The Thirty-Nine Steps | Page 8

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 was here, or he would be
besieged by communications from the India Office and the Prime
Minister and his cure would be ruined. I am bound to say Scudder
played up splendidly when he came to breakfast. He fixed Paddock
with his eyeglass, just like a British officer, asked him about the Boer
War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about imaginary pals. Paddock
couldn't learn to call me 'Sir', but he 'sirred' Scudder as if his life
depended on it.
I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and went down to the
City till luncheon. When I got back the lift-man had an important face.
'Nawsty business 'ere this morning, Sir. Gent in No. 15 been and shot
'isself. They've just took 'im to the mortiary. The police are up there
now.'
I ascended to No. 15, and found a couple of bobbies and an inspector
busy making an examination. I asked a few idiotic questions, and they
soon kicked me out. Then I found the man that had valeted Scudder,
and pumped him, but I could see he suspected nothing. He was a
whining fellow with a churchyard face, and half- a-crown went far to
console him.
I attended the inquest next day. A partner of some publishing firm gave
evidence that the deceased had brought him wood-pulp propositions,

and had been, he believed, an agent of an American business. The jury
found it a case of suicide while of unsound mind, and the few effects
were handed over to the American Consul to deal with. I gave Scudder
a full account of the affair, and it interested him greatly. He said he
wished he could have attended the inquest, for he reckoned it would be
about as spicy as to read one's own obituary notice.
The first two days he stayed with me in that back room he was very
peaceful. He read and smoked a bit, and made a heap of jottings in a
note-book, and every night we had a game of chess, at which he beat
me hollow. I think he was nursing his nerves back to health, for he had
had a pretty trying time. But on the third day I could see he was
beginning to get restless. He fixed up a list of the days till June 15th,
and ticked each off with a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand
against them. I would find him sunk in a brown study, with his sharp
eyes abstracted, and after those spells of meditation he was apt to be
very despondent.
Then I could see that he began to get edgy again. He listened for little
noises, and was always asking me if Paddock could be trusted. Once or
twice he got very peevish, and apologized for it. I didn't blame him. I
made every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly stiff job.
It was not the safety of his own skin that troubled him, but the success
of the scheme he had planned. That little man was clean grit all through,
without a soft spot in him. One night he was very solemn.
'Say, Hannay,' he said, 'I judge I should let you a bit deeper into this
business. I should hate to go out without leaving somebody else to put
up a fight.' And he began to tell me in detail what I had only heard from
him vaguely.
I did not give him very close attention. The fact is, I was more
interested in his own adventures than in his high politics. I reckoned
that Karolides and his affairs were not my business, leaving all that to
him. So a lot that he said slipped clean out of my memory. I remember
that he was very clear that the danger to Karolides would not begin till
he had got to London, and would come from the very highest quarters,

where there would be no thought of suspicion. He mentioned the name
of a woman - Julia Czechenyi - as having something to do with the
danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get Karolides out of the
care of his guards. He talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man that
lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly somebody that
he never referred to without a shudder - an old man with a