The Thirty-Nine Steps
of tossing it and catching it in my lips. That wants a pretty steady
heart.
He watched me with a smile. “I don’t want proofs. I may be an ass on
the platform, but I can size up a man. You’re no murderer and you’re no
fool, and I believe you are speaking the truth. I’m going to back you
up. Now, what can I do?”
“First, I want you to write a letter to your uncle. I’ve got to get in
touch with the Government people sometime before the 15th of June.”
He pulled his moustache. “That won’t help you. This is Foreign Office
business, and my uncle would have nothing to do with it. Besides, you’d
never convince him. No, I’ll go one better. I’ll write to the Permanent
Secretary at the Foreign Office. He’s my godfather, and one of the best
going. What do you want?”
He sat down at a table and wrote to my dictation. The gist of it was
that if a man called Twisdon (I thought I had better stick to that
name) turned up before June 15th he was to entreat him kindly. He said
Twisdon would prove his _bona fides_ by passing the word “Black Stone”
and whistling “Annie Laurie”.
“Good,” said Sir Harry. “That’s the proper style. By the way, you’ll
find my godfather—his name’s Sir Walter Bullivant—down at his country
cottage for Whitsuntide. It’s close to Artinswell on the Kennet. That’s
done. Now, what’s the next thing?”
“You’re about my height. Lend me the oldest tweed suit you’ve got.
Anything will do, so long as the colour is the opposite of the clothes
I destroyed this afternoon. Then show me a map of the neighbourhood and
explain to me the lie of the land. Lastly, if the police come seeking
me, just show them the car in the glen. If the other lot turn up, tell
them I caught the south express after your meeting.”
He did, or promised to do, all these things. I shaved off the remnants
of my moustache, and got inside an ancient suit of what I believe is
called heather mixture. The map gave me some notion of my whereabouts,
and told me the two things I wanted to know—where the main railway to
the south could be joined, and what were the wildest districts near at
hand.
At two o’clock he wakened me from my slumbers in the smoking-room
armchair, and led me blinking into the dark starry night. An old
bicycle was found in a tool-shed and handed over to me.
“First turn to the right up by the long fir-wood,” he enjoined. “By
daybreak you’ll be well into the hills. Then I should pitch the machine
into a bog and take to the moors on foot. You can put in a week among
the shepherds, and be as safe as if you were in New Guinea.”
I pedalled diligently up steep roads of hill gravel till the skies grew
pale with morning. As the mists cleared before the sun, I found myself
in a wide green world with glens falling on every side and a far-away
blue horizon. Here, at any rate, I could get early news of my enemies.
Chapter V.
The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman
I sat down on the very crest of the pass and took stock of my position.
Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills,
which was the upper glen of some notable river. In front was a flat
space of maybe a mile, all pitted with bog-holes and rough with
tussocks, and then beyond it the road fell steeply down another glen to
a plain whose blue dimness melted into the distance. To left and right
were round-shouldered green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to the
south—that is, the left hand—there was a glimpse of high heathery
mountains, which I remembered from the map as the big knot of hill
which I had chosen for my sanctuary. I was on the central boss of a
huge upland country, and could see everything moving for miles. In the
meadows below the road half a mile back a cottage smoked, but it was
the only sign of human life. Otherwise there was only the calling of
plovers and the tinkling of little streams.
It was now about seven o’clock, and as I waited I heard once again that
ominous beat in the air. Then I realized that my vantage-ground might
be in reality a trap. There was no cover for a tomtit in those bald
green places.
I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat grew louder. Then I saw
an aeroplane coming up from the east. It was flying high, but as I
looked it dropped several hundred feet and began to circle round the
knot of hill in narrowing circles, just as a hawk wheels before it
pounces. Now it was flying very low, and now the observer on board
caught sight of me. I could see one of the two occupants examining me
through glasses.
Suddenly it began to rise in swift whorls, and the next I knew it was
speeding eastward again till it became a speck in the blue morning.
That made me do some savage thinking. My enemies had located me, and
the next thing would be a cordon round me. I didn’t know what force
they could command, but I was certain it would be sufficient. The
aeroplane had seen my bicycle, and would conclude that I would try to
escape by the road. In that case there might be a chance on the moors
to the right or left. I wheeled the machine a hundred yards from the
highway, and plunged it into a moss-hole, where it sank among pond-weed
and water-buttercups. Then I climbed to a knoll which gave me a view of
the two valleys. Nothing was stirring on the long white ribbon that
threaded them.
I have said there was not cover in the whole place to hide a rat. As
the day advanced it was flooded with soft fresh light till it had the
fragrant sunniness of the South African veld. At other times I would
have liked the place, but now it seemed to suffocate me. The free
moorlands were prison walls, and the keen hill air was the breath of a
dungeon.
I tossed a coin—heads right, tails left—and it fell heads, so I turned
to the north. In a little I came to the brow of the ridge which was the
containing wall of the pass. I saw the highroad for maybe ten miles,
and far down it something that was moving, and that I took to be a
motor-car. Beyond the ridge I looked on a rolling green moor, which
fell away into wooded glens.
Now my life on the veld has given me the eyes of a kite, and I can see
things for which most men need a telescope.... Away down the slope, a
couple of miles away, several men were advancing, like a row of beaters
at a shoot.
I dropped out of sight behind the sky-line. That way was shut to me,
and I must try the bigger hills to the south beyond the highway. The
car I had noticed was getting nearer, but it was still a long way off
with some very steep gradients before it. I ran hard, crouching low
except in the hollows, and as I ran I kept scanning the brow of the
hill before me. Was it imagination, or did I see figures—one, two,
perhaps more—moving in a glen beyond the stream?
If you are hemmed in on all sides in a patch of land there is only one
chance of escape. You must stay in the patch, and let your enemies
search it and not find you. That was good sense, but how on earth was I
to escape notice in that table-cloth of a place? I would have buried
myself to the neck in mud or lain below water or climbed the tallest
tree. But there was not a stick of wood, the bog-holes were little
puddles, the stream was a slender trickle. There was nothing but short
heather, and bare hill bent, and the white highway.
Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap of stones, I found the
roadman.
He had just arrived, and was wearily flinging down his hammer. He
looked at me with a fishy eye and yawned.
“Confoond the day I ever left the herdin’!” he said, as if to the world
at large. “There I was my ain maister. Now I’m a slave to the
Goavernment, tethered to the roadside, wi’ sair een, and a back like a
suckle.”
He took up the hammer, struck a stone, dropped the implement with an
oath, and put both hands to his ears. “Mercy on me! My heid’s
burstin’!” he cried.
He was a wild figure, about my own size but much bent, with a week’s
beard on his chin, and a pair of big horn spectacles.
“I canna dae’t,” he cried again. “The Surveyor maun just report me. I’m
for my bed.”
I asked him what was the trouble, though indeed that was clear enough.
“The trouble is that I’m no sober. Last nicht my dochter Merran was
waddit, and they danced till fower in the byre. Me and some ither
chiels sat down to the drinkin’, and here I am. Peety that I ever
lookit on the wine when it was red!”
I agreed with him about bed.
“It’s easy speakin’,” he moaned. “But I got a postcard yestreen sayin’
that the new Road Surveyor would be round the day. He’ll come and he’ll
no find me, or else he’ll find me fou, and either way I’m a done man.
I’ll awa’ back to my bed and say I’m no weel, but I doot that’ll no
help me, for they ken my kind o’ no-weel-ness.”
Then I had an inspiration. “Does the new Surveyor know you?” I asked.
“No him. He’s just been a week at the job. He rins about in a wee
motor-cawr, and wad speir the inside oot o’ a whelk.”
“Where’s your house?” I asked, and was directed by a wavering finger to
the cottage by the stream.
“Well, back to your bed,” I said, “and sleep in peace. I’ll take on
your job for a bit and see the Surveyor.”
He stared at me blankly; then, as the notion dawned on his fuddled
brain, his face broke into the vacant drunkard’s smile.
“You’re the billy,” he cried. “It’ll be easy eneuch managed. I’ve
finished that bing o’ stanes, so you needna chap ony mair this
forenoon. Just take the barry, and wheel eneuch metal frae yon quarry
doon the road to mak anither bing the morn. My name’s Alexander
Trummle, and I’ve been seeven year at the trade, and twenty afore that
herdin’ on Leithen Water. My freens ca’ me Ecky, and whiles Specky, for
I wear glesses, being waik i’ the sicht. Just you speak the Surveyor
fair, and ca’ him Sir, and he’ll be fell pleased. I’ll be back or
midday.”
I borrowed his spectacles and filthy old hat; stripped off coat,
waistcoat, and collar, and gave him them to carry home; borrowed, too,
the foul stump of a clay pipe as an extra property. He indicated my
simple tasks, and without more ado set off at an amble bedwards. Bed
may have been his chief object, but I think there was also something
left in the foot of a bottle. I prayed that he might be safe under
cover before my friends arrived on the scene.
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
footgear. 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