THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 June 1939, Page 10

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

(PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.) (COPYRIGHT.)

By

JOHN BUCHAN

(Lord Tweedsmtiir, Governor-General of Canada.)

CHAPTER 11. Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the northern tunnels, an irate guard interviewed me. He wrote out for me a ticket to NewtonStewart, a name which had suddenly come back to my memory, and he conducted me from the first-class compartment, where I had ensconced myself, to a third-class smoker, occupied by a sailor and. a stout woman with a child. He went off grumbling, and as I mopped my brow I observed to my companions in my broadest Scots, that it was a sore job catching trains. I had already entered upon my part.

“The impidence o’ that gaird!” said the lady bitterly. “He needit a Scot’s tongue to pit him in his place. He was complainin’ o’ this wean no haein’ a ticket, and her no fewer till August twalmonth, and he was objectin’ to this gentleman spittin’.” The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life in an atmosphere of protest against authority. I reminded myself that a week ago I had been finding the world dull. I had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine May weather, with the hawthorn flowering on every hedge, and I asked myself why, when [ was still a freeman, I had stayed on in London, and not got the good of this heavenly country. I didn’t dare face the restaurant car, but I got a luncheon-basket at Leeds, and shared it with the fat woman. Also I got the morning's papers, with news about starters for the Derby, and the beginning of the cricket season, and some paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were settling .down and a British squadron was going to Kiel. When I had done with them I got out Scudder’s little black pocket-book and studied it. It was pretty well filled with jottings, chiefly figures, though now and then a name was printed in. For example, I found the words “Hofgaard,” “Luneville,” and Avocado” pretty often, and especially the word “Pavia.” Now I was certain that Scudder never did anything without a reason, and I was pretty sure that there was a cypher in all this. That is a subject which has always interested me, and I did a bit at it myself once as intel-ligence-officer at Delagoa Bay during the Boer War. I have a head for things like chess and puzzles, and I used to reckon myself pretty good at finding out cyphers. This one looked like the numerical kind where sets of figures correspond to the. letters of the alphabet, But any fairly shrewd men can find the clue to that sort after an hour or two’s work, and I didn’t think Scudder would have been content with anything so easy. So I fastened on the printed words, for you can make a pretty good numerical cypher if you have a key word which gives you the sequence on the letters. I tried for hours, but none of the words answered. Then I fell asleep and woke at Dumfries just in time to bundle out and get into the slow Galloway train. There was a man on the platform whose looks 1 didn’t like, but he never gianced at me. and when I caught sight of myself in the mirror off an automatic machine I didn't wonder. With my brown face, my old tweeds, and my slough, I was the very model of one of the hill farmers who were crowding into the third-class carriages.

I travelled with half a dozen in an atmosphere of shag and clay pipes. They had come from the weekly market, and their mouths were full of prices. I heard accounts of how the lambing had gone up the Cairn and the Deuch, and a dozen other mysterious waters. Above half the men had lunched heavily and were highly flavoured with whisky, but they took no notice of me. We rumbled slowly into a lancLof little wooded glens, and then to a great wide moor-land place, gleaming with lochs, with high blue hills showing northwards. About five o’clock the carriage had emptied, and I was left alone, as I had hoped. 1 got out at the next station, a little place whose name I scarcely noted, set right in the heart of a bog. It reminded me of one of those forgotten little stations in the Karroo. An old station-master was digging in his garden, and with his spade over his shoulder sauntered to the train, took charge of a parcel, and went back to his potatoes. A child of ten received my ticket, and I emerged on a white road that straggled over the brown moor.

It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as clear as a cut amethyst. The air had. the queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits. I actually felt light-hearted. I might have been a boy out for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirtyseven wanted by the police. I felt just as I used to feel when I was starting for a big trek on a frosty morning on the high veld. If you believe me, 1 swung along the road whistling. There was no plan of campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this blessed, honest-smell-ing hill country, for every mile put me in better humour with myself. In a roadside planting I cut a walk-ing-stick of hazel, and presently struck off the highway up a by-path which followed the glen of a brawling stream. I reckoned that I was still far ahead of any pursuit, and for that night might please myself. It was some hours since I had. tasted food, and I was getting very hungry when I came to a herd’s cottage set in a nook beside a water-fall. A brownfaced woman was standing by the door, and greeted me with the kindly shyness of moorland places. When I asked for a night's lodging she said I was welcome to the “bed in the loft,” and very soon she set before me a hearty meal of ham and eggs, scones, and thick sweet 'mil!:.

At the darkening her man came in from the hills, a lean giant, who in one step covered as much ground as three paces of ordinary mortals. They asked no questions, for they had the perfect breeding of all dwellers in the wilds, but I could see they set me down as a kind of dealer, and I took some trouble to confirm their view. I spoke a lot about cattle, of which my host knew little, and I picked up from him a good deal about the local Galloway markets, which I tucked away in my memory for future use. At ten 1 was nodding in my ehair, and the ■'bed hi the loft” received a weary

man who never opened his eyes till five o’clock set the little homestead agoing once more. They refused any payment, and by six I had breakfasted and was striding southwards again. My notion was to return to the railway line a station or two farther oir than the place where I had alighted yesterday and to double back, f reckoned that that was the safest way, for the police would naturally assume that I was always making -farther from London in the direction of some western port. I thought I had still a good bit of a start, for, as 1 reasoned, it would take some six hours to fix the blame on me, and several more to identify the fellow who got on board the train at St Pancras.

It was the same jolly, clear spring weather, and I simply could not contrive to feel careworn. Indeed I was in better spirits than I had oeen for some months. Over a long ridge of moorland I took my road, skirting the side of a high hill which the herd had called Cairnsmore of Fleet. Nesting curlews and plovers were crying everywhere, and the links of green pasture by the streams were dotted with young lambs. All the slackness of the past months were slipping from my bones, and 1 stepped out like a four-year-old. By and by I came to a swell of moorland, which dipped to the vale of a little river, and a mile away in the heather I saw the smoke of a train.

The station, when I reached' it proved to be ideal for my purpose. The moor surged up around it and left room only for the single line, the office, the station-master’s cottage, and a tiny yard of gooseberries and sweet-William. There seemed no road to it from anywhere, and to increase the desolation the waves of a tarn lapped on their grey granite beach half a mile away. I waited in the deep x heather till I saw the smoke of an east-going train on the horizon. Then I approached the tiny bookingoffice and took a ticket for Dumfries.

The only occupants of the carriage were an old shepherd and his dog—a wall-eyed brute that I mistrusted. The man was asleep, and on the cushions beside him was that morning’s Scotsman. Eagerly I seized it, for I fancied it would tell me something. There were two columns about the Portland Place Murder, as it was called. My ' man Paddock had given the alarm, and had the milkman arrested. Poor devil, it looked as if the latter had earned his sovereign hardly; but for me he had been cheap at the price, for he seemed to have occupied the police the better part of the day. In the latest news 1 found a further instalment of the story. The milkman had been released, I read, and the criminal, aDout whose identity the police were reticent, was believed to have got away from London by one of the northern lines. There was a short note about me as the owner of die fiat. 1 guessed the police had stuck that in as a clumsy contrivance ■io persuade me that 1 was unsuspected.

There was nothing else in the paper, nothing about foreign politics or Karolides, or the things that had interested Scudder. I laid it down, ana found that we were approaching the station at which I had got out yesterday. The potato-digging station-mas-ter had been gingered up into some activity, for the west going train was waiting to let us pass, and from it had descended three men who were asking him questions. I supposed that they were the local police, who had been stirred up by Scotland Yard, and traced me as far .as this one-horse siding. Sitting well back in the shadow I watched them carefully. One of them had a book, and took down notes. The old potato-digger seemed to have turned peevish, but the child who had collected my ticket was talking volubly. All the party looked out across the moor where the white road departed. I hoped they were going to take up my tracks there. As we moved away from that station my companion woke up. He fixed me with a wandering glance, kicked his dog viciously, and inquired where he was. Clearly jie was very drunk.

“That's what comes o’ being a teetotaller,” he observed in bitter regret. I expressed my surprise that in him I should have met a blue-ribbon stalwart. "Ay. but I’m a strong teetotaller,” he said pugnaciously. "I took the pledge last Martinmas, and I havena touched a drop o’ whisky sin-syne. No even at Hogmanay, though I was sair temptit.” He swung his heels up on the seat, and burrowed a frowsy head into the cushions. "And that’s a’ I get,” he moaned. “A heid better than tyell-flre, and twac een lookin' different ways for the Sabbath.” “What did it?" I asked. “A drink they ca’ brandy. Bein' a teetotaller I keepit off the whisky, but I was nip-nippin’ a’ day at this brandy, and I doubt I’ll no be weel for a fortnicht.” His voice died away into a stutter, and sleep once more laid its heavy hand on him. My plan had neon to get out at some station down the lino, but the train suddenly gave me a better chance, for.it came to a standstill, at the end of a culvert which spanned a brawling muddy-coloured river. I looked out and saw that every carriage window was closed and no human figure appeared in the landscape. So I opened the door, and dropped .quickly into the tangle of hazels which edged the line. It would have been all right but for that infernal dog. Under the impression that I was decamping with its master's belongings, it started to bark-, and all but got. me by the trousers. Tins woke up the herd, who stood bawling al the carriage door in the belief that I had committed suicide. I crawled through the thicket, reached the edge of the stream, and in cover of the bushes put a hundred yards or so behind me. Then from my shelter I peered back, and saw the guard and several passengers gathered round the open carriage door and staring in my direction. I could not have made a more public departure if I had loft with a bugler and a brass band. (To be Continued.)