THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1939, Page 10

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

(PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.) ' (COPYRIGHT.)

By

JOHN BUCHAN

(Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada.)

CHAPTER VI. (Continued). It must be some place which a particular staircase identified, and whore the tide was full at 10.17. On the whole it seemed to me that the place must be a bit of open coast. But the'staircase kept puzzling me. Then I went back to wider considerations. Whereabouts would a man be likely to leave for Germany—a man in a hurry, who wanted a speedy an secret passage? i\ot from any of the big harbours. And not \from the Channel or the West Coast of Scotland, for, remember, he was starting from London. I measured the distance on the map, and tried to put myself in the enemy’s shoes. 1 should try for Ostend or Antwerp or Rotterdam, and,' I should sail from somewhere on the East Coast between Cromer and Dover. I set out all my conclusions on a bit of Admiralty paper. They ran like this: (1) Place where there are several sets of stairs; one that matters by having thirty-nine stops. (2) Full tide at 10.17 p.m. Leaving shore only possible at full tide. (3) Steps not dock steps, and so place probably not harbour. (4) No regular night steamer at 10.17. Means of transport must be tramp (unlikely), yacht or fishing boat. There my reasoning stopped. I made another list, which I headed "Guessed,” but I was just as sure of the one as the other. (1) Place not harbour, but open coast. (2) Boat small —trawler, yacht, or launch. . (3) Place somewhere on East Coast between Cromer and Dover. It struck me as odd that I should be sitting at that desk with a Cabinet Minister, a Field-Marshal, two high Government officials, and a French General watching me, while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying to drag a secret which meant life or death for us. Sir Walter had joined us, and presently MacGillivray arrived. . He had sent out instructions to watch the ports and railway stations for the three men whom I had described to Sir Walter. "Here’s the most I can make of it,” I said. "We have got to find a place where there are several staircases down to the beach, one of which has thirty-nine steps. I think it's a piece of open coast with biggish cliffs, somewhere between the Wash and the Channel. Also it’s a place where full tide is at 10.17 tomorrow night. Then an idea struck me. “Is there no Inspector of Coastguards or some fellow like that who knows the East coast?" ' Whittaker said there was, and that he lived in Clapham. He went off in a car to fetch him. About one in the morning the coastguard man arrived. I left the War Minister to cross-examine him, for I felt he would think it cheek on me to talk. "We want you to tell us the places you know on the Eeast Coast where there are cliffs and where several sets of steps run down Io the beach.” He thought for a bit. "What kind of steps do you mean, sir? There are plenty of places with roads • cut down through the cliffs, and most roads have a step or two in them. Or do you mean regular staircases —all steps, so to speak?” Sir Arthur looked towards me. "We mean regular staircases,” I said. He reflected a minute or two. “I don’t know that I can think of any. Wait a second. There’s a place in Norfolk—Brattlesham—beside a golf course, where there arc a couple of staircases to let the gentlemen get a lost ball." "That's not it," I said.

“Then there are plenty of marine parades, if that's what you mean. Every seaside resort has them.” I shook my head. "It’s got to be more retired than that,” I said. “Well, gentlemen, I can’t think of anywhere else. Of course there’s the Ruff—” "What’s that?" I asked. "The big chalk headland in Kent, close to Bradgate. It's got a lot of villas on the top, and some of the Imuses have staircases down to a private beach. It’s a very high-toned sort of place, and the residents there like to keep by themselves.” I tore open the tide table and found Bradgate. High tide there was at 10.27 on' the 15th of June. “We’re on the scent at last,” I cried excitedly. "How can I find out what is the tide at the Ruff?” "I can toll you that, sir." said the coastguard • man. "The (ide’s ten minutes before Bradgate." I closed the book and looked round at the company. "If one of those staircases has thirty-nine steps wo have solved the mystery, gentlemen," f'said. “I want the loan of your, car, Sir Walter, and a map of the roads. If Mr MacGillivray will spare mo ten minutes, I think we can prepare something for tomorrow." By half-past three I was tearing past the moonlit hedgerows of Kent, with MacGillivray's best man on the seat beside me. A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the lightship on the Cock sands, which seemed the size of a bell-buoy. A couple of miles farther south and much nearer the shore a small destroyer was anchored. Scaife, MacGillivray’s man. who had been in the Navy, knew the boat and told me her name and her commander’s, so T sent off a wire to Sir Walter.

After breakfast Scaife got from a house agent a key for the gates of the staircases on the Ruff. I walked with him along the sands and sat down in a nook of the cliffs while he investigated the half-dozen of them. 1 didn't want to be seen, but the place at this hour was quite deserted, and all the time I was on that beach I saw nothing but the sea-gulls. It took him more than a hour to do the job, but when I saw him coming towards me, conning a bit of paper, I can tell you my heart was in my mouth. Everything depended, you see, on my guess proving right. He read aloud me number of steps in the different stairs. "Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-nine, forty-two, forty-seven,” and "twenty-one,” where the cliffs grew lower. I almost got up and shouted. Wo hurried back to the town and sent a wire to MacGillivray. I wanted half a dozen men and I directed them to divide themselves among different specified hotels. Then Scaife set out to prospect the house at the head of the thirty-nine steps. He came back with news that both puzzled and reassured me. The house wps called Trafalgar Lodge, and belonged to an old gentleman called Appleton—a retired stockbroker, the house agent said. Mr Appleton was there a good deal in the summer time, and was in residence now—had been for the better part of a week. Scaife could pick up very little information about him, except that he was a decent old fellow, who paid his bills regularly, and was always good for' a fiver for a local charity. Then Scaife seems .to have penetrated to the back door of the house, pretending he. was an agent for sewing machines. Only three servants were kept, a cook, a parlourmaid, and a housemaid, and they were just the sort that you would find in a respectable middle-class household. The cook was not the gossiping kind, and had pretty soon shut the door in his face, but Scaife said he was positive she knew nothing. Next door there was a new. house building which would give good cover for observation, and the villa on the other side was to let, and its garden was rough and shrubby. I borrowed Scaife’s telescope, and before lunch went for a walk along the Ruff. I kept well behind the rows of villas, and found a good observation point on the edge of the golf course. There I had a view of the line of turf along the cliff top, with seats placed at intervals, and the little square plots, railed in and planted with bushes, whence the staircases descended to the beach.

I saw Trafalgar Lodge vei-y plainly, a red-brick villa with a verandah, a tennis lawn behind, and in front the ordinary sea-side, dower garden full of marguerites’ and scraggy geraniums. There was a flagstaff from whisi an enormous Union Jack hung limply in the still air. Presently I observed someone leave the house and saunter along the cliff. When I got my glass on him I saw it was an old man, wearing white flannel trousers, a blue serge jacket, and straw hat. He carried field glasses and a newspaper, and sat down on one of the iron seats and began to read. Sometimes he ..would lay down the paper and turn his glasses on. the sea. He looked for a long time at the destroyer. I watched him for half an hour, til] he got up and went back to the house for his luncheon, when I returned to the hotel for mine. I wasn’t feeling very confident. This decent commonplace dwelling was not what I had expected. The man might be the bald archaeologist of that horrible moorland farm, or he might not. He was exactly the kind of satisfied old bird you will find in every suburb a’nd every holiday place. If you wanted a type of the perfectly harmless person you would probably pitch on that. But after lunch, as I sat in the hotel porch, I perked up, for I saw the thing I had hoped for and had dreaded to miss. A yacht came up from the South and dropped, anchor pretty well opposite the Ruff. She seemed about a hundred and fifty tons, and I saw she belonged io the Squadron from the white ensign. So Scaife and I went down to the harbour and hired a boatman for an afternoon’s fishing.

About four o'clock, when we had fished enough, I made the boatman row us round the yacht, which lay like a delicate white bird, ready at a moment to flee. Scaife said she must be a fast boat for her build, and that she was pretty heavily engined. Her name was the Ariadne, as I discovered from the cap of one of the men who was polishing brass-work. 1 spoke to him, and got an answer in the soft dialect of Essex. Another hand that came along passed mo the time of day in an unmistakable English tongue.

Then the men suddenly disregarded us and bent their heads to their work as an officer came along the deck. He was a pleasant, clean-looking young fellow, and he put a question to us about our fishing in very good English. But there could be no doubt, about him. His close-cropped head, and the cut of his collar and tic never came out of England.

That did something to reassure mo. but as we rowed back to Bradgate, my obstinate doubts would not be dismissed. The thing that worried me was the reflection that my enemies knew that I had got my knowledge from Scudder, and it was Scudder who had given me the clue to this place. If they knew that Scudder had this clue, would they not be certain to change their plans? I hid talked confidently last night about. Germans always sticking to a scheme, but if they had any suspi-

cions that I was on their track they would be fools not to cover it. I wondered if the man last night had seen that I recognised him. Somehow I did not think he had. and to that I clung. But the whole businesshad never seemed so difficult as that afternoon when by all calculations I should have been rejoicing on assured success. (To be Continued,)