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

recognized him⁠ ⁠… He came in and spoke to the porter⁠ ⁠… When I came back from my walk last night I found a card in my letter-box. It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on God’s earth.”

I think that the look in my companion’s eyes, the sheer naked scare on his face, completed my conviction of his honesty. My own voice sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next.

“I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to sleep again.”

“How did you manage it?”

“I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look like death. That wasn’t difficult, for I’m no slouch at disguises. Then I got a corpse⁠—you can always get a body in London if you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room. You see I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to mix me a sleeping-draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn’t abide leeches. When I was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse. He was my size, and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I daresay there will be somebody tomorrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas, with a revolver lying on the bedclothes and a considerable mess around. Then I got into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies. I didn’t dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides, it wasn’t any kind of use my trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind all day, and there seemed nothing to do but to make an appeal to you. I watched from my window till I saw you come home, and then slipped down the stair to meet you⁠ ⁠… There, sir, I guess you know about as much as me of this business.”

He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and yet desperately determined. By this time I was pretty well convinced that he was going straight with me. It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of judging the man rather than the story. If he had wanted to get a location in my flat, and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a milder yarn.

“Hand me your key,” I said, “and I’ll take a look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but I’m bound to verify a bit if I can.”

He shook his head mournfully. “I reckoned you’d ask for that, but I haven’t got it. It’s on my chain on the dressing-table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn’t leave any clues to breed suspicions. The gentry who are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You’ll have to take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you’ll get proof of the corpse business right enough.”

I thought for an instant or two. “Right. I’ll trust you for the night. I’ll lock you into this room and keep the key. Just one word, Mr. Scudder. I believe you’re straight, but if so be you are not I should warn you that I’m a handy man with a gun.”

“Sure,” he said, jumping up with some briskness. “I haven’t the privilege of your name, sir, but let me tell you that you’re a white man. I’ll thank you to lend me a razor.”

I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an hour’s time a figure came out that I scarcely recognized. Only his gimlety, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows. Further, he carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model, even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech.

“My hat! Mr. Scudder⁠—” I stammered.

“Not Mr. Scudder,” he corrected; “Captain Theophilus Digby, of the 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I’ll thank you to remember that, sir.”

I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought my own couch, more cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things did happen occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis.

I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce of a row at the smoking-room door.

Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty.

“Stop that row, Paddock,” I said. “There’s a friend of mine, Captain⁠—Captain” (I couldn’t remember the name) “dossing down in there. Get breakfast for two and then come and speak to me.”

I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a great swell, with his nerves pretty bad from overwork, who wanted absolute rest and stillness. Nobody had got to know he