Free The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan Page A

buttoned high at the top and thereby hid the
     deficiencies of my collar. I stuck the cap on my head, and added his gloves to my
     get-up. The dusty roadman in a minute was transformed into one of the neatest motorists
     in Scotland. On Mr Jopley’s head I clapped Turnbull’s unspeakable hat, and told him
     to keep it there.
    Then with some difficulty I turned the car. My plan was to go back the road he had
     come, for the watchers, having seen it before, would probably let it pass unremarked,
     and Marmie’s figure was in no way like mine.
    ‘Now, my child,’ I said, ‘sit quite still and be a good boy. I mean you no harm. I’m
     only borrowing your car for an hour or two. But if you play me any tricks, and above
     all if you open your mouth, as sure as there’s a God above me I’ll wring your neck.
Savez
?’
    I enjoyed that evening’s ride. We ran eight miles down the valley, through a village
     or two, and I could not help noticing several strange-looking folk lounging by the
     roadside. These were the watchers who would have had much to say to me if I had come
     in other garb or company. As it was, they looked incuriously on. One touched his cap
     in salute, and I responded graciously.
    As the dark fell I turned up a side glen which, as I remember from the map, led into
     an unfrequented corner of the hills. Soon the villages were left behind, then the
     farms, and then even the wayside cottage. Presently we came to a lonely moor where
     the night was blackening the sunset gleam in the bog pools. Here we stopped, and I
     obligingly reversed the car and restored to Mr Jopley his belongings.
    ‘A thousand thanks,’ I said. ‘There’s more use in you than I thought. Now be off and
     find the police.’
    As I sat on the hillside, watching the tail-light dwindle, I reflected on the various
     kinds of crime I had now sampled. Contrary to general belief, I was not a murderer,
     but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless impostor, and a highwayman with a marked
     taste for expensive motor-cars.

CHAPTER 6

The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist
    I spent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a boulder where the heather
     grew long and soft. It was a cold business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat.
     These were in Mr Turnbull’s keeping, as was Scudder’s little book, my watch and—worst
     of all—my pipe and tobacco pouch. Only my money accompanied me in my belt, and about
     half a pound of ginger biscuits in my trousers pocket.
    I supped off half those biscuits, and by worming myself deep into the heather got
     some kind of warmth. My spirits had risen, and I was beginning to enjoy this crazy
     game of hide-and-seek. So far I had been miraculously lucky. The milkman, the literary
     innkeeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic Marmie, were all pieces of undeserved
     good fortune. Somehow the first success gave me a feeling that I was going to pull
     the thing through.
    My chief trouble was that I was desperately hungry. When a Jew shoots himself in the
     City and there is an inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was
     ‘well-nourished’. I remember thinking that they would not call me well-nourished if
     I broke my neck in a bog-hole. I lay and tortured myself—for the ginger biscuits merely
     emphasized the aching void—with the memory of all the good food I had thought so little
     of in London. There were Paddock’s crisp sausages and fragrant shavings of bacon,
     and shapely poached eggs—how often I had turned up my nose at them! There were the
     cutlets they did at the club, and a particular ham that stood on the cold table, for
     which my soul lusted. My thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal edible, and
     finally settled on a porterhouse steak and a quart of bitter with a welsh rabbit to
     follow. In longing hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep.
    I woke very cold and stiff about an hour after dawn. It took me a little while to
     remember