The Thirty-Nine Steps
begin till he had got to London, and would come from the very highest
quarters, where there would be no thought of suspicion. He mentioned
the name of a woman—Julia Czechenyi—as having something to do with the
danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get Karolides out of the
care of his guards. He talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man that
lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly somebody that
he never referred to without a shudder—an old man with a young voice
who could hood his eyes like a hawk.
He spoke a good deal about death, too. He was mortally anxious about
winning through with his job, but he didn’t care a rush for his life.
“I reckon it’s like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out,
and waking to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the
window. I used to thank God for such mornings way back in the
Blue-Grass country, and I guess I’ll thank Him when I wake up on the
other side of Jordan.”
Next day he was much more cheerful, and read the life of Stonewall
Jackson much of the time. I went out to dinner with a mining engineer I
had got to see on business, and came back about half-past ten in time
for our game of chess before turning in.
I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as I pushed open the
smoking-room door. The lights were not lit, which struck me as odd. I
wondered if Scudder had turned in already.
I snapped the switch, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something
in the far corner which made me drop my cigar and fall into a cold
sweat.
My guest was lying sprawled on his back. There was a long knife through
his heart which skewered him to the floor.
Chapter II.
The Milkman Sets Out on his Travels
I sat down in an armchair and felt very sick. That lasted for maybe
five minutes, and was succeeded by a fit of the horrors. The poor
staring white face on the floor was more than I could bear, and I
managed to get a table-cloth and cover it. Then I staggered to a
cupboard, found the brandy and swallowed several mouthfuls. I had seen
men die violently before; indeed I had killed a few myself in the
Matabele War; but this cold-blooded indoor business was different.
Still I managed to pull myself together. I looked at my watch, and saw
that it was half-past ten.
An idea seized me, and I went over the flat with a small-tooth comb.
There was nobody there, nor any trace of anybody, but I shuttered and
bolted all the windows and put the chain on the door. By this time my
wits were coming back to me, and I could think again. It took me about
an hour to figure the thing out, and I did not hurry, for, unless the
murderer came back, I had till about six o’clock in the morning for my
cogitations.
I was in the soup—that was pretty clear. Any shadow of a doubt I might
have had about the truth of Scudder’s tale was now gone. The proof of
it was lying under the table-cloth. The men who knew that he knew what
he knew had found him, and had taken the best way to make certain of
his silence. Yes; but he had been in my rooms four days, and his
enemies must have reckoned that he had confided in me. So I would be
the next to go. It might be that very night, or next day, or the day
after, but my number was up all right.
Then suddenly I thought of another probability. Supposing I went out
now and called in the police, or went to bed and let Paddock find the
body and call them in the morning. What kind of a story was I to tell
about Scudder? I had lied to Paddock about him, and the whole thing
looked desperately fishy. If I made a clean breast of it and told the
police everything he had told me, they would simply laugh at me. The
odds were a thousand to one that I would be charged with the murder,
and the circumstantial evidence was strong enough to hang me. Few
people knew me in England; I had no real pal who could come forward and
swear to my character. Perhaps that was what those secret enemies were
playing for. They were clever enough for anything, and an English
prison was as good a way of getting rid of me till after June 15th as a
knife in my chest.
Besides, if I told the whole story, and by any miracle was believed, I
would be playing their game. Karolides would stay at home, which was
what they wanted. Somehow or other the sight of Scudder’s dead face had
made me a passionate believer in his scheme. He was gone, but he had
taken me into his confidence, and I was pretty well bound to carry on
his work.
You may think this ridiculous for a man in danger of his life, but that
was the way I looked at it. I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver
than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long
knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his
place.
It took me an hour or two to think this out, and by that time I had
come to a decision. I must vanish somehow, and keep vanished till the
end of the second week in June. Then I must somehow find a way to get
in touch with the Government people and tell them what Scudder had told
me. I wished to Heaven he had told me more, and that I had listened
more carefully to the little he had told me. I knew nothing but the
barest facts. There was a big risk that, even if I weathered the other
dangers, I would not be believed in the end. I must take my chance of
that, and hope that something might happen which would confirm my tale
in the eyes of the Government.
My first job was to keep going for the next three weeks. It was now the
24th day of May, and that meant twenty days of hiding before I could
venture to approach the powers that be. I reckoned that two sets of
people would be looking for me—Scudder’s enemies to put me out of
existence, and the police, who would want me for Scudder’s murder. It
was going to be a giddy hunt, and it was queer how the prospect
comforted me. I had been slack so long that almost any chance of
activity was welcome. When I had to sit alone with that corpse and wait
on Fortune I was no better than a crushed worm, but if my neck’s safety
was to hang on my own wits I was prepared to be cheerful about it.
My next thought was whether Scudder had any papers about him to give me
a better clue to the business. I drew back the table-cloth and searched
his pockets, for I had no longer any shrinking from the body. The face
was wonderfully calm for a man who had been struck down in a moment.
There was nothing in the breast-pocket, and only a few loose coins and
a cigar-holder in the waistcoat. The trousers held a little penknife
and some silver, and the side pocket of his jacket contained an old
crocodile-skin cigar-case. There was no sign of the little black book
in which I had seen him making notes. That had no doubt been taken by
his murderer.
But as I looked up from my task I saw that some drawers had been pulled
out in the writing-table. Scudder would never have left them in that
state, for he was the tidiest of mortals. Someone must have been
searching for something—perhaps for the pocket-book.
I went round the flat and found that everything had been ransacked—the
inside of books, drawers, cupboards, boxes, even the pockets of the
clothes in my wardrobe, and the sideboard in the dining-room. There was
no trace of the book. Most likely the enemy had found it, but they had
not found it on Scudder’s body.
Then I got out an atlas and looked at a big map of the British Isles.
My notion was to get off to some wild district, where my veldcraft
would be of some use to me, for I would be like a trapped rat in a
city. I considered that Scotland would be best, for my people were
Scotch and I could pass anywhere as an ordinary Scotsman. I had half an
idea at first to be a German tourist, for my father had had German
partners, and I had been brought up to speak the tongue pretty
fluently, not to mention having put in three years prospecting for
copper in German Damaraland. But I calculated that it would be less
conspicuous to be a Scot, and less in a line with what the police might
know of my past. I fixed on Galloway as the best place to go. It was
the nearest wild part of Scotland, so far as I could figure it out, and
from the look of the map was not over thick with population.
A search in Bradshaw informed me that a train left St Pancras at 7.10,
which would land me at any Galloway station in the late afternoon. That
was well enough, but a more important matter was how I was to make my
way to St Pancras, for I was pretty certain that Scudder’s friends
would be watching outside. This puzzled me for a bit; then I had an
inspiration, on which I went to bed and slept for two troubled hours.
I got up at four and opened my bedroom shutters. The faint light of a
fine summer morning was flooding the skies, and the sparrows had begun
to chatter. I had a great revulsion of feeling, and felt a
God-forgotten fool. My inclination was to let things slide, and trust
to the British police taking a reasonable view of my case. But as I
reviewed the situation I could find no arguments to bring against my
decision of the previous night, so with a wry mouth I resolved to go on
with my plan. I was not feeling in any particular funk; only
disinclined to go looking for trouble, if you understand me.
I hunted out a well-used tweed suit, a pair of strong nailed boots, and
a flannel shirt with a collar. Into my pockets I stuffed a spare shirt,
a cloth cap, some handkerchiefs, and a tooth-brush. I had drawn a good
sum in gold from the bank two days before, in case Scudder should want
money, and I took fifty pounds of it in sovereigns in a belt which I
had brought back from Rhodesia. That was about all I wanted. Then I had
a bath, and cut my moustache, which was long and drooping, into a short
stubbly fringe.
Now came the next step. Paddock used to arrive punctually at 7.30 and
let himself in with a latch-key. But about twenty minutes to seven, as
I knew from bitter experience, the milkman turned up with a great
clatter of cans, and deposited my share outside my door. I had seen
that milkman sometimes when I had gone out for an early ride. He was a
young man about my own height, with an ill-nourished moustache, and he
wore a white overall. On him I staked all my chances.
I went into the darkened smoking-room where the rays of morning light
were beginning to creep through the shutters. There I breakfasted off a
whisky-and-soda and some biscuits from the cupboard. By this time it
was getting on for six o’clock. I put a pipe in my pocket and filled my
pouch from the tobacco jar on the table by the fireplace.
As I poked into the tobacco my fingers touched something hard, and I
drew out Scudder’s little black pocket-book....
That seemed to me a good omen. I lifted the cloth from the body and was
amazed at the peace and dignity of the dead face. “Goodbye, old chap,”
I said; “I am going to do my best for you. Wish me well, wherever you
are.”
Then I hung about in the hall waiting for the milkman. That was the
worst part of the business, for I was fairly choking to get out of
doors. Six-thirty passed, then six-forty, but still he did not come.
The fool had chosen this day of all days to be late.
At one minute after the quarter to seven I heard the rattle of the cans
outside. I opened the front door, and there was my man, singling out my
cans from a bunch he carried and whistling through his teeth. He jumped
a bit at the sight of me.
“Come in here a moment,” I said. “I want a word with you.” And I led
him into the dining-room.
“I reckon you’re a bit of a sportsman,” I said, “and I want you to do
me a service. Lend me your cap and overall for ten minutes, and here’s
a sovereign for you.”
His eyes opened at the sight of the gold, and he grinned broadly.
“Wot’s the gyme?”he asked.