by John Buchan
The upshot was that about half-past nine I made up my mind to go to Queen Anne’s Gate. Very likely I would not be admitted, but it would ease my conscience to try.
I walked down Jermyn Street, and at the corner of Duke Street passed a group of young men. They were in evening dress, had been dining somewhere, and were going on to a music-hall. One of them was Mr Marmaduke Jopley.
He saw me and stopped short.
‘By God, the murderer!’ he cried. ‘Here, you fellows, hold him! That’s Hannay, the man who did the Portland Place murder!’ He gripped me by the arm, and the others crowded round.
I wasn’t looking for any trouble, but my ill-temper made me play the fool. A policeman came up, and I should have told him the truth, and, if he didn’t believe it, demanded to be taken to Scotland Yard, or for that matter to the nearest police station. But a delay at that moment seemed to me unendurable, and the sight of Marmie’s imbecile face was more than I could bear. I let out with my left, and had the satisfaction of seeing him measure his length in the gutter.
Then began an unholy row. They were all on me at once, and the policeman took me in the rear. I got in one or two good blows, for I think, with fair play, I could have licked the lot of them, but the policeman pinned me behind, and one of them got his fingers on my throat.
Through a black cloud of rage I heard the officer of the law asking what was the matter, and Marmie, between his broken teeth, declaring that I was Hannay the murderer.
‘Oh, damn it all,’ I cried, ‘make the fellow shut up. I advise you to leave me alone, constable. Scotland Yard knows all about me, and you’ll get a proper wigging if you interfere with me.’
‘You’ve got to come along of me, young man,’ said the policeman. ‘I saw you strike that gentleman crool ’ard. You began it too, for he wasn’t doing nothing. I seen you. Best go quietly or I’ll have to fix you up.’
Exasperation and an overwhelming sense that at no cost must I delay gave me the strength of a bull elephant. I fairly wrenched the constable off his feet, floored the man who was gripping my collar, and set off at my best pace down Duke Street. I heard a whistle being blown, and the rush of men behind me.
I have a very fair turn of speed, and that night I had wings. In a jiffy I was in Pall Mall and had turned down towards St James’s Park. I dodged the policeman at the Palace gates, dived through a press of carriages at the entrance to the Mall, and was making for the bridge before my pursuers had crossed the roadway. In the open ways of the Park I put on a spurt. Happily there were few people about and no one tried to stop me. I was staking all on getting to Queen Anne’s Gate.
When I entered that quiet thoroughfare it seemed deserted. Sir Walter’s house was in the narrow part, and outside it three or four motor-cars were drawn up. I slackened speed some yards off and walked briskly up to the door. If the butler refused me admission, or if he even delayed to open the door, I was done.
He didn’t delay. I had scarcely rung before the door opened.
‘I must see Sir Walter,’ I panted. ‘My business is desperately important.’
That butler was a great man. Without moving a muscle he held the door open, and then shut it behind me. ‘Sir Walter is engaged, sir, and I have orders to admit no one. Perhaps you will wait.’
The house was of the old-fashioned kind, with a wide hall and rooms on both sides of it. At the far end was an alcove with a telephone and a couple of chairs, and there the butler offered me a seat.
‘See here,’ I whispered. ‘There’s trouble about and I’m in it. But Sir Walter knows, and I’m working for him. If anyone comes and asks if I am here, tell him a lie.’
He nodded, and presently there was a noise of voices in the street, and a furious ringing at the bell. I never admired a man more than that butler. He opened the door, and with a face like a graven image waited to be questioned. Then he gave them it. He told them whose house it was, and what his orders were, and simply froze them off the doorstep. I could see it all from my alcove, and it was better than any play.
*
I hadn’t waited long till there came another ring at the bell. The butler made no bones about admitting this new visitor.
While he was taking off his coat I saw who it was. You couldn’t open a newspaper or a magazine without seeing that face – the grey beard cut like a spade, the firm fighting mouth, the blunt square nose, and the keen blue eyes. I recognized the First Sea Lord, the man, they say, that made the new British Navy.
He passed my alcove and was ushered into a room at the back of the hall. As the door opened I could hear the sound of low voices. It shut, and I was left alone again.
For twenty minutes I sat there, wondering what I was to do next. I was still perfectly convinced that I was wanted, but when or how I had no notion. I kept looking at my watch, and as the time crept on to half-past ten I began to think that the conference must soon end. In a quarter of an hour Royer should be speeding along the road to Portsmouth…
Then I heard a bell ring, and the butler appeared. The door of the back room opened, and the First Sea Lord came out. He walked past me, and in passing he glanced in my direction, and for a second we looked each other in the face.
Only for a second, but it was enough to make my heart jump. I had never seen the great man before, and he had never seen me. But in that fraction of time something sprang into his eyes, and that something was recognition. You can’t mistake it. It is a flicker, a spark of light, a minute shade of difference which means one thing and one thing only. It came involuntarily, for in a moment it died, and he passed on. In a maze of wild fancies I heard the street door close behind him.
I picked up the telephone book and looked up the number of his house. We were connected at once, and I heard a servant’s voice.
‘Is his Lordship at home?’ I asked.
‘His Lordship returned half an hour ago,’ said the voice, ‘and has gone to bed. He is not very well tonight. Will you leave a message, sir?’
I rang off and almost tumbled into a chair. My part in this business was not yet ended. It had been a close shave, but I had been in time.
Not a moment could be lost, so I marched boldly to the door of that back room and entered without knocking.
Five surprised faces looked up from a round table. There was Sir Walter, and Drew the War Minister, whom I knew from his photographs. There was a slim elderly man, who was probably Whittaker, the Admiralty official, and there was General Winstanley, conspicuous from the long scar on his forehead. Lastly, there was a short stout man with an iron-grey moustache and bushy eyebrows, who had been arrested in the middle of a sentence.
Sir Walter’s face showed surprise and annoyance.
‘This is Mr Hannay, of whom I have spoken to you,’ he said apologetically to the company. ‘I’m afraid, Hannay, this visit is ill-timed.’
I was getting back my coolness. ‘That remains to be seen, sir,’ I said; ‘but I think it may be in the nick of time. For God’s sake, gentlemen, tell me who went out a minute ago?’
‘Lord Alloa,’ Sir Walter said, reddening with anger.
‘It was not,’ I cried; ‘it was his living image, but it was not Lord Alloa. It was someone who recognized me, someone I have seen in the last month. He had scarcely left the doorstep when I rang up Lord Alloa’s house and was told he had come in half an hour before and had gone to bed.’
‘Who – who –’ someone stammered.
‘The Black Stone,’ I cried, and I sat down in the chair so recently vacated and looked round at five badly scared gentlemen.
CHAPTER NINE
The Thirty-Nine Steps
‘Nonsense!’ said the official from the Admiralty.
Sir Walter got up and left the room while we looked blankly at the table. He came back in ten minutes with a long face. ‘I have spoken to Alloa,’ he said. ‘Had him out of bed – very grumpy. He went straight home after Mulross’s dinner.’
‘But it’s madness,’ broke in General Winstanley. ‘
Do you mean to tell me that that man came here and sat beside me for the best part of half an hour and that I didn’t detect the imposture? Alloa must be out of his mind.’
‘Don’t you see the cleverness of it?’ I said. ‘You were too interested in other things to have any eyes. You took Lord Alloa for granted. If it had been anybody else you might have looked more closely, but it was natural for him to be here, and that put you all to sleep.’
Then the Frenchman spoke, very slowly and in good English.
‘The young man is right. His psychology is good. Our enemies have not been foolish!’
He bent his wise brows on the assembly.
‘I will tell you a tale,’ he said. ‘It happened many years ago in Senegal. I was quartered in a remote station, and to pass the time used to go fishing for big barbel in the river. A little Arab mare used to carry my luncheon basket – one of the salted dun breed you got at Timbuctoo in the old days. Well, one morning I had good sport, and the mare was unaccountably restless. I could hear her whinnying and squealing and stamping her feet, and I kept soothing her with my voice while my mind was intent on fish. I could see her all the time, as I thought, out of a corner of my eye, tethered to a tree twenty yards away. After a couple of hours I began to think of food. I collected my fish in a tarpaulin bag, and moved down the stream towards the mare, trolling my line. When I got up to her I flung the tarpaulin on her back…’
He paused and looked round.
‘It was the smell that gave me warning. I turned my head and found myself looking at a lion three feet off… An old man-eater, that was the terror of the village… What was left of the mare, a mass of blood and bones and hide, was behind him.’
‘What happened?’ I asked. I was enough of a hunter to know a true yarn when I heard it.
‘I stuffed my fishing-rod into his jaws, and I had a pistol. Also my servants came presently with rifles. But he left his mark on me.’ He held up a hand which lacked three fingers.
‘Consider,’ he said. ‘The mare had been dead more than an hour, and the brute had been patiently watching me ever since. I never saw the kill, for I was accustomed to the mare’s fretting, and I never marked her absence, for my consciousness of her was only of something tawny, and the lion filled that part. If I could blunder thus, gentlemen, in a land where men’s senses are keen, why should we busy preoccupied urban folk not err also?’
Sir Walter nodded. No one was ready to gainsay him.
‘But I don’t see,’ went on Winstanley. ‘Their object was to get these dispositions without our knowing it. Now it only required one of us to mention to Alloa our meeting tonight for the whole fraud to be exposed.’
Sir Walter laughed dryly. ‘The selection of Alloa shows their acumen. Which of us was likely to speak to him about tonight? Or was he likely to open the subject?’
I remembered the First Sea Lord’s reputation for taciturnity and shortness of temper.
‘The one thing that puzzles me,’ said the General, ‘is what good his visit here would do that spy fellow? He could not carry away several pages of figures and strange names in his head.’
‘That is not difficult,’ the Frenchman replied. ‘A good spy is trained to have a photographic memory. Like your own Macaulay. You noticed he said nothing, but went through these papers again and again. I think we may assume that he has every detail stamped on his mind. When I was younger I could do the same trick.’
‘Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to change the plans,’ said Sir Walter ruefully.
Whittaker was looking very glum. ‘Did you tell Lord Alloa what has happened?’ he asked. ‘No? Well, I can’t speak with absolute assurance, but I’m nearly certain we can’t make any serious change unless we alter the geography of England.’
‘Another thing must be said,’ it was Royer who spoke. ‘I talked freely when that man was here. I told something of the military plans of my Government. I was permitted to say so much. But that information would be worth many millions to our enemies. No, my friends, I see no other way. The man who came here and his confederates must be taken, and taken at once.’
‘Good God,’ I cried, ‘and we have not a rag of a clue.’
‘Besides,’ said Whittaker, ‘there is the post. By this time the news will be on its way.’
‘No,’ said the Frenchman. ‘You do not understand the habits of the spy. He receives personally his reward, and he delivers personally his intelligence. We in France know something of the breed. There is still a chance, mes amis. These men must cross the sea, and there are ships to be searched and ports to be watched. Believe me, the need is desperate for both France and Britain.’
Royer’s grave good sense seemed to pull us together. He was the man of action among fumblers. But I saw no hope in any face, and I felt none. Where among the fifty millions of these islands and within a. dozen hours were we to lay hands on the three cleverest rogues in Europe?
Then suddenly I had an inspiration.
‘Where is Scudder’s book?’ I cried to Sir Walter. ‘Quick, man, I remember something in it.’
He unlocked the door of a bureau and gave it to me.
I found the place. Thirty-nine steps, I read, and again, Thirty-nine steps – I counted them – High tide, 10.17 p.m.
The Admiralty man was looking at me as if he thought I had gone mad.
‘Don’t you see it’s a clue,’ I shouted. ‘Scudder knew where these fellows laired – he knew where they were going to leave the country, though he kept the name to himself. Tomorrow was the day, and it was some place where high tide was at 10.17.’
‘They may have gone tonight,’ someone said.
‘Not they. They have their own snug secret way, and they won’t be hurried. I know Germans, and they are mad about working to a plan. Where the devil can I get a book of Tide Tables?’
Whittaker brightened up. ‘It’s a chance,’ he said. ‘Let’s go over to the Admiralty.’
We got into two of the waiting motor-cars – all but Sir Walter, who went off to Scotland Yard – to ‘mobilize MacGillivray’, so he said.
We marched through empty corridors and big bare chambers where the charwomen were busy, till we reached a little room lined with books and maps. A resident clerk was unearthed, who presently fetched from the library the Admiralty Tide Tables. I sat at the desk and the others stood round, for somehow or other I had got charge of this expedition.
It was no good. There were hundreds of entries, and so far as I could see 10.17 might cover fifty places. We had to find some way of narrowing the possibilities.
I took my head in my hands and thought. There must be some way of reading this riddle. What did Scudder mean by steps? I thought of dock steps, but if he had meant that I didn’t think he would have mentioned the number. It must be some place where there were several staircases, and one marked out from the others by having thirty-nine steps.
Then I had a sudden thought, and hunted up all the steamer sailings. There was no boat which left for the Continent at 10.17 p.m.
Why was high tide so important? If it was a harbour it must be some little place where the tide mattered, or else it was a heavy-draught boat. But there was no regular steamer sailing at that hour, and somehow I didn’t think they would travel by a big boat from a regular harbour. So it must be some little harbour where the tide was important, or perhaps no harbour at all.
But if it was a little port I couldn’t see what the steps signified. There were no sets of staircases on any harbour that I had ever seen. It must be some place which a particular staircase identified, and where 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 staircases 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 and a secret passage? Not from any of the big harbours. And not from the Channel or the West Coast or Scotland, for, remember, he was starting from London. I measured the di
stance on the map, and tried to put myself in the enemy’s shoes. I should try for Ostend or Antwerp or Rotterdam, and I should sail from somewhere on the East Coast between Cromer and Dover.
All this was very loose guessing, and I don’t pretend it was ingenious or scientific. I wasn’t any kind of Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a kind of instinct about questions like this. I don’t know if I can explain myself, but I used to use my brains as far as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I guessed, and I usually found my guesses pretty right.
So I set out all my conclusions on a bit of Admiralty paper. They ran like this:
FAIRLY CERTAIN
(1) Place where there are several sets of stairs; one that matters distinguished by having thirty-nine steps.
(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.
GUESSED
(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. Not that he or anybody else thought that that would do much good.
‘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.’
