studied it. It was pretty well
filled with jottings, chiefly figures, though now and then
a name was printed in. For example, I found the words
‘Hofgaard’, ‘Luneville’, and ‘Avocado’ pretty often, and
especially the word ‘Pavia’.
Now I was certain that Scudder never did anything
without a reason, and I was pretty sure that there was
a cypher in all this. That is a subject which has always
interested me, and I did a bit at it myself once as intelli-
gence officer at Delagoa Bay during the Boer War. I have
a head for things like chess and puzzles, and I used to
reckon myself pretty good at finding out cyphers. This
one looked like the numerical kind where sets of figures
correspond to the letters of the alphabet, but any fairly
shrewd man can find the clue to that sort after an hour
or two’s work, and I didn’t think Scudder would have
been content with anything so easy. So I fastened on the
printed words, for you can make a pretty good numeri-
cal cypher if you have a key word which gives you the
sequence of the letters.

38
 CHAPTER THREE

I tried for hours, but none of the words answered. Then

I fell asleep and woke at Dumfries just in time to bun-
dle 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 mar-
ket, and their mouths were full of prices. I heard ac-
counts of how the lambing had gone up the Cairn and the
Deuch and a dozen other mysterious waters. Above half
the men had lunched heavily and were highly flavoured
with whisky, but they took no notice of me. We rum-
bled slowly into a land of little wooded glens and then to
a great wide moorland place, gleaming with lochs, with
high blue hills showing northwards.
About five o’clock the carriage had emptied, and I was
left alone as I had hoped. I got out at the next station, a
little place whose name I scarcely noted, set right in the
heart of a bog. It reminded me of one of those forgotten
little stations in the Karroo. An old station-master was

39
 CHAPTER THREE

digging in his garden, and with his spade over his shoul-
der 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 show-
ing 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 holi-
day tramp, instead of a man of thirty-seven very much
wanted by the police. I felt just as I used to feel when
I was starting for a big trek on a frosty morning on the
high veld. If you believe me, I swung along that road
whistling. There was no plan of campaign in my head,
only just to go on and on in this blessed, honest-smelling
hill country, for every mile put me in better humour with
myself.
In a roadside planting I cut a walking-stick of hazel,
and presently struck off the highway up a bypath which
followed the glen of a brawling stream. I reckoned that I
was still far ahead of any pursuit, and for that night might
please myself. It was some hours since I had tasted food,
and I was getting very hungry when I came to a herd’s

40
 CHAPTER THREE

cottage set in a nook beside a waterfall. A brown-faced

woman was standing by the door, and greeted me with
the kindly shyness of moorland places. When I asked for
a night’s lodging she said I was welcome to the ‘bed in
the loft’, and very soon she set before me a hearty meal of
ham and eggs, scones, and thick sweet milk.
At the darkening her man came in from the hills, a
lean giant, who in one step covered as much ground as
three paces of ordinary mortals. They asked me no ques-
tions, 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 Gal-
loway markets, which I tucked away in my memory for
future use. At ten I was nodding in my chair, and the ‘bed
in the loft’ received a weary man who never opened his
eyes till five o’clock set the little homestead a-going once
more.
They refused any payment, and by six I had break-
fasted and was striding southwards again. My notion
was to return to the railway line a station or two far-
ther on than the place where I had alighted yesterday
and to double back. I reckoned that that was the safest

41
 CHAPTER THREE

way, for the police would naturally assume that I was

always making farther from London in the direction of
some western port. I thought I had still a good bit of a
start, for, as I reasoned, it would take some hours to fix
the blame on me, and several more to identify the fellow
who got on board the train at St Pancras.
It was the same jolly, clear spring weather, and I simply
could not contrive to feel careworn. Indeed I was in bet-
ter 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. Nest-
ing 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 desola-

42
 CHAPTER THREE

tion 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 shep-
herd and his dog–a wall-eyed brute that I mistrusted. The
man was asleep, and on the cushions beside him was that
morning’s SCOTSMAN. Eagerly I seized on it, for I fan-
cied it would tell me something.
There were two columns about the Portland Place Mur-
der, as it was called. My man Paddock had given the
alarm and had the milkman arrested. Poor devil, it
looked as if the latter had earned his sovereign hardly;
but for me he had been cheap at the price, for he seemed
to have occupied the police for the better part of the day.
In the latest news I found a further instalment of the story.
The milkman had been released, I read, and the true crim-
inal, 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 unsus-
pected.

43
 CHAPTER THREE

There was nothing else in the paper, nothing about for-

eign politics or Karolides, or the things that had inter-
ested Scudder. I laid it down, and found that we were
approaching the station at which I had got out yesterday.
The potato-digging station-master had been gingered up
into some activity, for the west-going train was waiting
to let us pass, and from it had descended three men who
were asking him questions. I supposed that they were the
local police, who had been stirred up by Scotland Yard,
and had traced me as far as this one-horse siding. Sitting
well back in the shadow I watched them carefully. One of
them had a book, and took down notes. The old potato-
digger seemed to have turned peevish, but the child who
had collected my ticket was talking volubly. All the party
looked out across the moor where the white road de-
parted. 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.

44
 CHAPTER THREE

I expressed my surprise that in him I should have met

a blue-ribbon stalwart.
‘Ay, but I’m a strong teetotaller,’ he said pugnaciously.
‘I took the pledge last Martinmas, and I havena touched a
drop o’ whisky sinsyne. Not even at Hogmanay, though
I was sair temptit.’
He swung his heels up on the seat, and burrowed a
frowsy head into the cushions.
‘And that’s a’ I get,’ he moaned. ‘A heid better than hell
fire, and twae een lookin’ different ways for the Sabbath.’
‘What did it?’ I asked.
‘A drink they ca’ brandy. Bein’ a teetotaller I keepit off
the whisky, but I was nip-nippin’ a’ day at this brandy,
and I doubt I’ll no be weel for a fortnicht.’ His voice died
away into a splutter, and sleep once more laid its heavy
hand on him.
My plan had been to get out at some station down
the line, but the train suddenly gave me a better chance,
for it came to a standstill at the end of a culvert which
spanned a brawling porter-coloured river. I looked out
and saw that every carriage window was closed and no
human figure appeared in the landscape. So I opened the

45
 CHAPTER THREE

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 mas-
ter’s belongings, it started to bark, and all but got me by
the trousers. This woke up the herd, who stood bawl-
ing 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 swear-
ing. 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.

46
 CHAPTER THREE

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 hu-
man 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 po-
lice that I thought of, but the other folk, who knew that
I knew Scudder’s secret and dared not let me live. I was
certain that they would pursue me with a keenness and
vigilance unknown to the British law, and that once their
grip closed on me I should find no mercy.
I looked back, but there was nothing in the landscape.
The sun glinted on the metals of the line and the wet
stones in the stream, and you could not have found a
more peaceful sight in the world. Nevertheless I started
to run. Crouching low in the runnels of the bog, I ran till
the sweat blinded my eyes. The mood did not leave me
till I had reached the rim of mountain and flung myself
panting on a ridge high above the young waters of the
brown river.
From my vantage-ground I could scan the whole moor
right away to the railway line and to the south of it where
green fields took the place of heather. I have eyes like a
hawk, but I could see nothing moving in the whole coun-

47
 CHAPTER THREE

tryside. Then I looked east beyond the ridge and saw a

new kind of landscape–shallow green valleys with plen-
tiful fir plantations and the faint lines of dust which spoke
of highroads. Last of all I looked into the blue May sky,
and there I saw that which set my pulses racing ...
Low down in the south a monoplane was climbing into
the heavens. I was as certain as if I had been told that that
aeroplane was looking for me, and that it did not belong
to the police. For an hour or two I watched it from a pit
of heather. It flew low along the hill-tops, and then in
narrow circles over the valley up which I had come’ Then
it seemed to change its mind, rose to a great height, and
flew away back to the south.
I did not like this espionage from the air, and I began
to think less well of the countryside I had chosen for a
refuge. These heather hills were no sort of cover if my
enemies were in the sky, and I must find a different kind
of sanctuary. I looked with more satisfaction to the green
country beyond the ridge, for there I should find woods
and stone houses.
About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to
a white ribbon of road which wound up the narrow vale
of a lowland stream. As I followed it, fields gave place

48
 CHAPTER THREE

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 wa-
ter with spectacled eyes. In his left hand was a small book
with a finger marking the place. Slowly he repeated–

As when a Gryphon through the wilderness

With winged step, o’er hill and moory dale
Pursues the Arimaspian.

He jumped round as my step rung on the keystone, and

I saw a pleasant sunburnt boyish face.
‘Good evening to you,’ he said gravely. ‘It’s a fine night
for the road.’
The smell of peat smoke and of some savoury roast
floated to me from the house.
‘Is that place an inn?’ I asked.
‘At your service,’ he said politely. ‘I am the landlord,
Sir, and I hope you will stay the night, for to tell you the
truth I have had no company for a week.’

49
 CHAPTER THREE

I pulled myself up on the parapet of the bridge and

filled my pipe. I began to detect an ally.
‘You’re young to be an innkeeper,’ I said.
‘My father died a year ago and left me the business.
I live there with my grandmother. It’s a slow job for a
young man, and it wasn’t my choice of profession.’
‘Which was?’
He actually blushed. ‘I want to write books,’ he said.
‘And what better chance could you ask?’ I cried. ‘Man,
I’ve often thought that an innkeeper would make the best
story-teller in the world.’
‘Not now,’ he said eagerly. ‘Maybe in the old days
when you had pilgrims and ballad-makers and highway-
men 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 CHAM-
BERS’S JOURNAL.’ I looked at the inn standing golden
in the sunset against the brown hills.

50
 CHAPTER THREE

‘I’ve knocked a bit about the world, and I wouldn’t de-

spise 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 brighten-
ing, and he quoted some verse about ‘Romance bringing
up the 9.15’.
‘Here’s a true tale for you then,’ I cried, ‘and a month
from now you can make a novel out of it.’
Sitting on the bridge in the soft May gloaming I pitched
him a lovely yarn. It was true in essentials, too, though I
altered the minor details. I made out that I was a mining
magnate from Kimberley, who had had a lot of trouble
with I.D.B. and had shown up a gang. They had pursued
me across the ocean, and had killed my best friend, and
were now on my tracks.
I told the story well, though I say it who shouldn’t. I
pictured a flight across the Kalahari to German Africa,
the crackling, parching days, the wonderful blue-velvet
nights. I described an attack on my life on the voyage
home, and I made a really horrid affair of the Portland
Place murder. ‘You’re looking for adventure,’ I cried;
‘well, you’ve found it here. The devils are after me, and

51
 CHAPTER THREE

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 to-
wards the house. ‘You can lie as snug here as if you were
in a moss-hole. I’ll see that nobody blabs, either. And
you’ll give me some more material about your adven-
tures?’
As I entered the inn porch I heard from far off the beat
of an engine. There silhouetted against the dusky West
was my friend, the monoplane.
He gave me a room at the back of the house, with a
fine outlook over the plateau, and he made me free of
his own study, which was stacked with cheap editions of

52
 CHAPTER THREE

his favourite authors. I never saw the grandmother, so I

guessed she was bedridden. An old woman called Margit
brought me my meals, and the innkeeper was around me
at all hours. I wanted some time to myself, so I invented
a job for him. He had a motor-bicycle, and I sent him off
next morning for the daily paper, which usually arrived
with the post in the late afternoon. I told him to keep
his eyes skinned, and make note of any strange figures
he saw, keeping a special sharp look-out for motors and
aeroplanes. Then I sat down in real earnest to Scudder’s
note-book.
He came back at midday with the SCOTSMAN. There
was nothing in it, except some further evidence of Pad-
dock and the milkman, and a repetition of yesterday’s
statement that the murderer had gone North. But there
was a long article, reprinted from THE TIMES, about
Karolides and the state of affairs in the Balkans, though
there was no mention of any visit to England. I got rid
of the innkeeper for the afternoon, for I was getting very
warm in my search for the cypher.
As I told you, it was a numerical cypher, and by an
elaborate system of experiments I had pretty well discov-
ered what were the nulls and stops. The trouble was the
key word, and when I thought of the odd million words

53
 CHAPTER THREE

he might have used I felt pretty hopeless. But about three

o’clock I had a sudden inspiration.
The name Julia Czechenyi flashed across my memory.
Scudder had said it was the key to the Karolides business,
and it occurred to me to try it on his cypher.
It worked. The five letters of ‘Julia’ gave me the posi-
tion of the vowels. A was J, the tenth letter of the alpha-
bet, and so represented by X in the cypher. E was XXI, and
so on. ‘Czechenyi’ gave me the numerals for the principal
consonants. I scribbled that scheme on a bit of paper and
sat down to read Scudder’s pages.
In half an hour I was reading with a whitish face and
fingers that drummed on the table.
I glanced out of the window and saw a big touring-
car coming up the glen towards the inn. It drew up at
the door, and there was the sound of people alighting.
There seemed to be two of them, men in aquascutums
and tweed caps.
Ten minutes later the innkeeper slipped into the room,
his eyes bright with excitement.
‘There’s two chaps below looking for you,’ he whis-
pered. ‘They’re in the dining-room having whiskies-and-
sodas. They asked about you and said they had hoped

54
 CHAPTER THREE

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 posi-
tive.
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. ad-
vises 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.’

55
 CHAPTER THREE

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 pa-
per woke them up,’ he said gleefully. ‘The dark fellow
went as white as death and cursed like blazes, and the fat
one whistled and looked ugly. They paid for their drinks
with half-a-sovereign and wouldn’t wait for change.’
‘Now I’ll tell you what I want you to do,’ I said. ‘Get on
your bicycle and go off to Newton-Stewart to the Chief
Constable. Describe the two men, and say you suspect
them of having had something to do with the London
murder. You can invent reasons. The two will come back,
never fear. Not tonight, for they’ll follow me forty miles
along the road, but first thing tomorrow morning. Tell the
police to be here bright and early.’
He set off like a docile child, while I worked at Scud-
der’s notes. When he came back we dined together, and
in common decency I had to let him pump me. I gave
him a lot of stuff about lion hunts and the Matabele War,
thinking all the while what tame businesses these were
compared to this I was now engaged in! When he went

56
 CHAPTER THREE

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 en-
tered 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

57
 CHAPTER THREE

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.

58
 CHAPTER FOUR

T HE A DVENTURE OF THE R ADICAL

C ANDIDATE
may picture me driving that 40 h.p. car for all she
Y OU
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
 CHAPTER FOUR

Office Conference were eyewash, and so was Karolides.

And yet not quite, as you shall hear. I had staked every-
thing on my belief in his story, and had been let down;
here was his book telling me a different tale, and instead
of being once-bitten-twice-shy, I believed it absolutely.
Why, I don’t know. It rang desperately true, and the
first yarn, if you understand me, had been in a queer way
true also in spirit. The fifteenth day of June was going to
be a day of destiny, a bigger destiny than the killing of a
Dago. It was so big that I didn’t blame Scudder for keep-
ing 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 un-
derstand, which he would have filled up from his mem-
ory. He stuck down his authorities, too, and had an odd
trick of giving them all a numerical value and then strik-
ing a balance, which stood for the reliability of each stage
in the yarn. The four names he had printed were author-
ities, and there was a man, Ducrosne, who got five out
of a possible five; and another fellow, Ammersfoort, who

60
 CHAPTER FOUR

got three. The bare bones of the tale were all that was
in the book–these, and one queer phrase which occurred
half a dozen times inside brackets. ‘(Thirty-nine steps)’
was the phrase; and at its last time of use it ran–’(Thirty-
nine steps, I counted them–high tide 10.17 p.m.)’. I could
make nothing of that.
The first thing I learned was that it was no question of
preventing a war. That was coming, as sure as Christ-
mas: had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since Febru-
ary 1912. Karolides was going to be the occasion. He was
booked all right, and was to hand in his checks on June
14th, two weeks and four days from that May morning.
I gathered from Scudder’s notes that nothing on earth
could prevent that. His talk of Epirote guards that would
skin their own grandmothers was all billy-o.
The second thing was that this war was going to come
as a mighty surprise to Britain. Karolides’ death would
set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would chip
in with an ultimatum. Russia wouldn’t like that, and
there would be high words. But Berlin would play the
peacemaker, and pour oil on the waters, till suddenly
she would find a good cause for a quarrel, pick it up,
and in five hours let fly at us. That was the idea, and a
pretty good one too. Honey and fair speeches, and then a

61
 CHAPTER FOUR

stroke in the dark. While we were talking about the good-

will 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 offi-
cer, 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. Scud-
der 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,

62
 CHAPTER FOUR

suddenly in the darkness of a summer night.

This was the story I had been deciphering in a back
room of a country inn, overlooking a cabbage garden.
This was the story that hummed in my brain as I swung
in the big touring-car from glen to glen.
My first impulse had been to write a letter to the Prime
Minister, but a little reflection convinced me that that
would be useless. Who would believe my tale? I must
show a sign, some token in proof, and Heaven knew what
that could be. Above all, I must keep going myself, ready
to act when things got riper, and that was going to be no
light job with the police of the British Isles in full cry after
me and the watchers of the Black Stone running silently
and swiftly on my trail.
I had no very clear purpose in my journey, but I steered
east by the sun, for I remembered from the map that if I
went north I would come into a region of coalpits and
industrial towns. Presently I was down from the moor-
lands 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.

63
 CHAPTER FOUR

The land was so deep in peace that I could scarcely be-

lieve 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 En-
glish fields.
About mid-day I entered a long straggling village, and
had a mind to stop and eat. Half-way down was the Post
Office, and on the steps of it stood the postmistress and a
policeman hard at work conning a telegram. When they
saw me they wakened up, and the policeman advanced
with raised hand, and cried on me to stop.
I nearly was fool enough to obey. Then it flashed upon
me that the wire had to do with me; that my friends at
the inn had come to an understanding, and were united
in desiring to see more of me, and that it had been easy
enough for them to wire the description of me and the car
to thirty villages through which I might pass. I released
the brakes just in time. As it was, the policeman made a
claw at the hood, and only dropped off when he got my
left in his eye.
I saw that main roads were no place for me, and turned
into the byways. It wasn’t an easy job without a map, for

64
 CHAPTER FOUR

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

65
 CHAPTER FOUR

get to the leafy cover of the valley. Down the hill I went
like blue lightning, screwing my head round, whenever I
dared, to watch that damned flying machine. Soon I was
on a road between hedges, and dipping to the deep-cut
glen of a stream. Then came a bit of thick wood where I
slackened speed.
Suddenly on my left I heard the hoot of another car,
and realized to my horror that I was almost up on a
couple of gate-posts through which a private road de-
bouched on the highway. My horn gave an agonized roar,
but it was too late. I clapped on my brakes, but my impe-
tus 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 some-
thing 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.

66
 CHAPTER FOUR

Slowly that thorn let me go. I subsided first on the

hedge, and then very gently on a bower of nettles. As
I scrambled to my feet a hand took me by the arm, and
a sympathetic and badly scared voice asked me if I were
hurt.
I found myself looking at a tall young man in goggles
and a leather ulster, who kept on blessing his soul and
whinnying apologies. For myself, once I got my wind
back, I was rather glad than otherwise. This was one way
of getting rid of the car.
‘My blame, Sir,’ I answered him. ‘It’s lucky that I did
not add homicide to my follies. That’s the end of my
Scotch motor tour, but it might have been the end of my
life.’
He plucked out a watch and studied it. ‘You’re the
right sort of fellow,’ he said. ‘I can spare a quarter of
an hour, and my house is two minutes off. I’ll see you
clothed and fed and snug in bed. Where’s your kit, by
the way? Is it in the burn along with the car?’
‘It’s in my pocket,’ I said, brandishing a toothbrush.
‘I’m a Colonial and travel light.’
‘A Colonial,’ he cried. ‘By Gad, you’re the very man
I’ve been praying for. Are you by any blessed chance a

67
 CHAPTER FOUR

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 ush-
ered me indoors. He took me first to a bedroom and flung
half a dozen of his suits before me, for my own had been
pretty well reduced to rags. I selected a loose blue serge,
which differed most conspicuously from my former gar-
ments, and borrowed a linen collar. Then he haled me to
the dining-room, where the remnants of a meal stood on
the table, and announced that I had just five minutes to
feed. ‘You can take a snack in your pocket, and we’ll have
supper when we get back. I’ve got to be at the Masonic
Hall at eight o’clock, or my agent will comb my hair.’
I had a cup of coffee and some cold ham, while he
yarned away on the hearth-rug.
‘You find me in the deuce of a mess, Mr–by-the-by, you
haven’t told me your name. Twisdon? Any relation of old
Tommy Twisdon of the Sixtieth? No? Well, you see I’m
Liberal Candidate for this part of the world, and I had a
meeting on tonight at Brattleburn–that’s my chief town,

68
 CHAPTER FOUR

and an infernal Tory stronghold. I had got the Colonial

ex-Premier fellow, Crumpleton, coming to speak for me
tonight, and had the thing tremendously billed and the
whole place ground-baited. This afternoon I had a wire
from the ruffian saying he had got influenza at Black-
pool, 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 diffi-
culties 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 mo-
ment. 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.’

69
 CHAPTER FOUR

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 or-
phan, 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, be-
cause 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 im-
proving his shooting. Altogether, a very clean, decent,
callow young man.
As we passed through a little town two policemen sig-
nalled us to stop, and flashed their lanterns on us.
‘Beg pardon, Sir Harry,’ said one. ‘We’ve got instruc-
tions to look out for a car, and the description’s no unlike
yours.’

70
 CHAPTER FOUR

‘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 chair-
man, 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 pro-
longed 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

71
 CHAPTER FOUR

the most appalling rot, too. He talked about the ‘Ger-

man 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 thou-
sand 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 Liber-
als. That fetched a cheer, and I woke them up a bit when

72
 CHAPTER FOUR

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, Twis-
don,’ 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 impor-
tant to say to you. You’re a good fellow, and I’m going to
be frank. Where on earth did you get that poisonous rub-
bish you talked tonight?’
His face fell. ‘Was it as bad as that?’ he asked ruefully.
‘It did sound rather thin. I got most of it out of the PRO-

73
 CHAPTER FOUR

GRESSIVE MAGAZINE and pamphlets that agent chap

of mine keeps sending me. But you surely don’t think
Germany would ever go to war with us?’
‘Ask that question in six weeks and it won’t need an
answer,’ I said. ‘If you’ll give me your attention for half
an hour I am going to tell you a story.’
I can see yet that bright room with the deers’ heads and
the old prints on the walls, Sir Harry standing restlessly
on the stone curb of the hearth, and myself lying back in
an armchair, speaking. I seemed to be another person,
standing aside and listening to my own voice, and judg-
ing carefully the reliability of my tale. It was the first time
I had ever told anyone the exact truth, so far as I under-
stood it, and it did me no end of good, for it straightened
out the thing in my own mind. I blinked no detail. He
heard all about Scudder, and the milkman, and the note-
book, and my doings in Galloway. Presently he got very
excited and walked up and down the hearth-rug.
‘So you see,’ I concluded, ‘you have got here in your
house the man that is wanted for the Portland Place mur-
der. 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 acci-
dent, and I’ll have a knife in my ribs an hour or so after

74
 CHAPTER FOUR

arrest. Nevertheless, it’s your duty, as a law-abiding cit-

izen. Perhaps in a month’s time you’ll be sorry, but you
have no cause to think of that.’
He was looking at me with bright steady eyes. ‘What
was your job in Rhodesia, Mr Hannay?’ he asked.
‘Mining engineer,’ I said. ‘I’ve made my pile cleanly
and I’ve had a good time in the making of it.’
‘Not a profession that weakens the nerves, is it?’
I laughed. ‘Oh, as to that, my nerves are good enough.’
I took down a hunting-knife from a stand on the wall, and
did the old Mashona trick of tossing it and catching it in
my lips. That wants a pretty steady heart.
He watched me with a smile. ‘I don’t want proof. I
may be an ass on the platform, but I can size up a man.
You’re no murderer and you’re no fool, and I believe you
are speaking the truth. I’m going to back you up. Now,
what can I do?’
‘First, I want you to write a letter to your uncle. I’ve
got to get in touch with the Government people sometime
before the 15th of June.’
He pulled his moustache. ‘That won’t help you. This is
Foreign Office business, and my uncle would have noth-
ing to do with it. Besides, you’d never convince him. No,

75
 CHAPTER FOUR

I’ll go one better. I’ll write to the Permanent Secretary at

the Foreign Office. He’s my godfather, and one of the best
going. What do you want?’
He sat down at a table and wrote to my dictation. The
gist of it was that if a man called Twisdon (I thought I
had better stick to that name) turned up before June 15th
he was to entreat him kindly. He said Twisdon would
prove his bona fides by passing the word ‘Black Stone’
and whistling ‘Annie Laurie’.
‘Good,’ said Sir Harry. ‘That’s the proper style. By
the way, you’ll find my godfather–his name’s Sir Walter
Bullivant–down at his country cottage for Whitsuntide.
It’s close to Artinswell on the Kenner. That’s done. Now,
what’s the next thing?’
‘You’re about my height. Lend me the oldest tweed suit
you’ve got. Anything will do, so long as the colour is the
opposite of the clothes I destroyed this afternoon. Then
show me a map of the neighbourhood and explain to me
the lie of the land. Lastly, if the police come seeking me,
just show them the car in the glen. If the other lot turn up,
tell them I caught the south express after your meeting.’
He did, or promised to do, all these things. I shaved off
the remnants of my moustache, and got inside an ancient

76
 CHAPTER FOUR

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 dis-
tricts near at hand. At two o’clock he wakened me from
my slumbers in the smoking-room armchair, and led me
blinking into the dark starry night. An old bicycle was
found in a tool-shed and handed over to me.
‘First turn to the right up by the long fir-wood,’ he en-
joined. ‘By daybreak you’ll be well into the hills. Then I
should pitch the machine into a bog and take to the moors
on foot. You can put in a week among the shepherds, and
be as safe as if you were in New Guinea.’
I pedalled diligently up steep roads of hill gravel till the
skies grew pale with morning. As the mists cleared before
the sun, I found myself in a wide green world with glens
falling on every side and a far-away blue horizon. Here,
at any rate, I could get early news of my enemies.

77
 CHAPTER FIVE

T HE A DVENTURE OF THE S PECTACLED

R OADMAN

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 pit-
ted with bog-holes and rough with tussocks, and then be-
yond it the road fell steeply down another glen to a plain
whose blue dimness melted into the distance. To left
 CHAPTER FIVE

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 re-
membered 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 narrow-
ing 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

79
 CHAPTER FIVE

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 com-
mand, but I was certain it would be sufficient. The aero-
plane had seen my bicycle, and would conclude that I
would try to escape by the road. In that case there might
be a chance on the moors to the right or left. I wheeled the
machine a hundred yards from the highway, and plunged
it into a moss-hole, where it sank among pond-weed and
water-buttercups. Then I climbed to a knoll which gave
me a view of the two valleys. Nothing was stirring on the
long white ribbon that threaded them.
I have said there was not cover in the whole place to
hide a rat. As the day advanced it was flooded with soft
fresh light till it had the fragrant sunniness of the South
African veld. At other times I would have liked the place,
but now it seemed to suffocate me. The free moorlands
were prison walls, and the keen hill air was the breath of
a dungeon.
I tossed a coin–heads right, tails left–and it fell heads,
so I turned to the north. In a little I came to the brow

80
 CHAPTER FIVE

of the ridge which was the containing wall of the pass.

I saw the highroad for maybe ten miles, and far down it
something that was moving, and that I took to be a motor-
car. Beyond the ridge I looked on a rolling green moor,
which fell away into wooded glens.
Now my life on the veld has given me the eyes of a kite,
and I can see things for which most men need a telescope
... Away down the slope, a couple of miles away, several
men were advancing, like a row of beaters at a shoot ...
I dropped out of sight behind the sky-line. That way
was shut to me, and I must try the bigger hills to the south
beyond the highway. The car I had noticed was getting
nearer, but it was still a long way off with some very steep
gradients before it. I ran hard, crouching low except in the
hollows, and as I ran I kept scanning the brow of the hill
before me. Was it imagination, or did I see figures–one,
two, perhaps more–moving in a glen beyond the stream?
If you are hemmed in on all sides in a patch of land
there is only one chance of escape. You must stay in the
patch, and let your enemies search it and not find you.
That was good sense, but how on earth was I to escape
notice in that table-cloth of a place? I would have buried
myself to the neck in mud or lain below water or climbed

81
 CHAPTER FIVE

the tallest tree. But there was not a stick of wood, the bog-
holes were little puddles, the stream was a slender trickle.
There was nothing but short heather, and bare hill bent,
and the white highway.
Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap of stones, I
found the roadman.
He had just arrived, and was wearily flinging down his
hammer. He looked at me with a fishy eye and yawned.
‘Confoond the day I ever left the herdin’!’ he said, as if
to the world at large. ‘There I was my ain maister. Now
I’m a slave to the Goavernment, tethered to the roadside,
wi’ sair een, and a back like a suckle.’
He took up the hammer, struck a stone, dropped the
implement with an oath, and put both hands to his ears.
‘Mercy on me! My heid’s burstin’!’ he cried.
He was a wild figure, about my own size but much
bent, with a week’s beard on his chin, and a pair of big
horn spectacles.
‘I canna dae’t,’ he cried again. ‘The Surveyor maun just
report me. I’m for my bed.’
I asked him what was the trouble, though indeed that
was clear enough.

82
 CHAPTER FIVE

‘The trouble is that I’m no sober. Last nicht my dochter

Merran was waddit, and they danced till fower in the
byre. Me and some ither chiels sat down to the drinkin’,
and here I am. Peety that I ever lookit on the wine when
it was red!’
I agreed with him about bed. ‘It’s easy speakin’,’ he
moaned. ‘But I got a postcard yestreen sayin’ that the
new Road Surveyor would be round the day. He’ll come
and he’ll no find me, or else he’ll find me fou, and either
way I’m a done man. I’ll awa’ back to my bed and say
I’m no weel, but I doot that’ll no help me, for they ken
my kind o’ no-weel-ness.’
Then I had an inspiration. ‘Does the new Surveyor
know you?’ I asked.
‘No him. He’s just been a week at the job. He rins
about in a wee motor-cawr, and wad speir the inside oot
o’ a whelk.’
‘Where’s your house?’ I asked, and was directed by a
wavering finger to the cottage by the stream.
‘Well, back to your bed,’ I said, ‘and sleep in peace. I’ll
take on your job for a bit and see the Surveyor.’
He stared at me blankly; then, as the notion dawned on

83
 CHAPTER FIVE

his fuddled brain, his face broke into the vacant drunk-
ard’s smile.
‘You’re the billy,’ he cried. ‘It’ll be easy eneuch man-
aged. I’ve finished that bing o’ stanes, so you needna
chap ony mair this forenoon. Just take the barry, and
wheel eneuch metal frae yon quarry doon the road to mak
anither bing the morn. My name’s Alexander Turnbull,
and I’ve been seeven year at the trade, and twenty afore
that herdin’ on Leithen Water. My freens ca’ me Ecky, and
whiles Specky, for I wear glesses, being waik i’ the sicht.
Just you speak the Surveyor fair, and ca’ him Sir, and he’ll
be fell pleased. I’ll be back or mid-day.’
I borrowed his spectacles and filthy old hat; stripped
off coat, waistcoat, and collar, and gave him them to carry
home; borrowed, too, the foul stump of a clay pipe as an
extra property. He indicated my simple tasks, and with-
out more ado set off at an amble bedwards. Bed may have
been his chief object, but I think there was also something
left in the foot of a bottle. I prayed that he might be safe
under cover before my friends arrived on the scene.
Then I set to work to dress for the part. I opened the
collar of my shirt–it was a vulgar blue-and-white check
such as ploughmen wear–and revealed a neck as brown

84
 CHAPTER FIVE

as any tinker’s. I rolled up my sleeves, and there was a

forearm which might have been a blacksmith’s, sunburnt
and rough with old scars. I got my boots and trouser-
legs all white from the dust of the road, and hitched
up my trousers, tying them with string below the knee.
Then I set to work on my face. With a handful of dust I
made a water-mark round my neck, the place where Mr
Turnbull’s Sunday ablutions might be expected to stop. I
rubbed a good deal of dirt also into the sunburn of my
cheeks. A roadman’s eyes would no doubt be a little in-
flamed, so I contrived to get some dust in both of mine,
and by dint of vigorous rubbing produced a bleary effect.
The sandwiches Sir Harry had given me had gone off
with my coat, but the roadman’s lunch, tied up in a red
handkerchief, was at my disposal. I ate with great relish
several of the thick slabs of scone and cheese and drank a
little of the cold tea. In the handkerchief was a local paper
tied with string and addressed to Mr Turnbull–obviously
meant to solace his mid-day leisure. I did up the bundle
again, and put the paper conspicuously beside it.
My boots did not satisfy me, but by dint of kicking
among the stones I reduced them to the granite-like sur-
face which marks a roadman’s foot-gear. Then I bit and
scraped my finger-nails till the edges were all cracked

85
 CHAPTER FIVE

and uneven. The men I was matched against would miss

no detail. I broke one of the bootlaces and retied it in a
clumsy knot, and loosed the other so that my thick grey
socks bulged over the uppers. Still no sign of anything
on the road. The motor I had observed half an hour ago
must have gone home.
My toilet complete, I took up the barrow and began my
journeys to and from the quarry a hundred yards off.
I remember an old scout in Rhodesia, who had done
many queer things in his day, once telling me that the se-
cret of playing a part was to think yourself into it. You
could never keep it up, he said, unless you could man-
age to convince yourself that you were it. So I shut off
all other thoughts and switched them on to the road-
mending. I thought of the little white cottage as my home,
I recalled the years I had spent herding on Leithen Water,
I made my mind dwell lovingly on sleep in a box-bed and
a bottle of cheap whisky. Still nothing appeared on that
long white road.
Now and then a sheep wandered off the heather to
stare at me. A heron flopped down to a pool in the stream
and started to fish, taking no more notice of me than if
I had been a milestone. On I went, trundling my loads

86
 CHAPTER FIVE

of stone, with the heavy step of the professional. Soon I

grew warm, and the dust on my face changed into solid
and abiding grit. I was already counting the hours till
evening should put a limit to Mr Turnbull’s monotonous
toil. Suddenly a crisp voice spoke from the road, and
looking up I saw a little Ford two-seater, and a round-
faced young man in a bowler hat.
‘Are you Alexander Turnbull?’ he asked. ‘I am the
new County Road Surveyor. You live at Blackhopefoot,
and have charge of the section from Laidlawbyres to the
Riggs? Good! A fair bit of road, Turnbull, and not badly
engineered. A little soft about a mile off, and the edges
want cleaning. See you look after that. Good morning.
You’ll know me the next time you see me.’
Clearly my get-up was good enough for the dreaded
Surveyor. I went on with my work, and as the morn-
ing grew towards noon I was cheered by a little traffic.
A baker’s van breasted the hill, and sold me a bag of gin-
ger biscuits which I stowed in my trouser-pockets against
emergencies. Then a herd passed with sheep, and dis-
turbed me somewhat by asking loudly, ‘What had be-
come o’ Specky?’
‘In bed wi’ the colic,’ I replied, and the herd passed

87
 CHAPTER FIVE

on ... just about mid-day a big car stole down the hill,
glided past and drew up a hundred yards beyond. Its
three occupants descended as if to stretch their legs, and
sauntered towards me.
Two of the men I had seen before from the window of
the Galloway inn–one lean, sharp, and dark, the other
comfortable and smiling. The third had the look of a
countryman–a vet, perhaps, or a small farmer. He was
dressed in ill-cut knickerbockers, and the eye in his head
was as bright and wary as a hen’s.
‘Morning,’ said the last. ‘That’s a fine easy job o’ yours.’
I had not looked up on their approach, and now, when
accosted, I slowly and painfully straightened my back,
after the manner of roadmen; spat vigorously, after the
manner of the low Scot; and regarded them steadily be-
fore replying. I confronted three pairs of eyes that missed
nothing.
‘There’s waur jobs and there’s better,’ I said senten-
tiously. ‘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.’

88
 CHAPTER FIVE

The bright-eyed man was looking at the newspaper ly-

ing beside Turnbull’s bundle.
‘I see you get your papers in good time,’ he said.
I glanced at it casually. ‘Aye, in gude time. Seein’ that
that paper cam’ out last Setterday I’m just Sax days late.’
He picked it up, glanced at the superscription, and laid
it down again. One of the others had been looking at my
boots, and a word in German called the speaker’s atten-
tion to them.
‘You’ve a fine taste in boots,’ he said. ‘These were never
made by a country shoemaker.’
‘They were not,’ I said readily. ‘They were made in
London. I got them frae the gentleman that was here last
year for the shootin’. What was his name now?’ And I
scratched a forgetful head. Again the sleek one spoke in
German. ‘Let us get on,’ he said. ‘This fellow is all right.’
They asked one last question.
‘Did you see anyone pass early this morning? He
might be on a bicycle or he might be on foot.’
I very nearly fell into the trap and told a story of a bicy-
clist hurrying past in the grey dawn. But I had the sense
to see my danger. I pretended to consider very deeply.

89
 CHAPTER FIVE

‘I wasna up very early,’ I said. ‘Ye see, my dochter was

merrit last nicht, and we keepit it up late. I opened the
house door about seeven and there was naebody on the
road then. Since I cam’ up here there has just been the
baker and the Ruchill herd, besides you gentlemen.’
One of them gave me a cigar, which I smelt gingerly
and stuck in Turnbull’s bundle. They got into their car
and were out of sight in three minutes.
My heart leaped with an enormous relief, but I went on
wheeling my stones. It was as well, for ten minutes later
the car returned, one of the occupants waving a hand to
me. Those gentry left nothing to chance.
I finished Turnbull’s bread and cheese, and pretty soon
I had finished the stones. The next step was what puz-
zled me. I could not keep up this roadmaking business
for long. A merciful Providence had kept Mr Turnbull in-
doors, but if he appeared on the scene there would be
trouble. I had a notion that the cordon was still tight
round the glen, and that if I walked in any direction I
should meet with questioners. But get out I must. No
man’s nerve could stand more than a day of being spied
on.
I stayed at my post till five o’clock. By that time I had

90
 CHAPTER FIVE

resolved to go down to Turnbull’s cottage at nightfall and

take my chance of getting over the hills in the darkness.
But suddenly a new car came up the road, and slowed
down a yard or two from me. A fresh wind had risen,
and the occupant wanted to light a cigarette. It was a
touring car, with the tonneau full of an assortment of bag-
gage. 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 fa-
miliar 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 ti-
tle 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

91
 CHAPTER FIVE

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 re-
member.’
‘Good God, the murderer!’ he choked.
‘Just so. And there’ll be a second murder, my dear, if
you don’t do as I tell you. Give me that coat of yours.
That cap, too.’
He did as bid, for he was blind with terror. Over my
dirty trousers and vulgar shirt I put on his smart driving-
coat, which buttoned high at the top and thereby hid the
deficiencies of my collar. I stuck the cap on my head, and
added his gloves to my get-up. The dusty roadman in a
minute was transformed into one of the neatest motorists
in Scotland. On Mr Jopley’s head I clapped Turnbull’s
unspeakable hat, and told him to keep it there.
Then with some difficulty I turned the car. My plan
was to go back the road he had come, for the watchers,
having seen it before, would probably let it pass unre-
marked, and Marmie’s figure was in no way like mine.

92
 CHAPTER FIVE

‘Now, my child,’ I said, ‘sit quite still and be a good boy.

I mean you no harm. I’m only borrowing your car for an
hour or two. But if you play me any tricks, and above all
if you open your mouth, as sure as there’s a God above
me I’ll wring your neck. Savez?’
I enjoyed that evening’s ride. We ran eight miles down
the valley, through a village or two, and I could not
help noticing several strange-looking folk lounging by
the roadside. These were the watchers who would have
had much to say to me if I had come in other garb or com-
pany. 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 re-
member from the map, led into an unfrequented corner
of the hills. Soon the villages were left behind, then the
farms, and then even the wayside cottage. Presently we
came to a lonely moor where the night was blackening
the sunset gleam in the bog pools. Here we stopped, and
I obligingly reversed the car and restored to Mr Jopley his
belongings.
‘A thousand thanks,’ I said. ‘There’s more use in you
than I thought. Now be off and find the police.’
As I sat on the hillside, watching the tail-light dwindle,

93
 CHAPTER FIVE

I reflected on the various kinds of crime I had now sam-

pled. 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.

94
 CHAPTER SIX

T HE A DVENTURE OF THE B ALD

A RCHAEOLOGIST

Iwasspent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of

a boulder where the heather grew long and soft. It
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 to-
bacco pouch. Only my money accompanied me in my
belt, and about half a pound of ginger biscuits in my
trousers pocket.
 CHAPTER SIX

I supped off half those biscuits, and by worming my-

self 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 un-
deserved 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 in-
quest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased
was ‘well-nourished’. I remember thinking that they
would not call me well-nourished if I broke my neck in a
bog-hole. I lay and tortured myself–for the ginger biscuits
merely emphasized the aching void–with the memory of
all the good food I had thought so little of in London.
There were Paddock’s crisp sausages and fragrant shav-
ings 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 hov-
ered over all varieties of mortal edible, and finally settled
on a porterhouse steak and a quart of bitter with a welsh
rabbit to follow. In longing hopelessly for these dainties I

96
 CHAPTER SIX

fell asleep.
I woke very cold and stiff about an hour after dawn. It
took me a little while to remember where I was, for I had
been very weary and had slept heavily. I saw first the pale
blue sky through a net of heather, then a big shoulder of
hill, and then my own boots placed neatly in a blaeberry
bush. I raised myself on my arms and looked down into
the valley, and that one look set me lacing up my boots in
mad haste.
For there were men below, not more than a quarter of a
mile off, spaced out on the hillside like a fan, and beating
the heather. Marmie had not been slow in looking for his
revenge.
I crawled out of my shelf into the cover of a boulder,
and from it gained a shallow trench which slanted up
the mountain face. This led me presently into the nar-
row 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 quar-
tering 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

97
 CHAPTER SIX

of the flankers, who passed the word to the others. I

heard cries coming up from below, and saw that the line
of search had changed its direction. I pretended to re-
treat 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 no-
tion 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

98
 CHAPTER SIX

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 ev-
idently called in local talent to their aid, and the men I
could see had the appearance of herds or gamekeepers.
They hallooed at the sight of me, and I waved my hand.
Two dived into the glen and began to climb my ridge,
while the others kept their own side of the hill. I felt as if I
were taking part in a schoolboy game of hare and hounds.
But very soon it began to seem less of a game. Those
fellows behind were hefty men on their native heath.
Looking back I saw that only three were following direct,
and I guessed that the others had fetched a circuit to cut
me off. My lack of local knowledge might very well be
my undoing, and I resolved to get out of this tangle of
glens to the pocket of moor I had seen from the tops. I
must so increase my distance as to get clear away from
them, and I believed I could do this if I could find the
right ground for it. If there had been cover I would have
tried a bit of stalking, but on these bare slopes you could
see a fly a mile off. My hope must be in the length of my
legs and the soundness of my wind, but I needed easier
ground for that, for I was not bred a mountaineer. How I

99
 CHAPTER SIX

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 hun-
dred yards–as soon as it was out of sight of the highway–
the grass stopped and it became a very respectable road,
which was evidently kept with some care. Clearly it
ran to a house, and I began to think of doing the same.
Hitherto my luck had held, and it might be that my best
chance would be found in this remote dwelling. Anyhow
there were trees there, and that meant cover.
I did not follow the road, but the 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.

100
 CHAPTER SIX

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 de-
serted 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 en-
tered 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, in-

101
 CHAPTER SIX

stead 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 en-
tered, 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 re-
vealed certain figures half a mile off straggling through
the heather.
‘Ah, I see,’ he said, and took up a pair of field-glasses
through which he patiently scrutinized the figures.

102
 CHAPTER SIX

‘A fugitive from justice, eh? Well, we’ll go into the mat-

ter 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 some-
thing 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

103
 CHAPTER SIX

could scarcely refuse me a meal, and I fell to reconstruct-

ing my breakfast. Bacon and eggs would content me, but
I wanted the better part of a flitch of bacon and half a
hundred eggs. And then, while my mouth was watering
in anticipation, there was a click and the door stood open.
I emerged into the sunlight to find the master of the
house sitting in a deep armchair in the room he called his
study, and regarding me with curious eyes.
‘Have they gone?’ I asked.
‘They have gone. I convinced them that you had
crossed the hill. I do not choose that the police should
come between me and one whom I am delighted to hon-
our. This is a lucky morning for you, Mr Richard Hannay.’
As he spoke his eyelids seemed to tremble and to fall
a little over his keen grey eyes. In a flash the phrase of
Scudder’s came back to me, when he had described the
man he most dreaded in the world. He had said that he
‘could hood his eyes like a hawk’. Then I saw that I had
walked straight into the enemy’s headquarters.
My first impulse was to throttle the old ruffian and
make for the open air. He seemed to anticipate my inten-
tion, for he smiled gently, and nodded to the door behind
me.

104
 CHAPTER SIX

I turned, and saw two men-servants who had me cov-

ered with pistols.
He knew my name, but he had never seen me before.
And as the reflection darted across my mind I saw a slen-
der 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 Han-
nay. You are a clever actor, but not quite clever enough.’

105
 CHAPTER SIX

He spoke with assurance, but I could see the dawning

of a doubt in his mind.
‘Oh, for God’s sake stop jawing,’ I cried. ‘Everything’s
against me. I haven’t had a bit of luck since I came on
shore at Leith. What’s the harm in a poor devil with
an empty stomach picking up some money he finds in
a bust-up motor-car? That’s all I done, and for that I’ve
been chivvied for two days by those blasted bobbies over
those blasted hills. I tell you I’m fair sick of it. You can do
what you like, old boy! Ned Ainslie’s got no fight left in
him.’
I could see that the doubt was gaining.
‘Will you oblige me with the story of your recent do-
ings?’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 sig-
nalled 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 sud-
denly to me in German, but I turned on him a face as
blank as a stone wall.

106
 CHAPTER SIX

Then I told him my story–how I had come off an

Archangel ship at Leith a week ago, and was making my
way overland to my brother at Wigtown. I had run short
of cash–I hinted vaguely at a spree–and I was pretty well
on my uppers when I had come on a hole in a hedge,
and, looking through, had seen a big motor-car lying in
the burn. I had poked about to see what had happened,
and had found three sovereigns lying on the seat and one
on the floor. There was nobody there or any sign of an
owner, so I had pocketed the cash. But somehow the law
had got after me. When I had tried to change a sovereign
in a baker’s shop, the woman had cried on the police, and
a little later, when I was washing my face in a burn, I had
been nearly gripped, and had only got away by leaving
my coat and waistcoat behind me.
‘They can have the money back,’ I cried, ‘for a fat lot
of good it’s done me. Those perishers are all down on
a poor man. Now, if it had been you, guv’nor, that had
found the quids, nobody would have troubled you.’
‘You’re a good liar, Hannay,’ he said.
I flew into a rage. ‘Stop fooling, damn you! I tell you
my name’s Ainslie, and I never heard of anyone called
Hannay in my born days. I’d sooner have the police than

107
 CHAPTER SIX

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

108
 CHAPTER SIX

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 mesmer-
ized 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 col-
lect the two ruffians who had interviewed me yesterday.

109
 CHAPTER SIX

Now, they had seen me as the roadman, and they would

remember me, for I was in the same rig. What was a road-
man 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 plod-
ding over the hills after my wraith. They at any rate
were fellow-countrymen and honest men, and their ten-
der 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 con-
stabulary. Most likely he had letters from Cabinet Minis-
ters saying he was to be given every facility for plotting
against Britain. That’s the sort of owlish way we run our
politics in the Old Country.
The three would be back for lunch, so I hadn’t more
than a couple of hours to wait. It was simply waiting
on destruction, for I could see no way out of this mess.
I wished that I had Scudder’s courage, for I am free to

110
 CHAPTER SIX

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 shut-
ters, 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 investi-
gating.
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.

111
 CHAPTER SIX

There was a multitude of queer things there. I found

an odd vesta or two in my trouser pockets and struck a
light. It was out in a second, but it showed me one thing.
There was a little stock of electric torches on one shelf. I
picked up one, and found it was in working order.
With the torch to help me I investigated further. There
were bottles and cases of queer-smelling stuffs, chemi-
cals no doubt for experiments, and there were coils of fine
copper wire and yanks and yanks of thin oiled silk. There
was a box of detonators, and a lot of cord for fuses. Then
away at the back of the shelf I found a stout brown card-
board box, and inside it a wooden case. I managed to
wrench it open, and within lay half a dozen little grey
bricks, each a couple of inches square.
I took up one, and found that it crumbled easily in my
hand. Then I smelt it and put my tongue to it. After that
I sat down to think. I hadn’t been a mining engineer for
nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it.
With one of these bricks I could blow the house to
smithereens. I had used the stuff in Rhodesia and knew
its power. But the trouble was that my knowledge wasn’t
exact. I had forgotten the proper charge and the right way
of preparing it, and I wasn’t sure about the timing. I had

112
 CHAPTER SIX

only a vague notion, too, as to its power, for though I had

used it I had not handled it with my own fingers.
But it was a chance, the only possible chance. It was a
mighty risk, but against it was an absolute black certainty.
If I used it the odds were, as I reckoned, about five to one
in favour of my blowing myself into the tree-tops; but if
I didn’t I should very likely be occupying a six-foot hole
in the garden by the evening. That was the way I had to
look at it. The prospect was pretty dark either way, but
anyhow there was a chance, both for myself and for my
country.
The remembrance of little Scudder decided me. It was
about the beastliest moment of my life, for I’m no good
at these cold-blooded resolutions. Still I managed to rake
up the pluck to set my teeth and choke back the horrid
doubts that flooded in on me. I simply shut off my mind
and pretended I was doing an experiment as simple as
Guy Fawkes fireworks.
I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of feet of fuse.
Then I took a quarter of a lentonite brick, and buried it
near the door below one of the sacks in a crack of the floor,
fixing the detonator in it. For all I knew half those boxes
might be dynamite. If the cupboard held such deadly ex-

113
 CHAPTER SIX

plosives, why not the boxes? In that case there would be

a glorious skyward journey for me and the German ser-
vants and about an acre of 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 pas-
sage, and the peaceful cluck of hens from the warm out-
of-doors. I commended my soul to my Maker, and won-
dered 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 sec-
onds. I felt myself being choked by thick yellow fumes,

114
 CHAPTER SIX

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 pour-
ing 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 wa-
ter 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 com-

115
 CHAPTER SIX

ing from the other side.

But I had no time to linger, since this mill was obvi-
ously a bad hiding-place. Anyone looking for me would
naturally follow the lade, and I made certain the search
would begin as soon as they found that my body was not
in the storeroom. From another window I saw that on the
far side of the mill stood an old stone dovecot. If I could
get there without leaving tracks I might find a hiding-
place, for I argued that my enemies, if they thought I
could move, would conclude I had made for open coun-
try, and would go seeking me on the moor.
I crawled down the broken ladder, scattering chaff be-
hind me to cover my footsteps. I did the same on the
mill floor, and on the threshold where the door hung on
broken hinges. Peeping out, I saw that between me and
the dovecot was a piece of bare cobbled ground, where
no footmarks would show. Also it was mercifully hid
by the mill buildings from any view from the house. I
slipped across the space, got to the back of the dovecot
and prospected a way of ascent.
That was one of the hardest jobs I ever took on. My
shoulder and arm ached like hell, and I was so sick and
giddy that I was always on the verge of falling. But I

116
 CHAPTER SIX

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 speak-
ing throatily and the throbbing of a stationary car. There
was a little gap in the parapet to which I wriggled, and
from which I had some sort of prospect of the yard. I saw
figures come out–a servant with his head bound up, and
then a younger man in knickerbockers. They were look-
ing 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 fig-
ure 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 ban-

117
 CHAPTER SIX

dage was being soundly rated. I heard them fiddling with

the door of the dovecote and for one horrid moment I fan-
cied they were coming up. Then they thought better of it,
and went back to the house.
All that long blistering afternoon I lay baking on the
rooftop. Thirst was my chief torment. My tongue was
like a stick, and to make it worse I could hear the cool drip
of water from the mill-lade. I watched the course of the
little stream as it came in from the moor, and my fancy fol-
lowed it to the top of the glen, where it must issue from an
icy fountain fringed with cool ferns and mosses. I would
have given a thousand pounds to plunge my face into
that.
I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland. I
saw the car speed away with two occupants, and a man
on a hill pony riding east. I judged they were looking for
me, and I wished them joy of their quest.
But I saw something else more interesting. The house
stood almost on the summit of a swell of moorland which
crowned a sort of plateau, and there was no higher point
nearer than the big hills six miles off. The actual sum-
mit, as I have mentioned, was a biggish clump of trees–
firs mostly, with a few ashes and beeches. On the dove-

118
 CHAPTER SIX

cot 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 aero-
drome, and a secret one. The place had been most cun-
ningly chosen. For suppose anyone were watching an
aeroplane descending here, he would think it had gone
over the hill beyond the trees. As the place was on the
top of a rise in the midst of a big amphitheatre, any ob-
server 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 dis-
covered the truth, but only herds went there, and herds
do not carry spy-glasses. When I looked from the dove-
cot 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

119
 CHAPTER SIX

the big western hills and the twilight haze crept over the
moor. The aeroplane was late. The gloaming was far ad-
vanced when I heard the beat of wings and saw it vol-
planing downward to its home in the wood. Lights twin-
kled for a bit and there was much coming and going from
the house. Then the dark fell, and silence.
Thank God it was a black night. The moon was well on
its last quarter and would not rise till late. My thirst was
too great to allow me to tarry, so about nine o’clock, so far
as I could judge, I started to descend. It wasn’t easy, and
half-way down I heard the back door of the house open,
and saw the gleam of a lantern against the mill wall. For
some agonizing minutes I hung by the ivy and prayed
that whoever it was would not come round by the dove-
cot. Then the light disappeared, and I dropped as softly
as I could on to the hard soil of the yard.
I crawled on my belly in the lee of a stone dyke till I
reached 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 care-
fully every inch before me. It was as well, for presently I

120
 CHAPTER SIX

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 cun-
ningly 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 min-
utes 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 be-
tween me and that accursed dwelling.

121
 CHAPTER SEVEN

T HE D RY-F LY F ISHERMAN

InesssatI wasn’t
down on a hill-top and took stock of my position.
feeling very happy, for my natural thankful-
at my escape was clouded by my severe bodily dis-
comfort. Those lentonite fumes had fairly poisoned me,
and the baking hours on the dovecot hadn’t helped mat-
ters. 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
 CHAPTER SEVEN

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 For-
eign Office man, Sir Walter Bullivant, the better. I didn’t
see how I could get more proof than I had got already. He
must just take or leave my story, and anyway, with him I
would be in better hands than those devilish Germans. I
had begun to feel quite kindly towards the British police.
It was a wonderful starry night, and I had not much
difficulty about the road. Sir Harry’s map had given me
the lie of the land, and all I had to do was to steer a point
or two west of south-west to come to the stream where I
had met the roadman. In all these travels I never knew
the names of the places, but I believe this stream was no
less than the upper waters of the river Tweed. I calculated
I must be about eighteen miles distant, and that meant I
could not get there before morning. So I must lie up a day
somewhere, for I was too outrageous a figure to be seen
in the sunlight. I had neither coat, waistcoat, collar, nor
hat, my trousers were badly torn, and my face and hands
were black with the explosion. I daresay I had other beau-
ties, for my eyes felt as if they were furiously bloodshot.
Altogether I was no spectacle for God-fearing citizens to
see on a highroad.

123
 CHAPTER SEVEN

Very soon after daybreak I made an attempt to clean

myself in a hill burn, and then approached a herd’s cot-
tage, for I was feeling the need of food. The herd was
away from home, and his wife was alone, with no neigh-
bour for five miles. She was a decent old body, and a
plucky one, for though she got a fright when she saw
me, she had an axe handy, and would have used it on
any evil-doer. I told her that I had had a fall–I didn’t say
how–and she saw by my looks that I was pretty sick. Like
a true Samaritan she asked no questions, but gave me a
bowl of milk with a dash of whisky in it, and let me sit
for a little by her kitchen fire. She would have bathed my
shoulder, but it ached so badly that I would not let her
touch it.
I don’t know what she took me for–a repentant bur-
glar, 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 ‘giv-
ing it to them that had a right to it’. At this I protested so
strongly that I think she believed me honest, for she took
the money and gave me a warm new plaid for it, and an
old hat of her man’s. She showed me how to wrap the
plaid around my shoulders, and when I left that cottage I
was the living image of the kind of Scotsman you see in

124
 CHAPTER SEVEN

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 over-
hanging 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 some-
thing more than sober. He was primly dressed in an an-
cient but well-tended suit of black; he had been shaved

125
 CHAPTER SEVEN

not later than the night before; he wore a linen collar; and
in his left hand he carried a pocket Bible. At first he did
not recognize me.
‘Whae are ye that comes stravaigin’ here on the Sab-
bath mornin’?’ he asked.
I had lost all count of the days. So the Sabbath was the
reason for this strange decorum.
My head was swimming so wildly that I could not
frame a coherent answer. But he recognized me, and he
saw that I was ill.
‘Hae ye got my specs?’ he asked.
I fetched them out of my trouser pocket and gave him
them.
‘Ye’ll hae come for your jaicket and westcoat,’ he said.
‘Come in-bye. Losh, man, ye’re terrible dune i’ the legs.
Haud up till I get ye to a chair.’
I perceived I was in for a bout of malaria. I had a
good deal of fever in my bones, and the wet night had
brought it out, while my shoulder and the effects of the
fumes combined to make me feel pretty bad. Before I
knew, Mr Turnbull was helping me off with my clothes,

126
 CHAPTER SEVEN

and putting me to bed in one of the two cupboards that

lined the kitchen walls.
He was a true friend in need, that old roadman. His
wife was dead years ago, and since his daughter’s mar-
riage he lived alone.
For the better part of ten days he did all the rough nurs-
ing I needed. I simply wanted to be left in peace while the
fever took its course, and when my skin was cool again I
found that the bout had more or less cured my shoulder.
But it was a baddish go, and though I was out of bed in
five days, it took me some time to get my legs again.
He went out each morning, leaving me milk for the
day, and locking the door behind him; and came in in
the evening to sit silent in the chimney corner. Not a soul
came near the place. When I was getting better, he never
bothered me with a question. Several times he fetched me
a two days’ old SCOTSMAN, and I noticed that the in-
terest in the Portland Place murder seemed to have died
down. There was no mention of it, and I could find very
little about anything except a thing called the General
Assembly–some ecclesiastical spree, I gathered.
One day he produced my belt from a lockfast drawer.
‘There’s a terrible heap o’ siller in’t,’ he said. ‘Ye’d better

127
 CHAPTER SEVEN

coont it to see it’s a’ there.’

He never even sought my name. I asked him if any-
body had been around making inquiries subsequent to
my spell at the road-making.
‘Ay, there was a man in a motor-cawr. He speired whae
had ta’en my place that day, and I let on I thocht him
daft. But he keepit on at me, and syne I said he maun be
thinkin’ o’ my gude-brither frae the Cleuch that whiles
lent me a haun’. He was a wersh-lookin’ sowl, and I
couldna understand the half o’ his English tongue.’
I was getting restless those last days, and as soon as I
felt myself fit I decided to be off. That was not till the
twelfth day of June, and as luck would have it a drover
went past that morning taking some cattle to Moffat. He
was a man named Hislop, a friend of Turnbull’s, and he
came in to his breakfast with us and offered to take me
with him.
I made Turnbull accept five pounds for my lodging,
and a hard job I had of it. There never was a more inde-
pendent 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’.

128
 CHAPTER SEVEN

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 bet-
ter 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 fif-
teenth 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 mid-
night, 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

129
 CHAPTER SEVEN

too long, and had to run to the station and catch the train
with two minutes to spare. The feel of the hard third-
class cushions and the smell of stale tobacco cheered me
up wonderfully. At any rate, I felt now that I was getting
to grips with my job.
I was decanted at Crewe in the small hours and had to
wait till six to get a train for Birmingham. In the afternoon
I got to Reading, and changed into a local train which
journeyed into the deeps of Berkshire. Presently I was in
a land of lush water-meadows and slow reedy streams.
About eight o’clock in the evening, a weary and travel-
stained being–a cross between a farm-labourer and a vet–
with a checked black-and-white plaid over his arm (for I
did not dare to wear it south of the Border), descended at
the little station of Artinswell. There were several people
on the platform, and I thought I had better wait to ask my
way till I was clear of the place.
The road led through a wood of great beeches and
then into a shallow valley, with the green backs of downs
peeping over the distant trees. After Scotland the air
smelt heavy and flat, but infinitely sweet, for the limes
and chestnuts and lilac bushes were domes of blossom.
Presently I came to a bridge, below which a clear slow
stream flowed between snowy beds of water-buttercups.

130
 CHAPTER SEVEN

A little above it was a mill; and the lasher made a pleas-

ant cool sound in the scented dusk. Somehow the place
soothed me and put me at my ease. I fell to whistling as
I looked into the green depths, and the tune which came
to my lips was ‘Annie Laurie’.
A fisherman came up from the waterside, and as he
neared me he too began to whistle. The tune was infec-
tious, for he followed my suit. He was a huge man in
untidy old flannels and a wide-brimmed hat, with a can-
vas bag slung on his shoulder. He nodded to me, and I
thought I had never seen a shrewder or better-tempered
face. He leaned his delicate ten-foot split-cane rod against
the bridge, and looked with me at the water.
‘Clear, isn’t it?’ he said pleasantly. ‘I back our Kenner
any day against the Test. Look at that big fellow. Four
pounds if he’s an ounce. But the evening rise is over and
you can’t tempt ‘em.’
‘I don’t see him,’ said I.
‘Look! There! A yard from the reeds just above that
stickle.’
‘I’ve got him now. You might swear he was a black
stone.’

131
 CHAPTER SEVEN

‘So,’ he said, and whistled another bar of ‘Annie Lau-

rie’.
‘Twisdon’s the name, isn’t it?’ he said over his shoul-
der, his eyes still fixed on the stream.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean to say, Yes.’ I had forgotten all
about my alias.
‘It’s a wise conspirator that knows his own name,’ he
observed, grinning broadly at a moor-hen that emerged
from the bridge’s shadow.
I stood up and looked at him, at the square, cleft jaw
and broad, lined brow and the firm folds of cheek, and
began to think that here at last was an ally worth having.
His whimsical blue eyes seemed to go very deep.
Suddenly he frowned. ‘I call it disgraceful,’ he said,
raising his voice. ‘Disgraceful that an able-bodied man
like you should dare to beg. You can get a meal from my
kitchen, but you’ll get no money from me.’
A dog-cart was passing, driven by a young man who
raised his whip to salute the fisherman. When he had
gone, he picked up his rod.
‘That’s my house,’ he said, pointing to a white gate a
hundred yards on. ‘Wait five minutes and then go round
to the back door.’ And with that he left me.

132
 CHAPTER SEVEN

I did as I was bidden. I found a pretty cottage with a

lawn running down to the stream, and a perfect jungle of
guelder-rose and lilac flanking the path. The back door
stood open, and a grave butler was awaiting me.
‘Come this way, Sir,’ he said, and he led me along a
passage and up a back staircase to a pleasant bedroom
looking towards the river. There I found a complete outfit
laid out for me–dress clothes with all the fixings, a brown
flannel suit, shirts, collars, ties, shaving things and hair-
brushes, even a pair of patent shoes. ‘Sir Walter thought
as how Mr Reggie’s things would fit you, Sir,’ said the
butler. ‘He keeps some clothes ‘ere, for he comes regular
on the week-ends. There’s a bathroom next door, and I’ve
prepared a ‘ot bath. Dinner in ‘alf an hour, Sir. You’ll ‘ear
the gong.’
The grave being withdrew, and I sat down in a chintz-
covered easy-chair and gaped. It was like a pantomime,
to come suddenly out of beggardom into this orderly
comfort. Obviously Sir Walter believed in me, though
why he did I could not guess. I looked at myself in the
mirror and saw a wild, haggard brown fellow, with a fort-
night’s ragged beard, and dust in ears and eyes, collar-
less, vulgarly shirted, with shapeless old tweed clothes
and boots that had not been cleaned for the better part of

133
 CHAPTER SEVEN

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 in-
terloper. 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 din-

134
 CHAPTER SEVEN

ner.’ 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 hys-
terical 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 dis-
cussed 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 some-
thing to wake me up. I’m ready, Mr Hannay.’
I noticed with a start that he called me by my proper
name.

135
 CHAPTER SEVEN

I began at the very beginning. I told of my boredom

in London, and the night I had come back to find Scud-
der gibbering on my doorstep. I told him all Scudder had
told me about Karolides and the Foreign Office confer-
ence, 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 de-
scribe 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.

136
 CHAPTER SEVEN

But the old man in the moorland house solemnized

him. Again I had to describe every detail of his appear-
ance.
‘Bland and bald-headed and hooded his eyes like a bird
... He sounds a sinister wild-fowl! And you dynamited
his hermitage, after he had saved you from the police.
Spirited piece of work, that!’ Presently I reached the end
of my wanderings. He got up slowly, and looked down
at me from the hearth-rug.
‘You may dismiss the police from your mind,’ he said.
‘You’re in no danger from the law of this land.’
‘Great Scot!’ I cried. ‘Have they got the murderer?’
‘No. But for the last fortnight they have dropped you
from the list of possibles.’
‘Why?’ I asked in amazement.
‘Principally because I received a letter from Scudder. I
knew something of the man, and he did several jobs for
me. He was half crank, half genius, but he was wholly
honest. The trouble about him was his partiality for play-
ing 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

137
 CHAPTER SEVEN

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 evi-
dently did not anticipate an immediate decease. His com-
munications 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

138
 CHAPTER SEVEN

enemies only, and not my country’s law.

‘Now let us have the little note-book,’ said Sir Walter.
It took us a good hour to work through it. I explained
the cypher, and he was jolly quick at picking it up. He
emended my reading of it on several points, but I had
been fairly correct, on the whole. His face was very grave
before he had finished, and he sat silent for a while.
‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ he said at last. ‘He
is right about one thing–what is going to happen the day
after tomorrow. How the devil can it have got known?
That is ugly enough in itself. But all this about war and
the Black Stone–it reads like some wild melodrama. If
only I had more confidence in Scudder’s judgement. The
trouble about him was that he was too romantic. He had
the artistic temperament, and wanted a story to be better
than God meant it to be. He had a lot of odd biases, too.
Jews, for example, made him see red. Jews and the high
finance.
‘The Black Stone,’ he repeated. ‘DER SCHWARZE
STEIN. It’s like a penny novelette. And all this stuff about
Karolides. That is the weak part of the tale, for I happen
to know that the virtuous Karolides is likely to outlast us
both. There is no State in Europe that wants him gone.

139
 CHAPTER SEVEN

Besides, he has just been playing up to Berlin and Vienna

and giving my Chief some uneasy moments. No! Scud-
der has gone off the track there. Frankly, Hannay, I don’t
believe that part of his story. There’s some nasty busi-
ness afoot, and he found out too much and lost his life
over it. But I am ready to take my oath that it is ordi-
nary 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 apol-
ogize to the shade of Scudder,’ he said. ‘Karolides was
shot dead this evening at a few minutes after seven.’

140
 CHAPTER EIGHT

T HE C OMING OF THE B LACK S TONE

came down to breakfast next morning, after eight hours
Ia telegram
of blessed dreamless sleep, to find Sir Walter decoding
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 Lon-
don at five. Odd that the code word for a SOUS-CHEF
D/ETAT MAJOR-GENERAL should be “Porker“.’
 CHAPTER EIGHT

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 sur-
prise 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 pos-
sible. They are the result of immense thought, and no al-
teration 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 with-
out 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,

142
 CHAPTER EIGHT

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 Win-
stanley. The First Lord is ill, and has gone to Sheringham.
At my house he will get a certain document from Whit-
taker, and after that he will be motored to Portsmouth
where a destroyer will take him to Havre. His journey is
too important for the ordinary boat-train. He will never
be left unattended for a moment till he is safe on French
soil. The same with Whittaker till he meets Royer. That
is the best we can do, and it’s hard to see how there can
be any miscarriage. But I don’t mind admitting that I’m
horribly nervous. This murder of Karolides will play the
deuce in the chancelleries of Europe.’
After breakfast he asked me if I could drive a car. ‘Well,
you’ll be my chauffeur today and wear Hudson’s rig.
You’re about his size. You have a hand in this business

143
 CHAPTER EIGHT

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 Scot-
land 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 wel-
come present, Bullivant. This, I presume, is Mr Richard
Hannay, who for some days greatly interested my depart-
ment.’

144
 CHAPTER EIGHT

‘Mr Hannay will interest it again. He has much to tell

you, but not today. For certain grave reasons his tale must
wait for four hours. Then, I can promise you, you will be
entertained and possibly edified. I want you to assure Mr
Hannay that he will suffer no further inconvenience.’
This assurance was promptly given. ‘You can take up
your life where you left off,’ I was told. ‘Your flat, which
probably you no longer wish to occupy, is waiting for
you, and your man is still there. As you were never pub-
licly accused, we considered that there was no need of
a public exculpation. But on that, of course, you must
please yourself.’
‘We may want your assistance later on, MacGillivray,’
Sir Walter said as we left.
Then he turned me loose.
‘Come and see me tomorrow, Hannay. I needn’t tell
you to keep deadly quiet. If I were you I would go to
bed, for you must have considerable arrears of sleep to
overtake. You had better lie low, for if one of your Black
Stone friends saw you there might be trouble.’
I felt curiously at a loose end. At first it was very pleas-
ant to be a free man, able to go where I wanted without
fearing anything. I had only been a month under the ban

145
 CHAPTER EIGHT

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 dan-
ger and impending calamity, and I had the curious feel-
ing, 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

146
 CHAPTER EIGHT

of my three enemies. That would lead to developments. I

felt that I wanted enormously to have a vulgar scrap with
those gentry, where I could hit out and flatten something.
I was rapidly getting into a very bad temper.
I didn’t feel like going back to my flat. That had to
be faced some time, but as I still had sufficient money I
thought I would put it off till next morning, and go to a
hotel for the night.
My irritation lasted through dinner, which I had at
a restaurant in Jermyn Street. I was no longer hungry,
and let several courses pass untasted. I drank the best
part of a bottle of Burgundy, but it did nothing to cheer
me. An abominable restlessness had taken possession of
me. Here was I, a very ordinary fellow, with no particu-
lar 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 con-
ceit, 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

147
 CHAPTER EIGHT

mind to go to Queen Anne’s Gate. Very likely I would not

be admitted, but it would ease my conscience to try.
I walked down Jermyn Street, and at the corner of
Duke Street passed a group of young men. They were in
evening dress, had been dining somewhere, and were go-
ing on to a music-hall. One of them was Mr Marmaduke
Jopley.
He saw me and stopped short.
‘By God, the murderer!’ he cried. ‘Here, you fellows,
hold him! That’s Hannay, the man who did the Portland
Place murder!’ He gripped me by the arm, and the others
crowded round. I wasn’t looking for any trouble, but my
ill-temper made me play the fool. A policeman came up,
and I should have told him the truth, and, if he didn’t
believe it, demanded to be taken to Scotland Yard, or for
that matter to the nearest police station. But a delay at
that moment seemed to me unendurable, and the sight of
Marmie’s imbecile face was more than I could bear. I let
out with my left, and had the satisfaction of seeing him
measure his length in the gutter.
Then began an unholy row. They were all on me at
once, and the policeman took me in the rear. I got in one
or two good blows, for I think, with fair play, I could have

148
 CHAPTER EIGHT

licked the lot of them, but the policeman pinned me be-

hind, and one of them got his fingers on my throat.
Through a black cloud of rage I heard the officer of the
law asking what was the matter, and Marmie, between
his broken teeth, declaring that I was Hannay the mur-
derer.
‘Oh, damn it all,’ I cried, ‘make the fellow shut up. I
advise you to leave me alone, constable. Scotland Yard
knows all about me, and you’ll get a proper wigging if
you interfere with me.’
‘You’ve got to come along of me, young man,’ said the
policeman. ‘I saw you strike that gentleman crool ‘ard.
You began it too, for he wasn’t doing nothing. I seen you.
Best go quietly or I’ll have to fix you up.’
Exasperation and an overwhelming sense that at no
cost must I delay gave me the strength of a bull elephant.
I fairly wrenched the constable off his feet, floored the
man who was gripping my collar, and set off at my best
pace down Duke Street. I heard a whistle being blown,
and the rush of men behind me.
I have a very fair turn of speed, and that night I had
wings. In a jiffy I was in Pall Mall and had turned down
towards St James’s Park. I dodged the policeman at the

149
 CHAPTER EIGHT

Palace gates, dived through a press of carriages at the en-

trance 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 peo-
ple 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 de-
serted. Sir Walter’s house was in the narrow part, and
outside it three or four motor-cars were drawn up. I
slackened speed some yards off and walked briskly up
to the door. If the butler refused me admission, or if he
even delayed to open the door, I was done.
He didn’t delay. I had scarcely rung before the door
opened.
‘I must see Sir Walter,’ I panted. ‘My business is des-
perately 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

150
 CHAPTER EIGHT

alcove with a telephone and a couple of chairs, and there

the butler offered me a seat.
‘See here,’ I whispered. ‘There’s trouble about and I’m
in it. But Sir Walter knows, and I’m working for him. If
anyone comes and asks if I am here, tell him a lie.’
He nodded, and presently there was a noise of voices
in the street, and a furious ringing at the bell. I never ad-
mired a man more than that butler. He opened the door,
and with a face like a graven image waited to be ques-
tioned. Then he gave them it. He told them whose house
it was, and what his orders were, and simply froze them
off the doorstep. I could see it all from my alcove, and it
was better than any play.
I hadn’t waited long till there came another ring at the
bell. The butler made no bones about admitting this new
visitor.
While he was taking off his coat I saw who it was. You
couldn’t open a newspaper or a magazine without seeing
that face–the grey beard cut like a spade, the firm fight-
ing mouth, the blunt square nose, and the keen blue eyes.
I recognized the First Sea Lord, the man, they say, that
made the new British Navy.
He passed my alcove and was ushered into a room at

151
 CHAPTER EIGHT

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 look-
ing at my watch, and as the time crept on to half-past ten
I began to think that the conference must soon end. In a
quarter of an hour Royer should be speeding along the
road to Portsmouth ...
Then I heard a bell ring, and the butler appeared. The
door of the back room opened, and the First Sea Lord
came out. He walked past me, and in passing he glanced
in my direction, and for a second we looked each other in
the face.
Only for a second, but it was enough to make my heart
jump. I had never seen the great man before, and he had
never seen me. But in that fraction of time something
sprang into his eyes, and that something was recogni-
tion. 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.

152
 CHAPTER EIGHT

I picked up the telephone book and looked up the num-

ber of his house. We were connected at once, and I heard
a servant’s voice.
‘Is his Lordship at home?’ I asked.
‘His Lordship returned half an hour ago,’ said the
voice, ‘and has gone to bed. He is not very well tonight.
Will you leave a message, Sir?’
I rang off and almost tumbled into a chair. My part in
this business was not yet ended. It had been a close shave,
but I had been in time.
Not a moment could be lost, so I marched boldly to the
door of that back room and entered without knocking.
Five surprised faces looked up from a round table.
There was Sir Walter, and Drew the War Minister, whom
I knew from his photographs. There was a slim elderly
man, who was probably Whittaker, the Admiralty official,
and there was General Winstanley, conspicuous from the
long scar on his forehead. Lastly, there was a short stout
man with an iron-grey moustache and bushy eyebrows,
who had been arrested in the middle of a sentence.
Sir Walter’s face showed surprise and annoyance.

153
 CHAPTER EIGHT

‘This is Mr Hannay, of whom I have spoken to you,’ he

said apologetically to the company. ‘I’m afraid, Hannay,
this visit is ill-timed.’
I was getting back my coolness. ‘That remains to be
seen, Sir,’ I said; ‘but I think it may be in the nick of
time. For God’s sake, gentlemen, tell me who went out
a minute ago?’
‘Lord Alloa,’ Sir Walter said, reddening with anger. ‘It
was not,’ I cried; ‘it was his living image, but it was not
Lord Alloa. It was someone who recognized me, 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–who–’ someone stammered.
‘The Black Stone,’ I cried, and I sat down in the chair so
recently vacated and looked round at five badly scared
gentlemen.

154
 CHAPTER NINE

T HE T HIRTY-N INE S TEPS

‘Nonsense!’ said the official from the Admiralty.
Sir Walter got up and left the room while we looked
blankly at the table. He came back in ten minutes with
a long face. ‘I have spoken to Alloa,’ he said. ‘Had him
out of bed–very grumpy. He went straight home after
Mulross’s dinner.’
‘But it’s madness,’ broke in General Winstanley. ‘Do
you mean to tell me that that man came here and sat be-
side me for the best part of half an hour and that I didn’t
detect the imposture? Alloa must be out of his mind.’
 CHAPTER NINE

‘Don’t you see the cleverness of it?’ I said. ‘You were

too interested in other things to have any eyes. You took
Lord Alloa for granted. If it had been anybody else you
might have looked more closely, but it was natural for
him to be here, and that put you all to sleep.’
Then the Frenchman spoke, very slowly and in good
English.
‘The young man is right. His psychology is good. Our
enemies have not been foolish!’
He bent his wise brows on the assembly.
‘I will tell you a tale,’ he said. ‘It happened many years
ago in Senegal. I was quartered in a remote station, and to
pass the time used to go fishing for big barbel in the river.
A little Arab mare used to carry my luncheon basket–one
of the salted dun breed you got at Timbuctoo in the old
days. Well, one morning I had good sport, and the mare
was unaccountably restless. I could hear her whinnying
and squealing and stamping her feet, and I kept soothing
her with my voice while my mind was intent on fish. I
could see her all the time, as I thought, out of a corner
of my eye, tethered to a tree twenty yards away. After
a couple of hours I began to think of food. I collected
my fish in a tarpaulin bag, and moved down the stream

156
 CHAPTER NINE

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 pis-
tol. Also my servants came presently with rifles. But he
left his mark on me.’ He held up a hand which lacked
three fingers.
‘Consider,’ he said. ‘The mare had been dead more
than an hour, and the brute had been patiently watch-
ing me ever since. I never saw the kill, for I was ac-
customed to the mare’s fretting, and I never marked her
absence, for my consciousness of her was only of some-
thing tawny, and the lion filled that part. If I could blun-
der thus, gentlemen, in a land where men’s senses are
keen, why should we busy preoccupied urban folk not
err also?’

157
 CHAPTER NINE

Sir Walter nodded. No one was ready to gainsay him.

‘But I don’t see,’ went on Winstanley. ‘Their object was
to get these dispositions without our knowing it. Now it
only required one of us to mention to Alloa our meeting
tonight for the whole fraud to be exposed.’
Sir Walter laughed dryly. ‘The selection of Alloa shows
their acumen. Which of us was likely to speak to him
about tonight? Or was he likely to open the subject?’
I remembered the First Sea Lord’s reputation for taci-
turnity 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.

158
 CHAPTER NINE

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 geog-
raphy 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.

159
 CHAPTER NINE

He was the man of action among fumblers. But I saw no

hope in any face, and I felt none. Where among the fifty
millions of these islands and within a dozen hours were
we to lay hands on the three cleverest rogues in Europe?
Then suddenly I had an inspiration.
‘Where is Scudder’s book?’ I cried to Sir Walter.
‘Quick, man, I remember something in it.’
He unlocked the door of a bureau and gave it to me.
I found the place. THIRTY-NINE STEPS, I read, and
again, THIRTY-NINE STEPS–I COUNTED THEM–HIGH
TIDE 10.17 P.M.
The Admiralty man was looking at me as if he thought
I had gone mad.
‘Don’t you see it’s a clue,’ I shouted. ‘Scudder knew
where these fellows laired–he knew where they were go-
ing to leave the country, though he kept the name to him-
self. Tomorrow was the day, and it was some place where
high tide was at 10.17.’
‘They may have gone tonight,’ someone said.
‘Not they. They have their own snug secret way, and
they won’t be hurried. I know Germans, and they are

160
 CHAPTER NINE

mad about working to a plan. Where the devil can I get a

book of Tide Tables?’
Whittaker brightened up. ‘It’s a chance,’ he said. ‘Let’s
go over to the Admiralty.’
We got into two of the waiting motor-cars–all but
Sir Walter, who went off to Scotland Yard–to ‘mobilize
MacGillivray’, so he said. We marched through empty
corridors and big bare chambers where the charwomen
were busy, till we reached a little room lined with books
and maps. A resident clerk was unearthed, who presently
fetched from the library the Admiralty Tide Tables. I sat
at the desk and the others stood round, for somehow or
other I had got charge of this expedition.
It was no good. There were hundreds of entries, and so
far as I could see 10.17 might cover fifty places. We had
to find some way of narrowing the possibilities.
I took my head in my hands and thought. There must
be some way of reading this riddle. What did Scudder
mean by steps? I thought of dock steps, but if he had
meant that I didn’t think he would have mentioned the
number. It must be some place where there were several
staircases, and one marked out from the others by having
thirty-nine steps.

161
 CHAPTER NINE

Then I had a sudden thought, and hunted up all the

steamer sailings. There was no boat which left for the
Continent at 10.17 p.m.
Why was high tide so important? If it was a harbour
it must be some little place where the tide mattered, or
else it was a heavy-draught boat. But there was no reg-
ular steamer sailing at that hour, and somehow I didn’t
think they would travel by a big boat from a regular har-
bour. 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 par-
ticular staircase identified, and where the tide was full at
10.17. On the whole it seemed to me that the place must
be a bit of open coast. But the staircases kept puzzling
me.
Then I went back to wider considerations. Where-
abouts would a man be likely to leave for Germany, a
man in a hurry, who wanted a speedy and a secret pas-
sage? 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

162
 CHAPTER NINE

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 Sher-
lock 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 hav-
ing thirty-nine steps.
(2) Full tide at 10.17 p.m. Leaving shore
only possible at full tide.
(3) Steps not dock steps, and so place prob-
ably not harbour.
(4) No regular night steamer at 10.17.

163
 CHAPTER NINE

Means of transport must be tramp (unlikely),

yacht, or fishing-boat.

There my reasoning stopped. I made another list,

which I headed ‘Guessed’, but I was just as sure of the
one as the other.

GUESSED
(1) Place not harbour but open coast.
(2) Boat small–trawler, yacht, or launch.
(3) Place somewhere on East Coast between
Cromer and Dover.

It struck me as odd that I should be sitting at that

desk with a Cabinet Minister, a Field-Marshal, two high
Government officials, and a French General watching me,
while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying to drag
a secret which meant life or death for us.
Sir Walter had joined us, and presently MacGillivray
arrived. He had sent out instructions to watch the ports
and railway stations for the three men whom I had de-
scribed to Sir Walter. Not that he or anybody else thought
that that would do much good.

164
 CHAPTER NINE

‘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 be-
tween the Wash and the Channel. Also it’s a place where
full tide is at 10.17 tomorrow night.’
Then an idea struck me. ‘Is there no Inspector of Coast-
guards 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,

165
 CHAPTER NINE

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 stair-
cases,’ 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 cou-
ple of staircases, to let the gentlemen get a lost ball.’
‘That’s not it,’ I said.
‘Then there are plenty of Marine Parades, if that’s what
you mean. Every seaside resort has them.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s got to be more retired than that,’
I said.
‘Well, gentlemen, I can’t think of anywhere else. Of
course, there’s the Ruff–’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘The big chalk headland in Kent, close to Bradgate. It’s
got a lot of villas on the top, and some of the houses have
staircases down to a private beach. It’s a very high-toned

166
 CHAPTER NINE

sort of place, and the residents there like to keep by them-

selves.’
I tore open the Tide Tables and found Bradgate. High
tide there was at 10.17 P.m. on the 15th of June.
‘We’re on the scent at last,’ I cried excitedly. ‘How can
I find out what is the tide at the Ruff?’
‘I can tell you that, Sir,’ said the coastguard man. ‘I
once was lent a house there in this very month, and I used
to go out at night to the deep-sea fishing. The tide’s ten
minutes before Bradgate.’
I closed the book and looked round at the company.
‘If one of those staircases has thirty-nine steps we have
solved the mystery, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘I want the loan
of your car, Sir Walter, and a map of the roads. If Mr
MacGillivray will spare me ten minutes, I think we can
prepare something for tomorrow.’
It was ridiculous in me to take charge of the business
like this, but they didn’t seem to mind, and after all I had
been in the show from the start. Besides, I was used to
rough jobs, and these eminent gentlemen were too clever
not to see it. It was General Royer who gave me my com-
mission. ‘I for one,’ he said, ‘am content to leave the mat-
ter in Mr Hannay’s hands.’

167
 CHAPTER NINE

By half-past three I was tearing past the moonlit

hedgerows of Kent, with MacGillivray’s best man on the
seat beside me.

168
 CHAPTER TEN

VARIOUS PARTIES C ONVERGING ON THE

S EA

pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate

A looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to
the lightship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of
a bell-buoy. A couple of miles farther south and much
nearer the shore a small destroyer was anchored. Scaife,
MacGillivray’s man, who had been in the Navy, knew the
boat, and told me her name and her commander’s, so I
sent off a wire to Sir Walter.
 CHAPTER TEN

After breakfast Scaife got from a house-agent a key for

the gates of the staircases on the Ruff. I walked with him
along the sands, and sat down in a nook of the cliffs while
he investigated the half-dozen of them. I didn’t want to
be seen, but the place at this hour was quite deserted, and
all the time I was on that beach I saw nothing but the sea-
gulls.
It took him more than an hour to do the job, and when
I saw him coming towards me, conning a bit of paper,
I can tell you my heart was in my mouth. Everything
depended, you see, on my guess proving right.
He read aloud the number of steps in the differ-
ent stairs. ‘Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-nine, forty-
two, forty-seven,’ and ‘twenty-one’ where the cliffs grew
lower. I almost got up and shouted.
We hurried back to the town and sent a wire to
MacGillivray. I wanted half a dozen men, and I directed
them to divide themselves among different specified ho-
tels. Then Scaife set out to prospect the house at the head
of the thirty-nine steps.
He came back with news that both puzzled and reas-
sured me. The house was called Trafalgar Lodge, and
belonged to an old gentleman called Appleton–a retired

170
 CHAPTER TEN

stockbroker, the house-agent said. Mr Appleton was

there a good deal in the summer time, and was in resi-
dence now–had been for the better part of a week. Scaife
could pick up very little information about him, except
that he was a decent old fellow, who paid his bills regu-
larly, and was always good for a fiver for a local charity.
Then Scaife seemed to have penetrated to the back door
of the house, pretending he was an agent for sewing-
machines. Only three servants were kept, a cook, a
parlour-maid, and a housemaid, and they were just the
sort that you would find in a respectable middle-class
household. The cook was not the gossiping kind, and
had pretty soon shut the door in his face, but Scaife said
he was positive she knew nothing. Next door there was
a new house building which would give good cover for
observation, and the villa on the other side was to let, and
its garden was rough and shrubby.
I borrowed Scaife’s telescope, and before lunch went
for a walk along the Ruff. I kept well behind the rows of
villas, and found a good observation point on the edge of
the golf-course. There I had a view of the line of turf along
the cliff top, with seats placed at intervals, and the little
square plots, railed in and planted with bushes, whence
the staircases descended to the beach. I saw Trafalgar

171
 CHAPTER TEN

Lodge very plainly, a red-brick villa with a veranda, a ten-

nis lawn behind, and in front the ordinary seaside flower-
garden full of marguerites and scraggy geraniums. There
was a flagstaff from which an enormous Union Jack hung
limply in the still air.
Presently I observed someone leave the house and
saunter along the cliff. When I got my glasses on him I
saw it was an old man, wearing white flannel trousers, a
blue serge jacket, and a straw hat. He carried field-glasses
and a newspaper, and sat down on one of the iron seats
and began to read. Sometimes he would lay down the pa-
per and turn his glasses on the sea. He looked for a long
time at the destroyer. I watched him for half an hour, till
he got up and went back to the house for his luncheon,
when I returned to the hotel for mine.
I wasn’t feeling very confident. This decent common-
place dwelling was not what I had expected. The man
might be the bald archaeologist of that horrible moorland
farm, or he might not. He was exactly the kind of satisfied
old bird you will find in every suburb and every holiday
place. If you wanted a type of the perfectly harmless per-
son you would probably pitch on that.
But after lunch, as I sat in the hotel porch, I perked up,

172
 CHAPTER TEN

for I saw the thing I had hoped for and had dreaded to
miss. A yacht came up from the south and dropped an-
chor pretty well opposite the Ruff. She seemed about a
hundred and fifty tons, and I saw she belonged to the
Squadron from the white ensign. So Scaife and I went
down to the harbour and hired a boatman for an after-
noon’s fishing.
I spent a warm and peaceful afternoon. We caught be-
tween us about twenty pounds of cod and lythe, and out
in that dancing blue sea I took a cheerier view of things.
Above the white cliffs of the Ruff I saw the green and red
of the villas, and especially the great flagstaff of Trafalgar
Lodge. About four o’clock, when we had fished enough, I
made the boatman row us round the yacht, which lay like
a delicate white bird, ready at a moment to flee. Scaife
said she must be a fast boat for her build, and that she
was pretty heavily engined.
Her name was the ARIADNE, as I discovered from the
cap of one of the men who was polishing brasswork. I
spoke to him, and got an answer in the soft dialect of Es-
sex. 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 star-

173
 CHAPTER TEN

board 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 dis-
missed. 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 under-
stood about Scudder’s knowledge. I had talked con-
fidently 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. Some-
how I did not think he had, and to that I had clung. But
the whole business had never seemed so difficult as that

174
 CHAPTER TEN

afternoon when by all calculations I should have been re-

joicing 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 ten-
nis. 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 tremen-
dous zest, like two city gents who wanted hard exercise
to open their pores. You couldn’t conceive a more inno-
cent 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 dark-
ness had hung about the men who hunted me over the
Scotch moor in aeroplane and motor-car, and notably
about that infernal antiquarian. It was easy enough to
connect those folk with the knife that pinned Scudder to
the floor, and with fell designs on the world’s peace. But
here were two guileless citizens taking their innocuous

175
 CHAPTER TEN

exercise, and soon about to go indoors to a humdrum din-

ner, where they would talk of market prices and the last
cricket scores and the gossip of their native Surbiton. I
had been making a net to catch vultures and falcons, and
lo and behold! two plump thrushes had blundered into
it.
Presently a third figure arrived, a young man on a bicy-
cle, with a bag of golf-clubs slung on his back. He strolled
round to the tennis lawn and was welcomed riotously by
the players. Evidently they were chaffing him, and their
chaff sounded horribly English. Then the plump man,
mopping his brow with a silk handkerchief, announced
that he must have a tub. I heard his very words–’I’ve got
into a proper lather,’ he said. ‘This will bring down my
weight and my handicap, Bob. I’ll take you on tomorrow
and give you a stroke a hole.’ You couldn’t find anything
much more English than that.
They all went into the house, and left me feeling a pre-
cious 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, subur-

176
 CHAPTER TEN

ban Englishmen, wearisome, if you like, but sordidly in-

nocent.
And yet there were three of them; and one was old, and
one was plump, and one was lean and dark; and their
house chimed in with Scudder’s notes; and half a mile off
was lying a steam yacht with at least one German officer. I
thought of Karolides lying dead and all Europe trembling
on the edge of earthquake, and the men I had left behind
me in London who were waiting anxiously for the events
of the next hours. There was no doubt that hell was afoot
somewhere. The Black Stone had won, and if it survived
this June night would bank its winnings.
There seemed only one thing to do–go forward as if I
had no doubts, and if I was going to make a fool of myself
to do it handsomely. Never in my life have I faced a job
with greater disinclination. I would rather in my then
mind have walked into a den of anarchists, each with his
Browning handy, or faced a charging lion with a popgun,
than enter that happy home of three cheerful Englishmen
and tell them that their game was up. How they would
laugh at me!
But suddenly I remembered a thing I once heard in
Rhodesia from old Peter Pienaar. I have quoted Peter

177
 CHAPTER TEN

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 dis-
cussed with me the question of disguises, and he had
a theory which struck me at the time. He said, barring
absolute certainties like fingerprints, mere physical traits
were very little use for identification if the fugitive really
knew his business. He laughed at things like dyed hair
and false beards and such childish follies. The only thing
that mattered was what Peter called ‘atmosphere’.
If a man could get into perfectly different surroundings
from those in which he had been first observed, and–this
is the important part–really play up to these surround-
ings and behave as if he had never been out of them, he
would puzzle the cleverest detectives on earth. And he
used to tell a story of how he once borrowed a black coat
and went to church and shared the same hymn-book with
the man that was looking for him. If that man had seen
him in decent company before he would have recognized
him; but he had only seen him snuffing the lights in a
public-house with a revolver.
The recollection of Peter’s talk gave me the first real
comfort that I had had that day. Peter had been a wise old

178
 CHAPTER TEN

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 con-
vince yourself that you are it.’ That would explain the
game of tennis. Those chaps didn’t need to act, they just
turned a handle and passed into another life, which came
as naturally to them as the first. It sounds a platitude,
but Peter used to say that it was the big secret of all the
famous criminals.
It was now getting on for eight o’clock, and I went back
and saw Scaife to give him his instructions. I arranged
with him how to place his men, and then I went for a
walk, for I didn’t feel up to any dinner. I went round
the deserted golf-course, and then to a point on the cliffs
farther north beyond the line of the villas.
On the little trim newly-made roads I met people in
flannels coming back from tennis and the beach, and a
coastguard from the wireless station, and donkeys and
pierrots padding homewards. Out at sea in the blue dusk

179
 CHAPTER TEN

I saw lights appear on the ARIADNE and on the de-

stroyer away to the south, and beyond the Cock sands
the bigger lights of steamers making for the Thames. The
whole scene was so peaceful and ordinary that I got more
dashed in spirits every second. It took all my resolution
to stroll towards Trafalgar Lodge about half-past nine.
On the way I got a piece of solid comfort from the sight
of a greyhound that was swinging along at a nursemaid’s
heels. He reminded me of a dog I used to have in Rhode-
sia, and of the time when I took him hunting with me in
the Pali hills. We were after rhebok, the dun kind, and I
recollected how we had followed one beast, and both he
and I had clean lost it. A greyhound works by sight, and
my eyes are good enough, but that buck simply leaked
out of the landscape. Afterwards I found out how it man-
aged it. Against the grey rock of the kopjes it showed no
more than a crow against a thundercloud. It didn’t need
to run away; all it had to do was to stand still and melt
into the background.
Suddenly as these memories chased across my brain I
thought of my present case and applied the moral. The
Black Stone didn’t need to bolt. They were quietly ab-
sorbed into the landscape. I was on the right track, and I
jammed that down in my mind and vowed never to for-

180
 CHAPTER TEN

get it. The last word was with Peter Pienaar.

Scaife’s men would be posted now, but there was no
sign of a soul. The house stood as open as a market-place
for anybody to 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 din-
ner. Everything was as public and above-board as a char-
ity 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 under-
stands them and they understand him. I was at home
with herds and tramps and roadmen, and I was suffi-
ciently 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.

181
 CHAPTER TEN

I asked for Mr Appleton, and was ushered in. My

plan had been to walk straight into the dining-room, and
by a sudden appearance wake in the men that start of
recognition which would confirm my theory. But when
I found myself in that neat hall the place mastered me.
There were the golf-clubs and tennis-rackets, the straw
hats and caps, the rows of gloves, the sheaf of walking-
sticks, which you will find in ten thousand British homes.
A stack of neatly folded coats and waterproofs covered
the top of an old oak chest; there was a grandfather clock
ticking; and some polished brass warming-pans on the
walls, and a barometer, and a print of Chiltern winning
the St Leger. The place was as orthodox as an Anglican
church. When the maid asked me for my name I gave it
automatically, and was shown into the smoking-room, on
the right side of the hall.
That room was even worse. I hadn’t time to examine
it, but I could see some framed group photographs above
the mantelpiece, and I could have sworn they were En-
glish 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.

182
 CHAPTER TEN

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 er-
rand, Sir, for I really don’t know it.’
‘Well, then,’ I said, and all the time I seemed to my-
self to be talking pure foolishness–’I have come to tell you

183
 CHAPTER TEN

that the game’s up. I have a warrant for the arrest of you
three gentlemen.’
‘Arrest,’ said the old man, and he looked really
shocked. ‘Arrest! Good God, what for?’
‘For the murder of Franklin Scudder in London on the
23rd day of last month.’
‘I never heard the name before,’ said the old man in a
dazed voice.
One of the others spoke up. ‘That was the Portland
Place murder. I read about it. Good heavens, you must
be mad, Sir! Where do you come from?’
‘Scotland Yard,’ I said.
After that for a minute there was utter silence. The old
man was staring at his plate and fumbling with a nut, the
very model of innocent bewilderment.
Then the plump one spoke up. He stammered a little,
like a man picking his words.
‘Don’t get flustered, uncle,’ he said. ‘It is all a ridicu-
lous mistake; but these things happen sometimes, and we
can easily set it right. It won’t be hard to prove our inno-
cence. I can show that I was out of the country on the

184
 CHAPTER TEN

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 Wok-
ing, and lunched at the club with Charlie Symons. Then–
oh yes, I dined with the Fishmongers. I remember, for
the punch didn’t agree with me, and I was seedy next
morning. Hang it all, there’s the cigar-box I brought back
from the dinner.’ He pointed to an object on the table, and
laughed nervously.
‘I think, Sir,’ said the young man, addressing me re-
spectfully, ‘you will see you are mistaken. We want to as-
sist the law like all Englishmen, and we don’t want Scot-
land Yard to be making fools of themselves. That’s so,
uncle?’
‘Certainly, Bob.’ The old fellow seemed to be recover-
ing 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 noth-
ing ever happened to you. And now you’ve got it thick

185
 CHAPTER TEN

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 for-
give 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 noth-
ing 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 mem-

186
 CHAPTER TEN

ory 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 Ap-
pleton, Esq., of the St Bede’s Club, in a golf tournament. I
had to keep a firm hold of Peter Pienaar to prevent myself
bolting out of that house.
‘Well,’ said the old man politely, ‘are you reassured by
your scrutiny, Sir?’
I couldn’t find a word.
‘I hope you’ll find it consistent with your duty to drop
this ridiculous business. I make no complaint, but you’ll
see how annoying it must be to respectable people.’
I shook my head.
‘O Lord,’ said the young man. ‘This is a bit too thick!’
‘Do you propose to march us off to the police station?’
asked the plump one. ‘That might be the best way out
of it, but I suppose you won’t be content with the local

187
 CHAPTER TEN

branch. I have the right to ask to see your warrant, but I

don’t wish to cast any aspersions upon you. You are only
doing your duty. But you’ll admit it’s horribly awkward.
What do you propose to do?’
There was nothing to do except to call in my men and
have them arrested, or to confess my blunder and clear
out. I felt mesmerized by the whole place, by the air of
obvious innocence–not innocence merely, but frank hon-
est bewilderment and concern in the three faces.
‘Oh, Peter Pienaar,’ I groaned inwardly, and for a mo-
ment I was very near damning myself for a fool and ask-
ing their pardon.
‘Meantime I vote we have a game of bridge,’ said the
plump one. ‘It will give Mr Hannay time to think over
things, and you know we have been wanting a fourth
player. Do you play, Sir?’
I accepted as if it had been an ordinary invitation at the
club. The whole business had mesmerized me. We went
into the smoking-room where a card-table was set out,
and I was offered things to smoke and drink. I took my
place at the table in a kind of dream. The window was
open and the moon was flooding the cliffs and sea with a
great tide of yellow light. There was moonshine, too, in

188
 CHAPTER TEN

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

189
 CHAPTER TEN

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 bul-
let in Karolides.
The plump man’s features seemed to dislimn, and form
again, as I looked at them. He hadn’t a face, only a hun-
dred masks that he could assume when he pleased. That
chap must have been a superb actor. Perhaps he had been
Lord Alloa of the night before; perhaps not; it didn’t mat-
ter. I wondered if he was the fellow who had first tracked
Scudder, and left his card on him. Scudder had said he
lisped, and I could imagine how the adoption of a lisp
might add terror.
But the old man was the pick of the lot. He was sheer
brain, icy, cool, calculating, as ruthless as a steam ham-
mer. 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

190
 CHAPTER TEN

went on playing, and every second a greater hate welled

up in my heart. It almost choked me, and I couldn’t an-
swer when my partner spoke. Only a little longer could I
endure their company.
‘Whew! Bob! Look at the time,’ said the old man.
‘You’d better think about catching your train. Bob’s got to
go to town tonight,’ he added, turning to me. The voice
rang now as false as hell. I looked at the clock, and it was
nearly half-past ten.
‘I am afraid he must put off his journey,’ I said.
‘Oh, damn,’ said the young man. ‘I thought you had
dropped that rot. I’ve simply got to go. You can have my
address, and I’ll give any security you like.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you must stay.’
At that I think they must have realized that the game
was desperate. Their only chance had been to convince
me that I was playing the fool, and that had failed. But
the old man spoke again.
‘I’ll go bail for my nephew. That ought to content you,
Mr Hannay.’ Was it fancy, or did I detect some halt in the
smoothness of that voice?

191
 CHAPTER TEN

There must have been, for as I glanced at him, his eye-

lids 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 him-
self on the wall. There was a click as if a lever had been

192
 CHAPTER TEN

pulled. Then came a low rumbling far, far below the

ground, and through the window I saw a cloud of chalky
dust pouring out of the shaft of the stairway.
Someone switched on the light.
The old man was looking at me with blazing eyes.
‘He is safe,’ he cried. ‘You cannot follow in time ... He
is gone ... He has triumphed ... Der schwarze Stein ist in
der Siegeskrone.’
There was more in those eyes than any common tri-
umph. They had been hooded like a bird of prey, and
now they flamed with a hawk’s pride. A white fanatic
heat burned in them, and I realized for the first time the
terrible thing I had been up against. This man was more
than a spy; in his foul way he had been a patriot.
As the handcuffs clinked on his wrists I said my last
word to him.
‘I hope Franz will bear his triumph well. I ought to
tell you that the Ariadne for the last hour has been in our
hands.’
Three weeks later, as all the world knows, we went to
war. I joined the New Army the first week, and owing
to my Matabele experience got a captain’s commission

193
 CHAPTER TEN

straight off. But I had done my best service, I think, before

I put on khaki.

194