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

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 distance 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

Place where there are several sets of stairs; one that matters distinguished by having thirty-nine steps.

Full tide at 10:17 p.m. Leaving shore only possible at full tide.

Steps not dock steps, and so place probably not harbour.

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

Place not harbour but open coast.

Boat small⁠—trawler, yacht, or launch.

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.”

Then an idea struck me. “Is there no Inspector of Coastguards or some fellow like that who knows the East Coast?”

Whittaker said there was, and that he lived in Clapham. He went off in a car to fetch him, and the rest of us sat about the little room and talked of anything that came into our heads. I lit a pipe and went over the whole thing again till my brain grew weary.

About one in the morning the coastguard man arrived. He was a fine old fellow, with the look of a naval officer, and was desperately respectful to the company. I left the War Minister to cross-examine him, for I felt he would think it cheek in me to talk.

“We want you to tell us the places you know on the East Coast where there are cliffs, and where several sets of steps run down to the beach.”

He thought for a bit. “What kind of steps do you mean, Sir? There are plenty of places with roads cut down through the cliffs, and most roads have a step or two in them. Or do you mean regular staircases⁠—all steps, so to speak?”

Sir Arthur looked towards me. “We mean regular staircases,” I said.

He reflected a minute or two. “I don’t know that I can think of any. Wait a second. There’s a place in Norfolk⁠—Brattlesham⁠—beside a golf-course, where there are a couple of staircases, to let the gentlemen get a lost ball.”

“That’s not it,” I said.

“Then there are plenty of Marine Parades, if that’s what you mean. Every seaside resort has them.”

I shook my head. “It’s got to be more retired than that,” I said.

“Well, gentlemen, I can’t think of anywhere else. Of course, there’s the Ruff⁠—”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The big chalk headland in Kent, close to Bradgate. It’s got a lot of villas on the top, and some of the houses have staircases down to a private beach. It’s a very high-toned sort of place, and the residents there like to keep by themselves.”

I tore open the Tide Tables and found Bradgate. High tide there was at 10:27 p.m. on the 15th of June.

“We’re on the scent at last,” I cried excitedly. “How can I find out what is the tide at the Ruff?”

“I can tell you that, sir,” said the coastguard man. “I once was lent a house there in this very month, and I used to go out at night to the deep-sea fishing. The tide’s ten minutes before Bradgate.”

I closed the book and looked round at the company.

“If one of those staircases has thirty-nine