The Thirty-Nine Steps. Selected Stories / 39 ступеней. Избранные новеллы. Джон Бакен

disappear somehow till the end of the second week in June. Then I must somehow find a way to get in touch with the Government people and tell them what Scudder had told me. I wished I had listened more carefully to the things he had told me. I knew nothing but the facts. There was a big risk that I would not be believed in the end. I must hope that something might happen which would confirm my tale in the eyes of the Government.

      My first job was to keep going for the next three weeks. It was now the 24th of May, and that meant twenty days of hiding. I decided that two kinds of people would be looking for me: Scudder's enemies to kill me and the police who would want me for Scudder's murder. It was strange how this prospect excited me. I had been bored for so long that any activity was welcome.

      My next thought was if Scudder had any papers on him to give me a better idea of the business. I took off the table-cloth and searched his pockets. There was nothing much in there – no sign of the little black book in which I had seen him making notes. It had been taken by his murderer.

      But as I looked up, I saw that some drawers had been pulled out in the writing-table. Someone must have been searching for something, perhaps for the pocket-book.

      I went round the flat and found out that everything had been clearly searched. There was no trace of the book though. Most likely the enemies had found it, but they had not found it on Scudder's body.

      Then I took an atlas, opened it, and looked at a big map of the British Isles. My plan was to go to some wild district. I thought that Scotland would be best because my people were Scotch, and I could pass as[22] an ordinary Scotsman. I could also pretend to be a German tourist because I knew the language pretty well. In the end, I chose Galloway as the best place to go. It was the nearest wild part of Scotland where not so many people lived.

      Another search informed me that there was a train that left at 7.10, which would bring me to any place in Galloway in the late afternoon. That was great, but a more important question was how I could get to the station because I was pretty sure that Scudder's friends would be watching outside. This troubled me for a bit, but then I had an idea. On that I went to bed and slept for two hours.

      I got up at four and opened my bedroom shutters. It was a fine summer morning. I was determined to go on with my plan.

      I put on a well-used suit, a pair of strong boots, and a flannel shirt. I stuffed my pockets with a cap, some handkerchiefs, and a tooth-brush. I had taken a good sum in gold from the bank two days before, in case Scudder needed money, and now I put it in a belt which I had brought back from Africa. That was all I wanted.

      Then came the next step. Paddock usually arrived at 7.30 and let himself in with a key. But before that, about twenty minutes to seven, the milkman came with a great clatter of cans. I had seen that milkman sometimes. He was a young man about my own height, and he wore a white overall. On him I staked all my chances.

      I went into the darkened smoking-room where I put a pipe in my pocket and filled my pouch from the tobacco jar on the table by the fireplace. As I put my fingers into the tobacco, they touched something hard, and I took out Scudder's little black pocket-book… That seemed to me a good sign.

      'Goodbye, old chap,' I said to the body. 'I am going to do my best for you. Wish me luck.'

      Then I stayed in the hall waiting for the milkman. That was the worst part of the business. Six-thirty passed, then six-forty, and yet there was no sign of him. The milkman had chosen this day of all days to be late.

      At a quarter to seven I heard the clatter of the cans outside. I opened the front door, and there was my man. He was surprised to see me so early.

      'Come in here for a moment,' I said. 'I want a word with you.' I let him into the room.

      'I want you to do me a favor. Give me your cap and overall for ten minutes, and here's a sovereign[23] for you.'

      His eyes opened at the sight of the gold, and he smiled. 'What's the game?' he asked.

      'A bet,' I said. 'I haven't got time to explain, but to win it I've got to be a milkman for the next ten minutes. All you've got to do is to stay here till I come back. You'll be a bit late, but nobody will complain.'

      'Right!' he said cheerfully.

      I put on his blue hat and his white overall, picked up the cans, closed my door, and went downstairs. The porter there did not recognize me.

      At first I thought there was nobody in the street. Then I saw a policeman a hundred yards away and some man walking past on the other side. On impulse, I looked up at the opposite house, and there at a first-floor window was a face. As the man passed it, he also looked up, which was like a signal.

      I crossed the street, imitating the milkman. Then I turned into the first side street. There was no one in the little street, so I left the milk-cans, the cap and overall behind a board fence. I had only just put on my own cap when a postman came round the corner. I said good morning to him, and he answered me. At that moment the clock of a church struck seven.

      There was not a second to waste, so I ran. The clock at the station showed five minutes past seven. I had no time to take a ticket, nor to choose my destination. A porter told me the platform, and there I saw the train already leaving. I managed to jump into the last carriage.

      Three minutes later, the guard[24] wrote out a ticket to Newton-Stewart for me – a place name which had suddenly come back to my memory – and took me to a third-class compartment, occupied by a sailor and a fat woman with a child.

      There I started my new life and couldn't even believe that a week ago I had been so bored.

      3

      It was fine May weather, and I had a quiet time traveling north that day. I didn't dare go to the restaurant car, but I got lunch at Leeds[25] and shared it with the fat woman. Also I got the morning's papers with some paragraphs about Balkan affairs. When I had done with them, I took out Scudder's little black pocket-book and studied it. It was filled with writings. Most of them were figures, but now and then there was a name. For example, I found the words 'Hofgaard', 'Luneville', and 'Avocado' pretty often, and especially the word 'Pavia'.

      I was sure that Scudder never did anything without a reason, and I was sure that there was a cipher in all this. That is a subject which has always interested me, and I did a bit of it myself once as intelligence officer[26] during the war in Africa[27]. I used to be pretty good at reading ciphers. This one looked like the sets of figures corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. But any man can find the clue to that cipher after an hour or two's work, and I didn't think Scudder would've been using anything so easy. So I focused on the words because you can make a pretty good numerical cipher if you have a key word.

      I tried for hours, but none of the words answered. Then I fell asleep and woke just in time to get out and then catch the slow Galloway train. There was a man on the platform whose looks I didn't like, but he never glanced at me. No wonder[28]: with my tanned face and my old suit I looked like one of the many farmers who were traveling in the third-class carriages.

      At about five o'clock the carriage was finally empty, and I was left alone. I got out at the next station, a little place set right in the heart of a bog. Soon I found myself on a white road that went over the brown moor. It was a fine spring evening. The air had the queer smell of bogs, but it had the strangest effect on me. I felt light-hearted like a boy on a spring holiday, and not a man of thirty-seven, wanted by the police. I decided that I was still far ahead of any pursuit. There was no plan in my head, only just to go on and on in this hill country.

      I was getting very hungry when I came to a shepherd's cottage beside a waterfall. A woman, who was standing by the door, greeted me. When I asked for a place to spend the night, she said I was welcome to the 'bed in the loft', and very soon she set before me a meal of ham and eggs.

      In the evening her husband came back from the

22

сойти за

23

Соверен – британская золотая монета.

24

зд. билетёр/контролёр/кондуктор (брит.)

25

Лидс – крупный город в Йоркшире.

26

офицер разведки

27

Имеются в виду военные действия в Африке на рубеже ХХ в., в которых участвовала Великобритания.

28

ничего удивительного