The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan (adventure books to read txt) 📗

came up the road, and slowed down a yard or two from me. A fresh wind had risen, and the occupant wanted to light a cigarette. It was a touring car, with the tonneau full of an assortment of baggage. One man sat in it, and by an amazing chance I knew him. His name was Marmaduke Jopley, and he was an offence to creation. He was a sort of blood stockbroker, who did his business by toadying eldest sons and rich young peers and foolish old ladies.

“Marmie” was a familiar figure, I understood, at balls and polo-weeks and country houses. He was an adroit scandalmonger, and would crawl a mile on his belly to anything that had a title or a million. I had a business introduction to his firm when I came to London, and he was good enough to ask me to dinner at his club. There he showed off at a great rate, and pattered about his duchesses till the snobbery of the creature turned me sick. I asked a man afterwards why nobody kicked him, and was told that Englishmen reverenced the weaker sex.

Anyhow there he was now, nattily dressed, in a fine new car, obviously on his way to visit some of his smart friends. A sudden daftness took me, and in a second I had jumped into the tonneau and had him by the shoulder.

“Hullo, Jopley,” I sang out. “Well met, my lad!”

He got a horrid fright. His chin dropped as he stared at me. “Who the devil are you?” he gasped.

“My name’s Hannay,” I said. “From Rhodesia, you remember.”

“Good God, the murderer!” he choked.

“Just so. And there’ll be a second murder, my dear, if you don’t do as I tell you. Give me that coat of yours. That cap, too.”

He did as bid, for he was blind with terror. Over my dirty trousers and vulgar shirt I put on his smart driving-coat, which buttoned high at the top and thereby hid the deficiencies of my collar. I stuck the cap on my head, and added his gloves to my getup. The dusty roadman in a minute was transformed into one of the neatest motorists in Scotland. On Mr. Jopley’s head I clapped Turnbull’s unspeakable hat, and told him to keep it there.

Then with some difficulty I turned the car. My plan was to go back the road he had come, for the watchers, having seen it before, would probably let it pass unremarked, and Marmie’s figure was in no way like mine.

“Now, my child,” I said, “sit quite still and be a good boy. I mean you no harm. I’m only borrowing your car for an hour or two. But if you play me any tricks, and above all if you open your mouth, as sure as there’s a God above me I’ll wring your neck. Savez?”

I enjoyed that evening’s ride. We ran eight miles down the valley, through a village or two, and I could not help noticing several strange-looking folk lounging by the roadside. These were the watchers who would have had much to say to me if I had come in other garb or company. As it was, they looked incuriously on. One touched his cap in salute, and I responded graciously.

As the dark fell I turned up a side glen which, as I remember from the map, led into an unfrequented corner of the hills. Soon the villages were left behind, then the farms, and then even the wayside cottage. Presently we came to a lonely moor where the night was blackening the sunset gleam in the bog pools. Here we stopped, and I obligingly reversed the car and restored to Mr. Jopley his belongings.

“A thousand thanks,” I said. “There’s more use in you than I thought. Now be off and find the police.”

As I sat on the hillside, watching the taillight dwindle, I reflected on the various kinds of crime I had now sampled. Contrary to general belief, I was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless impostor, and a highwayman with a marked taste for expensive motorcars.

VI The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist

I spent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a boulder where the heather grew long and soft. It was a cold business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat. These were in Mr. Turnbull’s keeping, as was Scudder’s little book, my watch and⁠—worst of all⁠—my pipe and tobacco pouch. Only my money accompanied me in my belt, and about half a pound of ginger biscuits in my trousers pocket.

I supped off half those biscuits, and by worming myself deep into the heather got some kind of warmth. My spirits had risen, and I was beginning to enjoy this crazy game of hide-and-seek. So far I had been miraculously lucky. The milkman, the literary innkeeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic Marmie, were all pieces of undeserved good fortune. Somehow the first success gave me a feeling that I was going to pull the thing through.

My chief trouble was that I was desperately hungry. When a Jew shoots himself in the city and there is an inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was “well-nourished.” I remember thinking that they would not call me well-nourished if I broke my neck in a bog-hole. I lay and tortured myself⁠—for the ginger biscuits merely emphasized the aching void⁠—with the memory of all the good food I had thought so little of in London. There were Paddock’s crisp sausages and fragrant shavings of bacon, and shapely poached eggs⁠—how often I had turned up my nose at them! There were the cutlets they did at the club, and a particular ham that stood on the cold table, for which my soul lusted. My thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal edible, and finally settled on a porterhouse steak and a quart of bitter with a Welsh rabbit to follow. In longing