The Thirty-Nine Steps (14 page)

He paused and looked round.

‘It was the smell that gave me warning. I turned my head and found myself looking
at a lion three feet off … An old man-eater, that was the terror of the village …
What was left of the mare, a mass of blood and bones and hide, was behind him.’

‘What happened?’ I asked. I was enough of a hunter to know a true yarn when I heard
it.

‘I stuffed my fishing-rod into his jaws, and I had a pistol. Also my servants came
presently with rifles. But he left his mark on me.’ He held up a hand which lacked
three fingers.

‘Consider,’ he said. ‘The mare had been dead more than an hour, and the brute had
been patiently watching me ever since. I never saw the kill, for I was accustomed
to the mare’s fretting, and I never marked her absence, for my consciousness of her
was only of something tawny, and the lion filled that part. If I could blunder thus,
gentlemen, in a land where men’s senses are keen, why should we busy preoccupied urban
folk not err also?’

Sir Walter nodded. No one was ready to gainsay him.

‘But I don’t see,’ went on Winstanley. ‘Their object was to get these dispositions
without our knowing it. Now it only required one of us to mention to Alloa our meeting
tonight for the whole fraud to be exposed.’

Sir Walter laughed dryly. ‘The selection of Alloa shows their acumen. Which of us
was likely to speak to him about tonight? Or was he likely to open the subject?’

I remembered the First Sea Lord’s reputation for taciturnity and shortness of temper.

‘The one thing that puzzles me,’ said the General, ‘is what good his visit here would
do that spy fellow? He could not carry away several pages of figures and strange names
in his head.’

‘That is not difficult,’ the Frenchman replied. ‘A good spy is trained to have a photographic
memory. Like your own Macaulay. You noticed he said nothing, but went through these
papers again and again. I think we may assume that he has every detail stamped on
his mind. When I was younger I could do the same trick.’

‘Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to change the plans,’ said Sir Walter
ruefully.

Whittaker was looking very glum. ‘Did you tell Lord Alloa what has happened?’ he asked.
‘No? Well, I can’t speak with absolute assurance, but I’m nearly certain we can’t
make any serious change unless we alter the geography of England.’

‘Another thing must be said,’ it was Royer who spoke. ‘I talked freely when that man
was here. I told something of the military plans of my Government. I was permitted
to say so much. But that information would be worth many millions to our enemies.
No, my friends, I see no other way. The man who came here and his confederates must
be taken, and taken at once.’

‘Good God,’ I cried, ‘and we have not a rag of a clue.’

‘Besides,’ said Whittaker, ‘there is the post. By this time the news will be on its
way.’

‘No,’ said the Frenchman. ‘You do not understand the habits of the spy. He receives
personally his reward, and he delivers personally his intelligence. We in France know
something of the breed. There is still a chance,
mes amis
. These men must cross the sea, and there are ships to be searched and ports to be
watched. Believe me, the need is desperate for both France and Britain.’

Royer’s grave good sense seemed to pull us together. He was the man of action among
fumblers. But I saw no hope in any face, and I felt none. Where among the fifty millions
of these islands and within a dozen hours were we to lay hands on the three cleverest
rogues in Europe?

Then suddenly I had an inspiration.

‘Where is Scudder’s book?’ I cried to Sir Walter. ‘Quick, man, I remember something
in it.’

He unlocked the door of a bureau and gave it to me.

I found the place.
Thirty-nine steps
, I read, and again,
Thirty-nine steps—I counted them—High tide 10.17 P.M
.

The Admiralty man was looking at me as if he thought I had gone mad.

‘Don’t you see it’s a clue,’ I shouted. ‘Scudder knew where these fellows laired—he
knew where they were going to leave the country, though he kept the name to himself.
Tomorrow was the day, and it was some place where high tide was at 10.17.’

‘They may have gone tonight,’ someone said.

‘Not they. They have their own snug secret way, and they won’t be hurried. I know
Germans, and they are mad about working to a plan. Where the devil can I get a book
of Tide Tables?’

Whittaker brightened up. ‘It’s a chance,’ he said. ‘Let’s go over to the Admiralty.’

We got into two of the waiting motor-cars—all but Sir Walter, who went off to Scotland
Yard—to ‘mobilize MacGillivray’, so he said. We marched through empty corridors and
big bare chambers where the charwomen were busy, till we reached a little room lined
with books and maps. A resident clerk was unearthed, who presently fetched from the
library the Admiralty Tide Tables. I sat at the desk and the others stood round, for
somehow or other I had got charge of this expedition.

It was no good. There were hundreds of entries, and so far as I could see 10.17 might
cover fifty places. We had to find some way of narrowing the possibilities.

I took my head in my hands and thought. There must be some way of reading this riddle.
What did Scudder mean by steps? I thought of dock steps, but if he had meant that
I didn’t think he would have mentioned the number. It must be some place where there
were several staircases, and one marked out from the others by having thirty-nine
steps.

Then I had a sudden thought, and hunted up all the steamer sailings. There was no
boat which left for the Continent at 10.17
P.M.

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

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

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 10.17 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 steps we have solved the mystery, gentlemen,’
I said. ‘I want the loan of your car, Sir Walter, and a map of the roads. If Mr MacGillivray
will spare me ten minutes, I think we can prepare something for tomorrow.’

It was ridiculous in me to take charge of the business like this, but they didn’t
seem to mind, and after all I had been in the show from the start. Besides, I was
used to rough jobs, and these eminent gentlemen were too clever not to see it. It
was General Royer who gave me my commission. ‘I for one,’ he said, ‘am content to
leave the matter in Mr Hannay’s hands.’

By half-past three I was tearing past the moonlit hedgerows of Kent, with MacGillivray’s
best man on the seat beside me.

A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from the Griffin Hotel over
a smooth sea to the lightship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a bell-buoy.
A couple of miles farther south and much nearer the shore a small destroyer was anchored.
Scaife, MacGillivray’s man, who had been in the Navy, knew the boat, and told me her
name and her commander’s, so I sent off a wire to Sir Walter.

After breakfast Scaife got from a house-agent a key for the gates of the staircases
on the Ruff. I walked with him along the sands, and sat down in a nook of the cliffs
while he investigated the half-dozen of them. I didn’t want to be seen, but the place
at this hour was quite deserted, and all the time I was on that beach I saw nothing
but the sea-gulls.

It took him more than an hour to do the job, and when I saw him coming towards me,
conning a bit of paper, I can tell you my heart was in my mouth. Everything depended,
you see, on my guess proving right.