 CHAPTER 1 THE MAN WHO DIED I returned from the city about three o'clock on that May afternoon, pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the old country and was fed up with it. If 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 English man 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 Hane, I kept telling myself, you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out." It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Bulawayo. I had got my pile, not one of the big ones, but good enough for me, and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since, so England was a sort of Arabian night to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days. But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race meetings. I had no real pal to go about with which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much interested in me. They would ask me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on to their own affairs. A lot of imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good time yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the Velt, for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom. That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to give my mind something to work on, and on my way home I turned into my club, rather a pot-house which took in colonial members. I had a long drink and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an article about Carolides, the Greek premier. I rather fancied the chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in the show, and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be said for most of them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him and one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon. I remember wondering if I could get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning. About six o'clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Café Royale, and turned into a musical. It was a silly show, all capering women monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear as I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had some interest in life that kept them going. I gave half a crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn. He was a fellow-sufferer. At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would give the old country another day to fit me into something. If nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the cape. My flat was on the first floor at a new block behind Langham Place. There was a common staircase with a porter and a lift-man at the entrance, but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was quite shut off from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came in by the day. He arrived before eight o'clock every morning and used to depart at seven, for I never dined at home. I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at my elbow. I had not seen him approach and the sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim man with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of the flat on the top floor, with whom I had passed the time of day on the stairs. Can I speak to you? he said. May I come in for a minute? He was steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pouring my arm. I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the threshold than he made a dash for my back room where I used to smoke and write my letters. Then he bolted back. Is the door locked? He asked feverishly, and he fastened the chain with his own hand. I am very sorry. He said humbly. It's a mighty liberty, but you 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 whiskey and soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down. Pardon, he said. I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead. I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe. What does it feel like? I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal with a madman. A smile flickered over his drawn face. I'm not mad yet. Say, sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer. I reckon too you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I'm going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in. Get on with your yarn, I said, and then I'll tell you. He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions, but here is the gist of it. He was an American from Kentucky, and after college, being pretty well off, he had started out to see the world. He wrote a bit, and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a year or two in Southeastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine linguist, and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts. He spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen in the newspapers. He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the interest of them, and then because he couldn't help himself. I read him as a sharp, restless fellow who always wanted to get down to the roots of things. He got a little further down than he wanted. I'm 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'd come on it by accident. It fascinated him. He went further, and then got caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that beside them were financiers who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the years. He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me, things that had happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads. When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no farther land. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell. Do you wonder, he cried, for three hundred years they had been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the back stairs to find him. Take any big, teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it, the first man you meet is Prince von Unzu something, an elegant young man who talks, eaten, and harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German businessman that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the empire of the Tsar because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga. I couldn't help saying that his Jew-anarchists seem 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. These foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven't played their last card by a long sight. They've got the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they're going to play it and win. But I thought you were dead, I put in. Mors Januavite, he smiled. I recognized the quotation. It was about all the Latin I knew. I'm coming to that. And 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 Carolides. I sat up for that, for I had been reading about him that very afternoon. He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is the one big brain in the whole show. And he happens also to be an honest man, wherefore he has been marked down these twelve months past. I found that out. Not that it was difficult, for any fool could guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to get him. And that knowledge was deadly. That's why I have had to decease. He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was getting interested in the beggar. They can't get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of aparotes that would skin their grandmothers. But on the fifteenth 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 Carolides is reckoned the principal guest, and if my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring countrymen. That's simple enough, anyhow, I said. You can warn him and keep him at home. And play their game," he asked sharply. If he does not come they win, for he's the only man that can straighten out the tangle. And if his government is warned he won't come, for he does not know how big the stakes will be on June fifteenth. What about the British government? I asked. They're not going to let their guests be murdered. Tip them the wink, and they'll take extra precautions. No good. They might stuff your city with plain clothes detectives and double the police, and Constantine would still be a doomed man. My friends are not playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for the taking off with the eyes of all Europe on it. He'll be murdered by an Austrian, and there'll be plenty of evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will look black enough to the world. I'm not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will be the most finished piece of black-artism since the Borgias. But it's not going to come off if there's a certain man who knows the wheels of the business alive right here in London on the fifteenth day of June. And that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P. Scudder. I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like a rat-trap, and there was a fire of battle in his gim-litty eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn, he could act up to it. When did you find out this story? I asked. I got the first hint in an inn in the Arkhönse in Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a first shop in the Galatian Quarter of Buda, in a stranger's club in Vienna, and in a little book-shop off the Ragnitzstrasse in Leipzig. I completed my evidence ten days ago in Paris. I can't tell you the details now, for it's something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I judged it my business to disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English student of Ibsen, collecting materials for lectures. But when I left Bergen I was a cinema-man with special ski films. And I came here from Leith with a lot of pulpwood propositions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers. Till yesterday I had 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 whiskey. Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this block. I used to stay close in my room all day, and only slip out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for a bit from my window, and I thought I recognized him. He came in and spoke to the porter. When I came back from my walk last night I found a card in my letter box. It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on God's earth. I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked fright 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 I was bottled up as sure as a pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to sleep again. How did you manage it? I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look like death. That wasn't difficult, for I'm no slouch at disguises. Then I got a corpse. You can always get a body in London if you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room. You see, I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed, and got my man to mix me a sleeping draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted a fetched doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn't abide leeches. When I was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse. He was my size and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I dare say there will be somebody to-morrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed, dressed up in my pyjamas, with a revolver lying on the bed clothes, and a considerable mess around. Then I got into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies. I didn't dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides it wasn't any kind of use my trying to get into the streets. I'd 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'd wanted to get a location in my flat and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a milder yarn. Hand me your key, I said, and I'll take a look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but I am bound to verify a bit if I can. He shook his head mournfully. I reckoned you'd asked for that, but I haven't got it. It's on my chain on the jesting table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn't leave any clues to race suspicions. The gentry who were 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 or not I should warn you that I'm a handyman with a gun. Sure, he said, jumping up with some briskness. I haven't the privilege of your name, sir, but let me tell you that you're a white man. I'll thank you to lend me a razor. I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an hour's time a figure came out that I scarcely recognized. Only his gimlet-y, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows. Furthermore, he carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model, even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech. My hat, Mr. Scudder, I stammered. Not Mr. Scudder, he corrected, Captain Theophilus Digby of the Seventh Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I'll thank you to remember that, sir. I made him a bed in my smoking-room, and sought my own couch more cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things did happen occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis. I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the juice of a row at the smoking-room door. Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the Salakwi, and I had in spanned him as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus. I was not a great hand at Valotin, but I knew I could count on his loyalty. Stop that row, Paddock, I said. There's a friend of mine. Captain, Captain—I couldn't remember his 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 there, or he would be besieged by communications from the India office and the Prime Minister, and his cure would be ruined. I'm bound to say Scudder played up splendidly when he came to breakfast. He fixed Paddock with his eyeglass just like a British officer, and 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 Serred 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 porter had a weighty face. Nasty business here this morning, Sir, Gentin Number 15 been shot himself. They just took him off to the mortuary. The police are up there now. I sent it to Number 15, and found a couple of bobbies and an inspector busy making an examination. I asked a few idiotic questions, and they soon kicked me out. Then I found the man that had valeted Scudder and pumped him, and I could see he suspected nothing. He was a whining fellow with a churchyard face, and half a crown went far to console him. I attended the inquest next day. A partner of some publishing firm gave evidence that the deceased had brought him pulpwood propositions, and had been, he believed, an agent of an American business. The jury founded a case of suicide while of unsound mind, and the few effects were handed over to the American console 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 notebook, 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 fifteenth, and ticked each off with a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand against them. I would find him sunk in a brown study with his sharp eyes abstracted, and after these spells of meditation he was apt to be very despondent. Then I could see that he began to get edgy again. He listened for little noises, and was always asking me if Paddock could be trusted. Once or twice he got very peevish and apologised for it. I didn't blame him. I made every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly stiff job. It was not the safety of his own skin that troubled him, but the success of the scheme he had planned. That little man was clean pluck all through, without a soft spot in him. One night he was very solemn. Say, Hane, he said, I judged 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 Carolides 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 Carolides would not begin till he had got to London and would come from the very highest quarters where there would be no thought of suspicion. He mentioned the name of a woman, Julia Checheni, as having something to do with the danger. She would be the decoy I gathered to get Carolides out of the care of his guards. He talked to about a black stone and a man that lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly somebody that he never referred to without a shudder, an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk. He spoke a good deal about death, too. He was mortally anxious about winning through with his job, but he didn't care a rush for his life. I reckon it's like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out, and waking to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the window. I used to thank God for such morning, way back in the bluegrass country, and I guess I'll thank him when I wake up on the other side of Jordan. Next day he was much more cheerful and read the life of Stonewall Jackson most of the time. I went out to dinner with a mining engineer I'd got to see on business and came back at about half-past ten in time for our game of chess before turning in. I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as I pushed open the smoking-room door. The lights were not lit, which struck me as odd. I wonder if Scudder had turned in already. I snapped the switch, and 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. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of The 39 Steps by John Buckin Chapter 2 The milkman sets out on his travels. I sat down in an armchair and felt very sick. That lasted for maybe five minutes, and was succeeded by a fit of the horrors. The poor, staring white face on the floor was more than I could bear, and I managed to get a tablecloth and cover it. Then I staggered to a cupboard, found the brandy, and swallowed several mouthfuls. I had seen men die violently before. Indeed, I had killed a few myself in the Matabele War, but this cold-blooded indoor business was different. Still, I had managed to pull myself together. I looked at my watch and saw that it was half past ten. An idea seized me, and I went over the flat with a small tooth comb. There was nobody there, nor any trace of anybody, but I shuttered and bolted all the windows and put the chain on the door. By this time my wits were coming back to me, and I could think again. It took me about an hour to figure the thing out, and I did not hurry for, unless the murderer came back, I had until about six o'clock in the morning for my cogitations. I was in the soup, that was pretty clear. Any shadow of a doubt I might have had about the truth of Scudder's tale was now gone. The proof of it was lying under the tablecloth. The men that 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 room for four days, and his enemies must have reckoned that he had confided in me. So I would be the next to go. It might be that very night, or next day, or the day after, but my number was up all right. Then suddenly I thought of another probability. Supposing I went out now and called in the police, or went to bed and let Paddock find the body and call them in the morning. What kind of a story was I to tell about Scudder? I had lied to Paddock about him, and the whole thing looked desperately fishy. If I made a clean breast of it and told the police everything he had told me, they would simply laugh at me. The odds were a thousand to one that I would be charged with the murder, and the circumstantial evidence was strong enough to hang me. Few people knew me in England. I had no real power who could come forward and swear to my character. Perhaps that was what these 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 until 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. Carolides would stay at home, which was what they wanted. Somehow or other the sight of Scudder's dead face had made me a passionate believer in his scheme. He was gone, but he had taken me into his confidence, and I was pretty well bound to carry on his work. You may think this ridiculous for a man in danger of his life, but that was the way I looked at it. I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place. It took me an hour or two to think this out, and by that time I had come to a decision. I must vanish somehow, and keep vanished, until the end of the second week of June. Then I must somehow find a way to get in touch with the government people, and tell them what Scudder had told me. I wished to heaven he had told me more, and that I had listened more carefully to the little he had told me. I knew nothing but the barest facts. There was a big risk that, even if I weathered the other dangers, I would not be believed in the end. I must take my chance of that, and hope that something might 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 twenty-fourth of May, and that meant twenty days of hiding before I could venture to approach the powers that be. I reckoned that two sets of people would be looking for me, Scudder's enemies to put me out of existence, and the police who would want me for Scudder's murder. It was going to be a giddy hunt, and it was queer how the prospect comforted me. I had been slack so long that almost any chance of activity was welcome. When I had to sit alone with that corpse and wait on fortune, I was no better than a crushed worm. But if my next safety was to hang on my own wits, I was prepared to be cheerful about it. My next thought was whether Scudder had any papers about him to give me a better clue to the business. I drew back the tablecloth and searched his pockets, for I had no longer any shrinking from the body. The face was wonderfully calm for a man who had been struck down in a moment. There was nothing in the breast pocket, and only a few loose coins and a cigar-holder in the waistcoat. The trousers held a little pen-knife and some silver, and the side pocket of his jacket contained an old crocodile-skin cigar-case. There was no sign of the little black book in which I had seen him making notes. That had, no doubt, been taken by his murderer. But as I looked up from my task I saw that some drawers had been pulled out in the writing-table. Scudder would never have left them in that state, for he was the tidiest of mortals. Someone must have been searching for something, perhaps for the pocket-book. I went round the flat and found that everything had been ransacked. The insides of books, drawers, cupboards, boxes, even the pockets of clothes in my wardrobe and the sideboard in the dining-room. There was no trace of the book. Most likely the enemy had found it, but they had not found it on Scudder's body. Then I got out an atlas and looked at a big map of the British Isles. My notion was to get off to some wild district, where my Veltcraft 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 place 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 a Galloway station in the late afternoon. That was well enough, but a more important matter was how I was to make my way to St Pancras, for I was pretty certain that Scudder's friends would be watching outside. This puzzled me for a bit. Then I had an inspiration, on which I went to bed and slept for two troubled hours. I got up at four and opened my bedroom shutters. The faint light of a fine summer morning was flooding the skies, and the sparrows had begun to chatter. I had a great revulsion of feeling and felt a God-forgiven fool. My inclination was to let things slide, and trust the British police taking a reasonable view of my case. But as I viewed the situation I could find no arguments to bring against my decision of the previous night, so with a rye mouth I resolved to go on with my plan. I was not feeling in any particular funk, only disinclined to go looking for trouble, if you understand me. I hunted out a well-used tweed suit, a pair of strong-nailed boots, and a flannel shirt with a collar. Into my pockets I stuffed a spare shirt, a cloth cap, some handkerchiefs, and a toothbrush. I had drawn a good sum in gold from the bank two days before, in case Scudder should want money. And I took fifty pounds of it in sovereigns in a belt which I had brought back from Rhodesia. That was about all I wanted. Then I had a bath, and cut my moustache, which was long and drooping, into a short stubby fringe. Now came the next step. Paddock used to arrive punctually at seven-thirty and let himself in with the latch key. But at about twenty minutes to seven, as I knew from bitter experience, the milkman turned up with a great clatter of cans, and deposited my share outside my door. I had seen that milkman sometimes when I had got out for an early ride. He was a young man about my own height, with a scrubby moustache, dressed in a white overall. On him I staked all my chances. I went into the darkened smoking-room where the rays of morning light were beginning to creep through the shutters. There I breakfasted off a whiskey and soda and some biscuits from the cupboard. By this time it was getting on to six o'clock. I put a pipe in my pocket and filled my pouch from the tobacco-jar on the table by the fireplace. As I poked into the tobacco, my fingers touched something hard, and I drew out Scudder's little black pocket-book. That seemed to me a good omen. I lifted the cloth from the body and was amazed at the peace and dignity of the dead face. Good-bye, old chap, I said. I am going to do my best for you. Wish me well wherever you are. Then I hung about in the hall waiting for the milkmen. 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 a 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 for a moment, I said. I want a word with you. And I laid him into the dining-room. I reckon you are 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. What's the game? 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. Here's the red governor. I stuck on his flat blue cap and his white overall, picked up the cans, banged my door, and went whistling downstairs. The porter at the foot told me to shut my jaw, which sounded as if my makeup 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 turned up a left-hand turning which led past a bit of vacant ground. There was no one in the little street, so I dropped the milk cans inside the hoarding and sent the hats and cover all after them. I'd only just put on my cloth cap when a postman came round the corner. I gave him a good morning, and he answered me unsuspeciously. At the moment the clock of a neighbouring church struck the hour of seven. There was not a second despair. As soon as I got to Euston Road I took to my heels and ran. The clock at Euston Station showed five minutes past the hour. At St Pancras I had no time to take a ticket, let alone that I had not settled upon my destination. A porter told me the platform, and as I entered it I saw the train already in motion. Two station officials blocked the way, but I dodged them and clambered into the last carriage. Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the northern tunnels, an irate guard interviewed me. He wrote out for me a ticket to Newton Stewart, a name which had suddenly came 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 impudence of that guard, said the Lady Bitterly. He was complaining of this weird nojena ticket, and heard no furer than August 12th, and he was objecting to this gentleman's spitting. The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life in an atmosphere of protest against authority. I reminded myself that a week ago I had been finding the world dull. CHAPTER III. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LITERARY INKEAPER I had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine May weather with the hawthorn flowering on every edge, and I asked myself why, when I was still a free man, I had stayed on in London, and not got the good of this heavenly country. I didn't dare face the restaurant car, but I got a lunch and basket at Leeds and shared it with the fat woman. Also I got the morning's papers, with news about starters for the derby in the beginning of the cricket season, and some paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were settling down and a British squadron was going to keel. When I had done with them I got out Scudder's Little Black Pocket Book, and studied it. It was pretty well filled with jottings, chiefly figures, though now and then a name was printed in. For example, I found the word Hofgaard, Loonville, and Avocado, pretty often, and especially the word Pavia. Now, I was certain that Scudder never did anything without a reason, and I was pretty sure that there was a cipher in all this. That is a subject which has always interested me, and I did a bit of it myself once as Intelligence Officer at Delago Bay during the Boer War. I have a head for things like chess and puzzles, and I used to reckon myself pretty good at finding out ciphers. This one looked like the numerical kind, where sets of figures corresponded to the letters of the alphabet. But any fairly shrewd man can find the clue to that sort after an hour or two's work, and I didn't think Scudder would have been content with anything so easy. So I fastened on the printed words, for you can make a pretty good numerical cipher if you have a key word which gives you the sequence of the letters. I tried for hours, but none of the words answered. Then I fell asleep and woke at Dumfries just in time to bundle out and get into the slow Galloway train. There was a man on the platform whose looks I didn't like. But he never glanced at me and when I caught sight of myself in the mirror of an automatic machine, I didn't wonder. With my brown face, my old tweeds, and my slouch, I was the very muddle of one of the hill-farmers who were crowding into third-class carriages. I travelled with half a dozen in an atmosphere of shag and clay pipes. They had come from the weekly market, and their mouths were full of prices. I heard accounts of how the lambing had gone up on the cairn and the duch and a half-dozen other mysterious waters. Above half the man had lunched heavily and were highly flavoured with whisky, but they took no notice of me. We rumbled slowly into a land of little wooded glens, and then to a great wide moorland place gleaming with locks and high blue hills showing northwards. About five o'clock the carriage had emptied and I was left alone as I'd 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 caroo. An old station-master was digging in his garden, and with his spade over his shoulder, sauntered to the train, took charge of a parcel and went back to his potatoes. A child of ten received my ticket, and I emerged on a white road that straggled over the brown moor. It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as clear as a cut amethyst. The air had the queer rooty smell of bogs. But it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits. I actually felt light-hearted. I might have been a boy out for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-seven, very much wanted by the police. I felt just as I used to feel when I was starting for a big trek on a frosty morning on the high veld. If you believe me, I swung along that road whistling. There was no plan of campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this blessed, honest-smelling hill-country. For every mile put me in better humour with myself. In a roadside planting I cut a walking stick of hazel, and presently struck off the highway by a bypass 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 hour since I had tasted food, and I was getting very hungry when I came to a herd 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 welcomed to the bed in the loft, and very soon she set before me a hearty meal of ham and eggs, scones, and thick sweet milk. At the darkening her man came in from the hills, a lean giant who in one step covered as much ground as three paces of ordinary mortals. They asked no questions, for they had the perfect breeding of all dwellers in the wilds. But I could see that they set me down as some kind of dealer, and I took some trouble to confirm their view. I spoke a lot about cattle, of which my host knew little, and I picked up from him a good deal about the local Galloway markets, which I tucked away in my memory for future use. At ten I was nodding in my chair, and the bed in the loft received a weary man who never opened his eyes till five o'clock set the little homesteader going once more. They refused any payment, and by six I had breakfasted and was striding southwards again. My notion was to return to the railway line a station or two further on than the place where I had alighted yesterday, and to double back. I reckoned that was the safest way, for the police would naturally assume that I was always making further from London in the direction of some western port. I thought I had still a good bit of a start, for, as I 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 care-worn. Indeed, I was in better spirits than I had been for months. Over the long ridge of Moreland I took my road, skirting the side of a high hill which the herd had called Cairnsmoor of Fleet. Nestling curlews and plovers were crying everywhere, and the links of green pasture by the streams were dotted with young lambs. All the slackness of the past months was slipping from my bones, and I stepped out like a four-year-old. By and by I came to a swell of Moreland 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 a room only for the single line, a slender siding, a waiting room, an office, the station master's cottage, and a tiny yard of gooseberries and sweet William. There seemed no road to it from anywhere, and to increase the desolation the waves of a tarn lapped on their gray granite beach half a mile away. I waited in the deep heather till I saw the smoke of an east going train on the horizon. Then I approached the tiny booking office and took a ticket for Dumfries. The only occupants of the carriage were an old shepherd and his dog, a war-eyed brute that I mistrusted. The man was asleep, and on the cushions beside him was that morning's Scotsman. Eagley I seized on it, for I fancied it would tell me something. There were two columns about the Portland Place murder, as it was called. My man Paddock had given the alarm and had the milkmen arrested. Poor devil! It looked as if the latter had earned his sovereign hardly. But for me he had been cheap at the price, for he seemed to have occupied the police the better part of a day. In the stop-press news I found a further instalment of the story. The milkman had been released, I read, and the true criminal about whose identity the police were reticent was believed to have got away from London by one of the northern lines. There was a short note about me as the owner of the flat. I guess the police had stuck in that as a clumsy contrivance to persuade me that I was unsuspected. There was nothing else in the paper, nothing about foreign politics or carol IDs, or the things that had interested Scudder. I laid it down and found that we were approaching the station at which I had got out yesterday. The potato-dinging 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 suppose 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 across the moor where the white road departed. I hoped they were going to take up my tracks there. As we moved away from that station my companion woke up. He fixed me with a wandering glance, kicked his dog vigorously, and inquired where he was. Clearly he was very drunk. That's what comes of being a teetotaler, he observed in bitter regret. I expressed my surprise that in him I should have met a blue-ribbon stalwart. Hey, but I'm a strong teetotaler, he said, pugnaciously. I took the pledge last Martin Mus and I haven't touched a drop of whiskey-cine, not even at Hogmanay, though I was ser-tempted. He swung his heels up on the seat and borrowed a frowsy head into the cushions. And last at a get, he moaned, a head hotter than hell fire, until he looked in different ways for the sabbath. What did it, I asked. A drink they call brandy. Being a teetotaler I kept off the whiskey, but I was nipping a day yesterday in at this brandy, and I do all know be well for a fortnict. His voice died away into a stutter, and sleep once more laid its heavy hand on him. My plan had been to get out at some station down the line, but the train suddenly gave me a better chance, for it came to a standstill at the end of a culvert which spanned a brawling portacoloured river. I looked out and saw that every carriage window was closed, and no human figure appeared on the landscape. So I opened the door and dropped quickly into the tangle of hazels which edged the line. It would have been all right, but for that infernal dog. Under the impression that I was decamping with its master's belongings, it started to bark, and all but got me by the trousers. This woke up the herd, who stood bawling at the carriage door in the belief that I had committed suicide. I crawled through the thicket, reached the edge of the stream, and in cover of the bushes put a hundred yards or so behind me. Then from my shelter I peered back, and saw that the guard and several passengers gathered round the open carriage door and stared in my direction. I could not have made a more public departure if I had left with a bugler and a brass band. Happily the drunken herd provided a diversion. He and his dog, which was attached by a rope to his waist, suddenly cascaded out of the carriage, landed on their heads on the track, and rolled some way down the bank towards the water. In the rescue which followed the dog bit somebody, for I could hear the sound of hard swearing. Presently they had forgotten me, and when after a quarter of a mile's crawl I ventured to look back, the train had started again and was vanishing in the cutting. I was in a wide semi-circle of Moreland, with the brown river as radius and the high hills forming the northern circumference. There was not a sign or sound of a human being, only the plashing water and the odd interminable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly enough, for the first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me. It was not the police that I thought of, but the other folk who knew that I knew Scudder's secret, and dared not let me live. I was certain that they would pursue me with a keenness and vigilance unknown to the British law, and that once their grip closed on me I should find no mercy. I looked back and 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 the green fields took the place of Heather. I have eyes like a hawk, but I could see nothing moving in the whole countryside. Then I looked east, beyond the ridge, and saw a new kind of landscape, shallow green valleys with plentiful fir plantations, and the faint lines of dust which spoke of high roads. 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 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 back 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 veil of a lowland stream. As I followed it, fields gave place to bent, the glen became a plateau, and presently I had reached a kind of pass where a solitary house smoked in the twilight. The road swung over a bridge, and leaning on the parapet was a man. He was smoking a long clay pipe and studying the water with spectacled eyes. In his left hand was a small book with a finger marking the place. Slowly he repeated, as when a griffin through the wilderness, with winged steppe or 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 wood-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 all stay the night. For to tell you the truth I have had no company for a week. I pulled myself up on the parapet of the bridge and filled my pipe. I began to detect an ally. You're young to be an innkeeper, I said. My father died a year ago, and left me the business. I lived there with my grandmother. It's a slow job for a young man, and it wasn't my choice of a 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 storyteller in the world. Not now, he said, eagerly. Maybe in the old days when you had pilgrims and ballad-makers and high women and male coaches on the road, but not now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of fat women who stop for lunch, or a fisherman or two in the spring, and the shooting tenant in August. There's 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. The most I've done yet is to get some verses printed in Chambers Journal. I looked at the inn, standing golden in the sunset against the wine-red hills. I've knocked a bit about the world, and I wouldn't despise such a hermitage. Do 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 lightening, and he quoted some verse about romance being up the nine-fifteen. Here's a true tale for you, then, I cried, and a month's henth 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 Decentral's, 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 IDB, illicit diamond-buying, 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 found it here. The devils are after me, and the police are after them. It's a race that I mean to win. By God! he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply. It is all pure rider-haggered, 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 toward the house. You can lie as snug here as if you were in a moss-hole. I'll see that nobody blabs, either, and you'll give me some more material about your adventures? As I entered the inn porch I heard from far off the beat of an engine. There, silhouetted against the dusky west, was my friend, the monoplane. He gave me a room at the back of the house with a fine outlook over the plateau, and made me free of his own study, which was stacked with cheap additions of his favourite authors. I never saw the grandmother, so I guessed she was bed-ridden. An old woman named 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 set 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 to make note of any strange figures he saw keeping a special sharp lookout for motors and aeroplanes. Then I sat down in real earnest to Scudder's Notebook. He came back at midday with the Scotsman. There was nothing in it except some further evidence of Paddock and the Milkman, and a repetition of yesterday's statement that the murderer had gone north. But there was a long article reprinted from the Times about Carolides 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 cipher. As I told you, it was a numerical cipher, and by an elaborate system of experiments I had pretty well discovered what were the nulls and stops. The trouble was the key word, and when I thought of the odd million words he might have used I felt pretty hopeless. But about three o'clock I had a sudden inspiration. The name Julia Chekeny flashed across my memory. Scudder had said it was the key to the Carolides business, and it occurred to me to try it on his cipher. It worked. The five letters of Julia gave me the position of the vowels. A was J, the tenth letter of the alphabet. And so repeated by X in the cipher. E was U, X, X, I, and so on. Chekeny 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 after 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 aqua-scutums and tweed-caps. Ten minutes later the innkeeper slipped into the room, his eyes bright with excitement. There's two chaps below looking for you, he whispered. They're in the dining-room having whiskies and sodas. They asked about you, and said they'd hope 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, and the other was always smiling and lisped in his talk. Neither was any kind of foreigner, on this my young friend was positive. I took a bit of paper, and wrote these words in German, as if they were part of a letter. Blackstone. 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 Carolides is uncertain about his plans, but if Mr. T advises, I will do the best I—I manufactured it rather neatly, so that it looked like a loose page or private letter. Take this down, and say it was found in my bedroom, and ask them to return it to me if they overtake me. Three minutes later I heard the car begin to move, and peeping from behind the curtain caught sight of the two figures. One was slim, the other was sleek. That was the most I could make of my reconnaissance. The innkeeper appeared in great excitement. Your paper woke them up, he said gleefully. That 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 a 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's Stuart to the chief constable. Describe the two men, and say you suspect them of having something to do with the London murder. You can invent reasons. The two will come back, no fear. Not to-night, for they'll follow me forty miles along the road. But first thing to-morrow morning, tell the police to be here bright and early. He set off like a docile child while I worked at Scudder's notes. When he came back we dined together, and in common decency I had to let him pump me. I gave him a lot of stuff about lion hunts and the Matabeely War, thinking all the while what tame business these were compared with this I was now engaged in. When he went to bed I sat up and finished Scudder. I smoked in a chair till daylight, for I could not sleep. About eight next morning I witnessed the arrival of two constables and a sergeant. They put their car in a coach-house under the innkeeper's instructions, and entered the house. Twenty minutes later I saw from my window a second car come across the plateau from the opposite direction. It did not come up to the inn, but stopped two hundred yards off in the shelter of a patch of wood. I noticed that its occupants carefully reversed it before leaving it. A minute or two later I heard their steps on the gravel outside the window. My plan had been to lie hid in my bedroom and see what happened. I had a notion that if I could bring the police and my other more dangerous pursuers together something might work out of it to my advantage. But now I had a better idea. I scribbled a line of thanks to my host, opened the window, and dropped quietly into a gooseberry bush. Unobserved I crossed the dyke, crawled down to the side of a tributary burn, and won the high road 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 onto 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. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of The 39 Steps by John Buchan This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The 39 Steps by John Buchan Read by Adrian Pretzelis Chapter 4 The Adventure of the Radical Candidate You may picture me driving that forty-horsepower car for all she was worth over the crisp more roads on that shining May morning, glancing back at first over my shoulder, and looking anxiously to the next turning, then driving with a vague eye just wide enough awake to keep on the highway, for I was thinking desperately of what I had found in Scudder's pocket-book. The little man had told me a pack of lies. All his yarns about the Balkans and the Jew-anarchists, and the Foreign Office Conference were eye-wash, and so was Carolides. And yet not quite as usual here. I had staked everything on my belief in his story, and have been let down. Here was his book telling me a different tale, and instead of being once bitten twice shy, I believed it absolutely. Why? I don't know. It rang desperately true, and the first yarn, if you understand me, had been in a queer way true also in spirit. The fifteenth day of June was going to be a day of destiny—a bigger destiny than the killing of a Dago. It was so big that I didn't blame Scudder for keeping me out of the game and wanting to play a lone hand. That, I was pretty clear, was his intention. He had told me something which sounded big enough, but the real thing was so immortally big that he, the man who had found it out, wanted it all for himself. I didn't blame him. It was risks, after all, that he was chiefly greedy about. The whole story was in the notes, with gaps you understand, which he would have filled up from his memory. He stuck down his authorities, too, and had an odd trick of giving them all a numerical value, and then striking a balance which stood for the reliability of each stage in the yarn. The three names he had printed were authorities, and there was a man, Ducrosney, who got five out of a possible five, and another fellow, Amherst Fort, who got three. The bare bones of the tale were all that was in the book. That, and one queer phrase which occurred half a dozen times inside brackets. Thirty-nine steps was the phrase, and at its last time of use it ran thirty-nine steps. I counted them. High tide, ten-seventeen p.m. I could make nothing of that. The first thing I learned was that it was no question of preventing a war. That was coming, as sure as Christmas, had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since February 1912. Carolides 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 eporotic guards that would skin their own grandmother was all billio. The second thing was that this war was going to come as a mighty surprise to Britain. Carolides' death would set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would chip in with an ultimatum. Russia wouldn't like that, and there would be high words. But Berlin would play the peacemaker and pour oil on the waters, till suddenly she would find a good cause for a quarrel, pick it up, and in five hours let fly at us. That was the idea, and a pretty good one, too. Honey and fair speeches, and then a stroke in the dark. While we were talking about the 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 officer coming back from West Africa who had told me a lot of things. One was that, in spite of all the nonsense talked in Parliament, there was a real working alliance between France and Britain, and that the two General Staffs met every now and then and made plans for joint action in time 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 mobilisation. At least I gathered it was something like that, anyhow it was something uncommonly important. But on the fifteenth day of June there were to be others in London, others at whom I could only guess. Scudder was content to call them collectively the Black Stone. They represented not our allies but our deadly foes, and the information destined for France was to be diverted to their pockets. And it was to be used, remember, used a week or two later with great guns and swift torpedoes suddenly in the darkness of a summer night. This was the story I had been deciphering in the 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 watches of the Black Stone running silently and swiftly on my trail. I had no very clear purpose in my journey, but I steered east by the sun, for I remembered from the map that if I went north I would come into a region of coal pits and industrial towns. Presently I was down from the moorlands and traversing the broad whore 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 the little old, thatched villages, and over peaceful lowland streams, and past gardens blazing with hawthorn and yellow labyrinum. The land was so deep in peace that I could scarcely believe that somewhere behind me were those who sought my life. I, and that in a month's time, unless I had the mightiest of luck, these round, country faces would be pinched and staring, and men would be lying dead in English fields. About mid-day I entered a long, straggling village, and had a mind to stop and eat. Half way down was the post office, and on the steps of it stood the postmistress and a policeman hard at work conning a telegram. When they saw me they wakened up, and the policeman advanced with a raised hand and cried on me to stop. I nearly was full 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 by-ways. It wasn't an easy job without a map, for there was the risk of getting into a farm-yard 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 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 hostelry 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 brought from a baker's cart. Just then I heard a noise in the sky, and lo and behold there was that infernal aeroplane flying low about a dozen miles to the south and rapidly coming towards me. I had the sense to remember that, on a bare moor, I was at the aeroplane's mercy and that my only chance was to get to the leafy cover of the valley. Down the hill I went, like blue lightning, screwing my head round whenever I dared to watch that damned flying machine. Soon I was on a road between hedges and dipping to the deep-cut glen of a stream. Then came a bit of thick wood where I slackened speed. Suddenly on my left I heard the hoot of another car, and realised to my horror that I was almost upon a couple of gate-posts through which a private road debouched onto the highway. My horn gave an agonised roar, but it was too late. I clapped on my brakes, but my impetus was too great, and there before me a car was sliding a-thought my course. In a second there would have been a deuce of a wreck. I did the only thing possible, and ran slap into the hedge on the right, trusting to find something soft beyond. But there I was mistaken. My car slithered through the hedge, like butter, 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 tonne or two of expensive metal slipped below me, bucked and pitched, and then dropped with an almighty smash, fifty feet, to the bed of the stream. Slowly that thorn let me go. I subsided first on the hedge, and then very gently on a bow 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 yellow ulster who kept on blessing his soul, and winneying 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, but I gad you're the very man I've been praying for. Are you by any chance a free trader? I am, said I, without the foggiest notion of what he meant. He patted my shoulder and hurried me into his car. Three minutes later we drew up before a comfortable-looking shooting-box set among pine trees, and he ushered me indoors. He took me first to a bedroom and flung a half a dozen of his suits before me, for my own had been pretty well reduced to rags. I selected a loose blue surge, which differed most conspicuously from my own garments, and borrowed a linen collar. Then he hailed 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 juice of a mess, Mr. R. By the by you haven't told me your name. Twiston? Any relation to old Tommy Twiston of the sixtieth? No? Well, you see, I am liberal candidate for this part of the world, and I had a meeting on to-night at Brattleburn. That's my chief town, and an infernal Tory stronghold. I had got the colonial ex-premier fellow, Crumpleton, coming to speak for me to-night, and had the thing tremendously billed, and the whole place ground-baited. This afternoon I got a wire from the ruffian, saying he has got influenza at Blackpool, and here I am 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 forever more in your debt. I had very few notions about free trade, one way or the other, but I saw no other chance to get what I wanted. My young gentleman was far too absorbed in his own difficulties to think how odd it was to ask a stranger who had just missed death by an ace, and who had lost a one-thousand-guinea car to address a meeting for him on the spur of the moment. But my necessities did not allow me to contemplate oddness or to pick and choose my supports. All right, I said. I'm not much good as a speaker, but I'll tell them a bit about Australia. At my words the cares of the ages slipped from his shoulders, and he was raptuous in his thanks. He lent me a big driving-coat, and never troubled to ask why I had started on a motor-tour without possessing an Ulster, and as we slipped down the dusty roads, poured into my ears the simple facts of his history. He was an orphan, and his uncle had brought him up. I've forgotten the uncle's name, but he was in the cabinet, and you can read his speeches in the papers. He had gone round the world after leaving Cambridge, and then, being short of a job, his uncle had advised politics. I gathered that he had no preference in parties. Good chaps in both, he said cheerfully, and plenty of blighters, too. I'm a liberal, because my family have always been wigs. But if he was lukewarm politically, he had strong views on other things. He found out that I knew a bit about horses, and jeered away about the Derby entries, and he was full of plans for improving his shooting—all together a very clean, decent, callow young man. As we passed through a little town, two policemen signalled to us to stop, and flashed their lanterns on us. Beg pardon, Sahari. I've got instructions to look out for a car, and the descriptions not unlike yours. Right here, said my host, when I thanked Providence for the devious ways I had been brought to safety. After that we spoke no more, for my host's mind began to labour heavily with his coming speech. His lips kept muttering, his eyes wandered, and I began to prepare myself for a second catastrophe. I tried to think of something to say myself, but my mind was dry as a stone. The next thing I knew we had drawn up outside a door in a street, and were being welcomed by some noisy gentleman with rosettes. The hall had about five hundred in it, women mostly, a lot of bald heads, and a dozen or two young men. The chairman, a weasley 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've never heard anything like it. He didn't begin to know how to talk. He had about a bushel of notes from which he read, and when he let go of them he fell into one prolonged stutter. Every now and then he remembered a phrase he had learned by heart, straightened his back, and gave it off like Harry Irving, and the next moment he was bent double and crooning over his papers. It was the most appalling rot, too. He talked about the German menace, and said it was all a Tory invention to cheat the poor of their rights, and keep back the great flood of social reform, but that organised labour realised this, and laughed the Tories to scorn. He was all for reducing our navy as a proof of our good faith, and then sending Germany an ultimatum, telling her to do the same, or we would knock her into a cocked hat. He said that, but for the Tories, Germany and Britain would be fellow workers in peace and reform. I thought of the little black book in my pocket. A giddy lot scudder's friends cared for peace and reform. Yet in a queer way I liked the speech. You could see the niceness of the chap shining out behind the muck with which he had been spoon-fed. Also it took a load off my mind. I mightn't be much of an orator, but I was a thousand percent 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 immigration and universal service. I doubt if I remembered to mention free trade, but I said there were no Tories in Australia, only labour and liberals. That fetched a cheer, and I woke them up a bit when I started in to tell them the kind of glorious business I thought could be made out of the empire if we really put our backs into it. Although 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 Statesman-like, and mine as having the eloquence of an immigration agent. When we were in the car again my host was in wild spirits, having got his job over. A ripping speech, Twisden, he said. Now you're coming home with me. I'm all alone, and if you'll stop a day or two I'll show you some very decent fishing. We had a hot supper, and I wanted it pretty badly, and then drank grog in a big, cheery smoking room with a crackling wood fire. I thought the time had come for me to put my cards on the table. I saw by this man's eye that he was the kind you can trust. Listen, Sir Harry, I said. I've got something pretty important to say to you. You're a good fellow, and I'm going to be frank. Where on earth did you get that poisonous rubbish you talked last night? His face fell. Was it as bad as that? he asked ruefully. It did sound rather thin. I got most of it out of the progressive magazine, and pamphlets that agent chap of mine keeps sending me. But surely you 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. But if you'll give me your attention for half an hour, I'm going to tell you a story. I can see yet that bright room with the deer's heads and the old prints on the walls. Sir Harry standing restlessly on the stone curb of the hearth, and myself lying back in an arm chair, speaking. I seemed to be another person, standing aside and listening to my own voice, and judging carefully the reliability of my tale. It was the first time I had ever told any one the exact truth, so far as I understood it, and it did me no end of good, for it straightened out the thing in my own mind. I blinked no detail. He heard all about Scudder, and the Milkman, and the Notebook, and my doings in Galloway. Presently he got very excited and walked up and down the hearth-rug. So you see, I concluded, you have got here in your house the man that is wanted for the Portland Place murder. Your duty is to send your car for the police and give me up. I don't think I'll get very far. There'll be an accident, and I'll have a knife in my ribs in an hour or two after a rest. Nevertheless, it's your duty as a law-abiding citizen. Perhaps in a month's time you'll be sorry, but you'll have no cause to think of that. He was looking at me with bright, steady eyes. "'What was your job in Rudisha, Mr. Haney?' he asked. Miding-engineer, I said. I 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 Mishona trick of tossing it and catching it in my lips. That wants a pretty steady heart.' He watched me with a smile. I don't want proofs. I may be in an ass on a platform, but I can size up a man. You're no murderer, and you're no fool, and I believe you are speaking the truth. I'm going to back you up. Now, what can I do? First, I want you to write a letter to your uncle. I've got to get in touch with the government people some time before the fifteenth of June. He pulled his moustache. That won't help you. This is foreign office business, and my uncle would have nothing to do with it. Besides, you'll never convince him. No, I'll go one better. I'll write to the permanent secretary at the foreign office. He's my godfather, and one of the best going. What do you want? He sat down at the table and wrote to my dictation. The gist of it was that if a man called Twizden—I thought I'd better stick to that name—turned up before June fifteenth, he was to treat him kindly. He said Twizden would prove his bona fides by passing the word Blackstone and whistling Annie Laurie. Good, said Sir Harry. That's the proper style. By the way, you'll find my godfather, his name Sir Walter Bullivant, down at his country cottage for Whitsun Tide. It's close to Artin's well on the Kennet. That's done. Now, what's the next thing? You're about my height. Lend me the oldest tweed suit you've got. Anything will do, so long as the collar is the opposite for the clothes I destroyed this afternoon. Then show me a map of the neighbourhood, and explain to me the lie of the land. Lastly, if the police come asking about me, just show them the car and the glen. If the other lot turn up, tell them I caught the South Express after your meeting. He did, or promised to do, all these things. I shaved off the remnants of my moustache, and got inside an ancient suit of what I believe is called heather mixture. The map gave me some notion of my whereabouts, and told me the two things I wanted to know, where the mowing railway to the South could be joined, and what were the wildest districts near at hand. At two o'clock he wakened me from my slumbered in the smoking-room armchair, and led me blinking into the dark, starry night. An old bicycle was found in a tall shed, and handed over to me. First turned to the right up by the long firwood, he enjoyed. 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 you were in New Guinea. I peddled 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 of glens falling on every side, and a far away blue horizon. Here at any rate I could get early news of my enemies.