The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan [best book club books txt] 📗

that an able-bodied man like you should dare to beg. You can get a meal from my kitchen, but you’ll get no money from me.”

A dogcart was passing, driven by a young man who raised his whip to salute the fisherman. When he had gone, he picked up his rod.

“That’s my house,” he said, pointing to a white gate a hundred yards on. “Wait five minutes and then go round to the back door.” And with that he left me.

I did as I was bidden. I found a pretty cottage with a lawn running down to the stream, and a perfect jungle of guelder-rose and lilac flanking the path. The back door stood open, and a grave butler was awaiting me.

“Come this way, sir,” he said, and he led me along a passage and up a back staircase to a pleasant bedroom looking towards the river. There I found a complete outfit laid out for me⁠—dress clothes with all the fixings, a brown flannel suit, shirts, collars, ties, shaving things and hairbrushes, even a pair of patent shoes. “Sir Walter thought as how Mr. Reggie’s things would fit you, Sir,” said the butler. “He keeps some clothes ’ere, for he comes regular on the weekends. There’s a bathroom next door, and I’ve prepared a ’ot bath. Dinner in ’alf an hour, Sir. You’ll ’ear the gong.”

The grave being withdrew, and I sat down in a chintz-covered easy-chair and gaped. It was like a pantomime, to come suddenly out of beggardom into this orderly comfort. Obviously Sir Walter believed in me, though why he did I could not guess. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a wild, haggard brown fellow, with a fortnight’s ragged beard, and dust in ears and eyes, collarless, vulgarly shirted, with shapeless old tweed clothes and boots that had not been cleaned for the better part of a month. I made a fine tramp and a fair drover; and here I was ushered by a prim butler into this temple of gracious ease. And the best of it was that they did not even know my name.

I resolved not to puzzle my head but to take the gifts the gods had provided. I shaved and bathed luxuriously, and got into the dress clothes and clean crackling shirt, which fitted me not so badly. By the time I had finished the looking-glass showed a not unpersonable young man.

Sir Walter awaited me in a dusky dining-room where a little round table was lit with silver candles. The sight of him⁠—so respectable and established and secure, the embodiment of law and government and all the conventions⁠—took me aback and made me feel an interloper. He couldn’t know the truth about me, or he wouldn’t treat me like this. I simply could not accept his hospitality on false pretences.

“I’m more obliged to you than I can say, but I’m bound to make things clear,” I said. “I’m an innocent man, but I’m wanted by the police. I’ve got to tell you this, and I won’t be surprised if you kick me out.”

He smiled. “That’s all right. Don’t let that interfere with your appetite. We can talk about these things after dinner.”

I never ate a meal with greater relish, for I had had nothing all day but railway sandwiches. Sir Walter did me proud, for we drank a good champagne and had some uncommon fine port afterwards. It made me almost hysterical to be sitting there, waited on by a footman and a sleek butler, and remember that I had been living for three weeks like a brigand, with every man’s hand against me. I told Sir Walter about tiger-fish in the Zambesi that bite off your fingers if you give them a chance, and we discussed sport up and down the globe, for he had hunted a bit in his day.

We went to his study for coffee, a jolly room full of books and trophies and untidiness and comfort. I made up my mind that if ever I got rid of this business and had a house of my own, I would create just such a room. Then when the coffee-cups were cleared away, and we had got our cigars alight, my host swung his long legs over the side of his chair and bade me get started with my yarn.

“I’ve obeyed Harry’s instructions,” he said, “and the bribe he offered me was that you would tell me something to wake me up. I’m ready, Mr. Hannay.”

I noticed with a start that he called me by my proper name.

I began at the very beginning. I told of my boredom in London, and the night I had come back to find Scudder gibbering on my doorstep. I told him all Scudder had told me about Karolides and the Foreign Office conference, and that made him purse his lips and grin.

Then I got to the murder, and he grew solemn again. He heard all about the milkman and my time in Galloway, and my deciphering Scudder’s notes at the inn.

“You’ve got them here?” he asked sharply, and drew a long breath when I whipped the little book from my pocket.

I said nothing of the contents. Then I described my meeting with Sir Harry, and the speeches at the hall. At that he laughed uproariously.

“Harry talked dashed nonsense, did he? I quite believe it. He’s as good a chap as ever breathed, but his idiot of an uncle has stuffed his head with maggots. Go on, Mr. Hannay.”

My day as roadman excited him a bit. He made me describe the two fellows in the car very closely, and seemed to be raking back in his memory. He grew merry again when he heard of the fate of that ass Jopley.

But the old man in the moorland house solemnized him. Again I had to describe every detail of his appearance.

“Bland and bald-headed and hooded his eyes like a bird⁠ ⁠… He sounds a sinister wildfowl! And you dynamited his hermitage, after he had saved you from