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

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.

“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 Timbuktu 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