The Thirty-Nine Steps
infernal aeroplane, flying low, about a dozen miles to the south and
rapidly coming towards me.
I had the sense to remember that on a bare moor I was at the
aeroplane’s mercy, and that my only chance was to get to the leafy
cover of the valley. Down the hill I went like blue lightning, screwing
my head round, whenever I dared, to watch that damned flying machine.
Soon I was on a road between hedges, and dipping to the deep-cut glen
of a stream. Then came a bit of thick wood where I slackened speed.
Suddenly on my left I heard the hoot of another car, and realized to my
horror that I was almost up on a couple of gate-posts through which a
private road debouched on the highway. My horn gave an agonized roar,
but it was too late. I clapped on my brakes, but my impetus was too
great, and there before me a car was sliding athwart my course. In a
second there would have been the deuce of a wreck. I did the only thing
possible, and ran slap into the hedge on the right, trusting to find
something soft beyond.
But there I was mistaken. My car slithered through the hedge like
butter, and then gave a sickening plunge forward. I saw what was
coming, leapt on the seat and would have jumped out. But a branch of
hawthorn got me in the chest, lifted me up and held me, while a ton or
two of expensive metal slipped below me, bucked and pitched, and then
dropped with an almighty smash fifty feet to the bed of the stream.
Slowly that thorn let me go. I subsided first on the hedge, and then
very gently on a bower of nettles. As I scrambled to my feet a hand
took me by the arm, and a sympathetic and badly scared voice asked me
if I were hurt.
I found myself looking at a tall young man in goggles and a leather
ulster, who kept on blessing his soul and whinnying apologies. For
myself, once I got my wind back, I was rather glad than otherwise. This
was one way of getting rid of the car.
“My blame, sir,” I answered him. “It’s lucky that I did not add
homicide to my follies. That’s the end of my Scotch motor tour, but it
might have been the end of my life.”
He plucked out a watch and studied it. “You’re the right sort of
fellow,” he said. “I can spare a quarter of an hour, and my house is
two minutes off. I’ll see you clothed and fed and snug in bed. Where’s
your kit, by the way? Is it in the burn along with the car?”
“It’s in my pocket,” I said, brandishing a toothbrush. “I’m a colonial
and travel light.”
“A colonial,” he cried. “By Gad, you’re the very man I’ve been praying
for. Are you by any blessed chance a Free Trader?”
“I am,” said I, without the foggiest notion of what he meant.
He patted my shoulder and hurried me into his car. Three minutes later
we drew up before a comfortable-looking shooting-box set among pine
trees, and he ushered me indoors. He took me first to a bedroom and
flung half a dozen of his suits before me, for my own had been pretty
well reduced to rags. I selected a loose blue serge, which differed
most conspicuously from my former garments, and borrowed a linen
collar. Then he haled me to the dining-room, where the remnants of a
meal stood on the table, and announced that I had just five minutes to
feed. “You can take a snack in your pocket, and we’ll have supper when
we get back. I’ve got to be at the Masonic Hall at eight o’clock, or my
agent will comb my hair.”
I had a cup of coffee and some cold ham, while he yarned away on the
hearthrug.
“You find me in the deuce of a mess, Mr ——; by-the-by, you haven’t told
me your name. Twisdon? Any relation of old Tommy Twisdon of the
Sixtieth? No? Well, you see I’m Liberal Candidate for this part of the
world, and I had a meeting on tonight at Brattleburn—that’s my chief
town, and an infernal Tory stronghold. I had got the Colonial
ex-Premier fellow, Crumpleton, coming to speak for me tonight, and had
the thing tremendously billed and the whole place ground-baited. This
afternoon I had a wire from the ruffian saying he had got influenza at
Blackpool, and here am I left to do the whole thing myself. I had meant
to speak for ten minutes and must now go on for forty, and, though I’ve
been racking my brains for three hours to think of something, I simply
cannot last the course. Now you’ve got to be a good chap and help me.
You’re a Free Trader and can tell our people what a wash-out Protection
is in the Colonies. All you fellows have the gift of the gab—I wish to
Heaven I had it. I’ll be for evermore in your debt.”
I had very few notions about Free Trade one way or the other, but I saw
no other chance to get what I wanted. My young gentleman was far too
absorbed in his own difficulties to think how odd it was to ask a
stranger who had just missed death by an ace and had lost a
1,000-guinea car to address a meeting for him on the spur of the
moment. But my necessities did not allow me to contemplate oddnesses or
to pick and choose my supports.
“All right,” I said. “I’m not much good as a speaker, but I’ll tell
them a bit about Australia.”
At my words the cares of the ages slipped from his shoulders, and he
was rapturous in his thanks. He lent me a big driving coat—and never
troubled to ask why I had started on a motor tour without possessing an
ulster—and, as we slipped down the dusty roads, poured into my ears the
simple facts of his history. He was an orphan, and his uncle had
brought him up—I’ve forgotten the uncle’s name, but he was in the
Cabinet, and you can read his speeches in the papers. He had gone round
the world after leaving Cambridge, and then, being short of a job, his
uncle had advised politics. I gathered that he had no preference in
parties. “Good chaps in both,” he said cheerfully, “and plenty of
blighters, too. I’m Liberal, because my family have always been Whigs.”
But if he was lukewarm politically he had strong views on other things.
He found out I knew a bit about horses, and jawed away about the Derby
entries; and he was full of plans for improving his shooting.
Altogether, a very clean, decent, callow young man.
As we passed through a little town two policemen signalled us to stop,
and flashed their lanterns on us.
“Beg pardon, Sir Harry,” said one. “We’ve got instructions to look out
for a car, and the description’s no unlike yours.”
“Right-o,” said my host, while I thanked Providence for the devious
ways I had been brought to safety. After that he spoke no more, for his
mind began to labour heavily with his coming speech. His lips kept
muttering, his eye wandered, and I began to prepare myself for a second
catastrophe. I tried to think of something to say myself, but my mind
was dry as a stone. The next thing I knew we had drawn up outside a
door in a street, and were being welcomed by some noisy gentlemen with
rosettes.
The hall had about five hundred in it, women mostly, a lot of bald
heads, and a dozen or two young men. The chairman, a weaselly minister
with a reddish nose, lamented Crumpleton’s absence, soliloquized on his
influenza, and gave me a certificate as a “trusted leader of Australian
thought”. There were two policemen at the door, and I hoped they took
note of that testimonial. Then Sir Harry started.
I never heard anything like it. He didn’t begin to know how to talk. He
had about a bushel of notes from which he read, and when he let go of
them he fell into one prolonged stutter. Every now and then he
remembered a phrase he had learned by heart, straightened his back, and
gave it off like Henry Irving, and the next moment he was bent double
and crooning over his papers. It was the most appalling rot, too. He
talked about the “German menace”, and said it was all a Tory invention
to cheat the poor of their rights and keep back the great flood of
social reform, but that “organized labour” realized this and laughed
the Tories to scorn. He was all for reducing our Navy as a proof of our
good faith, and then sending Germany an ultimatum telling her to do the
same or we would knock her into a cocked hat. He said that, but for the
Tories, Germany and Britain would be fellow-workers in peace and
reform. I thought of the little black book in my pocket! A giddy lot
Scudder’s friends cared for peace and reform.
Yet in a queer way I liked the speech. You could see the niceness of
the chap shining out behind the muck with which he had been spoon-fed.
Also it took a load off my mind. I mightn’t be much of an orator, but I
was a thousand per cent better than Sir Harry.
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 hearthrug.
“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