The Thirty-Nine Steps(三十九级台阶)

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

THE THIRTY-NINE

STEPS

JOHN BUCHAN

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

TO THOMAS ARTHUR NELSON

(LOTHIAN AND BORDER HORSE)

My Dear Tommy,

You and I have long cherished an affection for that elemental type of

tale which Americans call the 'dime novel' and which we know as the

'shocker' - the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and

march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last winter I

exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write

one for myself. This little volume is the result, and I should like to put

your name on it in memory of our long friendship, in the days when the

wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the facts.

J.B.

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

CHAPTER ONE The Man Who

Died

I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon

pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country,

and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have

been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact.

The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made

me sick, I couldn't get enough exercise, and the amusements of London

seemed as flat as soda- water that has been standing in the sun. 'Richard

Hannay,' I kept telling myself, 'you have got into the wrong ditch, my

friend, and you had better climb out.' It made me bite my lips to think of

the plans I had been building up those last years in Bulawayo. I had got

my pile - not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had

figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought

me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since;

so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping

there for the rest of my days.

But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was

tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of

restaurants and theatres and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go about

with, which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their

houses, but they didn't seem much interested in me. They would fling me a

question or two about South Africa, and then get on their own affairs. A lot

of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New

Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business

of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb, with

enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all day. I had

just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the best

bored man in the United Kingdom.

That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to

give my mind something to work on, and on my way home I turned into

my club - rather a pot-house, which took in Colonial members. I had a

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the

Near East, and there was an article about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I

rather fancied the chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in

the show; and he played a straight game too, which was more than could

be said for most of them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in

Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and one paper

said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon. I

remember wondering if I could get a job in those parts. It struck me that

Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.

About six o'clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Cafe Royal, and

turned into a music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering women and

monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear

as I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place. The crowd

surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the

people for having something to do. These shop-girls and clerks and

dandies and policemen had some interest in life that kept them going. I

gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-

sufferer. At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a

vow. I would give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if

nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape.

My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langham Place.

There was a common staircase, with a porter and a liftman at the entrance,

but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was quite

shut off from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I had a fellow

to look after me who came in by the day. He arrived before eight o'clock

every morning and used to depart at seven, for I never dined at home.

I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at my

elbow. I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance made me

start. He was a slim man, with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue

eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of a flat on the top floor, with

whom I had passed the time of day on the stairs.

'Can I speak to you?' he said. 'May I come in for a minute?' He was

steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing my arm.

I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

threshold than he made a dash for my back room, where I used to smoke

and write my letters. Then he bolted back.

'Is the door locked?' he asked feverishly, and he fastened the chain

with his own hand.

'I'm very sorry,' he said humbly. 'It's a mighty liberty, but you looked

the kind of man who would understand. I've had you in my mind all this

week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?'

'I'll listen to you,' I said. 'That's all I'll promise.' I was getting worried

by the antics of this nervous little chap.

There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled

himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and

cracked the glass as he set it down.

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

moment to be dead.'

I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.

'What does it feel like?' I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal

with a madman.

A smile flickered over his drawn face. 'I'm not mad - yet. Say, Sir, I've

been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer. I reckon, too,

you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I'm going to

confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I want

to know if I can count you in.'

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

He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the

queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask

him questions. But here is the gist of it:

He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college, being pretty

well off, he had started out to see the world. He wrote a bit, and acted as

war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a year or two in South-

Eastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine linguist, and had got to know

pretty well the society in those parts. He spoke familiarly of many names

that I remembered to have seen in the newspapers.

He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the interest of

them, and then because he couldn't help himself. I read him as a sharp,

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

restless fellow, who always wanted to get down to the roots of things. He

got a little further down than he wanted.

I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out. Away

behind all the Governments and the armies there was a big subterranean

movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come

on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further, and then he got caught.

I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists

that make revolutions, but that beside them there were financiers who

were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling

market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.

He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me

- things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came

out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men

disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the

whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads.

When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give

them their chance. Everything would be in the melting- pot, and they

looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the

shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had

no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the

Jew hated Russia worse than hell.

'Do you wonder?' he cried. 'For three hundred years they have been

persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is

everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take

any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first

man you meet is Prince von und Zu Something, an elegant young man

who talks Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is

big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a

retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man

that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're on the biggest kind

of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up

against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a

rattlesnake. Yes, Sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and

he has his knife in the Empire of the Tzar, because his aunt was outraged

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga.'

I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left

behind a little.

'Yes and no,' he said. 'They won up to a point, but they struck a bigger

thing than money, a thing that couldn't be bought, the old elemental

fighting instincts of man. If you're going to be killed you invent some kind

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

Those foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and

that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends

haven't played their last card by a long sight. They've gotten the ace up

their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they are going to

play it and win.'

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

'MORS JANUA VITAE,' he smiled. (I recognized the quotation: it was

about all the Latin I knew.) 'I'm coming to that, but I've got to put you wise

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

the name of Constantine Karolides?'

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

'He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is the one big brain

in the whole show, and he happens also to be an honest man. Therefore he

has been marked down these twelve months past. I found that out - not

that it was difficult, for any fool could guess as much. But I found out the

way they were going to get him, and that knowledge was deadly. That's

why I have had to decease.'

He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was getting

interested in the beggar.

'They can't get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of Epirotes

that would skin their grandmothers. But on the 15th day of June he is

coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken to having

International tea-parties, and the biggest of them is due on that date. Now

Karolides is reckoned the principal guest, and if my friends have their way

he will never return to his admiring countrymen.'

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

him at home.'

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

'And play their game?' he asked sharply. 'If he does not come they win,

for he's the only man that can straighten out the tangle. And if his

Government are warned he won't come, for he does not know how big the

stakes will be on June the 15th.'

'What about the British Government?' I said. 'They're not going to let

their guests be murdered. Tip them the wink, and they'll take extra

precautions.'

'No good. They might stuff your city with plain-clothes detectives and

double the police and Constantine would still be a doomed man. My

friends are not playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for

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

Austrian, and there'll be plenty of evidence to show the connivance of the

big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course, but

the case will look black enough to the world. I'm not talking hot air, my

friend. I happen to know every detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can

tell you it will be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the

Borgias. But it's not going to come off if there's a certain man who knows

the wheels of the business alive right here in London on the 15th day of

June. And that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P. Scudder.'

I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like a rat- trap,

and there was the fire of battle in his gimlety eyes. If he was spinning me a

yarn he could act up to it.

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

'I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol. That set me

inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur-shop in the Galician

quarter of Buda, in a Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little 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 French-American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew

diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English student of Ibsen collecting

materials for lectures, but when I left Bergen I was a cinema-man with

special ski films. And I came here from Leith with a lot of pulp-wood

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

propositions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers. Till

yesterday I thought I had muddied my trail some, and was feeling pretty

happy. Then ...'

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

whisky.

'Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this block. I used to

stay close in my room all day, and only slip out after dark for an hour or

two. I watched him for a bit from my window, and I thought I recognized

him ... He came in and spoke to the porter ... When I came back from my

walk last night I found a card in my letter-box. It bore the name of the man

I want least to meet on God's earth.'

I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked scare on

his face, completed my conviction of his honesty. My own voice

sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next.

'I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that there

was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they

would go to sleep again.'

'How did you manage it?'

'I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got

myself up to look like death. That wasn't difficult, for I'm no slouch at

disguises. Then I got a corpse - you can always get a body in London if

you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the top of a

four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room. You see I had

to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to

mix me a sleeping- draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted to

fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn't abide leeches. When I

was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse. He was my size, and I

judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy

about the place. The jaw was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it

away with a revolver. I daresay there will be somebody tomorrow to swear

to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I

guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas,

with a revolver lying on the bed-clothes and a considerable mess around.

Then I got into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies. I didn't

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides, it wasn't any kind of

use my trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind all day, and

there seemed nothing to do but to make an appeal to you. I watched from

my window till I saw you come home, and then slipped down the stair to

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

business.'

He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and yet desperately

determined. By this time I was pretty well convinced that he was going

straight with me. It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my

time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I had made a

practice of judging the man rather than the story. If he had wanted to get a

location in my flat, and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a milder

yarn.

'Hand me your key,' I said, 'and I'll take a look at the corpse. Excuse

my caution, but I'm bound to verify a bit if I can.'

He shook his head mournfully. 'I reckoned you'd ask for that, but I

haven't got it. It's on my chain on the dressing-table. I had to leave it

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

are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You'll have to take me on trust

for the night, and tomorrow you'll get proof of the corpse business right

enough.'

I thought for an instant or two. 'Right. I'll trust you for the night. I'll

lock you into this room and keep the key. just one word, Mr Scudder. I

believe you're straight, but if so be you are not I should warn you that I'm

a handy man with a gun.'

'Sure,' he said, jumping up with some briskness. 'I haven't the privilege

of your name, Sir, but let me tell you that you're a white man. I'll thank

you to lend me a razor.'

I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an hour's

time a figure came out that I scarcely 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

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