The Thirty-Nine Steps (10 page)

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 throw 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 mesmerized 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 put this fellow
in the storeroom till I return, and you will be answerable to 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, for 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 question 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?

I began to think wistfully of the police, now plodding over the hills after my wraith.
They at any rate were fellow-countrymen and honest men, and their tender mercies would
be kinder than these ghoulish aliens. But they wouldn’t have listened to me. That
old devil with the eyelids had not taken long to get rid of them. I thought he probably
had some kind of graft with the constabulary. Most likely he had letters from Cabinet
Ministers saying he was to be given every facility for plotting against Britain. That’s
the sort of owlish way we run our politics in the Old Country.

The three would be back for lunch, so I hadn’t more than a couple of hours to wait.
It was simply waiting on destruction, for I could see no way out of this mess. I wished
that I had Scudder’s courage, for I am free to confess I didn’t feel any great fortitude.
The only thing that kept me going was that I was pretty furious. It made me boil with
rage to think of those three spies getting the pull on me like this. I hoped that
at any rate I might be able to twist one of their necks before they downed me.

The more I thought of it the angrier I grew, and I had to get up and move about the
room. I tried the shutters, but they were the kind that lock with a key, and I couldn’t
move them. From the outside came the faint clucking of hens in the warm sun. Then
I groped among the sacks and boxes. I couldn’t open the latter, and the sacks seemed
to be full of things like dog-biscuits that smelt of cinnamon. But, as I circumnavigated
the room, I found a handle in the wall which seemed worth investigating.

It was the door of a wall cupboard—what they call a ‘press’ in Scotland—and it was
locked. I shook it, and it seemed rather flimsy. For want of something better to do
I put out my strength on that door, getting some purchase on the handle by looping
my braces round it. Presently the thing gave with a crash which I thought would bring
in my warders to inquire. I waited for a bit, and then started to explore the cupboard
shelves.

There was a multitude of queer things there. I found an odd vesta or two in my trouser
pockets and struck a light. It was out in a second, but it showed me one thing. There
was a little stock of electric torches on one shelf. I picked up one, and found it
was in working order.

With the torch to help me I investigated further. There were bottles and cases of
queer-smelling stuffs, chemicals no doubt for experiments, and there were coils of
fine copper wire and yanks and yanks of thin oiled silk. There was a box of detonators,
and a lot of cord for fuses. Then away at the back of the shelf I found a stout brown
cardboard box, and inside it a wooden case. I managed to wrench it open, and within
lay half a dozen little grey bricks, each a couple of inches square.

I took up one, and found that it crumbled easily in my hand. Then I smelt it and put
my tongue to it. After that I sat down to think. I hadn’t been a mining engineer for
nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it.

With one of these bricks I could blow the house to smithereens. I had used the stuff
in Rhodesia and knew its power. But the trouble was that my knowledge wasn’t exact.
I had forgotten the proper charge and the right way of preparing it, and I wasn’t
sure about the timing. I had only a vague notion, too, as to its power, for though
I had used it I had not handled it with my own fingers.

But it was a chance, the only possible chance. It was a mighty risk, but against it
was an absolute black certainty. If I used it the odds were, as I reckoned, about
five to one in favour of my blowing myself into the tree-tops; but if I didn’t I should
very likely be occupying a six-foot hole in the garden by the evening. That was the
way I had to look at it. The prospect was pretty dark either way, but anyhow there
was a chance, both for myself and for my country.

The remembrance of little Scudder decided me. It was about the beastliest moment of
my life, for I’m no good at these cold-blooded resolutions. Still I managed to rake
up the pluck to set my teeth and choke back the horrid doubts that flooded in on me.
I simply shut off my mind and pretended I was doing an experiment as simple as Guy
Fawkes fireworks.

I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of feet of fuse. Then I took a quarter
of a lentonite brick, and buried it near the door below one of the sacks in a crack
of the floor, fixing the detonator in it. For all I knew half those boxes might be
dynamite. If the cupboard held such deadly explosives, why not the boxes? In that
case there would be a glorious skyward journey for me and the German servants and
about an acre of surrounding country. There was also the risk that the detonation
might set off the other bricks in the cupboard, for I had forgotten most that I knew
about lentonite. But it didn’t do to begin thinking about the possibilities. The odds
were horrible, but I had to take them.

I ensconced myself just below the sill of the window, and lit the fuse. Then I waited
for a moment or two. There was dead silence—only a shuffle of heavy boots in the passage,
and the peaceful cluck of hens from the warm out-of-doors. I commended my soul to
my Maker, and wondered where I would be in five seconds …

A great wave of heat seemed to surge upwards from the floor, and hang for a blistering
instant in the air. Then the wall opposite me flashed into a golden yellow and dissolved
with a rending thunder that hammered my brain into a pulp. Something dropped on me,
catching the point of my left shoulder.

And then I think I became unconscious.

My stupor can scarcely have lasted beyond a few seconds. I felt myself being choked
by thick yellow fumes, and struggled out of the debris to my feet. Somewhere behind
me I felt fresh air. The jambs of the window had fallen, and through the ragged rent
the smoke was pouring out to the summer noon. I stepped over the broken lintel, and
found myself standing in a yard in a dense and acrid fog. I felt very sick and ill,
but I could move my limbs, and I staggered blindly forward away from the house.

A small mill-lade ran in a wooden aqueduct at the other side of the yard, and into
this I fell. The cool water revived me, and I had just enough wits left to think of
escape. I squirmed up the lade among the slippery green slime till I reached the mill-wheel.
Then I wriggled through the axle hole into the old mill and tumbled on to a bed of
chaff. A nail caught the seat of my trousers, and I left a wisp of heather-mixture
behind me.

The mill had been long out of use. The ladders were rotten with age, and in the loft
the rats had gnawed great holes in the floor. Nausea shook me, and a wheel in my head
kept turning, while my left shoulder and arm seemed to be stricken with the palsy.
I looked out of the window and saw a fog still hanging over the house and smoke escaping
from an upper window. Please God I had set the place on fire, for I could hear confused
cries coming from the other side.

But I had no time to linger, since this mill was obviously a bad hiding-place. Anyone
looking for me would naturally follow the lade, and I made certain the search would
begin as soon as they found that my body was not in the storeroom. From another window
I saw that on the far side of the mill stood an old stone dovecot. If I could get
there without leaving tracks I might find a hiding-place, for I argued that my enemies,
if they thought I could move, would conclude I had made for open country, and would
go seeking me on the moor.

I crawled down the broken ladder, scattering chaff behind me to cover my footsteps.
I did the same on the mill floor, and on the threshold where the door hung on broken
hinges. Peeping out, I saw that between me and the dovecot was a piece of bare cobbled
ground, where no footmarks would show. Also it was mercifully hid by the mill buildings
from any view from the house. I slipped across the space, got to the back of the dovecot
and prospected a way of ascent.

That was one of the hardest jobs I ever took on. My shoulder and arm ached like hell,
and I was so sick and giddy that I was always on the verge of falling. But I managed
it somehow. By the use of out-jutting stones and gaps in the masonry and a tough ivy
root I got to the top in the end. There was a little parapet behind which I found
space to lie down. Then I proceeded to go off into an old-fashioned swoon.

I woke with a burning head and the sun glaring in my face. For a long time I lay motionless,
for those horrible fumes seemed to have loosened my joints and dulled my brain. Sounds
came to me from the house—men speaking throatily and the throbbing of a stationary
car. There was a little gap in the parapet to which I wriggled, and from which I had
some sort of prospect of the yard. I saw figures come out—a servant with his head
bound up, and then a younger man in knickerbockers. They were looking for something,
and moved towards the mill. Then one of them caught sight of the wisp of cloth on
the nail, and cried out to the other. They both went back to the house, and brought
two more to look at it. I saw the rotund figure of my late captor, and I thought I
made out the man with the lisp. I noticed that all had pistols.

For half an hour they ransacked the mill. I could hear them kicking over the barrels
and pulling up the rotten planking. Then they came outside, and stood just below the
dovecot arguing fiercely. The servant with the bandage was being soundly rated. I
heard them fiddling with the door of the dovecote and for one horrid moment I fancied
they were coming up. Then they thought better of it, and went back to the house.

All that long blistering afternoon I lay baking on the rooftop. Thirst was my chief
torment. My tongue was like a stick, and to make it worse I could hear the cool drip
of water from the mill-lade. I watched the course of the little stream as it came
in from the moor, and my fancy followed it to the top of the glen, where it must issue
from an icy fountain fringed with cool ferns and mosses. I would have given a thousand
pounds to plunge my face into that.

I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland. I saw the car speed away with
two occupants, and a man on a hill pony riding east. I judged they were looking for
me, and I wished them joy of their quest.

But I saw something else more interesting. The house stood almost on the summit of
a swell of moorland which crowned a sort of plateau, and there was no higher point
nearer than the big hills six miles off. The actual summit, as I have mentioned, was
a biggish clump of trees—firs mostly, with a few ashes and beeches. On the dovecot
I was almost on a level with the tree-tops, and could see what lay beyond. The wood
was not solid, but only a ring, and inside was an oval of green turf, for all the
world like a big cricket-field.

I didn’t take long to guess what it was. It was an aerodrome, and a secret one. The
place had been most cunningly chosen. For suppose anyone were watching an aeroplane
descending here, he would think it had gone over the hill beyond the trees. As the
place was on the top of a rise in the midst of a big amphitheatre, any observer from
any direction would conclude it had passed out of view behind the hill. Only a man
very close at hand would realize that the aeroplane had not gone over but had descended
in the midst of the wood. An observer with a telescope on one of the higher hills
might have discovered the truth, but only herds went there, and herds do not carry
spy-glasses. When I looked from the dovecot I could see far away a blue line which
I knew was the sea, and I grew furious to think that our enemies had this secret conning-tower
to rake our waterways.

Then I reflected that if that aeroplane came back the chances were ten to one that
I would be discovered. So through the afternoon I lay and prayed for the coming of
darkness, and glad I was when the sun went down over the big western hills and the
twilight haze crept over the moor. The aeroplane was late. The gloaming was far advanced
when I heard the beat of wings and saw it volplaning downward to its home in the wood.
Lights twinkled for a bit and there was much coming and going from the house. Then
the dark fell, and silence.