The Thirty-Nine Steps | Page 3

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

by JOHN BUCHAN

TO
THOMAS ARTHUR NELSON
(LOTHIAN AND BORDER HORSE)
My Dear Tommy,
You and I have long cherished an affection for that elemental type of
tale which Americans call the 'dime novel' and which we know as the
'shocker' - the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and
march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last
winter I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was
driven to write one for myself. This little volume is the result, and I
should like to put your name on it in memory of our long friendship, in
the days when the wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the
facts.
J.B.

CONTENTS
1. The Man Who Died 2. The Milkman Sets Out on his Travels 3. The
Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper 4. The Adventure of the Radical
Candidate 5. The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman 6. The
Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist 7. The Dry-Fly Fisherman 8. The
Coming of the Black Stone 9. The Thirty-Nine Steps 10. Various
Parties Converging on the Sea

CHAPTER ONE
The Man Who Died
I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon
pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old
Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I
would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but
there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the
ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough exercise, and
the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda- water that has been
standing in the sun. 'Richard Hannay,' I kept telling myself, 'you have
got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.' It
made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those
last years in Bulawayo. I had got my pile - not one of the big ones, but
good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of
enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the
age of six, and I had never been home since; so England was a sort of
Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of
my days.
But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was
tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of
restaurants and theatres and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go about
with, which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to
their houses, but they didn't seem much interested in me. They would
fling me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on their
own affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet
schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that
was the dismalest business of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old,
sound in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good time,
yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear out and
get back to the veld, for I was the best bored man in the United
Kingdom.
That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to
give my mind something to work on, and on my way home I turned

into my club - rather a pot-house, which took in Colonial members. I
had a long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the