The Thirty-Nine Steps (7 page)

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

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

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

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

‘Listen, Sir Harry,’ I said. ‘I’ve something pretty important to say to you. You’re
a good fellow, and I’m going to be frank. Where on earth did you get that poisonous
rubbish you talked 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 think
Germany would ever go to war with us?’

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

I can see yet that bright room with the deers’ heads and the old prints on the walls,
Sir Harry standing restlessly on the stone curb of the hearth, and myself lying back
in an armchair, speaking. I seemed to be another person, standing aside and listening
to my own voice, and 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 note-book, and my doings
in Galloway. Presently he got very excited and walked up and down the hearth-rug.

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

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

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

‘Not a profession that weakens the nerves, is it?’

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

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

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

He pulled his moustache. ‘That won’t help you. This is Foreign Office business, and
my uncle would have 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. Now, what’s the next thing?’

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

He did, or promised to do, all these things. I shaved off the remnants of my moustache,
and got inside an ancient suit of what I believe is called heather mixture. The map
gave me some notion of my whereabouts, and told me the two things I wanted to know—where
the main railway to the south could be joined and what were the wildest districts
near at hand. At two o’clock he wakened me from my slumbers in the smoking-room armchair,
and led me blinking into the dark starry night. An old bicycle was found in a tool-shed
and handed over to me.

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

I pedalled diligently up steep roads of hill gravel till the skies grew pale with
morning. As the mists cleared before the sun, I found myself in a wide green world
with glens falling on every side and a far-away blue horizon. Here, at any rate, I
could get early news of my enemies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have said there was not cover in the whole place to hide a rat. As the day advanced
it was flooded with soft fresh light till it had the fragrant sunniness of the South
African veld. At other times I would have liked the place, but now it seemed to suffocate
me. The free moorlands were prison walls, and the keen hill air was the breath of
a dungeon.

I tossed a coin—heads right, tails left—and it fell heads, so I turned to the north.
In a little I came to the brow of the ridge which was the containing wall of the pass.
I saw the highroad for maybe ten miles, and far down it something that was moving,
and that I took to be a motor-car. Beyond the ridge I looked on a rolling green moor,
which fell away into wooded glens.

Now my life on the veld has given me the eyes of a kite, and I can see things for
which most men need a telescope … Away down the slope, a couple of miles away, several
men were advancing, like a row of beaters at a shoot …

I dropped out of sight behind the sky-line. That way was shut to me, and I must try
the bigger hills to the south beyond the highway. The car I had noticed was getting
nearer, but it was still a long way off with some very steep gradients before it.
I ran hard, crouching low except in the hollows, and as I ran I kept scanning the
brow of the hill before me. Was it imagination, or did I see figures—one, two, perhaps
more—moving in a glen beyond the stream?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I agreed with him about bed. ‘It’s easy speakin’,’ he moaned. ‘But I got a postcard
yestreen sayin’ that the new Road Surveyor would be round the day. He’ll come and
he’ll no find me, or else he’ll find me fou, and either way I’m a done man. I’ll awa’
back to my bed and say I’m no weel, but I doot that’ll no help me, for they ken my
kind o’ no-weel-ness.’

Then I had an inspiration. ‘Does the new Surveyor know you?’ I asked.

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

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

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

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

‘You’re the billy,’ he cried. ‘It’ll be easy eneuch managed. I’ve finished that bing
o’ stanes, so you needna chap ony mair this forenoon. Just take the 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 my
friends arrived on the scene.