The Thirty-Nine Steps
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.”
“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 Leipsig. 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 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 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 monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of
the American had gone out of his speech.
“My hat! Mr Scudder—” I stammered.
“Not Mr Scudder,” he corrected; “Captain Theophilus Digby, of the 40th
Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I’ll thank you to remember that,
sir.”
I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought my own couch, more
cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things did happen
occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis.
I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce of a row
at the smoking-room 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 hand at valeting, but I knew I could
count on his loyalty.
“Stop that row, Paddock,” I said. “There’s a friend of mine,
Captain—Captain” (I couldn’t remember the name) “dossing down in there.
Get breakfast for two and then come and speak to me.”
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 the liftman had an important face.
“Nawsty business ’ere this morning, sir. Gent in No. 15 been and shot
’isself. They’ve just took ’im to the mortiary. The police are up there
now.”
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 half-a-crown went far to console
him.
I attended the inquest next day. A partner of some publishing firm gave
evidence that the deceased had brought him wood-pulp 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 obituary notice.
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
note-book, 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 made every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly stiff
job.
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 vaguely.
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