The Thirty Nine Steps - John Buchan

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knowledge. I had talked confidently last night about Germans always sticking to a scheme, but if they had
any suspicions that I was on their track they would be fools not to cover it. I wondered if the man last
night had seen that I recognized him. Somehow I did not think he had, and to that I had clung. But the
whole business had never seemed so difficult as that afternoon when by all calculations I should have
been rejoicing in assured success.
In the hotel I met the commander of the destroyer, to whom Scaife introduced me, and with whom I had a
few words. Then I thought I would put in an hour or two watching Trafalgar Lodge.
I found a place farther up the hill, in the garden of an empty house. From there I had a full view of the
court, on which two figures were having a game of tennis. One was the old man, whom I had already
seen; the other was a younger fellow, wearing some club colours in the scarf round his middle. They
played with tremendous zest, like two city gents who wanted hard exercise to open their pores. You
couldn't conceive a more innocent spectacle. They shouted and laughed and stopped for drinks, when a
maid brought out two tankards on a salver. I rubbed my eyes and asked myself if I was not the most
immortal fool on earth. Mystery and darkness had hung about the men who hunted me over the Scotch
moor in aeroplane and motor-car, and notably about that infernal antiquarian. It was easy enough to
connect those folk with the knife that pinned Scudder to the floor, and with fell designs on the world's
peace. But here were two guileless citizens taking their innocuous exercise, and soon about to go indoors
to a humdrum dinner, where they would talk of market prices and the last cricket scores and the gossip of
their native Surbiton. I had been making a net to catch vultures and falcons, and lo and behold! two plump
thrushes had blundered into it.
Presently a third figure arrived, a young man on a bicycle, with a bag of golf-clubs slung on his back. He
strolled round to the tennis lawn and was welcomed riotously by the players. Evidently they were chaffing
him, and their chaff sounded horribly English. Then the plump man, mopping his brow with a silk
handkerchief, announced that he must have a tub. I heard his very words—'I've got into a proper lather,' he
said. 'This will bring down my weight and my handicap, Bob. I'll take you on tomorrow and give you a
stroke a hole.' You couldn't find anything much more English than that.
They all went into the house, and left me feeling a precious idiot. I had been barking up the wrong tree
this time. These men might be acting; but if they were, where was their audience? They didn't know I was
sitting thirty yards off in a rhododendron. It was simply impossible to believe that these three hearty
fellows were anything but what they seemed—three ordinary, game-playing, suburban Englishmen,
wearisome, if you like, but sordidly innocent.
And yet there were three of them; and one was old, and one was plump, and one was lean and dark; and
their house chimed in with Scudder's notes; and half a mile off was lying a steam yacht with at least one
German officer. I thought of Karolides lying dead and all Europe trembling on the edge of earthquake, and
the men I had left behind me in London who were waiting anxiously for the events of the next hours.
There was no doubt that hell was afoot somewhere. The Black Stone had won, and if it survived this June
night would bank its winnings.
There seemed only one thing to do—go forward as if I had no doubts, and if I was going to make a fool of
myself to do it handsomely. Never in my life have I faced a job with greater disinclination. I would rather
in my then mind have walked into a den of anarchists, each with his Browning handy, or faced a charging
lion with a popgun, than enter that happy home of three cheerful Englishmen and tell them that their game
was up. How they would laugh at me!
But suddenly I remembered a thing I once heard in Rhodesia from old Peter Pienaar. I have quoted Peter
already in this narrative. He was the best scout I ever knew, and before he had turned respectable he had
been pretty often on the windy side of the law, when he had been wanted badly by the authorities. Peter
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