The Thirty-Nine Steps (8 page)

Then I set to work to dress for the part. I opened the collar of my shirt—it was a
vulgar blue-and-white check such as ploughmen wear—and revealed a neck as brown as
any tinker’s. I rolled up my sleeves, and there was a forearm which might have been
a blacksmith’s, sunburnt and rough with old scars. I got my boots and trouser-legs
all white from the dust of the road, and hitched up my trousers, tying them with string
below the knee. Then I set to work on my face. With a handful of dust I made a water-mark
round my neck, the place where Mr Turnbull’s Sunday ablutions might be expected to
stop. I rubbed a good deal of dirt also into the sunburn of my cheeks. A roadman’s
eyes would no doubt be a little inflamed, so I contrived to get some dust in both
of mine, and by dint of vigorous rubbing produced a bleary effect.

The sandwiches Sir Harry had given me had gone off with my coat, but the roadman’s
lunch, tied up in a red handkerchief, was at my disposal. I ate with great relish
several of the thick slabs of scone and cheese and drank a little of the cold tea.
In the handkerchief was a local paper tied with string and addressed to Mr Turnbull—obviously
meant to solace his midday leisure. I did up the bundle again, and put the paper conspicuously
beside it.

My boots did not satisfy me, but by dint of kicking among the stones I reduced them
to the granite-like surface which marks a roadman’s foot-gear. Then I bit and scraped
my finger-nails 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 box-bed and a bottle of
cheap whisky. Still nothing appeared on that long white road.

Now and then a sheep wandered off the heather to stare at me. A heron flopped down
to a pool in the stream and started to fish, taking no more notice of me than if I
had been a milestone. On I went, trundling my loads of stone, with the heavy step
of the professional. Soon I grew warm, and the dust on my face changed into solid
and abiding grit. I was already counting the hours till evening should put a limit
to Mr Turnbull’s monotonous toil. Suddenly a crisp voice spoke from the road, and
looking up I saw a little Ford two-seater, and a round-faced young man in a bowler
hat.

‘Are you Alexander Turnbull?’ he asked. ‘I am the new County Road Surveyor. You live
at Blackhopefoot, and have charge of the section from Laidlawbyres to the Riggs? Good!
A fair bit of road, Turnbull, and not badly engineered. A little soft about a mile
off, and the edges want cleaning. See you look after that. Good morning. You’ll know
me the next time you see me.’

Clearly my get-up was good enough for the dreaded Surveyor. I went on with my work,
and as the 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, and disturbed me somewhat by asking
loudly, ‘What had become o’ Specky?’

‘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 sauntered towards me.

Two of the men I had seen before from the window of the Galloway inn—one lean, sharp,
and dark, the other comfortable and smiling. The third had the look of a countryman—a
vet, perhaps, or a small farmer. He was dressed in ill-cut knickerbockers, and the
eye in his head was as bright and wary as a hen’s.

‘Morning,’ said the last. ‘That’s a fine easy job o’ yours.’

I had not looked up on their approach, and now, when accosted, I slowly and painfully
straightened my back, after the manner of roadmen; spat vigorously, after the manner
of the low Scot; and regarded them steadily before replying. I confronted three pairs
of eyes that missed nothing.

‘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 sud be made to mend what ye break.’

The bright-eyed man was looking at the newspaper lying beside Turnbull’s bundle.

‘I see you get your papers in good time,’ he said.

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

He picked it up, glanced at the superscription, and laid it down again. One of the
others had been looking at my boots, and a word in German called the speaker’s attention
to them.

‘You’ve a fine taste in boots,’ he said. ‘These were never made by a country shoemaker.’

‘They were not,’ I said readily. ‘They were made in London. I got them frae the gentleman
that was here last year for the shootin’. What was his name now?’ And I scratched
a forgetful head. Again the sleek one spoke in German. ‘Let us get on,’ he said. ‘This
fellow is all right.’

They asked one last question.

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

I very nearly fell into the trap and told a story of a bicyclist hurrying past in
the grey dawn. But I had the sense to see my danger. I pretended to consider very
deeply.

‘I wasna up very early,’ I said. ‘Ye see, my dochter was merrit last nicht, and we
keepit it up late. I opened the house door about seeven and there was naebody on the
road then. Since I cam’ up here there has just been the baker and the Ruchill herd,
besides you gentlemen.’

One of them gave me a cigar, which I smelt gingerly and stuck in Turnbull’s bundle.
They got into their car and were out of sight in three minutes.

My heart leaped with an enormous relief, but I went on wheeling my stones. It was
as well, for ten minutes later the car returned, one of the occupants waving a hand
to me. Those gentry left nothing to chance.

I finished Turnbull’s bread and cheese, and pretty soon I had finished the stones.
The next step was what 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 must. No man’s nerve could stand more than a day of being spied on.

I stayed at my post till five o’clock. By that time I had 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 polo-weeks 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 weaker
sex.

Anyhow there he was now, nattily dressed, in a fine new car, obviously on his way
to visit some of his smart friends. A sudden daftness took me, and in a second I had
jumped into the tonneau and had him by the shoulder.

‘Hullo, Jopley,’ I sang out. ‘Well met, my lad!’ He got a horrid fright. His chin
dropped as he stared at me. ‘Who the devil are
you
?’ he gasped.

‘My name’s Hannay,’ I said. ‘From Rhodesia, you remember.’

‘Good God, the murderer!’ he choked.

‘Just so. And there’ll be a second murder, my dear, if you don’t do as I tell you.
Give me that coat of yours. That cap, too.’

He did as bid, for he was blind with terror. Over my dirty trousers and vulgar shirt
I put on his smart driving-coat, which buttoned high at the top and thereby hid the
deficiencies of my collar. I stuck the cap on my head, and added his gloves to my
get-up. The dusty roadman in a minute was transformed into one of the neatest motorists
in Scotland. On Mr Jopley’s head I clapped Turnbull’s unspeakable hat, and told him
to keep it there.

Then with some difficulty I turned the car. My plan was to go back the road he had
come, for the watchers, having seen it before, would probably let it pass 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 above me I’ll wring your neck.
Savez
?’

I enjoyed that evening’s ride. We ran eight miles down the valley, through a village
or two, and I could not help noticing several strange-looking folk lounging by the
roadside. These were the watchers who would have had much to say to me if I had come
in other garb or company. As it was, they looked incuriously on. One touched his cap
in salute, and I responded graciously.

As the dark fell I turned up a side glen which, as I 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 tail-light 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 impostor, and a highwayman with a marked
taste for expensive motor-cars.

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 my belt, and about
half a pound of ginger biscuits in my trousers pocket.

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 hide-and-seek. So far I had been miraculously lucky. The milkman, the literary
innkeeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic Marmie, were all pieces of undeserved
good fortune. Somehow the first success gave me a feeling that I was going to pull
the thing through.

My chief trouble was that I was desperately hungry. When a Jew shoots himself in the
City and there is an inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was
‘well-nourished’. I remember thinking that they would not call me well-nourished if
I broke my neck in a bog-hole. I lay and tortured myself—for the ginger biscuits merely
emphasized the aching void—with the memory of all the good food I had thought so little
of in London. There were Paddock’s crisp sausages and fragrant 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.