THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 June 1939, Page 10

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

(PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.) (COPYRIGHT.)

By

JOHN BUCHAN

(Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada.)

CHAPTER 111. (Continued). I did not follow the road, but the burnside, which flanked it on the right, where the bracken grew deep and high banks made a tolerable screen. It was well I did so, for no sooner had I gained the hollow than, looking back, I saw (he pursuit topping the ridge from which I had descended. After that I did not look back; I had not time. 1 ran up the’burnside, crawling over the open places, and for a large part wading in the shallow stream. I found a deserted cottage with a row of phantom peatstacks and an overgrown garden. Then I was among young hay, and very soon had come to the edge of a plantation of wind-blown firs. . From there I saw the chimneys of the house smoking a few hundred yards to my left. I forsook the burnside, crossed another dyke, and almost before I knew was on a rough lawn. A glance back told me that I was well out of sight of the pursuit, which had not passed the first lift of the moor.

The house before me was the ordinary moorland farm, with a more pretentious whitewashed wing added. Attached to this wing 'was a glass Verandah, and through the glass I saw the face of an elderly gentleman meekly watching me.

I stalked over the border of coarse hill gravel and entered the open verandah door. Within was a pleasant room, glass on one side and on the other a mass of books. More books showed in an inner room. On the floor, instead of tables, stood cases such as you see in a museum, filled with coins and queer stone implements.

There was a knee-hole desk in the middle, and seated at it, with some paper and open volumes before him, was the benevolent old gentleman. His face was round and shiny, like Mr Pickwicks’, big glasses were stuck on the end of his nose, and the top of his head was as bright and bare as a glass- bottle. He never moyed when I entered, but raised his placid eyebrows and waited on me to speak. It was not an easy job, with about five minutes to spare, to tell a stranger who I was and' what I wanted, and to win his aid. I did not attempt it. There was something about the eye of the man before me, something so keen and knowledgeable, that I could not find a word. I simply stared at him and stuttered. “You seem in a hurry, my friend,” he said slowly. I nodded towards the window. It gave a prospect across the moor through a gap in the plantation, and revealed certain figures half a mile off straggling through the heather. “Ah, I see,” he said, and took up a pair of field-glasses, through which he patiently scrutinised the figures. “A fugitive from justice, eh? Well, we’ll go into the matter at our leisure. Meantime, I object to my privacy being broken in upon by clumsy rural policemen. Go into my study, and you will see two doors facing you. Take the one on the left and close it behind you. You will be perfectly safe.” And this extraordinary man took up his pen again. I did as I was bid, and found myself in a little dark chamber which smelt of chemicals, and was lit only by a tiny window high up in the wall. The door had swung behind me with a | click like the door of a safe. Once again I had found an unexpected sanctuary.

All the same I was not comfortable. There was something about the old gentleman which puzzled and rather terrified me. He had been too easy and ready, almost as if he had expected me. And his eyes had been horribly intelligent. No sound came to me in that dark place. For all I knew the police might be searching the house, and if they did they would want to know what was behind this door. I tried to possess my soul in patience, and to forget how hungry I was.

Then I took a more cheerful view. The old gentleman could scarcely refuse me a meal, and I fell to reconstructing my breakfast. Bacon and eggs would content me, but I wanted the better part of a flitch of bacon and half a hundred eggs. And then, while my mouth was watering in anticipation, there was a click and the door stood open. I emerged into the sunlight to find the master of the house sitting in a deep armchair in the room he called his study and regarding me with curious eyes. “Have they gone?” I asked.

"They have gone. I convinced them that you had crossed the hill. I did not choose that the police should come between me and one whom I am delighted to honour. This is a lucky morning for you, Mr Richard Hannay.” As he spoke his eyelids seemed to tremble and to fall a little over his keen grey eyes. In -a flash the phrase of Scudder’s came back to me, when he had described the man he most dreaded in the world. He had said that he “could hood his eyes like a hawk." Then I saw that I had walked into the enemy’s headquarters.

My first impulse was to throttle the old ruffian and make for the open air. He seemed to anticipate my intention, for he smiled gently, and nodded to the door behind me. I turned and saw two manservants who had me covered with pistols. He knew my name, but he had never seen me before. And as the reflection darted across my mind I saw a splendid chance. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said roughly. "And who are you calling Richard Hannay? My name’s Ainslie.”

“So?” he said, still smiling. “But. of course, you have others. We won’t quarrell about a name.” I was pulling myself together now, and I reflected that my garb, lacking coat and waistcoat and collar, would at any rate not betray me. I put on my surliest face and shrugged my shoulders.

“I suppose you’re going to give me up after all. and I call it a damned dirty trick. My God, I wish I had never seen that cursed motor-car! Here’s the money and be damned to you,” and I flung four sovereigns on the table.

He opened his eyes a little. “Oh, no, I shall not give you up. My friends and I will have a little private settlement with you, that is all. You know a little too much, Mr Hannay. You are a clever actor, but not quite clever enough.” He spoke with assurance, but I could see the fawning of a doubt in his mind.

“Oh, for God's sake stop jawing,” I cried, “Everything's against me. I haven’t had a bit of luck since I came on shore at Leith. What’s the harm in a poor devil with an empty stomach picking up some money he finds in a bust-up motor-car? That’s all I done, and for that I’ve been chivvied for two days by those blasted bobbies over those blasted hills. I tell you I’m fair sick of it. You can do what you like, old boy! Ned Ainslie s got no fight left in him.”

1 could see that the doubt was gaining.

“Will you oblige me with the story of your recent doings?” he asked. “I can’t guv’nor, 1 ” I said in a real beggar’s whine. “I’ve not had a bite to eat for two days. Give me a mouthful of food, and then you’ll hear God’s truth.”

I must have showed my hunger in my face, for he signalled to one of the men in the doorway. A bit of cold pie was brought and a glass of beer, and I wolfed them down like a pig—or rather, like Ned Ainslie. for I was keeping up my character. In the' middle of my mea] he spoke suddenly to me in German, but I turned on him a face as blank as a stone wall. Then I told him my story —how I had come off an Archangel ship at Leith a week ago, and was making my way overland to my brother at Wigtown. I had run short of cash — I hinted vaguely at a spree—and I was pretty well on my uppers when I had come on a hole in a hedge, and looking through, had seen a big motor-car lying in the burn. I had poked about to see what had happened, and had found three sovereigns lying on the seat and one on the floor. There was nobody there or any sign of an owner, so I had pocketed the cash. But somehow the law had got after me. When I had tried to change a sovereign in a baker’s shop, the women had cried to the police, and a little later, when I was washing my face in a burn, I had been nearly gripped, and had only got away by leaving my coat and waistcoat behind me. “They can have the money back,” I cried, “for a fat lot of good it’s done me. Those perishefs are all down on a poor man. Now, if it had been you, guv’nor, that had found the quids, nobody would have troubled you.” “You’re a good liar, Hannay,” he said. Rage shook me. “Stop fooling, damn you! I tell'you my name’s Ainslie, and I never heard of anyone called Hannay in my born days. I’d sooner have the police than you with your Hannays and your monkey-faced pistol tricks . . No, guv’nor, I beg pardon I don’t mean that. I’m much obliged to you for th<* grub, and I’ll thank you to let me go now the coast’s clear.” It was obvious that he was badly puzzled. You see, he had never seen me, and my appearance must have altered considerably from my photographs, if he had got one of them. I was pretty smart and well dressed in London, and now I was a regular tramp. “I do not propose to let you go. If you are what you say you are, you will soon have a chance of clearing yourself. If you are what I believe you are, I do not think you will see the light much longer.” He rang a bell, and a third servant appeared from the verandah. “I want the Lanchester in five minutes,” he said. “There will be three to luncheon.” Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest ordeal of all. There was something weird and devilish in those eyes, cold, malignant, unearthly, and most hellishly clever. They fascinated me like the bright eyes of a snake. I had a strong impulse to thrown myself on his mercy and offer to join his side, and if you consider the way I felt about the whole thing you will see that that impulse must have been purely physical, the weakness of a brain mesmerised and mastered by a stronger spirit. But I managed to stick it out and even to grin. “You'll know me next time, guv’nor,” I said. “Karl,” he spoke in German to one of the men in the doorway, “you will nut this fellow in the storeroom till I return, and you will be answerable ‘o me for his keeping.” I was marched out of the room with a pistol at each ear. The storeroom was a damp chamber in what had been the old farmhouse. There was no carpet on the uneven floor, and nothing to sit down on but a school form. It was black as pitch. Cor the windows were heavily shuttered. I made out by groping that the walls were lined with boxes and barrels and sacks of some heavy stuff. The whole place smelt of mould and disuse. My gaolers turned the key in the door, and I could hear them shifting their feet as they stood on guard outside.

I sat down in that chilly darkness in a very miserable frame of mind. The old boy had gone off in a motor to collect the two ruffians who had interviewed me yesterday. Now, they had seen me as the roadman, and they would remember me, for I was in the same rig. What was a roadman doing twenty miles from his beat, pursued by the police. A ciuestion or two would put them on the track. Probably they had seen Mr Turnbull, probably Marmie, too; most likely they could link me up with Sir Harry, and then the whole thing would be crystal clear. What chance had I in this moorland house with three desperadoes and' their armed servants? (To be Continued.)