The Thirty-Nine Steps (9 page)

I crawled out of my shelf into the cover of a boulder, and from it gained a shallow
trench which slanted up the mountain face. This led me presently into the narrow gully
of a burn, by way of which I scrambled to the top of the ridge. From there I looked
back, and saw that I was still undiscovered. My pursuers were patiently quartering
the hillside and moving upwards.

Keeping behind the skyline I ran for maybe half a mile, till I judged I was above
the uppermost end of the glen. Then I showed myself, and was instantly noted by one
of the flankers, who passed the word to the others. I heard cries coming up from below,
and saw that the line of search had changed its direction. I pretended to retreat
over the skyline, but instead went back the way I had come, and in twenty minutes
was behind the ridge overlooking my sleeping place. From that viewpoint I had the
satisfaction of seeing the pursuit streaming up the hill at the top of the glen on
a hopelessly false scent.

I had before me a choice of routes, and I chose a ridge which made an angle with the
one I was on, and so would soon put a deep glen between me and my enemies. The exercise
had warmed my blood, and I was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly. As I went I breakfasted
on the dusty remnants of the ginger biscuits.

I knew very little about the country, and I hadn’t a notion what I was going to do.
I trusted to the strength of my legs, but I was well aware that those behind me would
be familiar with the lie of the land, and that my ignorance would be a heavy handicap.
I saw in front of me a sea of hills, rising very high towards the south, but northwards
breaking down into broad ridges which separated wide and shallow dales. The ridge
I had chosen seemed to sink after a mile or two to a moor which lay like a pocket
in the uplands. That seemed as good a direction to take as any other.

My stratagem had given me a fair start—call it twenty minutes—and I had the width
of a glen behind me before I saw the first heads of the pursuers. The police had evidently
called in local talent to their aid, and the men I could see had the appearance of
herds or gamekeepers. They hallooed at the sight of me, and I waved my hand. Two dived
into the glen and began to climb my ridge, while the others kept their own side of
the hill. I felt as if I were taking part in a schoolboy game of hare and hounds.

But very soon it began to seem less of a game. Those fellows behind were hefty men
on their native heath. Looking back I saw that only three were following direct, and
I guessed that the others had fetched a circuit to cut me off. My lack of local knowledge
might very well be my undoing, and I resolved to get out of this tangle of glens to
the pocket of moor I had seen from the tops. I must so increase my distance as to
get clear away from them, and I believed I could do this if I could find the right
ground for it. If there had been cover I would have tried a bit of stalking, but on
these bare slopes you could see a fly a mile off. My hope must be in the length of
my legs and the soundness of my wind, but I needed easier ground for that, for I was
not bred a mountaineer. How I longed for a good Afrikander pony!

I put on a great spurt and got off my ridge and down into the moor before any figures
appeared on the skyline behind me. I crossed a burn, and came out on a highroad which
made a pass between two glens. All in front of me was a big field of heather sloping
up to a crest which was crowned with an odd feather of trees. In the dyke by the roadside
was a gate, from which a grass-grown track led over the first wave of the moor.

I jumped the dyke and followed it, and after a few hundred yards—as soon as it was
out of sight of the highway—the grass stopped and it became a very respectable road,
which was evidently kept with some care. Clearly it ran to a house, and I began to
think of doing the same. Hitherto my luck had held, and it might be that my best chance
would be found in this remote dwelling. Anyhow there were trees there, and that meant
cover.

I did not follow the road, but the burnside which flanked it on the right, where the
bracken grew deep and the 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 the pursuit topping
the ridge from which I had descended.

After that I did not look back; I had no time. I 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 peat-stacks 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 yet passed the first lift of the moor.

The lawn was a very rough place, cut with a scythe instead of a mower, and planted
with beds of scrubby rhododendrons. A brace of black-game, which are not usually garden
birds, rose at my approach. The house before me was the ordinary moorland farm, with
a more pretentious whitewashed wing added. Attached to this wing was a glass veranda,
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 veranda 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 papers and open
volumes before him, was the benevolent old gentleman. His face was round and shiny,
like Mr Pickwick’s, 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 moved 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
scrutinized 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 the clumsy rural policeman. 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 do 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 straight 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 men-servants 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 slender 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 quarrel 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 dawning 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.’

I 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,’ 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 meal 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 woman had cried on 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
perishers 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.

I flew into a rage. ‘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 the 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 veranda.

‘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.