The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan Read Free Book Online

let down; here was his book telling me a different tale, and instead
     of being once-bitten-twice-shy, I believed it absolutely.
    Why, I don’t know. It rang desperately true, and the first yarn, if you understand
     me, had been in a queer way true also in spirit. The fifteenth day of June was going
     to be a day of destiny, a bigger destiny than the killing of a Dago. It was so big
     that I didn’t blame Scudder for keeping me out of the game and wanting to play a lone
     hand. That, I was pretty clear, was his intention. He had told me something which
     sounded big enough, but the real thing was so immortally big that he, the man who
     had found it out, wanted it all for himself. I didn’t blame him. It was risks after
     all that he was chiefly greedy about.
    The whole story was in the notes—with gaps, you understand, which he would have filled
     up from his memory. He stuck down his authorities, too, and had an odd trick of giving
     them all a numerical value and then striking a balance, which stood for the reliability
     of each stage in the yarn. The four names he had printed were authorities, and there
     was a man, Ducrosne, who got five out of a possible five; and another fellow, Ammersfoort,
     who got three. The bare bones of the tale were all that was in the book—these, and
     one queer phrase which occurred half a dozen times inside brackets. ‘(Thirty-nine
     steps)’ was the phrase; and at its last time of use it ran—‘(Thirty-nine steps, I
     counted them—high tide 10.17 P.M .)’. I could make nothing of that.
    The first thing I learned was that it was no question of preventing a war. That was
     coming, as sure as Christmas: had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since February
     1912. Karolides was going to be the occasion. He was booked all right, and was to
     hand in his checks on June 14th, two weeks and four days from that May morning. I
     gathered from Scudder’s notes that nothing on earth could prevent that. His talk of
     Epirote guards that would skin their own grandmothers was all billy-o.
    The second thing was that this war was going to come as a mighty surprise to Britain.
     Karolides’ death would set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would chip in
     with an ultimatum. Russia wouldn’t like that, and there would be high words. But Berlin
     would play the peacemaker, and pour oil on the waters, till suddenly she would find
     a good cause for a quarrel, pick it up, and in five hours let fly at us. That was
     the idea, and a pretty good one too. Honey and fair speeches, and then a stroke in
     the dark. While we were talking about the goodwill and good intentions of Germany
     our coast would be silently ringed with mines, and submarines would be waiting for
     every battleship.
    But all this depended upon the third thing, which was due to happen on June 15th.
     I would never have grasped this if I hadn’t once happened to meet a French staff officer,
     coming back from West Africa, who had told me a lot of things. One was that, in spite
     of all the nonsense talked in Parliament, there was a real working alliance between
     France and Britain, and that the two General Staffs met every now and then, and made
     plans for joint action in case of war. Well, in June a very great swell was coming
     over from Paris, and he was going to get nothing less than a statement of the disposition
     of the British Home Fleet on mobilization. At least I gathered it was something like
     that; anyhow, it was something uncommonly important.
    But on the 15th day of June there were to be others in London—others, at whom I could
     only guess. Scudder was content to call them collectively the ‘Black Stone’. They
     represented not our Allies, but our deadly foes; and the information, destined for
     France, was to be diverted to their pockets. And it was to be used, remember—used
     a week or two later, with great guns and swift torpedoes, suddenly in the darkness
     of a summer night.
    This was the story I