The Thirty-Nine Steps
“No. But for the last fortnight they have dropped you from the list of
possibles.”
“Why?” I asked in amazement.
“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 would choke him off. I had a letter from him on the
31st of May.”
“But he had been dead a week by then.”
“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
Newcastle. He had a mania, you know, for concealing his tracks.”
“What did he say?” I stammered.
“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 against my country’s enemies only, and not
my country’s law.
“Now let us have the little note-book,” said Sir Walter.
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 grave before he had finished, and he sat silent for a while.
“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 red. Jews and the high
finance.
“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 pigeon-holed—nothing more.”
Just then the butler entered the room.
“There’s a trunk-call from London, Sir Walter. It’s Mr ’Eath, and he
wants to speak to you personally.”
My host went off to the telephone.
He returned in five minutes with a whitish face. “I apologize to the
shade of Scudder,” he said. “Karolides was shot dead this evening at a
few minutes after seven.”
Chapter VIII.
The Coming of the Black Stone
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
tarnished.
“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 _Sous-chef
d’État Major-General_ should be ‘Porker.’”
He directed me to the hot dishes and went on.
“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 in France, for they
manage these things better there.”
While I ate he continued to talk, making me to my surprise a present of
his full confidence.
“Can the dispositions not be changed?” I asked.
“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 fail, for, once we suspect, they
know that the whole thing must be altered.”
“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 which they reckon is going to win out.”
“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
boat-train. 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 deuce in the chancelleries of
Europe.”
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 half-past eleven. The butler was coming up by
train with the luggage.
The first thing he did was to take me round to Scotland Yard. There we
saw a prim gentleman, with a clean-shaven, lawyer’s face.
“I’ve brought you the Portland Place murderer,” was Sir Walter’s
introduction.
The reply was a wry smile. “It would have been a welcome present,
Bullivant. This, I presume, is Mr Richard Hannay, who for some days
greatly interested my department.”
“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 assure Mr Hannay that he will suffer no further
inconvenience.”
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, you must please yourself.”
“We may want your assistance later on, MacGillivray,” Sir Walter said
as we left.
Then he turned me loose.
“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 Stone friends saw you there might be trouble.”
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 wondered if they were thinking about the murder.
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 cog-wheel 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 Lords and Generals would admit me to their councils.
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 and flatten something. I was rapidly getting into a very bad
temper.
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 thought I would put it off
till next morning, and go to a hotel for the night.
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
sleep again.