The Thirty-Nine Steps Read Free Page A

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 young voice who could hood
     his eyes like a hawk.
    He spoke a good deal about death, too. He was mortally anxious about winning through
     with his job, but he didn’t care a rush for his life.
    ‘I reckon it’s like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out, and waking
     to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the window. I used to