Chapter 9: The Thirty-Nine Steps

‘Nonsense!’ said the official from the Admiralty.

Sir Walter got up and left the room while we looked blankly at the table. He came back in ten minutes with a long face. ‘I have spoken to Alloa,’ he said. ‘Had him out of bed--very grumpy. He went straight home after Mulross’s dinner.’

‘But it’s madness,’ broke in General Winstanley. ‘Do you mean to tell me that that man came here and sat beside me for the best part of half an hour and that I didn’t detect the imposture? Alloa must be out of his mind.’

‘Don’t you see the cleverness of it?’ I said. ‘You were too interested in other things to have any eyes. You took Lord Alloa for granted. If it had been anybody else you might have looked more closely, but it was natural for him to be here, and that put you all to sleep.’

Then the Frenchman spoke, very slowly and in good English.

‘The young man is right. His psychology is good. Our enemies have not been foolish!’

He bent his wise brows on the assembly.

‘I will tell you a tale,’ he said. ‘It happened many years ago in Senegal. I was quartered in a remote station, and to pass the time used to go fishing for big barbel in the river. A little Arab mare used to carry my luncheon basket--one of the salted dun breed you got at Timbuctoo in the old days. Well, one morning I had good sport, and the mare was unaccountably restless. I could hear her whinnying and squealing and stamping her feet, and I kept soothing her with my voice while my mind was intent on fish. I could see her all the time, as I thought, out of a corner of my eye, tethered to a tree twenty yards away. After a couple of hours I began to think of food. I collected my fish in a tarpaulin bag, and moved down the stream towards the mare, trolling my line. When I got up to her I flung the tarpaulin on her back--’

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.