The ThirtyNine Steps.......................................................................................................................................1

John Buchan .............................................................................................................................................1

You and I have long cherished an affection for that elemental type of tale which Americans call the 'dime

novel' and which we know as the 'shocker' the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and

march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last winter I exhausted my store of those aids

to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself. This little volume is the result, and I should like to

put your name on it in memory of our long friendship, in the days when the wildest fictions are so much less

I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been

three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have

been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the

talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough exercise, and the amusements of London

seemed as flat as soda water that has been standing in the sun. 'Richard Hannay,' I kept telling myself, 'you

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 racemeetings. I had no real pal to go about with,

which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much

interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on their own

affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from

Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all. Here was I, thirtyseven years old, sound in wind and

limb, with enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear

out and get back to the veld, for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom.

That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to give my mind something to work on,

and on my way home I turned into my club rather a pothouse, which took in Colonial members. I had a

long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an article

about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I rather fancied the chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man

in the show; and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be said for most of them. I

gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and

one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon. I remember wondering if I

could get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from

About six o'clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Cafe Royal, and turned into a musichall. It was a silly

show, all capering women and monkeyfaced 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 shopgirls and clerks and dandies

and policemen had some interest in life that kept them going. I gave halfacrown to a beggar because I saw

him yawn; he was a fellowsufferer. 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

My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langham Place. There was a common staircase, with a

porter and a liftman at the entrance, but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was

quite shut off from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came in

by the day. He arrived before eight o'clock every morning and used to depart at seven, for I never dined at

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

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

I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the threshold than he made a dash for my

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

'I'm very sorry,' he said humbly. 'It's a mighty liberty, but you looked the kind of man who would understand.

I've had you in my mind all this week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?'

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

There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff whiskyandsoda. He

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

'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.'

He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold 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

I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out. Away behind all the Governments and the

armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come

on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further, and then he got caught. I gathered that most of the people

in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that beside them there were financiers

who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited the book of

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

When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would

be in the melting pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels,

and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides,

'Do you wonder?' he cried. 'For three hundred years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match

for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take any big

Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und Zu

Something, an elegant young man who talks EtonandHarrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business

is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a

hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're on the biggest

kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little whitefaced

Jew in a bathchair 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

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

'Yes and no,' he said. 'They won up to a point, but they struck a bigger thing than money, a thing that couldn't

be bought, the old elemental fighting instincts of man. If you're going to be killed you invent some kind of

flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing. Those foolish devils of soldiers

have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my

friends haven't played their last card by a long sight. They've gotten the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can

'MORS JANUA VITAE,' he smiled. (I recognized the quotation: it was about all the Latin I knew.) 'I'm

you wise about a lot of things first. If you read your newspaper, I guess you know the name of Constantine

'He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is the one big brain in the whole show, and he happens

also to be an honest man. Therefore he has been marked down these twelve months past. I found that out

not that it was difficult, for any fool could guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to get

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

'They can't get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of Epirotes that would skin their grandmothers.

But on the 15th day of June he is coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken to having

International teaparties, and the biggest of them is due on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned the principal

guest, and if my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring countrymen.'

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

'And play their game?' he asked sharply. 'If he does not come they win, for he's the only man that can

straighten out the tangle. And if his Government are warned he won't come, for he does not know how big the

'What about the British Government?' I said. 'They're not going to let their guests be murdered. Tip them the

'No good. They might stuff your city with plainclothes detectives and double the police and Constantine

would still be a doomed man. My friends are not playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for

the taking off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He'll be murdered by an Austrian, and there'll be plenty of

evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course,

but the case will look black enough to the world. I'm not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every

detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will be the most finished piece of blackguardism since

the Borgias. But it's not going to come off if there's a certain man who knows the wheels of the business alive

right here in London on the 15th day of June. And that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P. Scudder.'

I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like a rattrap, and there was the fire of battle in his

'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 furshop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little bookshop off the

Racknitzstrasse in Leipsic. I completed my evidence ten days ago in Paris. I can't tell you the details now, for

it's something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I judged it my business to disappear, and I

reached this city by a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young FrenchAmerican, 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 cinemaman 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 thought I

'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

I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked scare on his face, completed my conviction of

'I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die. If

'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 fourwheeler, and I had to be assisted

upstairs to my room. You see I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to

mix me a sleeping draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some

and said I couldn't abide leeches. When I was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse. He was my size,

and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place. The jaw was

the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I daresay there will be somebody tomorrow

to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I

left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas, with a revolver lying on the bedclothes 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

use my trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind all day, and there seemed nothing to do but to

make an appeal to you. I watched from my window till I saw you come home, and then slipped down the stair

to meet you ... There, Sir, I guess you know about as much as me of this business.'

He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and yet desperately determined. By this time I was pretty

well convinced that he was going straight with me. It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my

time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of judging the man rather

than the story. If he had wanted to get a location in my flat, and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a

'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

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

dressingtable. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn't leave any clues to breed suspicions. The gentry who are

after me are pretty brighteyed citizens. You'll have to take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you'll get

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

'Sure,' he said, jumping up with some briskness. 'I haven't the privilege of your name, Sir, but let me tell you

I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an hour's time a figure came out that I scarcely

recognized. Only his gimlety, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the

middle, and he had cut his eyebrows. Further, he carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very

model, even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had had a long spell in India. He had a

monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech.

'Not Mr Scudder,' he corrected; 'Captain Theophilus Digby, of the 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I'll

I made him up a bed in my smokingroom and sought my own couch, more cheerful than I had been for the

past month. Things did happen occasionally, even in this Godforgotten metropolis.

I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce of a row at the smokingroom door.

Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him as my servant

as soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great

'Stop that row, Paddock,' I said. 'There's a friend of mine, Captain Captain' (I couldn't remember the name)

I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a great swell, with his nerves pretty bad from overwork,

who wanted absolute rest and stillness. Nobody had got to know he was here, or he would be besieged by

communications from the India Office and the Prime Minister and his cure would be ruined. I am bound to

say Scudder played up splendidly when he came to breakfast. He fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just like a

British officer, asked him about the Boer War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about imaginary pals.

Paddock couldn't learn to call me 'Sir', but he 'sirred' Scudder as if his life depended on it.

I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and went down to the City till luncheon. When I got back

'Nawsty business 'ere this morning, Sir. Gent in No. 15 been and shot 'isself. They've just took 'im to the

I ascended to No. 15, and found a couple of bobbies and an inspector busy making an examination. I asked a

few idiotic questions, and they soon kicked me out. Then I found the man that had valeted Scudder, and

pumped him, but I could see he suspected nothing. He was a whining fellow with a churchyard face, and

I attended the inquest next day. A partner of some publishing firm gave evidence that the deceased had

brought him woodpulp propositions, and had been, he believed, an agent of an American business. The jury

found it a case of suicide while of unsound mind, and the few effects were handed over to the American

Consul to deal with. I gave Scudder a full account of the affair, and it interested him greatly. He said he

wished he could have attended the inquest, for he reckoned it would be about as spicy as to read one's own

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 15th, and ticked each off

with a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand against them. I would find him sunk in a brown study, with

his sharp eyes abstracted, and after those spells of meditation he was apt to be very despondent.

Then I could see that he began to get edgy again. He listened for little noises, and was always asking me if

Paddock could be trusted. Once or twice he got very peevish, and apologized for it. I didn't blame him. I

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

I did not give him very close attention. The fact is, I was more interested in his own adventures than in his

high politics. I reckoned that Karolides and his affairs were not my business, leaving all that to him. So a lot

that he said slipped clean out of my memory. I remember that he was very clear that the danger to Karolides

would not begin till he had got to London, and would come from the very highest quarters, where there would

be no thought of suspicion. He mentioned the name of a woman Julia Czechenyi as having something to

do with the danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get Karolides out of the care of his guards. He

talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man that lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly

somebody that he never referred to without a shudder an old man with a young voice who could hood his

He spoke a good deal about death, too. He was mortally anxious about winning through with his job, but he

didn't care a rush for his life. 'I reckon it's like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out, and waking

to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the window. I used to thank God for such mornings

way back in the 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 much of the time. I went out to

dinner with a mining engineer I had got to see on business, and came back about halfpast ten in time for our

I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as I pushed open the smokingroom door. The lights were not lit,

I snapped the switch, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the far corner which made me

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

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

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 coldblooded indoor business was different. Still I

managed to pull myself together. I looked at my watch, and saw that it was halfpast ten.

An idea seized me, and I went over the flat with a smalltooth 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 tablecloth. The men who knew that he knew what he

knew had found him, and had taken the best way to make certain of his silence. Yes; but he had been in my

rooms four days, and his enemies must have reckoned that he had confided in me. So I would be the next to

go. It might be that very night, or next day, or the day after, but my number was up all right. Then suddenly I

thought of another probability. Supposing I went out now and called in the police, or went to bed and let

Paddock find the body and call them in the morning. What kind of a story was I to tell about Scudder? I had

lied to Paddock about him, and the whole thing looked desperately fishy. If I made a clean breast of it and

told the police everything he had told me, they would simply laugh at me. The odds were a thousand to one

that I would be charged with the murder, and the circumstantial evidence was strong enough to hang me. Few

people knew me in England; I had no real pal who could come forward and swear to my character. Perhaps

that was what those secret enemies were playing for. They were clever enough for anything, and an English

prison was as good a way of getting rid of me till after June 15th as a knife in my chest.

Besides, if I told the whole story, and by any miracle was believed, I would be playing their game. Karolides

would stay at home, which was what they wanted. Somehow or other the sight of Scudder's dead face had

made me a passionate believer in his scheme. He was gone, but he had taken me into his confidence, and I

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

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

My first job was to keep going for the next three weeks. It was now the 24th day of May, and that meant

twenty days of hiding before I could venture to approach the powers that be. I reckoned that two sets of

people would be looking for me Scudder's enemies to put me out of existence, and the police, who would

want me for Scudder's murder. It was going to be a giddy hunt, and it was queer how the prospect comforted

me. I had been slack so long that almost any chance of activity was welcome. When I had to sit alone with

that corpse and wait on Fortune I was no better than a crushed worm, but if my neck's safety was to hang on

My 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

breastpocket, and only a few loose coins and a cigarholder in the waistcoat. The trousers held a little

penknife and some silver, and the side pocket of his jacket contained an old crocodileskin cigarcase. There

was no sign of the little black book in which I had seen him making notes. That had no doubt been taken by

been pulled out in the writingtable. 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 pocketbook.

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 diningroom. There was no

trace of the book. Most likely the enemy had found it, but they had not found it on Scudder's body.

Then I got out an atlas and looked at a big map of the British Isles. My notion was to get off to some wild

district, where my veldcraft would be of some use to me, for I would be like a trapped rat in a city. I

considered that Scotland would be best, for my people were Scotch and I could pass anywhere as an ordinary

Scotsman. I had half an idea at first to be a German tourist, for my father had had German partners, and I had

been brought up to speak the tongue pretty fluently, not to mention having put in three years prospecting for

copper in German Damaraland. But I calculated that it would be less conspicuous to be a Scot, and less in a

line with what the police might know of my past. I fixed on Galloway as the best place to go. It was the

nearest wild part of Scotland, so far as I could figure it out, and from the look of the map was not over thick

A search in Bradshaw informed me that a train left St Pancras at 7.10, which would land me at any Galloway

station in the late afternoon. That was well enough, but a more important matter was how I was to make my

way to St Pancras, for I was pretty certain that Scudder's friends would be watching outside. This puzzled me

for a bit; then I had an inspiration, on which I went to bed and slept for two troubled hours.

I got up at four and opened my bedroom shutters. The faint light of a fine summer morning was flooding the

skies, and the sparrows had begun to chatter. I had a great revulsion of feeling, and felt a Godforgotten fool.

My inclination was to let things slide, and trust to the British police taking a reasonable view of my case. But

as I reviewed the situation I could find no arguments to bring against my decision of the previous night, so

with a wry mouth I resolved to go on with my plan. I was not feeling in any particular funk; only disinclined

I hunted out a wellused 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,

Now came the next step. Paddock used to arrive punctually at 7.30 and let himself in with a latchkey. But

about twenty minutes to seven, as I knew from bitter experience, the milkman turned up with a great clatter of

cans, and deposited my share outside my door. I had seen that milkman sometimes when I had gone out for

an early ride. He was a young man about my own height, with an illnourished moustache, and he wore a

I went into the darkened smokingroom where the rays of morning light were beginning to creep through the

shutters. There I breakfasted off a whiskyandsoda and some biscuits from the cupboard. By this time it

was getting on for six o'clock. I put a pipe in My Pocket and filled my pouch from the tobacco jar on the table

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

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

Then I hung about in the hall waiting for the milkman. That was the worst part of the business, for I was

fairly choking to get out of doors. Sixthirty passed, then sixforty, but still he did not come. The fool had

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

'Come in here a moment,' I said. 'I want a word with you.' And I led him into the diningroom.

'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

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

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

I stuck on his flat blue hat and his white overall, picked up the cans, banged my door, and went whistling

downstairs. The porter at the foot told me to shut my jaw, which sounded as if my 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 firstfloor window was a face. As the loafer passed he looked up, and I fancied a signal was

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 lefthand turning which led past a bit of vacant ground. There was no one in the little

street, so I dropped the milkcans inside the hoarding and sent the cap and overall after them. I had only just

put on my cloth cap when a postman came round the corner. I gave him good morning and he answered me

unsuspiciously. At the moment the clock of a neighbouring church struck the hour of seven.

There was not a second to spare. As soon as I got to Euston Road I took to my heels and ran. The clock at

Euston Station showed five minutes past the hour. At St Pancras I had no time to take a ticket, let alone that I

had not settled upon my destination. A porter told me the platform, and as I entered it I saw the train already

in motion. Two station officials blocked the way, but I dodged them and clambered into the last carriage.

Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the northern tunnels, an irate guard interviewed me. He

wrote out for me a ticket to NewtonStewart, a name which had suddenly come back to my memory, and he

conducted me from the firstclass compartment where I had ensconced myself to a thirdclass 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

'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'

The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life in an atmosphere of protest against authority. I

I had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine May weather, with the hawthorn flowering on every

hedge, and I asked myself why, when I was still a free man, I had stayed on in London and not got the good

of this heavenly country. I didn't dare face the restaurant car, but I got a luncheonbasket at Leeds and shared

it with the fat woman. Also I got the morning's papers, with news about starters for the Derby and the

beginning of the cricket season, and some paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were settling down and a

When I had done with them I got out Scudder's little black pocketbook and studied it. It was pretty well

filled with jottings, chiefly figures, though now and then a name was printed in. For example, I found the

words 'Hofgaard', 'Luneville', and 'Avocado' pretty often, and especially the word 'Pavia'.

Now I was certain that Scudder never did anything without a reason, and I was pretty sure that there was a

cypher in all this. That is a subject which has always interested me, and I did a bit at it myself once as

intelligence officer at Delagoa Bay during the Boer War. I have a head for things like chess and puzzles, and

I used to reckon myself pretty good at finding out cyphers. This one looked like the numerical kind where

sets of figures correspond to the letters of the alphabet, but any fairly shrewd man can find the clue to that

sort after an hour or two's work, and I didn't think Scudder would have been content with anything so easy.

So I fastened on the printed words, for you can make a pretty good numerical cypher if you have a key word

I tried for hours, but none of the words answered. Then I fell asleep and woke at Dumfries just in time to

bundle out and get into the slow Galloway train. There was a man on the platform whose looks I didn't like,

but he never glanced at me, and when I caught sight of myself in the mirror of an automatic machine I didn't

wonder. With my brown face, my old tweeds, and my slouch, I was the very model of one of the hill farmers

I travelled with half a dozen in an atmosphere of shag and clay pipes. They had come from the weekly

market, and their mouths were full of prices. I heard accounts of how the lambing had gone up the Cairn and

the Deuch and a dozen other mysterious waters. Above half the men had lunched heavily and were highly

flavoured with whisky, but they took no notice of me. We rumbled slowly into a land of little wooded glens

and then to a great wide moorland place, gleaming with lochs, with high blue hills showing northwards.

About five o'clock the carriage had emptied, and I was left alone as I had hoped. I got out at the next station,

a little place whose name I scarcely noted, set right in the heart of a bog. It reminded me of one of those

forgotten little stations in the Karroo. An old stationmaster 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 midocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits. I actually

felt lighthearted. I might have been a boy out for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirtyseven

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, honestsmelling hill country, for every mile

In a roadside planting I cut a walkingstick of hazel, and presently struck off the highway up a bypath which

followed the glen of a brawling stream. I reckoned that I was still far ahead of any pursuit, and for that night

might please myself. It was some hours since I had tasted food, and I was getting very hungry when I came to

a herd's cottage set in a nook beside a waterfall. A brownfaced 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

At the darkening her man came in from the hills, a lean giant, who in one step covered as much ground as

three paces of ordinary mortals. They asked me no questions, for they had the perfect breeding of all dwellers

in the wilds, but I could see they set me down as a kind of dealer, and I took some trouble to confirm their

view. I spoke a lot about cattle, of which my host knew little, and I picked up from him a good deal about the

local Galloway markets, which I tucked away in my memory for future use. At ten I was nodding in my chair,

and the 'bed in the loft' received a weary man who never opened his eyes till five o'clock set the little

They refused any payment, and by six I had breakfasted and was striding southwards again. My notion was to

return to the railway line a station or two farther on than the place where I had alighted yesterday and to

double back. I reckoned that that was the safest way, for the police would naturally assume that I was always

making farther from London in the direction of some western port. I thought I had still a good bit of a start,

for, as I reasoned, it would take some hours to fix the blame on me, and several more to identify the fellow

it was the same jolly, clear spring weather, and I simply could not contrive to feel careworn. Indeed I was in

better spirits than I had been for months. Over a long ridge of moorland I took my road, skirting the side of a

high hill which the herd had called Cairnsmore of Fleet. Nesting curlews and plovers were crying

everywhere, and the links of green pasture by the streams were dotted with young lambs. All the slackness of

the past months was slipping from my bones, and I stepped out like a fouryearold. Byandby 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

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 waitingroom, an office, the station master's cottage, and a tiny

yard of gooseberries and sweetwilliam. There seemed no road to it from anywhere, and to increase the

desolation the waves of a tarn lapped on their grey granite beach half a mile away. I waited in the deep

heather till I saw the smoke of an eastgoing train on the horizon. Then I approached the tiny bookingoffice

The only occupants of the carriage were an old shepherd and his dog a walleyed brute that I mistrusted.

The man was asleep, and on the cushions beside him was that morning's SCOTSMAN. Eagerly I seized on it,

There were two columns about the Portland Place Murder, as it was called. My man Paddock had given the

alarm and had the milkman arrested. Poor devil, it looked as if the latter had earned his sovereign hardly; but

for me he had been cheap at the price, for he seemed to have occupied the police for the better part of the day.

In the latest news I found a further instalment of the story. The milkman had been released, I read, and the

true criminal, about whose identity the police were reticent, was believed to have got away from London by

one of the northern lines. There was a short note about me as the owner of the flat. I guessed the police had

There was nothing else in the paper, nothing about foreign politics or Karolides, or the things that had

interested Scudder. I laid it down, and found that we were approaching the station at which I had got out

yesterday. The potatodigging stationmaster had been gingered up into some activity, for the westgoing

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 onehorse siding. Sitting well back in the shadow I watched them carefully. One of them had a book,

and took down notes. The old potatodigger seemed to have turned peevish, but the child who had collected

my ticket was talking volubly. All the party looked out across the moor where the white road departed. I

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

'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 hetter than hell fire, and twae een lookin' different ways for the

'A drink they ca' brandy. Bein' a teetotaller I keepit off the whisky, but I was nipnippin' 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

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 portercoloured river. I looked out

and saw that every carriage window was closed and no human figure appeared in the landscape. So I opened

it would have been all right but for that infernal dog. Under the impression that I was decamping with its

master's belongings, it started to bark, and all but got me by the trousers. This woke up the herd, who stood

bawling at the carriage door in the belief that I had committed suicide. I crawled through the thicket, reached

the edge of the stream, and in cover of the bushes put a hundred yards or so behind me. Then from my shelter

I peered back, and saw the guard and several passengers gathered round the open carriage door and staring in

my direction. I could not have made a more public departure if I had left with a bugler and a brass band.

Happily the drunken herd provided a diversion. He and his dog, which was attached by a rope to his waist,

suddenly cascaded out of the carriage, landed on their heads on the track, and rolled some way down the bank

towards the water. In the rescue which followed the dog bit somebody, for I could hear the sound of hard

swearing. Presently they had forgotten me, and when after a quarter of a mile's crawl I ventured to look back,

I was in a wide semicircle of moorland, with the brown river as radius, and the high hills forming the

northern circumference. There was not a sign or sound of a human being, only the plashing water and the

interminable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly enough, for the first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me. It

was not the police that I thought of, but the other folk, who knew that I knew Scudder's secret and dared not

let me live. I was certain that they would pursue me with a keenness and vigilance unknown to the British

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

From my vantageground I could scan the whole moor right away to the railway line and to the south of it

where green fields took the place of heather. I have eyes like a hawk, but I could see nothing moving in the

whole countryside. Then I looked east beyond the ridge and saw a new kind of landscape shallow green

valleys with plentiful fir plantations and the faint lines of dust which spoke of highroads. Last of all I looked

Low down in the south a monoplane was climbing into the heavens. I was as certain as if I had been told that

that aeroplane was looking for me, and that it did not belong to the police. For an hour or two I watched it

from a pit of heather. It flew low along the hilltops, and then in narrow circles over the valley up which I

had come' Then it seemed to change its mind, rose to a great height, and flew away back to the south.

I did not like this espionage from the air, and I began to think less well of the countryside I had chosen for a

refuge. These heather hills were no sort of cover if my enemies were in the sky, and I must find a different

kind of sanctuary. I looked with more satisfaction to the green country beyond the ridge, for there I should

find woods and stone houses. About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to a white ribbon of road

which wound up the narrow vale of a lowland stream. As I followed it, fields gave place to bent, the glen

became a plateau, and presently I had reached a kind of pass where a solitary house smoked in the twilight.

He was smoking a long clay pipe and studying the water with spectacled eyes. In his left hand was a small

As when a Gryphon through the wilderness With winged step, o'er hill and moory dale Pursues the

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

'At your service,' he said politely. 'I am the landlord, Sir, and I hope you will stay the night, for to tell you the

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

'My father died a year ago and left me the business. I live there with my grandmother. It's a slow job for a

'And what better chance could you ask?' I cried. 'Man, I've often thought that an innkeeper would make the

'Not now,' he said eagerly. 'Maybe in the old days when you had pilgrims and balladmakers and

highwaymen and mailcoaches on the road. But not now. Nothing comes here but motorcars full of fat

women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two in the spring, and the shooting tenants in August. There

is not much material to be got out of that. I want to see life, to travel the world, and write things like Kipling

and Conrad. But the most I've done yet is to get some verses printed in CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL.' I looked

'I've knocked a bit about the world, and I wouldn't despise such a hermitage. D'you think that adventure is

found only in the tropics or among gentry in red shirts? Maybe you're rubbing shoulders with it at this

'That's what Kipling says,' he said, his eyes brightening, and he quoted some verse about 'Romance bringing

'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

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 bluevelvet nights. I described an attack on my life on the voyage

home, and I made a really horrid affair of the Portland Place murder. 'You're looking for adventure,' I cried;

'well, you've found it here. The devils are after me, and the police are after them. It's a race that I mean to

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

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

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

He caught my elbow in his eagerness and drew me towards the house. 'You can lie as snug here as if you

were in a mosshole. I'll see that nobody blabs, either. And you'll give me some more material about your

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

He gave me a room at the back of the house, with a fine outlook over the plateau, and he made me free of his

own study, which was stacked with cheap editions of his favourite authors. I never saw the grandmother, so I

guessed she was bedridden. An old woman called Margit brought me my meals, and the innkeeper was

around me at all hours. I wanted some time to myself, so I invented a job for him. He had a motorbicycle,

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

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 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

As I told you, it was a numerical cypher, and by an elaborate system of experiments I had pretty well

discovered what were the nulls and stops. The trouble was the key word, and when I thought of the odd

million words he might have used I felt pretty hopeless. But about three o'clock I had a sudden inspiration.

The name Julia Czechenyi flashed across my memory. Scudder had said it was the key to the Karolides

It worked. The five letters of 'Julia' gave me the position of the vowels. A was J, the tenth letter of the

alphabet, and so represented by X in the cypher. E was XXI, and so on. 'Czechenyi' gave me the numerals for

the principal consonants. I scribbled that scheme on a bit of paper and sat down to read Scudder's pages.

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

I glanced out of the window and saw a big touringcar 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

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 diningroom having

whiskiesandsodas. They asked about you and said they had hoped to meet you here. Oh! and they

described you jolly well, down to your boots and shirt. I told them you had been here last night and had gone

I made him tell me what they looked like. One was a darkeyed 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

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

... 'Black Stone. Scudder had got on to this, but he could not act for a fortnight. I doubt if I can do any good

now, especially as Karolides is uncertain about his plans. But if Mr T. advises I will do the best I ...'

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

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

Three minutes later I heard the car begin to move, and peeping from behind the curtain caught sight of the

two figures. One was slim, the other was sleek; that was the most I could make of my reconnaissance.

The innkeeper appeared in great excitement. 'Your paper woke them up,' he said gleefully. 'The dark fellow

went as white as death and cursed like blazes, and the fat one whistled and looked ugly. They paid for their

'Now I'll tell you what I want you to do,' I said. 'Get on your bicycle and go off to NewtonStewart to the

Chief Constable. Describe the two men, and say you suspect them of having had something to do with the

London murder. You can invent reasons. The two will come back, never fear. Not tonight, for they'll follow

me forty miles along the road, but first thing tomorrow morning. Tell the police to be here bright and early.'

He set off like a docile child, while I worked at Scudder's notes. When he came back we dined together, and

in common decency I had to let him pump me. I gave him a lot of stuff about lion hunts and the Matabele

War, thinking all the while what tame businesses these were compared to this I was now engaged in! When

he went to bed I sat up and finished Scudder. I smoked in a chair till daylight, for I could not sleep.

About eight next morning I witnessed the arrival of two constables and a sergeant. They put their car in a

coachhouse under the innkeeper's instructions, and entered the house. Twenty minutes later I saw from my

window a second car come across the plateau from the opposite direction. It did not come up to the inn, but

stopped two hundred yards off in the shelter of a patch of wood. I noticed that its occupants carefully

reversed it before leaving it. A minute or two later I heard their steps on the gravel outside the window.

My plan had been to lie hid in my bedroom, and see what happened. I had a notion that, if I could bring the

police and my other more dangerous pursuers together, something might work out of it to my advantage. But

now I had a better idea. I scribbled a line of thanks to my host, opened the window, and dropped quietly into

a gooseberry bush. Unobserved I crossed the dyke, crawled down the side of a tributary burn, and won the

highroad on the far side of the patch of trees. There stood the car, very spick and span in the morning

sunlight, but with the dust on her which told of a long journey. I started her, jumped into the chauffeur's seat,

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

You may picture me driving that 40 h.p. car for all she was worth over the crisp moor roads on that shining

May morning; glancing back at first over my shoulder, and looking anxiously to the next turning; then

driving with a vague eye, just wide enough awake to keep on the highway. For I was thinking desperately of

The little man had told me a pack of lies. All his yarns about the Balkans and the JewAnarchists and the

Foreign Office Conference were eyewash, and so was Karolides. And yet not quite, as you shall hear. I had

staked everything on my belief in his story, and had been let down; here was his book telling me a different

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

The whole story was in the notes with gaps, you understand, which he would have filled up from his

memory. He stuck down his authorities, too, and had an odd trick of giving them all a numerical value and

then striking a balance, which stood for the reliability of each stage in the yarn. The four names he had

printed were authorities, and there was a man, Ducrosne, who got five out of a possible five; and another

fellow, Ammersfoort, who got three. The bare bones of the tale were all that was in the book these, and one

queer phrase which occurred half a dozen times inside brackets. '(Thirtynine steps)' was the phrase; and at

its last time of use it ran '(Thirtynine steps, I counted them high tide 10.17 p.m.)'. I could make nothing

The first thing I learned was that it was no question of preventing a war. That was coming, as sure as

Christmas: had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since February 1912. Karolides was going to be the

occasion. He was booked all right, and was to hand in his checks on June 14th, two weeks and four days from

that May morning. I gathered from Scudder's notes that nothing on earth could prevent that. His talk of

The second thing was that this war was going to come as a mighty surprise to Britain. Karolides' death would

set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would chip in with an ultimatum. Russia wouldn't like that, and

there would be high words. But Berlin would play the peacemaker, and pour oil on the waters, till suddenly

she would find a good cause for a quarrel, pick it up, and in five hours let fly at us. That was the idea, and a

pretty good one too. Honey and fair speeches, and then a stroke in the dark. While we were talking about the

goodwill and good intentions of Germany our coast would be silently ringed with mines, and submarines

But all this depended upon the third thing, which was due to happen on June 15th. I would never have

grasped this if I hadn't once happened to meet a French staff officer, coming back from West Africa, who had

told me a lot of things. One was that, in spite of all the nonsense talked in Parliament, there was a real

working alliance between France and Britain, and that the two General Staffs met every now and then, and

made plans for joint action in case of war. Well, in June a very great swell was coming over from Paris, and

he was going to get nothing less than a statement of the disposition of the British Home Fleet on

mobilization. At least I gathered it was something like that; anyhow, it was something uncommonly

But on the 15th day of June there were to be others in London others, at whom I could only guess. Scudder

was content to call them collectively the 'Black Stone'. They represented not our Allies, but our deadly foes;

and the information, destined for France, was to be diverted to their pockets. And it was to be used, remember

used a week or two later, with great guns and swift torpedoes, suddenly in the darkness of a summer night.

This was the story I had been deciphering in a back room of a country inn, overlooking a cabbage garden.

This was the story that hummed in my brain as I swung in the big touringcar 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

I had no very clear purpose in my journey, but I steered east by the sun, for I remembered from the map that

if I went north I would come into a region of coalpits and industrial towns. Presently I was down from the

moorlands and traversing the broad haugh of a river. For miles I ran alongside a park wall, and in a break of

the trees I saw a great castle. I swung through little old thatched villages, and over peaceful lowland streams,

and past gardens blazing with hawthorn and yellow laburnum. The land was so deep in peace that I could

scarcely believe that somewhere behind me were those who sought my life; ay, and that in a month's time,

unless I had the almightiest of luck, these round country faces would be pinched and staring, and men would

About midday I entered a long straggling village, and had a mind to stop and eat. Halfway 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

I saw that main roads were no place for me, and turned into the byways. It wasn't an easy job without a map,

for there was the risk of getting on to a farm road and ending in a duckpond 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

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 doubleline 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

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 deepcut 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 gateposts through which a private road debouched on the highway. My horn gave an agonized

roar, but it was too late. I clapped on my brakes, but my impetus was too great, and there before me a car was

sliding athwart my course. In a second there would have been the deuce of a wreck. I did the only thing

possible, and ran slap into the hedge on the right, trusting to find something soft beyond.

But there I was mistaken. My car slithered through the hedge like butter, and then gave a sickening plunge

forward. I saw what was coming, leapt on the seat and would have jumped out. But a branch of hawthorn got

me in the chest, lifted me up and held me, while a ton or two of expensive metal slipped below me, bucked

and pitched, and then dropped with an almighty smash fifty feet to the bed of the stream.

Slowly that thorn let me go. I subsided first on the hedge, and then very gently on a bower of nettles. As I

scrambled to my feet a hand took me by the arm, and a sympathetic and badly scared voice asked me if I

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

'My blame, Sir,' I answered him. 'It's lucky that I did not add homicide to my follies. That's the end of my

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

'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

He patted my shoulder and hurried me into his car. Three minutes later we drew up before a

comfortablelooking shooting box set among pinetrees, and he ushered me indoors. He took me first to a

bedroom and flung half a dozen of his suits before me, for my own had been pretty well reduced to rags. I

selected a loose blue serge, which differed most conspicuously from my former garments, and borrowed a

linen collar. Then he haled me to the diningroom, 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.'

'You find me in the deuce of a mess, Mr bytheby, you haven't told me your name. Twisdon? Any

relation of old Tommy Twisdon of the Sixtieth? No? Well, you see I'm Liberal Candidate for this part of the

world, and I had a meeting on tonight at Brattleburn that's my chief town, and an infernal Tory stronghold.

I had got the Colonial exPremier fellow, Crumpleton, coming to speak for me tonight, and had the thing

tremendously billed and the whole place groundbaited. This afternoon I had a wire from the ruffian saying

he had got influenza at Blackpool, and here am I left to do the whole thing myself. I had meant to speak for

ten minutes and must now go on for forty, and, though I've been racking my brains for three hours to think of

something, I simply cannot last the course. Now you've got to be a good chap and help me. You're a Free

Trader and can tell our people what a washout Protection is in the Colonies. All you fellows have the gift of

I had very few notions about Free Trade one way or the other, but I saw no other chance to get what I wanted.

My young gentleman was far too absorbed in his own difficulties to think how odd it was to ask a stranger

who had just missed death by an ace and had lost a 1,000guinea car to address a meeting for him on the spur

of the moment. But my necessities did not allow me to contemplate oddnesses or to pick and choose my

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

At my words the cares of the ages slipped from his shoulders, and he was rapturous in his thanks. He lent me

a big driving coat and never troubled to ask why I had started on a motor tour without possessing an ulster

and, as we slipped down the dusty roads, poured into my ears the simple facts of his history. He was an

orphan, and his uncle had brought him up I've forgotten the uncle's name, but he was in the Cabinet, and

you can read his speeches in the papers. He had gone round the world after leaving Cambridge, and then,

being short of a job, his uncle had advised politics. I gathered that he had no preference in parties. 'Good

chaps in both,' he said cheerfully, 'and plenty of blighters, too. I'm Liberal, because my family have always

been Whigs.' But if he was lukewarm politically he had strong views on other things. He found out I knew a

bit about horses, and jawed away about the Derby entries; and he was full of plans for improving his

As we passed through a little town two policemen signalled us to stop, and flashed their lanterns on us.

'Beg pardon, Sir Harry,' said one. 'We've got instructions to look out for a car, and the description's no unlike

'Righto,' said my host, while I thanked Providence for the devious ways I had been brought to safety. After

that he spoke no more, for his mind began to labour heavily with his coming speech. His lips kept muttering,

his eye wandered, and I began to prepare myself for a second catastrophe. I tried to think of something to say

myself, but my mind was dry as a stone. The next thing I knew we had drawn up outside a door in a street,

and were being welcomed by some noisy gentlemen with rosettes. The hall had about five hundred in it,

women mostly, a lot of bald heads, and a dozen or two young men. The chairman, a weaselly minister with a

reddish nose, lamented Crumpleton's absence, soliloquized on his influenza, and gave me a certificate as a

'trusted leader of Australian thought'. There were two policemen at the door, and I hoped they took note of

I never heard anything like it. He didn't begin to know how to talk. He had about a bushel of notes from

which he read, and when he let go of them he fell into one prolonged stutter. Every now and then he

remembered a phrase he had learned by heart, straightened his back, and gave it off like Henry Irving, and the

next moment he was bent double and crooning over his papers. It was the most appalling rot, too. He talked

about the 'German menace', and said it was all a Tory invention to cheat the poor of their rights and keep back

the great flood of social reform, but that 'organized labour' realized this and laughed the Tories to scorn. He

was all for reducing our Navy as a proof of our good faith, and then sending Germany an ultimatum telling

her to do the same or we would knock her into a cocked hat. He said that, but for the Tories, Germany and

Britain would be fellowworkers in peace and reform. I thought of the little black book in my pocket! A

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 spoonfed. Also it took a load off my mind. I mightn't be much of an orator, but I

I didn't get on so badly when it came to my turn. I simply told them all I could remember about Australia,

praying there should be no Australian there all about its labour party and emigration and universal service. I

doubt if I remembered to mention Free Trade, but I said there were no Tories in Australia, only Labour and

Liberals. That fetched a cheer, and I woke them up a bit when I started in to tell them the kind of glorious

business I thought could be made out of the Empire if we really put our backs into it.

Altogether I fancy I was rather a success. The minister didn't like me, though, and when he proposed a vote

of thanks, spoke of Sir Harry's speech as 'statesmanlike' and mine as having 'the eloquence of an emigration

When we were in the car again my host was in wild spirits at having got his job over. 'A ripping speech,

Twisdon,' he said. 'Now, you're coming home with me. I'm all alone, and if you'll stop a day or two I'll show

We had a hot supper and I wanted it pretty badly and then drank grog in a big cheery smokingroom 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

'Listen, Sir Harry,' I said. 'I've something pretty important to say to you. You're a good fellow, and I'm going

to be frank. Where on earth did you get that poisonous rubbish you talked tonight?'

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

PROGRESSIVE MAGAZINE and pamphlets that agent chap of mine keeps sending me. But you surely don't

'Ask that question in six weeks and it won't need an answer,' I said. 'If you'll give me your attention for half

I can see yet that bright room with the deers' heads and the old prints on the walls, Sir Harry standing

restlessly on the stone curb of the hearth, and myself lying back in an armchair, speaking. I seemed to be

another person, standing aside and listening to my own voice, and judging carefully the reliability of my tale.

It was the first time I had ever told anyone the exact truth, so far as I understood it, and it did me no end of

good, for it straightened out the thing in my own mind. I blinked no detail. He heard all about Scudder, and

the milkman, and the notebook, and my doings in Galloway. Presently he got very excited and walked up

'So you see,' I concluded, 'you have got here in your house the man that is wanted for the Portland Place

murder. Your duty is to send your car for the police and give me up. I don't think I'll get very far. There'll be

an accident, and I'll have a knife in my ribs an hour or so after arrest. Nevertheless, it's your duty, as a

lawabiding citizen. Perhaps in a month's time you'll be sorry, but you have no cause to think of that.'

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

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

I laughed. 'Oh, as to that, my nerves are good enough.' I took down a huntingknife 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.

'First, I want you to write a letter to your uncle. I've got to get in touch with the Government people sometime

He pulled his moustache. 'That won't help you. This is Foreign Office business, and my uncle would have

nothing to do with it. Besides, you'd never convince him. No, I'll go one better. I'll write to the Permanent

Secretary at the Foreign Office. He's my godfather, and one of the best going. What do you want?'

He sat down at a table and wrote to my dictation. The gist of it was that if a man called Twisdon (I thought I

had better stick to that name) turned up before June 15th he was to entreat him kindly. He said Twisdon

would prove his bona fides by passing the word 'Black Stone' and whistling 'Annie Laurie'.

'Good,' said Sir Harry. 'That's the proper style. By the way, you'll find my godfather his name's Sir Walter

Bullivant down at his country cottage for Whitsuntide. It's close to Artinswell on the Kenner. That's done.

'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

He did, or promised to do, all these things. I shaved off the remnants of my moustache, and got inside an

ancient suit of what I believe is called heather mixture. The map gave me some notion of my whereabouts,

and told me the two things I wanted to know where the main railway to the south could be joined and what

were the wildest districts near at hand. At two o'clock he wakened me from my slumbers in the

smokingroom armchair, and led me blinking into the dark starry night. An old bicycle was found in a

'First turn to the right up by the long firwood,' he enjoined. 'By daybreak you'll be well into the hills. Then I

should pitch the machine into a bog and take to the moors on foot. You can put in a week among the

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 faraway blue

Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills, which was the upper glen of some notable

river. In front was a flat space of maybe a mile, all pitted with bogholes and rough with tussocks, and then

beyond it the road fell steeply down another glen to a plain whose blue dimness melted into the distance. To

left and right were roundshouldered green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to the south that is, the left

hand there was a glimpse of high heathery mountains, which I remembered from the map as the big knot of

hill which I had chosen for my sanctuary. I was on the central boss of a huge upland country, and could see

everything moving for miles. In the meadows below the road half a mile back a cottage smoked, but it was

the only sign of human life. Otherwise there was only the calling of plovers and the tinkling of little streams.

It was now about seven o'clock, and as I waited I heard once again that ominous beat in the air. Then I

realized that my vantage ground might be in reality a trap. There was no cover for a tomtit in those bald

I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat grew louder. Then I saw an aeroplane coming up from the east. It

was flying high, but as I looked it dropped several hundred feet and began to circle round the knot of hill in

narrowing circles, just as a hawk wheels before it pounces. Now it was flying very low, and now the observer

on board caught sight of me. I could see one of the two occupants examining me through glasses.

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

That made me do some savage thinking. My enemies had located me, and the next thing would be a cordon

round me. I didn't know what force they could command, but I was certain it would be sufficient. The

aeroplane had seen my bicycle, and would conclude that I would try to escape by the road. In that case there

might be a chance on the moors to the right or left. I wheeled the machine a hundred yards from the highway,

and plunged it into a mosshole, where it sank among pondweed and waterbuttercups. 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

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

I tossed a coin heads right, tails left and it fell heads, so I turned to the north. In a little I came to the brow

of the ridge which was the containing wall of the pass. I saw the highroad for maybe ten miles, and far down

it something that was moving, and that I took to be a motorcar. Beyond the ridge I looked on a rolling green

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

I dropped out of sight behind the skyline. That way was shut to me, and I must try the bigger hills to the

south beyond the highway. The car I had noticed was getting nearer, but it was still a long way off with some

very steep gradients before it. I ran hard, crouching low except in the hollows, and as I ran I kept scanning the

brow of the hill before me. Was it imagination, or did I see figures one, two, perhaps more moving in a

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 tablecloth of a place? I would have buried myself to the neck in mud or lain below water or

climbed the tallest tree. But there was not a stick of wood, the bogholes were little puddles, the stream was a

slender trickle. There was nothing but short heather, and bare hill bent, and the white highway.

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

'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.

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

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

'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

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

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

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

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

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

'You're the billy,' he cried. 'It'll be easy eneuch managed. I've finished that bing o' stanes, so you needna chap

ony mair this forenoon. just take the barry, and wheel eneuch metal frae yon quarry doon the road to mak

anither bing the morn. My name's Alexander Turnbull, and I've been seeven year at the trade, and twenty

afore that herdin' on Leithen Water. My freens ca' me Ecky, and whiles Specky, for I wear glesses, being

waik i' the sicht. just you speak the Surveyor fair, and ca' him Sir, and he'll be fell pleased. I'll be back or

midday.' I borrowed his spectacles and filthy old hat; stripped off coat, waistcoat, and collar, and gave him

them to carry home; borrowed, too, the foul stump of a clay pipe as an extra property. He indicated my

simple tasks, and without more ado set off at an amble bedwards. Bed may have been his chief object, but I

think there was also something left in the foot of a bottle. I prayed that he might be safe under cover before

Then I set to work to dress for the part. I opened the collar of my shirt it was a vulgar blueandwhite

check such as ploughmen wear and revealed a neck as brown as any tinker's. I rolled up my sleeves, and

there was a forearm which might have been a blacksmith's, sunburnt and rough with old scars. I got my boots

and trouserlegs all white from the dust of the road, and hitched up my trousers, tying them with string below

the knee. Then I set to work on my face. With a handful of dust I made a watermark round my neck, the

place where Mr Turnbull's Sunday ablutions might be expected to stop. I rubbed a good deal of dirt also into

the sunburn of my cheeks. A roadman's eyes would no doubt be a little inflamed, so I contrived to get some

The sandwiches Sir Harry had given me had gone off with my coat, but the roadman's lunch, tied up in a red

handkerchief, was at my disposal. I ate with great relish several of the thick slabs of scone and cheese and

drank a little of the cold tea. In the handkerchief was a local paper tied with string and addressed to Mr

Turnbull obviously meant to solace his midday leisure. I did up the bundle again, and put the paper

My boots did not satisfy me, but by dint of kicking among the stones I reduced them to the granitelike

surface which marks a roadman's footgear. Then I bit and scraped my fingernails till the edges were all

cracked and uneven. The men I was matched against would miss no detail. I broke one of the bootlaces and

retied it in a clumsy knot, and loosed the other so that my thick grey socks bulged over the uppers. Still no

sign of anything on the road. The motor I had observed half an hour ago must have gone home.

My toilet complete, I took up the barrow and began my journeys to and from the quarry a hundred yards off.

I remember an old scout in Rhodesia, who had done many queer things in his day, once telling me that the

secret of playing a part was to think yourself into it. You could never keep it up, he said, unless you could

manage to convince yourself that you were it. So I shut off all other thoughts and switched them on to the

road mending. I thought of the little white cottage as my home, I recalled the years I had spent herding on

Leithen Water, I made my mind dwell lovingly on sleep in a boxbed and a bottle of cheap whisky. Still

Now and then a sheep wandered off the heather to stare at me. A heron flopped down to a pool in the stream

and started to fish, taking no more notice of me than if I had been a milestone. On I went, trundling my loads

of stone, with the heavy step of the professional. Soon I grew warm, and the dust on my face changed into

solid and abiding grit. I was already counting the hours till evening should put a limit to Mr Turnbull's

monotonous toil. Suddenly a crisp voice spoke from the road, and looking up I saw a little Ford twoseater,

'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

Clearly my getup was good enough for the dreaded Surveyor. I went on with my work, and as the morning

grew towards noon I was cheered by a little traffic. A baker's van breasted the hill, and sold me a bag of

ginger biscuits which I stowed in my trouser pockets against emergencies. Then a herd passed with sheep,

'In bed wi' the colic,' I replied, and the herd passed on ... just about midday a big car stole down the hill,

glided past and drew up a hundred yards beyond. Its three occupants descended as if to stretch their legs, and

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 illcut knickerbockers, and the eye in his head was as bright and wary as a hen's.

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

'There's waur jobs and there's better,' I said sententiously. 'I wad rather hae yours, sittin' a' day on your

hinderlands on thae cushions. It's you and your muckle cawrs that wreck my roads! If we a' had oor richts, ye

I glanced at it casually. 'Aye, in gude time. Seein' that that paper cam' out last Setterday I'm just Sax days

He picked it up, glanced at the superscription, and laid it down again. One of the others had been looking at

my boots, and a word in German called the speaker's attention to them. 'You've a fine taste in boots,' he said.

'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

'Did you see anyone pass early this morning? He might be on a bicycle or he might be on foot.'

I very nearly fell into the trap and told a story of a bicyclist hurrying past in the grey dawn. But I had the

'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

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

My heart leaped with an enormous relief, but I went on wheeling my stones. It was as well, for ten minutes

later the car returned, one of the occupants waving a hand to me. Those gentry left nothing to chance.

I finished Turnbull's bread and cheese, and pretty soon I had finished the stones. The next step was what

puzzled me. I could not keep up this roadmaking business for long. A merciful Providence had kept Mr

Turnbull indoors, but if he appeared on the scene there would be trouble. I had a notion that the cordon was

still tight round the glen, and that if I walked in any direction I should meet with questioners. But get out I

I stayed at my post till five o'clock. By that time I had resolved to go down to Turnbull's cottage at nightfall

and take my chance of getting over the hills in the darkness. But suddenly a new car came up the road, and

slowed down a yard or two from me. A fresh wind had risen, and the occupant wanted to light a cigarette. It

was a touring car, with the tonneau full of an assortment of baggage. One man sat in it, and by an amazing

chance I knew him. His name was Marmaduke jopley, and he was an offence to creation. He was a sort of

blood stockbroker, who did his business by toadying eldest sons and rich young peers and foolish old ladies.

'Marmie' was a familiar figure, I understood, at balls and poloweeks and country houses. He was an adroit

scandalmonger, and would crawl a mile on his belly to anything that had a title or a million. I had a business

introduction to his firm when I came to London, and he was good enough to ask me to dinner at his club.

There he showed off at a great rate, and pattered about his duchesses till the snobbery of the creature turned

me sick. I asked a man afterwards why nobody kicked him, and was told that Englishmen reverenced the

Anyhow there he was now, nattily dressed, in a fine new car, obviously on his way to visit some of his smart

friends. A sudden daftness took me, and in a second I had jumped into the tonneau and had him by the

'Hullo, jopley,' I sang out. 'Well met, my lad!' He got a horrid fright. His chin dropped as he stared at me.

'Good God, the murderer!' he choked. 'Just so. And there'll be a second murder, my dear, if you don't do as I

He did as bid, for he was blind with terror. Over my dirty trousers and vulgar shirt I put on his smart

drivingcoat, 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

Then with some difficulty I turned the car. My plan was to go back the road he had come, for the watchers,

having seen it before, would probably let it pass unremarked, and Marmie's figure was in no way like mine.

'Now, my child,' I said, 'sit quite still and be a good boy. I mean you no harm. I'm only borrowing your car for

an hour or two. But if you play me any tricks, and above all if you open your mouth, as sure as there's a God

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 strangelooking folk lounging by the roadside. These were the watchers who would

have had much to say to me if I had come in other garb or company. As it was, they looked incuriously on.

As the dark fell I turned up a side glen which, as I remember from the map, led into an unfrequented corner

of the hills. Soon the villages were left behind, then the farms, and then even the wayside cottage. Presently

we came to a lonely moor where the night was blackening the sunset gleam in the bog pools. Here we

stopped, and I obligingly reversed the car and restored to Mr jopley his belongings.

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

As I sat on the hillside, watching the taillight dwindle, I reflected on the various kinds of crime I had now

sampled. Contrary to general belief, I was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless

I spent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a boulder where the heather grew long and soft. It was

a cold business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat. These were in Mr Turnbull's keeping, as was Scudder's

little book, my watch and worst of all my pipe and tobacco pouch. Only my money accompanied me in

I supped off half those biscuits, and by worming myself deep into the heather got some kind of warmth. My

spirits had risen, and I was beginning to enjoy this crazy game of hideandseek. So far I had been

miraculously lucky. The milkman, the literary innkeeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic Marmie,

were all pieces of undeserved good fortune. Somehow the first success gave me a feeling that I was going to

My chief trouble was that I was desperately hungry. When a Jew shoots himself in the City and there is an

inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was 'wellnourished'. I remember thinking that they

would not call me wellnourished if I broke my neck in a boghole. I lay and tortured myself for the ginger

biscuits merely emphasized the aching void with the memory of all the good food I had thought so little of

in London. There were Paddock's crisp sausages and fragrant shavings of bacon, and shapely poached eggs

how often I had turned up my nose at them! There were the cutlets they did at the club, and a particular ham

that stood on the cold table, for which my soul lusted. My thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal

edible, and finally settled on a porterhouse steak and a quart of bitter with a welsh rabbit to follow. In longing

hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep. I woke very cold and stiff about an hour after dawn. It took me a

little while to remember where I was, for I had been very weary and had slept heavily. I saw first the pale

blue sky through a net of heather, then a big shoulder of hill, and then my own boots placed neatly in a

blaeberry bush. I raised myself on my arms and looked down into the valley, and that one look set me lacing

up my boots in mad haste. For there were men below, not more than a quarter of a mile off, spaced out on the

hillside like a fan, and beating the heather. Marmie had not been slow in looking for his revenge.

I crawled out of my shelf into the cover of a boulder, and from it gained a shallow trench which slanted up

the mountain face. This led me presently into the narrow gully of a burn, by way of which I scrambled to the

top of the ridge. From there I looked back, and saw that I was still undiscovered. My pursuers were patiently

Keeping behind the skyline I ran for maybe half a mile, till I judged I was above the uppermost end of the

glen. Then I showed myself, and was instantly noted by one of the flankers, who passed the word to the

others. I heard cries coming up from below, and saw that the line of search had changed its direction. I

pretended to retreat over the skyline, but instead went back the way I had come, and in twenty minutes was

behind the ridge overlooking my sleeping place. From that viewpoint I had the satisfaction of seeing the

pursuit streaming up the hill at the top of the glen on a hopelessly false scent. I had before me a choice of

routes, and I chose a ridge which made an angle with the one I was on, and so would soon put a deep glen

between me and my enemies. The exercise had warmed my blood, and I was beginning to enjoy myself

amazingly. As I went I breakfasted on the dusty remnants of the ginger biscuits.

I knew very little about the country, and I hadn't a notion what I was going to do. I trusted to the strength of

my legs, but I was well aware that those behind me would be familiar with the lie of the land, and that my

ignorance would be a heavy handicap. I saw in front of me a sea of hills, rising very high towards the south,

but northwards breaking down into broad ridges which separated wide and shallow dales. The ridge I had

chosen seemed to sink after a mile or two to a moor which lay like a pocket in the uplands. That seemed as

My stratagem had given me a fair start call it twenty minutes and I had the width of a glen behind me

before I saw the first heads of the pursuers. The police had evidently called in local talent to their aid, and the

men I could see had the appearance of herds or gamekeepers. They hallooed at the sight of me, and I waved

my hand. Two dived into the glen and began to climb my ridge, while the others kept their own side of the

hill. I felt as if I were taking part in a schoolboy game of hare and hounds. But very soon it began to seem

less of a game. Those fellows behind were hefty men on their native heath. Looking back I saw that only

three were following direct, and I guessed that the others had fetched a circuit to cut me off. My lack of local

knowledge might very well be my undoing, and I resolved to get out of this tangle of glens to the pocket of

moor I had seen from the tops. I must so increase my distance as to get clear away from them, and I believed

I could do this if I could find the right ground for it. If there had been cover I would have tried a bit of

stalking, but on these bare slopes you could see a fly a mile off. My hope must be in the length of my legs

and the soundness of my wind, but I needed easier ground for that, for I was not bred a mountaineer. How I

I put on a great spurt and got off my ridge and down into the moor before any figures appeared on the skyline

behind me. I crossed a burn, and came out on a highroad which made a pass between two glens. All in front

of me was a big field of heather sloping up to a crest which was crowned with an odd feather of trees. In the

dyke by the roadside was a gate, from which a grass grown track led over the first wave of the moor.

I jumped the dyke and followed it, and after a few hundred yards as soon as it was out of sight of the

highway the grass stopped and it became a very respectable road, which was evidently kept with some care.

Clearly it ran to a house, and I began to think of doing the same. Hitherto my luck had held, and it might be

that my best chance would be found in this remote dwelling. Anyhow there were trees there, and that meant

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

After that I did not look back; I had no time. I ran up the burnside, crawling over the open places, and for a

large part wading in the shallow stream. I found a deserted cottage with a row of phantom peatstacks and an

overgrown garden. Then I was among young hay, and very soon had come to the edge of a plantation of

windblown 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 blackgame, which are not usually garden birds, rose at my approach. The house

before me was the ordinary moorland farm, with a more pretentious whitewashed wing added. Attached to

this wing was a glass veranda, and through the glass I saw the face of an elderly gentleman meekly watching

me. I stalked over the border of coarse hill gravel and entered the open veranda door. Within was a pleasant

room, glass on one side, and on the other a mass of books. More books showed in an inner room. On the

floor, instead of tables, stood cases such as you see in a museum, filled with coins and queer stone

There was a kneehole 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

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.

I nodded towards the window. It gave a prospect across the moor through a gap in the plantation, and

'Ah, I see,' he said, and took up a pair of fieldglasses through which he patiently scrutinized the figures.

'A fugitive from justice, eh? Well, we'll go into the matter at our leisure. Meantime I object to my privacy

being broken in upon by the clumsy rural policeman. Go into my study, and you will see two doors facing

you. Take the one on the left and close it behind you. You will be perfectly safe.'

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

All the same I was not comfortable. There was something about the old gentleman which puzzled and rather

terrified me. He had been too easy and ready, almost as if he had expected me. And his eyes had been

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

Then I took a more cheerful view. The old gentleman could scarcely refuse me a meal, and I fell to

reconstructing my breakfast. Bacon and eggs would content me, but I wanted the better part of a flitch of

bacon and half a hundred eggs. And then, while my mouth was watering in anticipation, there was a click and

I emerged into the sunlight to find the master of the house sitting in a deep armchair in the room he called his

'Have they gone?' I asked. 'They have gone. I convinced them that you had crossed the hill. I do not choose

that the police should come between me and one whom I am delighted to honour. This is a lucky morning for

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

He knew my name, but he had never seen me before. And as the reflection darted across my mind I saw a

'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

'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 motorcar! Here's the money and be damned to you,' and I flung four sovereigns on the

He opened his eyes a little. 'Oh no, I shall not give you up. My friends and I will have a little private

settlement with you, that is all. You know a little too much, Mr Hannay. You are a clever actor, but not quite

'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

bustup motorcar? 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

'Will you oblige me with the story of your recent doings?'he asked. 'I can't, guv'nor,' I said in a real beggar's

whine. 'I've not had a bite to eat for two days. Give me a mouthful of food, and then you'll hear God's truth.'

I must have showed my hunger in my face, for he signalled to one of the men in the doorway. A bit of cold

pie was brought and a glass of beer, and I wolfed them down like a pig or rather, like Ned Ainslie, for I was

keeping up my character. In the middle of my meal he spoke suddenly to me in German, but I turned on him

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

motorcar 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

'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.'

I flew into a rage. 'Stop fooling, damn you! I tell you my name's Ainslie, and I never heard of anyone called

Hannay in my born days. I'd sooner have the police than you with your Hannays and your monkeyfaced

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

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

'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.'

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

There was something weird and devilish in those eyes, cold, malignant, unearthly, and most hellishly clever.

They fascinated me like the bright eyes of a snake. I had a strong impulse to throw myself on his mercy and

offer to join his side, and if you consider the way I felt about the whole thing you will see that that impulse

must have been purely physical, the weakness of a brain mesmerized and mastered by a stronger spirit. But I

'Karl,' he spoke in German to one of the men in the doorway, 'you will put this fellow in the storeroom till I

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

I sat down in that chilly darkness in a very miserable frame of mind. The old boy had gone off in a motor to

collect the two ruffians who had interviewed me yesterday. Now, they had seen me as the roadman, and they

would remember me, for I was in the same rig. What was a roadman doing twenty miles from his beat,

pursued by the police? A question or two would put them on the track. Probably they had seen Mr Turnbull,

probably Marmie too; most likely they could link me up with Sir Harry, and then the whole thing would be

crystal clear. What chance had I in this moorland house with three desperadoes and their armed servants?

I began to think wistfully of the police, now plodding over the hills after my wraith. They at any rate were

fellowcountrymen and honest men, and their tender mercies would be kinder than these ghoulish aliens. But

they wouldn't have listened to me. That old devil with the eyelids had not taken long to get rid of them. I

thought he probably had some kind of graft with the constabulary. Most likely he had letters from Cabinet

Ministers saying he was to be given every facility for plotting against Britain. That's the sort of owlish way

The three would be back for lunch, so I hadn't more than a couple of hours to wait. It was simply waiting on

destruction, for I could see no way out of this mess. I wished that I had Scudder's courage, for I am free to

confess I didn't feel any great fortitude. The only thing that kept me going was that I was pretty furious. It

made me boil with rage to think of those three spies getting the pull on me like this. I hoped that at any rate I

The more I thought of it the angrier I grew, and I had to get up and move about the room. I tried the shutters,

but they were the kind that lock with a key, and I couldn't move them. From the outside came the faint

clucking of hens in the warm sun. Then I groped among the sacks and boxes. I couldn't open the latter, and

the sacks seemed to be full of things like dogbiscuits that smelt of cinnamon. But, as I circumnavigated the

It was the door of a wall cupboard what they call a 'press' in Scotland and it was locked. I shook it, and it

seemed rather flimsy. For want of something better to do I put out my strength on that door, getting some

purchase on the handle by looping my braces round it. Presently the thing gave with a crash which I thought

would bring in my warders to inquire. I waited for a bit, and then started to explore the cupboard shelves.

There was a multitude of queer things there. I found an odd vesta or two in my trouser pockets and struck a

light. It was out in a second, but it showed me one thing. There was a little stock of electric torches on one

With the torch to help me I investigated further. There were bottles and cases of queersmelling stuffs,

chemicals no doubt for experiments, and there were coils of fine copper wire and yanks and yanks of thin

oiled silk. There was a box of detonators, and a lot of cord for fuses. Then away at the back of the shelf I

found a stout brown cardboard box, and inside it a wooden case. I managed to wrench it open, and within lay

I took up one, and found that it crumbled easily in my hand. Then I smelt it and put my tongue to it. After

that I sat down to think. I hadn't been a mining engineer for nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it.

With one of these bricks I could blow the house to smithereens. I had used the stuff in Rhodesia and knew its

power. But the trouble was that my knowledge wasn't exact. I had forgotten the proper charge and the right

way of preparing it, and I wasn't sure about the timing. I had only a vague notion, too, as to its power, for

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

treetops; but if I didn't I should very likely be occupying a sixfoot 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

The remembrance of little Scudder decided me. It was about the beastliest moment of my life, for I'm no

good at these coldblooded 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

I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of feet of fuse. Then I took a quarter of a lentonite brick, and buried

it near the door below one of the sacks in a crack of the floor, fixing the detonator in it. For all I knew half

those boxes might be dynamite. If the cupboard held such deadly explosives, why not the boxes? In that case

there would be a glorious skyward journey for me and the German servants and about an acre of surrounding

country. There was also the risk that the detonation might set off the other bricks in the cupboard, for I had

forgotten most that I knew about lentonite. But it didn't do to begin thinking about the possibilities. The odds

I ensconced myself just below the sill of the window, and lit the fuse. Then I waited for a moment or two.

There was dead silence only a shuffle of heavy boots in the passage, and the peaceful cluck of hens from

the warm outofdoors. I commended my soul to my Maker, and wondered where I would be in five seconds

A great wave of heat seemed to surge upwards from the floor, and hang for a blistering instant in the air.

Then the wall opposite me flashed into a golden yellow and dissolved with a rending thunder that hammered

my brain into a pulp. Something dropped on me, catching the point of my left shoulder.

My stupor can scarcely have lasted beyond a few seconds. I felt myself being choked by thick yellow fumes,

and struggled out of the debris to my feet. Somewhere behind me I felt fresh air. The jambs of the window

had fallen, and through the ragged rent the smoke was pouring out to the summer noon. I stepped over the

broken lintel, and found myself standing in a yard in a dense and acrid fog. I felt very sick and ill, but I could

A small milllade ran in a wooden aqueduct at the other side of the yard, and into this I fell. The cool water

revived me, and I had just enough wits left to think of escape. I squirmed up the lade among the slippery

green slime till I reached the millwheel. 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 heathermixture 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

But I had no time to linger, since this mill was obviously a bad hidingplace. 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 hidingplace, for I argued that my enemies, if they

thought I could move, would conclude I had made for open country, and would go seeking me on the moor.

I crawled down the broken ladder, scattering chaff behind me to cover my footsteps. I did the same on the

mill floor, and on the threshold where the door hung on broken hinges. Peeping out, I saw that between me

and the dovecot was a piece of bare cobbled ground, where no footmarks would show. Also it was mercifully

hid by the mill buildings from any view from the house. I slipped across the space, got to the back of the

That was one of the hardest jobs I ever took on. My shoulder and arm ached like hell, and I was so sick and

giddy that I was always on the verge of falling. But I managed it somehow. By the use of outjutting 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 oldfashioned swoon.

I woke with a burning head and the sun glaring in my face. For a long time I lay motionless, for those

horrible fumes seemed to have loosened my joints and dulled my brain. Sounds came to me from the house

men speaking throatily and the throbbing of a stationary car. There was a little gap in the parapet to which I

wriggled, and from which I had some sort of prospect of the yard. I saw figures come out a servant with his

head bound up, and then a younger man in knickerbockers. They were looking for something, and moved

towards the mill. Then one of them caught sight of the wisp of cloth on the nail, and cried out to the other.

They both went back to the house, and brought two more to look at it. I saw the rotund figure of my late

captor, and I thought I made out the man with the lisp. I noticed that all had pistols.

For half an hour they ransacked the mill. I could hear them kicking over the barrels and pulling up the rotten

planking. Then they came outside, and stood just below the dovecot arguing fiercely. The servant with the

bandage was being soundly rated. I heard them fiddling with the door of the dovecote and for one horrid

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

All that long blistering afternoon I lay baking on the rooftop. Thirst was my chief torment. My tongue was

like a stick, and to make it worse I could hear the cool drip of water from the mill lade. I watched the course

of the little stream as it came in from the moor, and my fancy followed it to the top of the glen, where it must

issue from an icy fountain fringed with cool ferns and mosses. I would have given a thousand pounds to

I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland. I saw the car speed away with two occupants, and a man

on a hill pony riding east. I judged they were looking for me, and I wished them joy of their quest.

But I saw something else more interesting. The house stood almost on the summit of a swell of moorland

which crowned a sort of plateau, and there was no higher point nearer than the big hills six miles off. The

actual summit, as I have mentioned, was a biggish clump of trees firs mostly, with a few ashes and beeches.

On the dovecot I was almost on a level with the treetops, 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 cricketfield.

I didn't take long to guess what it was. It was an aerodrome, and a secret one. The place had been most

cunningly chosen. For suppose anyone were watching an aeroplane descending here, he would think it had

gone over the hill beyond the trees. As the place was on the top of a rise in the midst of a big amphitheatre,

any observer from any direction would conclude it had passed out of view behind the hill. Only a man very

close at hand would realize that the aeroplane had not gone over but had descended in the midst of the wood.

An observer with a telescope on one of the higher hills might have discovered the truth, but only herds went

there, and herds do not carry spyglasses. When I looked from the dovecot I could see far away a blue line

which I knew was the sea, and I grew furious to think that our enemies had this secret conningtower to rake

Then I reflected that if that aeroplane came back the chances were ten to one that I would be discovered. So

through the afternoon I lay and prayed for the coming of darkness, and glad I was when the sun went down

over the big western hills and the twilight haze crept over the moor. The aeroplane was late. The gloaming

was far advanced when I heard the beat of wings and saw it volplaning downward to its home in the wood.

Lights twinkled for a bit and there was much coming and going from the house. Then the dark fell, and

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 halfway down I heard the back door of the house open, and saw the gleam of a lantern against the

mill wall. For some agonizing minutes I hung by the ivy and prayed that whoever it was would not come

round by the dovecot. Then the light disappeared, and I dropped as softly as I could on to the hard soil of the

I crawled on my belly in the lee of a stone dyke till I reached the fringe of trees which surrounded the house.

If I had known how to do it I would have tried to put that aeroplane out of action, but I realized that any

attempt would probably be futile. I was pretty certain that there would be some kind of defence round the

house, so I went through the wood on hands and knees, feeling carefully every inch before me. It was as well,

for presently I came on a wire about two feet from the ground. If I had tripped over that, it would doubtless

A hundred yards farther on I found another wire cunningly placed on the edge of a small stream. Beyond that

lay the moor, and in five minutes I was deep in bracken and heather. Soon I was round the shoulder of the

rise, in the little glen from which the milllade flowed. Ten minutes later my face was in the spring, and I

was soaking down pints of the blessed water. But I did not stop till I had put half a dozen miles between me

I sat down on a hilltop and took stock of my position. I wasn't feeling very happy, for my natural

thankfulness at my escape was clouded by my severe bodily discomfort. Those lentonite fumes had fairly

poisoned me, and the baking hours on the dovecot hadn't helped matters. I had a crushing headache, and felt

as sick as a cat. Also my shoulder was in a bad way. At first I thought it was only a bruise, but it seemed to be

My plan was to seek Mr Turnbull's cottage, recover my garments, and especially Scudder's notebook, and

then make for the main line and get back to the south. It seemed to me that the sooner I got in touch with the

Foreign Office man, Sir Walter Bullivant, the better. I didn't see how I could get more proof than I had got

already. He must just take or leave my story, and anyway, with him I would be in better hands than those

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 southwest to come to the stream

where I had met the roadman. In all these travels I never knew the names of the places, but I believe this

stream was no less than the upper waters of the river Tweed. I calculated I must be about eighteen miles

distant, and that meant I could not get there before morning. So I must lie up a day somewhere, for I was too

outrageous a figure to be seen in the sunlight. I had neither coat, waistcoat, collar, nor hat, my trousers were

badly torn, and my face and hands were black with the explosion. I daresay I had other beauties, for my eyes

felt as if they were furiously bloodshot. Altogether I was no spectacle for Godfearing citizens to see on a

Very soon after daybreak I made an attempt to clean myself in a hill burn, and then approached a herd's

cottage, for I was feeling the need of food. The herd was away from home, and his wife was alone, with no

neighbour for five miles. She was a decent old body, and a plucky one, for though she got a fright when she

saw me, she had an axe handy, and would have used it on any evildoer. I told her that I had had a fall I

didn't say how and she saw by my looks that I was pretty sick. Like a true Samaritan she asked no

questions, but gave me a bowl of milk with a dash of whisky in it, and let me sit for a little by her kitchen

fire. She would have bathed my shoulder, but it ached so badly that I would not let her touch it.

I don't know what she took me for a repentant burglar, perhaps; for when I wanted to pay her for the milk

and tendered a sovereign which was the smallest coin I had, she shook her head and said something about

'giving it to them that had a right to it'. At this I protested so strongly that I think she believed me honest, for

she took the money and gave me a warm new plaid for it, and an old hat of her man's. She showed me how to

wrap the plaid around my shoulders, and when I left that cottage I was the living image of the kind of

Scotsman you see in the illustrations to Burns's poems. But at any rate I was more or less clad.

It was as well, for the weather changed before midday to a thick drizzle of rain. I found shelter below an

overhanging rock in the crook of a burn, where a drift of dead brackens made a tolerable bed. There I

managed to sleep till nightfall, waking very cramped and wretched, with my shoulder gnawing like a

toothache. I ate the oatcake and cheese the old wife had given me and set out again just before the darkening.

I pass over the miseries of that night among the wet hills. There were no stars to steer by, and I had to do the

best I could from my memory of the map. Twice I lost my way, and I had some nasty falls into peatbogs. 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

Mr Turnbull himself opened to me sober and something more than sober. He was primly dressed in an

ancient but welltended suit of black; he had been shaved not later than the night before; he wore a linen

collar; and in his left hand he carried a pocket Bible. At first he did not recognize me.

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

'Ye'll hae come for your jaicket and westcoat,' he said. 'Come in bye. Losh, man, ye're terrible dune i' the

I perceived I was in for a bout of malaria. I had a good deal of fever in my bones, and the wet night had

brought it out, while my shoulder and the effects of the fumes combined to make me feel pretty bad. Before I

knew, Mr Turnbull was helping me off with my clothes, and putting me to bed in one of the two cupboards

He was a true friend in need, that old roadman. His wife was dead years ago, and since his daughter's

For the better part of ten days he did all the rough nursing I needed. I simply wanted to be left in peace while

the fever took its course, and when my skin was cool again I found that the bout had more or less cured my

shoulder. But it was a baddish go, and though I was out of bed in five days, it took me some time to get my

He went out each morning, leaving me milk for the day, and locking the door behind him; and came in in the

evening to sit silent in the chimney corner. Not a soul came near the place. When I was getting better, he

never bothered me with a question. Several times he fetched me a two days' old SCOTSMAN, and I noticed

that the interest in the Portland Place murder seemed to have died down. There was no mention of it, and I

could find very little about anything except a thing called the General Assembly some ecclesiastical spree, I

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

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

'Ay, there was a man in a motorcawr. 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 gudebrither frae the Cleuch that

whiles lent me a haun'. He was a wershlookin' sowl, and I couldna understand the half o' his English

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

I made Turnbull accept five pounds for my lodging, and a hard job I had of it. There never was a more

independent being. He grew positively rude when I pressed him, and shy and red, and took the money at last

without a thank you. When I told him how much I owed him, he grunted something about 'ae guid turn

deservin' anither'. You would have thought from our leavetaking 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 'packshepherd' from those parts

whatever that may be. My plaid and my old hat, as I have said, gave me a fine theatrical Scots look. But

driving cattle is a mortally slow job, and we took the better part of the day to cover a dozen miles.

If I had not had such an anxious heart I would have enjoyed that time. It was shining blue weather, with a

constantly changing prospect of brown hills and far green meadows, and a continual sound of larks and

curlews and falling streams. But I had no mind for the summer, and little for Hislop's conversation, for as the

fateful fifteenth of June drew near I was overweighed with the hopeless difficulties of my enterprise.

I got some dinner in a humble Moffat publichouse, and walked the two miles to the junction on the main

line. The night express for the south was not due till near midnight, and to fill up the time I went up on the

hillside and fell asleep, for the walk had tired me. I all but slept too long, and had to run to the station and

catch the train with two minutes to spare. The feel of the hard thirdclass 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 watermeadows and slow reedy streams. About eight o'clock in the evening,

a weary and travelstained being a cross between a farmlabourer and a vet with a checked

blackandwhite 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

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 waterbuttercups. A little above it was a mill; and the lasher

made a pleasant cool sound in the scented dusk. Somehow the place soothed me and put me at my ease. I fell

to whistling as I looked into the green depths, and the tune which came to my lips was 'Annie Laurie'.

A fisherman came up from the waterside, and as he neared me he too began to whistle. The tune was

infectious, for he followed my suit. He was a huge man in untidy old flannels and a widebrimmed hat, with

a canvas bag slung on his shoulder. He nodded to me, and I thought I had never seen a shrewder or

bettertempered face. He leaned his delicate tenfoot splitcane rod against the bridge, and looked with me

'Clear, isn't it?' he said pleasantly. 'I back our Kenner any day against the Test. Look at that big fellow. Four

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

'It's a wise conspirator that knows his own name,' he observed, grinning broadly at a moorhen that emerged

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 ablebodied man

like you should dare to beg. You can get a meal from my kitchen, but you'll get no money from me.'

A dogcart was passing, driven by a young man who raised his whip to salute the fisherman. When he had

'That's my house,' he said, pointing to a white gate a hundred yards on. 'Wait five minutes and then go round

I did as I was bidden. I found a pretty cottage with a lawn running down to the stream, and a perfect jungle of

guelderrose 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 hairbrushes, 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 weekends. There's a bathroom next door, and I've prepared a 'ot bath. Dinner in 'alf

The grave being withdrew, and I sat down in a chintzcovered easychair and gaped. It was like a

pantomime, to come suddenly out of beggardom into this orderly comfort. Obviously Sir Walter believed in

me, though why he did I could not guess. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a wild, haggard brown

fellow, with a fortnight's ragged beard, and dust in ears and eyes, collarless, vulgarly shirted, with shapeless

old tweed clothes and boots that had not been cleaned for the better part of a month. I made a fine tramp and

a fair drover; and here I was ushered by a prim butler into this temple of gracious ease. And the best of it was

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

Sir Walter awaited me in a dusky diningroom where a little round table was lit with silver candles. The sight

of him so respectable and established and secure, the embodiment of law and government and all the

conventions took me aback and made me feel an interloper. He couldn't know the truth about me, or he

wouldn't treat me like this. I simply could not accept his hospitality on false pretences.

'I'm more obliged to you than I can say, but I'm bound to make things clear,' I said. 'I'm an innocent man, but

I'm wanted by the police. I've got to tell you this, and I won't be surprised if you kick me out.'

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

dinner.' I never ate a meal with greater relish, for I had had nothing all day but railway sandwiches. Sir

Walter did me proud, for we drank a good champagne and had some uncommon fine port afterwards. it made

me almost hysterical to be sitting there, waited on by a footman and a sleek butler, and remember that I had

been living for three weeks like a brigand, with every man's hand against me. I told Sir Walter about

tigerfish in the Zambesi that bite off your fingers if you give them a chance, and we discussed sport up and

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 coffeecups were cleared away, and we had got our cigars alight, my host swung his long legs

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

I began at the very beginning. I told of my boredom in London, and the night I had come back to find

Scudder gibbering on my doorstep. I told him all Scudder had told me about Karolides and the Foreign Office

Then I got to the murder, and he grew solemn again. He heard all about the milkman and my time in

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

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

'Harry talked dashed nonsense, did he? I quite believe it. He's as good a chap as ever breathed, but his idiot of

My day as roadman excited him a bit. He made me describe the two fellows in the car very closely, and

seemed to be raking back in his memory. He grew merry again when he heard of the fate of that ass jopley.

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

'Bland and baldheaded and hooded his eyes like a bird ... He sounds a sinister wildfowl! And you

dynamited his hermitage, after he had saved you from the police. Spirited piece of work, that!' Presently I

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

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

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

'Principally because I received a letter from Scudder. I knew something of the man, and he did several jobs

for me. He was half crank, half genius, but he was wholly honest. The trouble about him was his partiality for

playing a lone hand. That made him pretty well useless in any Secret Service a pity, for he had uncommon

gifts. I think he was the bravest man in the world, for he was always shivering with fright, and yet nothing

'The letter was written and posted on the 23rd. He evidently did not anticipate an immediate decease. His

communications usually took a week to reach me, for they were sent under cover to Spain and then to

'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

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

'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

'The Black Stone,' he repeated. 'DER SCHWARZE STEIN. It's like a penny novelette. And all this stuff

about Karolides. That is the weak part of the tale, for I happen to know that the virtuous Karolides is likely to

outlast us both. There is no State in Europe that wants him gone. Besides, he has just been playing up to

Berlin and Vienna and giving my Chief some uneasy moments. No! Scudder has gone off the track there.

Frankly, Hannay, I don't believe that part of his story. There's some nasty business afoot, and he found out

too much and lost his life over it. But I am ready to take my oath that it is ordinary spy work. A certain great

European Power makes a hobby of her spy system, and her methods are not too particular. Since she pays by

piecework her blackguards are not likely to stick at a murder or two. They want our naval dispositions for

their collection at the Marineamt; but they will be pigeonholed nothing more.' just then the butler entered

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

He returned in five minutes with a whitish face. 'I apologize to the shade of Scudder,' he said. 'Karolides was

I came down to breakfast next morning, after eight hours of blessed dreamless sleep, to find Sir Walter

decoding a telegram in the midst of muffins and marmalade. His fresh rosiness of yesterday seemed a thought

'I had a busy hour on the telephone after you went to bed,' he said. 'I got my Chief to speak to the First Lord

and the Secretary for War, and they are bringing Royer over a day sooner. This wire clinches it. He will be in

London at five. Odd that the code word for a SOUSCHEF D/ETAT MAJORGENERAL should be

'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

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

'They could,' he said. 'But we want to avoid that if possible. They are the result of immense thought, and no

alteration would be as good. Besides, on one or two points change is simply impossible. Still, something

could be done, I suppose, if it were absolutely necessary. But you see the difficulty, Hannay. Our enemies are

not going to be such fools as to pick Royer's pocket or any childish game like that. They know that would

mean a row and put us on our guard. Their aim is to get the details without any one of us knowing, so that

Royer will go back to Paris in the belief that the whole business is still deadly secret. If they can't do that they

'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

'Royer dines with my Chief, and then comes to my house where four people will see him Whittaker from

the Admiralty, myself, Sir Arthur Drew, and General Winstanley. The First Lord is ill, and has gone to

Sheringham. At my house he will get a certain document from Whittaker, and after that he will be motored to

Portsmouth where a destroyer will take him to Havre. His journey is too important for the ordinary

boattrain. 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

After breakfast he asked me if I could drive a car. 'Well, you'll be my chauffeur today and wear Hudson's rig.

You're about his size. You have a hand in this business and we are taking no risks. There are desperate men

against us, who will not respect the country retreat of an overworked official.'

When I first came to London I had bought a car and amused myself with running about the south of England,

so I knew something of the geography. I took Sir Walter to town by the Bath Road and made good going. It

was a soft breathless June morning, with a promise of sultriness later, but it was delicious enough swinging

through the little towns with their freshly watered streets, and past the summer gardens of the Thames valley.

I landed Sir Walter at his house in Queen Anne's Gate punctually by halfpast eleven. The butler was coming

The first thing he did was to take me round to Scotland Yard. There we saw a prim gentleman, with a

The reply was a wry smile. 'It would have been a welcome present, Bullivant. This, I presume, is Mr Richard

'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

This assurance was promptly given. 'You can take up your life where you left off,' I was told. 'Your flat,

which probably you no longer wish to occupy, is waiting for you, and your man is still there. As you were

never publicly accused, we considered that there was no need of a public exculpation. But on that, of course,

'We may want your assistance later on, MacGillivray,' Sir Walter said as we left.

'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

I felt curiously at a loose end. At first it was very pleasant to be a free man, able to go where I wanted without

fearing anything. I had only been a month under the ban of the law, and it was quite enough for me. I went to

the Savoy and ordered very carefully a very good luncheon, and then smoked the best cigar the house could

provide. But I was still feeling nervous. When I saw anybody look at me in the lounge, I grew shy, and

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 cogwheel of the whole business, was out of it. Royer would be landing at

Dover, Sir Walter would be making plans with the few people in England who were in the secret, and

somewhere in the darkness the Black Stone would be working. I felt the sense of danger and impending

calamity, and I had the curious feeling, too, that I alone could avert it, alone could grapple with it. But I was

out of the game now. How could it be otherwise? It was not likely that Cabinet Ministers and Admiralty

I actually began to wish that I could run up against one of my three enemies. That would lead to

developments. I felt that I wanted enormously to have a vulgar scrap with those gentry, where I could hit out

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

My irritation lasted through dinner, which I had at a restaurant in Jermyn Street. I was no longer hungry, and

let several courses pass untasted. I drank the best part of a bottle of Burgundy, but it did nothing to cheer me.

An abominable restlessness had taken possession of me. Here was I, a very ordinary fellow, with no

particular brains, and yet I was convinced that somehow I was needed to help this business through that

without me it would all go to blazes. I told myself it was sheer silly conceit, that four or five of the cleverest

people living, with all the might of the British Empire at their back, had the job in hand. Yet I couldn't be

convinced. It seemed as if a voice kept speaking in my ear, telling me to be up and doing, or I would never

The upshot was that about halfpast nine I made up my mind to go to Queen Anne's Gate. Very likely I

I walked down Jermyn Street, and at the corner of Duke Street passed a group of young men. They were in

evening dress, had been dining somewhere, and were going on to a musichall. One of them was Mr

'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 illtemper made me play the fool. A policeman came up, and I should have told him the truth, and, if he

didn't believe it, demanded to be taken to Scotland Yard, or for that matter to the nearest police station. But a

delay at that moment seemed to me unendurable, and the sight of Marmie's imbecile face was more than I

could bear. I let out with my left, and had the satisfaction of seeing him measure his length in the gutter.

Then began an unholy row. They were all on me at once, and the policeman took me in the rear. I got in one

or two good blows, for I think, with fair play, I could have licked the lot of them, but the policeman pinned

Through a black cloud of rage I heard the officer of the law asking what was the matter, and Marmie,

'Oh, damn it all,' I cried, 'make the fellow shut up. I advise you to leave me alone, constable. Scotland Yard

'You've got to come along of me, young man,' said the policeman. 'I saw you strike that gentleman crool 'ard.

You began it too, for he wasn't doing nothing. I seen you. Best go quietly or I'll have to fix you up.'

Exasperation and an overwhelming sense that at no cost must I delay gave me the strength of a bull elephant.

I fairly wrenched the constable off his feet, floored the man who was gripping my collar, and set off at my

best pace down Duke Street. I heard a whistle being blown, and the rush of men behind me.

I have a very fair turn of speed, and that night I had wings. In a jiffy I was in Pall Mall and had turned down

towards St James's Park. I dodged the policeman at the Palace gates, dived through a press of carriages at the

entrance to the Mall, and was making for the bridge before my pursuers had crossed the roadway. In the open

ways of the Park I put on a spurt. Happily there were few people about and no one tried to stop me. I was

When I entered that quiet thoroughfare it seemed deserted. Sir Walter's house was in the narrow part, and

outside it three or four motorcars 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.

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

oldfashioned kind, with a wide hall and rooms on both sides of it. At the far end was an alcove with a

'See here,' I whispered. 'There's trouble about and I'm in it. But Sir Walter knows, and I'm working for him. If

He nodded, and presently there was a noise of voices in the street, and a furious ringing at the bell. I never

admired a man more than that butler. He opened the door, and with a face like a graven image waited to be

questioned. Then he gave them it. He told them whose house it was, and what his orders were, and simply

froze them off the doorstep. I could see it all from my alcove, and it was better than any play.

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

While he was taking off his coat I saw who it was. You couldn't open a newspaper or a magazine without

seeing that face the grey beard cut like a spade, the firm fighting mouth, the blunt square nose, and the keen

blue eyes. I recognized the First Sea Lord, the man, they say, that made the new British Navy.

He passed my alcove and was ushered into a room at the back of the hall. As the door opened I could hear the

For twenty minutes I sat there, wondering what I was to do next. I was still perfectly convinced that I was

wanted, but when or how I had no notion. I kept looking at my watch, and as the time crept on to halfpast

ten I began to think that the conference must soon end. In a quarter of an hour Royer should be speeding

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

Only for a second, but it was enough to make my heart jump. I had never seen the great man before, and he

had never seen me. But in that fraction of time something sprang into his eyes, and that something was

recognition. You can't mistake it. It is a flicker, a spark of light, a minute shade of difference which means

one thing and one thing only. It came involuntarily, for in a moment it died, and he passed on. In a maze of

I picked up the telephone book and looked up the number of his house. We were connected at once, and I

'His Lordship returned half an hour ago,' said the voice, 'and has gone to bed. He is not very well tonight.

I rang off and almost tumbled into a chair. My part in this business was not yet ended. It had been a close

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 irongrey moustache and bushy eyebrows, who had been arrested in the middle of a

'This is Mr Hannay, of whom I have spoken to you,' he said apologetically to the company. 'I'm afraid,

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.

'Lord Alloa,' Sir Walter said, reddening with anger. 'It was not,' I cried; 'it was his living image, but it was not

Lord Alloa. It was someone who recognized me, someone I have seen in the last month. He had scarcely left

the doorstep when I rang up Lord Alloa's house and was told he had come in half an hour before and had

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

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

'But it's madness,' broke in General Winstanley. 'Do you mean to tell me that that man came here and sat

beside me for the best part of half an hour and that I didn't detect the imposture? Alloa

must be out of his mind.' 'Don't you see the cleverness of it?' I said. 'You were too interested in other things to

have any eyes. You took Lord Alloa for granted. If it had been anybody else you might have looked more

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

'I will tell you a tale,' he said. 'It happened many years ago in Senegal. I was quartered in a remote station,

and to pass the time used to go fishing for big barbel in the river. A little Arab mare used to carry my

luncheon basket one of the salted dun breed you got at Timbuctoo in the old days. Well, one morning I had

good sport, and the mare was unaccountably restless. I could hear her whinnying and squealing and stamping

her feet, and I kept soothing her with my voice while my mind was intent on fish. I could see her all the time,

as I thought, out of a corner of my eye, tethered to a tree twenty yards away. After a couple of hours I began

to think of food. I collected my fish in a tarpaulin bag, and moved down the stream towards the mare, trolling

my line. When I got up to her I flung the tarpaulin on her back ' He paused and looked round.

'It was the smell that gave me warning. I turned my head and found myself looking at a lion three feet off ...

An old maneater, that was the terror of the village ... What was left of the mare, a mass of blood and bones

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

'I stuffed my fishingrod into his jaws, and I had a pistol. Also my servants came presently with rifles. But he

'Consider,' he said. 'The mare had been dead more than an hour, and the brute had been patiently watching me

ever since. I never saw the kill, for I was accustomed to the mare's fretting, and I never marked her absence,

for my consciousness of her was only of something tawny, and the lion filled that part. If I could blunder

thus, gentlemen, in a land where men's senses are keen, why should we busy preoccupied urban folk not err

'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

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

'The one thing that puzzles me,' said the General, 'is what good his visit here would do that spy fellow? He

'That is not difficult,' the Frenchman replied. 'A good spy is trained to have a photographic memory. Like

your own Macaulay. You noticed he said nothing, but went through these papers again and again. I think we

may assume that he has every detail stamped on his mind. When I was younger I could do the same trick.'

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

Whittaker was looking very glum. 'Did you tell Lord Alloa what has happened?' he asked. 'No? Well, I can't

speak with absolute assurance, but I'm nearly certain we can't make any serious change unless we alter the

'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

'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

Royer's grave good sense seemed to pull us together. He was the man of action among fumblers. But I saw no

hope in any face, and I felt none. Where among the fifty millions of these islands and within a dozen hours

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

I found the place. THIRTYNINE STEPS, I read, and again, THIRTYNINE STEPS I COUNTED

'Don't you see it's a clue,' I shouted. 'Scudder knew where these fellows laired he knew where they were

going to leave the country, though he kept the name to himself. Tomorrow was the day, and it was some

'Not they. They have their own snug secret way, and they won't be hurried. I know Germans, and they are

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

We got into two of the waiting motorcars 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

It was no good. There were hundreds of entries, and so far as I could see 10.17 might cover fifty places. We

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

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

Why was high tide so important? If it was a harbour it must be some little place where the tide mattered, or

else it was a heavy draught boat. But there was no regular steamer sailing at that hour, and somehow I didn't

think they would travel by a big boat from a regular harbour. So it must be some little harbour where the tide

But if it was a little port I couldn't see what the steps signified. There were no sets of staircases on any

harbour that I had ever seen. It must be some place which a particular staircase identified, and where the tide

was full at 10.17. On the whole it seemed to me that the place must be a bit of open coast. But the staircases

Then I went back to wider considerations. Whereabouts would a man be likely to leave for Germany, a man

in a hurry, who wanted a speedy and a secret passage? Not from any of the big harbours. And not from the

Channel or the West Coast or Scotland, for, remember, he was starting from London. I measured the distance

on the map, and tried to put myself in the enemy's shoes. I should try for Ostend or Antwerp or Rotterdam,

All this was very loose guessing, and I don't pretend it was ingenious or scientific. I wasn't any kind of

Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a kind of instinct about questions like this. I don't know if I

can explain myself, but I used to use my brains as far as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I

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

(1) Place where there are several sets of stairs; one that matters distinguished by having thirtynine steps.

(4) No regular night steamer at 10.17. Means of transport must be tramp (unlikely), yacht, or fishingboat.

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

(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 FieldMarshal, two high

Government officials, and a French General watching me, while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying

Sir Walter had joined us, and presently MacGillivray arrived. He had sent out instructions to watch the ports

and railway stations for the three men whom I had described to Sir Walter. Not that he or anybody else

'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 thirtynine steps. I think it's a piece of open coast with biggish cliffs,

somewhere between the Wash and the Channel. Also it's a place where full tide is at 10.17 tomorrow night.'

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

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

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 crossexamine him, for I

'We want you to tell us the places you know on the East Coast where there are cliffs, and where several sets

He thought for a bit. 'What kind of steps do you mean, Sir? There are plenty of places with roads cut down

through the cliffs, and most roads have a step or two in them. Or do you mean regular staircases all steps,

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 golfcourse, where there are a couple of staircases, to let the gentlemen get a lost

'Then there are plenty of Marine Parades, if that's what you mean. Every seaside resort has them.'

'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 hightoned sort of place, and the residents there like to

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 deepsea fishing. The tide's ten minutes before Bradgate.'

'If one of those staircases has thirtynine 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

It was ridiculous in me to take charge of the business like this, but they didn't seem to mind, and after all I

had been in the show from the start. Besides, I was used to rough jobs, and these eminent gentlemen were too

clever not to see it. It was General Royer who gave me my commission. 'I for one,' he said, 'am content to

By halfpast three I was tearing past the moonlit hedgerows of Kent, with MacGillivray's best man on the

A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the

lightship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a bellbuoy. A couple of miles farther south and much

nearer the shore a small destroyer was anchored. Scaife, MacGillivray's man, who had been in the Navy,

knew the boat, and told me her name and her commander's, so I sent off a wire to Sir Walter.

After breakfast Scaife got from a houseagent 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

It took him more than an hour to do the job, and when I saw him coming towards me, conning a bit of paper,

I can tell you my heart was in my mouth. Everything depended, you see, on my guess proving right.

He read aloud the number of steps in the different stairs. 'Thirtyfour, thirtyfive, thirtynine, fortytwo,

fortyseven,' and 'twentyone' where the cliffs grew lower. I almost got up and shouted.

We hurried back to the town and sent a wire to MacGillivray. I wanted half a dozen men, and I directed them

to divide themselves among different specified hotels. Then Scaife set out to prospect the house at the head of

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

belonged to an old gentleman called Appleton a retired stockbroker, the houseagent said. Mr Appleton

was there a good deal in the summer time, and was in residence now had been for the better part of a week.

Scaife could pick up very little information about him, except that he was a decent old fellow, who paid his

bills regularly, and was always good for a fiver for a local charity. Then Scaife seemed to have penetrated to

the back door of the house, pretending he was an agent for sewingmachines. Only three servants were kept,

a cook, a parlourmaid, and a housemaid, and they were just the sort that you would find in a respectable

middleclass 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

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 golfcourse. There I had a view of the line of

turf along the cliff top, with seats placed at intervals, and the little square plots, railed in and planted with

bushes, whence the staircases descended to the beach. I saw Trafalgar Lodge very plainly, a redbrick villa

with a veranda, a tennis lawn behind, and in front the ordinary seaside flowergarden 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

fieldglasses and a newspaper, and sat down on one of the iron seats and began to read. Sometimes he would

lay down the paper and turn his glasses on the sea. He looked for a long time at the destroyer. I watched him

for half an hour, till he got up and went back to the house for his luncheon, when I returned to the hotel for

I wasn't feeling very confident. This decent commonplace dwelling was not what I had expected. The man

might be the bald archaeologist of that horrible moorland farm, or he might not. He was exactly the kind of

satisfied old bird you will find in every suburb and every holiday place. If you wanted a type of the perfectly

But after lunch, as I sat in the hotel porch, I perked up, for I saw the thing I had hoped for and had dreaded to

miss. A yacht came up from the south and dropped anchor pretty well opposite the Ruff. She seemed about a

hundred and fifty tons, and I saw she belonged to the Squadron from the white ensign. So Scaife and I went

I spent a warm and peaceful afternoon. We caught between us about twenty pounds of cod and lythe, and out

in that dancing blue sea I took a cheerier view of things. Above the white cliffs of the Ruff I saw the green

and red of the villas, and especially the great flagstaff of Trafalgar Lodge. About four o'clock, when we had

fished enough, I made the boatman row us round the yacht, which lay like a delicate white bird, ready at a

moment to flee. Scaife said she must be a fast boat for her build, and that she was pretty heavily engined.

Her name was the ARIADNE, as I discovered from the cap of one of the men who was polishing brasswork. I

spoke to him, and got an answer in the soft dialect of Essex. Another hand that came along passed me the

time of day in an unmistakable English tongue. Our boatman had an argument with one of them about the

Then the men suddenly disregarded us and bent their heads to their work as an officer came along the deck.

He was a pleasant, cleanlooking 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 closecropped head and the cut of his collar and tie

That did something to reassure me, but as we rowed back to Bradgate my obstinate doubts would not be

dismissed. The thing that worried me was the reflection that my enemies knew that I had got my knowledge

from Scudder, and it was Scudder who had given me the clue to this place. If they knew that Scudder had this

clue, would they not be certain to change their plans? Too much depended on their success for them to take

any risks. The whole question was how much they understood about Scudder's knowledge. I had talked

confidently last night about Germans always sticking to a scheme, but if they had any suspicions that I was

on their track they would be fools not to cover it. I wondered if the man last night had seen that I recognized

him. Somehow I did not think he had, and to that I had clung. But the whole business had never seemed so

difficult as that afternoon when by all calculations I should have been rejoicing in assured success.

In the hotel I met the commander of the destroyer, to whom Scaife introduced me, and with whom I had a

few words. Then I thought I would put in an hour or two watching Trafalgar Lodge.

I found a place farther up the hill, in the garden of an empty house. From there I had a full view of the court,

on which two figures were having a game of tennis. One was the old man, whom I had already seen; the other

was a younger fellow, wearing some club colours in the scarf round his middle. They played with tremendous

zest, like two city gents who wanted hard exercise to open their pores. You couldn't conceive a more innocent

spectacle. They shouted and laughed and stopped for drinks, when a maid brought out two tankards on a

salver. I rubbed my eyes and asked myself if I was not the most immortal fool on earth. Mystery and darkness

had hung about the men who hunted me over the Scotch moor in aeroplane and motorcar, and notably about

that infernal antiquarian. It was easy enough to connect those folk with the knife that pinned Scudder to the

floor, and with fell designs on the world's peace. But here were two guileless citizens taking their innocuous

exercise, and soon about to go indoors to a humdrum dinner, where they would talk of market prices and the

last cricket scores and the gossip of their native Surbiton. I had been making a net to catch vultures and

Presently a third figure arrived, a young man on a bicycle, with a bag of golfclubs 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

They all went into the house, and left me feeling a precious idiot. I had been barking up the wrong tree this

time. These men might be acting; but if they were, where was their audience? They didn't know I was sitting

thirty yards off in a rhododendron. It was simply impossible to believe that these three hearty fellows were

anything but what they seemed three ordinary, gameplaying, suburban Englishmen, wearisome, if you

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

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.

But suddenly I remembered a thing I once heard in Rhodesia from old Peter Pienaar. I have quoted Peter

already in this narrative. He was the best scout I ever knew, and before he had turned respectable he had been

pretty often on the windy side of the law, when he had been wanted badly by the authorities. Peter once

discussed with me the question of disguises, and he had a theory which struck me at the time. He said, barring

absolute certainties like fingerprints, mere physical traits were very little use for identification if the fugitive

really knew his business. He laughed at things like dyed hair and false beards and such childish follies. The

If a man could get into perfectly different surroundings from those in which he had been first observed, and

this is the important part really play up to these surroundings and behave as if he had never been out of

them, he would puzzle the cleverest detectives on earth. And he used to tell a story of how he once borrowed

a black coat and went to church and shared the same hymnbook 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 publichouse with a revolver. The recollection of Peter's talk gave me the first real

comfort that I had had that day. Peter had been a wise old bird, and these fellows I was after were about the

pick of the aviary. What if they were playing Peter's game? A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks

Again, there was that other maxim of Peter's which had helped me when I had been a roadman. 'If you are

playing a part, you will never keep it up unless you convince yourself that you are it.' That would explain the

game of tennis. Those chaps didn't need to act, they just turned a handle and passed into another life, which

came as naturally to them as the first. It sounds a platitude, but Peter used to say that it was the big secret of

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 golfcourse, and then to a point on the cliffs farther north beyond the line of the villas.

On the little trim newlymade roads I met people in flannels coming back from tennis and the beach, and a

coastguard from the wireless station, and donkeys and pierrots padding homewards. Out at sea in the blue

dusk I saw lights appear on the ARIADNE and on the destroyer away to the south, and beyond the Cock

sands the bigger lights of steamers making for the Thames. The whole scene was so peaceful and ordinary

that I got more dashed in spirits every second. It took all my resolution to stroll towards Trafalgar Lodge

On the way I got a piece of solid comfort from the sight of a greyhound that was swinging along at a

nursemaid's heels. He reminded me of a dog I used to have in Rhodesia, and of the time when I took him

hunting with me in the Pali hills. We were after rhebok, the dun kind, and I recollected how we had followed

one beast, and both he and I had clean lost it. A greyhound works by sight, and my eyes are good enough, but

that buck simply leaked out of the landscape. Afterwards I found out how it managed it. Against the grey

rock of the kopjes it showed no more than a crow against a thundercloud. It didn't need to run away; all it had

Suddenly as these memories chased across my brain I thought of my present case and applied the moral. The

Black Stone didn't need to bolt. They were quietly absorbed into the landscape. I was on the right track, and I

jammed that down in my mind and vowed never to forget it. The last word was with Peter Pienaar.

Scaife's men would be posted now, but there was no sign of a soul. The house stood as open as a

marketplace for anybody to observe. A threefoot railing separated it from the cliff road; the windows on

the groundfloor were all open, and shaded lights and the low sound of voices revealed where the occupants

were finishing dinner. Everything was as public and aboveboard as a charity bazaar. Feeling the greatest

A man of my sort, who has travelled about the world in rough places, gets on perfectly well with two classes,

what you may call the upper and the lower. He understands them and they understand him. I was at home

with herds and tramps and roadmen, and I was sufficiently at my ease with people like Sir Walter and the

men I had met the night before. I can't explain why, but it is a fact. But what fellows like me don't understand

is the great comfortable, satisfied middleclass 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

I asked for Mr Appleton, and was ushered in. My plan had been to walk straight into the diningroom, 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 golfclubs and tennisrackets, the straw

hats and caps, the rows of gloves, the sheaf of walkingsticks, 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 warmingpans 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 smokingroom, on the right side of the hall.

That room was even worse. I hadn't time to examine it, but I could see some framed group photographs above

the mantelpiece, and I could have sworn they were English public school or college. I had only one glance,

for I managed to pull myself together and go after the maid. But I was too late. She had already entered the

diningroom and given my name to her master, and I had missed the chance of seeing how the three took it.

When I walked into the room the old man at the head of the table had risen and turned round to meet me. He

was in evening dress a short coat and black tie, as was the other, whom I called in my own mind the plump

one. The third, the dark fellow, wore a blue serge suit and a soft white collar, and the colours of some club or

The old man's manner was perfect. 'Mr Hannay?' he said hesitatingly. 'Did you wish to see me? One moment,

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

The light in the room was dim, but so far as I could see their faces, they played the part of mystification very

'Maybe, maybe,' said the old man. 'I haven't a very good memory, but I'm afraid you must tell me your

'Well, then,' I said, and all the time I seemed to myself to be talking pure foolishness 'I have come to tell

you that the game's up. I have a warrant for the arrest of you three gentlemen.'

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

One of the others spoke up. 'That was the Portland Place murder. I read about it. Good heavens, you must be

After that for a minute there was utter silence. The old man was staring at his plate and fumbling with a nut,

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

'Don't get flustered, uncle,' he said. 'It is all a ridiculous mistake; but these things happen sometimes, and we

can easily set it right. It won't be hard to prove our innocence. I can show that I was out of the country on the

23rd of May, and Bob was in a nursing home. You were in London, but you can explain what you were

'Right, Percy! Of course that's easy enough. The 23rd! That was the day after Agatha's wedding. Let me see.

What was I doing? I came up in the morning from Woking, and lunched at the club with Charlie Symons.

Then oh yes, I dined with the Fishmongers. I remember, for the punch didn't agree with me, and I was

seedy next morning. Hang it all, there's the cigarbox I brought back from the dinner.' He pointed to an

'I think, Sir,' said the young man, addressing me respectfully, 'you will see you are mistaken. We want to

assist the law like all Englishmen, and we don't want Scotland Yard to be making fools of themselves. That's

'Certainly, Bob.' The old fellow seemed to be recovering his voice. 'Certainly, we'll do anything in our power

to assist the authorities. But but this is a bit too much. I can't get over it.'

'How Nellie will chuckle,' said the plump man. 'She always said that you would die of boredom because

nothing ever happened to you. And now you've got it thick and strong,' and he began to laugh very pleasantly.

'By Jove, yes. just think of it! What a story to tell at the club. Really, Mr Hannay, I suppose I should be

angry, to show my innocence, but it's too funny! I almost forgive you the fright you gave me! You looked so

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

laughingstock 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,

Well, I made nothing of it. One was old and bald, one was stout, one was dark and thin. There was nothing in

their appearance to prevent them being the three who had hunted me in Scotland, but there was nothing to

identify them. 1 simply can't explain why I who, as a roadman, had looked into two pairs of eyes, and as Ned

Ainslie into another pair, why I, who have a good memory and reasonable powers of observation, could find

no satisfaction. They seemed exactly what they professed to be, and I could not have sworn to one of them.

There in that pleasant diningroom, 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

cigarettebox beside me, and I saw that it had been won by Percival Appleton, Esq., of the St Bede's Club, in

a golf tournament. I had to keep a firm hold of Peter Pienaar to prevent myself bolting out of that house.

'I hope you'll find it consistent with your duty to drop this ridiculous business. I make no complaint, but you'll

'Do you propose to march us off to the police station?' asked the plump one. 'That might be the best way out

of it, but I suppose you won't be content with the local branch. I have the right to ask to see your warrant, but

I don't wish to cast any aspersions upon you. You are only doing your duty. But you'll admit it's horribly

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

'Oh, Peter Pienaar,' I groaned inwardly, and for a moment I was very near damning myself for a fool and

'Meantime I vote we have a game of bridge,' said the plump one. 'It will give Mr Hannay time to think over

I accepted as if it had been an ordinary invitation at the club. The whole business had mesmerized me. We

went into the smokingroom where a cardtable was set out, and I was offered things to smoke and drink. I

took my place at the table in a kind of dream. The window was open and the moon was flooding the cliffs and

sea with a great tide of yellow light. There was moonshine, too, in my head. The three had recovered their

composure, and were talking easily just the kind of slangy talk you will hear in any golf clubhouse. I must

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

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

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

A little thing, lasting only a second, and the odds were a thousand to one that I might have had my eyes on

my cards at the time and missed it. But I didn't, and, in a flash, the air seemed to clear. Some shadow lifted

from my brain, and I was looking at the three men with full and absolute recognition.

The 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 goodhumour. His knife, I made certain,

The plump man's features seemed to dislimn, and form again, as I looked at them. He hadn't a face, only a

hundred masks that he could assume when he pleased. That chap must have been a superb actor. Perhaps he

had been Lord Alloa of the night before; perhaps not; it didn't matter. I wondered if he was the fellow who

had first tracked Scudder, and left his card on him. Scudder had said he lisped, and I could imagine how the

But the old man was the pick of the lot. He was sheer brain, icy, cool, calculating, as ruthless as a steam

hammer. Now that my eyes were opened I wondered where I had seen the benevolence. His jaw was like

chilled steel, and his eyes had the inhuman luminosity of a bird's. I went on playing, and every second a

greater hate welled up in my heart. It almost choked me, and I couldn't answer when my partner spoke. Only

'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

'Oh, damn,' said the young man. 'I thought you had dropped that rot. I've simply got to go. You can have my

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

There must have been, for as I glanced at him, his eyelids fell in that hawklike hood which fear had stamped

In an instant the lights were out. A pair of strong arms gripped me round the waist, covering the pockets in

'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 outofdoors, 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

Suddenly my prisoner broke from me and flung himself on the wall. There was a click as if a lever had been

pulled. Then came a low rumbling far, far below the ground, and through the window I saw a cloud of chalky

'He is safe,' he cried. 'You cannot follow in time ... He is gone ... He has triumphed ... DER SCHWARZE

There was more in those eyes than any common triumph. They had been hooded like a bird of prey, and now

they flamed with a hawk's pride. A white fanatic heat burned in them, and I realized for the first time the

terrible thing I had been up against. This man was more than a spy; in his foul way he had been a patriot.

'I hope Franz will bear his triumph well. I ought to tell you that the ARIADNE for the last hour has been in

Three weeks later, as all the world knows, we went to war. I joined the New Army the first week, and owing

to my Matabele experience got a captain's commission straight off. But I had done my best service, I think,