JOHN BUCHAN – Ultimate Collection: 28 Novels & 40+ Short Stories (Including Poems, War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs) - Illustrated E-Book
John Buchan
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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
In the expansive anthology "JOHN BUCHAN 'Äì Ultimate Collection," readers are invited into the multifaceted world of John Buchan, an author whose works intricately blend adventure, mystery, and historical reflection. This comprehensive collection features 28 novels and over 40 short stories, showcasing Buchan's prose characterized by rich detail and a vigorous narrative flow. His writing emerges from the literary context of early 20th-century British literature, showcasing themes of nationalism, heroism, and the complexity of human character, often set against the backdrop of war and political turmoil. John Buchan, born in 1875, was not only a novelist but also a politician and a soldier. His diverse experiences as a public servant and his experiences during World War I profoundly shaped his literary voice. Buchan's deep understanding of the human psyche, upbringing in Northern Scotland, and his engagement with the pressing social issues of his time have culminated in works that reflect both personal and national narratives, illustrating the individual in the grand sweep of history. This ultimate collection is a treasure trove for enthusiasts of historical adventure and deep character studies. Readers seeking to explore the intersections of fiction and historical events will find Buchan's works compelling. Whether you are a longtime admirer or newly discovering his writing, this beautifully illustrated anthology is an indispensable addition to any literary library. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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JOHN BUCHAN – Ultimate Collection: 28 Novels & 40+ Short Stories (Including Poems, War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs) - Illustrated
Table of Contents
Introduction
This single-author library gathers the breadth of John Buchan’s writing into one curated volume, uniting 28 novels and more than 40 short stories with poems, war writings, essays, biographies, and a memoir. It places his celebrated fiction cycles alongside a wide span of standalone novels, short-story collections, verse, and historical studies, and it is illustrated. Designed to show range as well as continuity, the collection lets readers trace recurring concerns across changing forms—from high-velocity thrillers to reflective chronicles and biographical portraits. By presenting creative and documentary work together, it offers an immersive, panoramic introduction to Buchan’s achievement and to the intellectual and historical contexts within which his imagination moved.
At the heart of the fiction stand three interlinked cycles. The Richard Hannay sequence—The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, The Three Hostages, and The Island of Sheep—follows a capable civilian repeatedly drawn into perilous espionage and wartime service. The Dickson McCunn novels—Huntingtower, Castle Gay, and The House of the Four Winds—revolve around a retired Glasgow grocer whose practical decency pulls him and the Gorbals Die-hards into capers of loyalty and resourcefulness. The Sir Edward Leithen books—The Power-House, John Macnab, The Dancing Floor, The Gap in the Curtain, and Sick Heart River—test a lawyer-statesman against hidden forces, ethical choices, and personal reckonings, blending brisk action with reflective depth.
Beyond the series, the novels display striking variety in setting, period, and tone. Early romances such as Sir Quixote of the Moors, John Burnet of Barns, and A Lost Lady of Old Years explore honor and love in historical frames, while The Half-Hearted and A Lodge in the Wilderness mark transitions toward political and imperial preoccupations. Prester John and Salute to Adventurers move through colonial frontiers; The Path of the King and Midwinter braid episodic history and adventure; Witch Wood and The Blanket of the Dark evoke older Scotland and Tudor intrigue; A Prince of the Captivity and The Free Fishers pair endurance and ingenuity; The Magic Walking Stick addresses younger readers; The Courts of the Morning widens the geopolitical lens.
The short fiction brings Buchan’s economy and atmosphere into focus across multiple registers. Collections such as Grey Weather and The Moon Endureth: Tales mix borderland adventures with the uncanny; The Far Islands, Fountainblue, and Basilissa extend this reach into the fabulous and the strange; war pieces like The Wife of Flanders and The King of Ypres offer concentrated impressions of conflict; The Keeper of Cademuir and No-Man’s-Land explore peril at the margins; The Strange Adventure of Mr. Andrew Hawthorn and The Runagates Club showcase framed storytelling and club talk. Throughout, pace, topographical precision, and a storyteller’s cadence sustain tension while leaving space for suggestion rather than overstatement.
The poetry complements the prose by revealing the rhythms and preoccupations that animate it. From To the Adventurous Spirit of the North and The Pilgrim Fathers: The Newdigate Prize Poem 1898 to the ballad-inflected lyrics of The Moon Endureth: Fancies and Poems, Scots and English, Buchan moves between English and Scots with ease. Pieces such as Th’ Immortal Wanderer, the Youth and Spirit of Art sequences, and shorter lyrics on friendship, season, and love display themes of endurance, fellowship, landscape, and vocation. The verse’s clean line and ballad measures echo the clarity and momentum of the fiction, while its meditative turns illuminate the reflective temper behind the narratives.
The historical and political writings illuminate the world that the fiction often distills. The African Colony examines administration and policy; Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great War and battle studies on Jutland and the Somme record and interpret contemporary conflict; Nelson’s History of the War (Volumes I–V) offers an extended chronicle; Scholar Gipsies and A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys gather inquiries and narratives of endurance; Montrose: A History, Lord Minto, A Memoir, Sir Walter Scott, and The King’s Grace 1910–1935 present biographical and constitutional perspectives. Research, clear structure, and narrative verve combine to make complex events legible, while highlighting leadership, morale, logistics, and character under strain.
The autobiographical Memory Hold-the-door and the biography Unforgettable, Unforgotten by Anna Masterton Buchan provide inward and outward vantage points on a life engaged with letters, public service, and travel. Read together with the fiction, stories, poems, and studies, they reveal unifying themes—duty and friendship, the testing of character, the shaping force of place, curiosity about hidden systems in public life, and the pull of history on the present. Stylistically, the hallmarks are brisk pacing, exact sense of terrain, and unforced erudition. The collection endures for the momentum of its storytelling, its ethical clarity, and its layered historical imagination, serving both newcomers and long-time readers as a coherent portrait of Buchan’s art.
Historical Context
John Buchan (1875–1940) wrote across the transition from high Victorian certainties to the crises of the twentieth century. Born in Perth to a Free Church minister and reared between Fife and the Scottish Borders, he absorbed a Calvinist ethic and Border balladry that color his romances and poems. At the University of Glasgow and Brasenose College, Oxford, he studied classics, won the Newdigate Prize in 1898 for The Pilgrim Fathers, and entered London’s literary world as reviewer and editor. His apprenticeship with Blackwood’s and as literary adviser to Thomas Nelson & Sons trained him to write swiftly for a mass readership newly empowered by cheap print and railways.
Imperial service in southern Africa supplied settings, themes, and convictions that recur across the collection. During and after the Second Boer War (1899–1902) he worked in Pretoria as private secretary to High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner, among the reformist circle later called "Milner's Kindergarten" (Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr, Geoffrey Dawson). The reconstruction of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, the Rand mines around Johannesburg, and the politics of race and franchise shaped The African Colony (1903) and informed frontier adventures from Prester John to A Lodge in the Wilderness. The veld, missionary stations, and mining towns become moral testing grounds for courage, prudence, and imperial responsibility.
The Great War reoriented Buchan’s imagination toward global conflict, clandestine networks, and national morale. He reported from the Western Front in 1915, then joined the government’s information apparatus, becoming Director of Information in 1917. His serial Nelson’s History of the War (1915–1919) and companion monographs on the Somme (1916) and Jutland (1916) codified British memory of industrial slaughter and naval stalemate. Against this backdrop, the modern spy-thriller took shape: railways, telegraph lines, and porous borders enable pursuit and escape; the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Levant become theatres where Ottoman, German, and British agents contest loyalties; home-front vigilance mirrors trench endurance and sacrifice.
The unsettled interwar decades provide the atmosphere for Buchan’s mature fiction and essays. After the 1919 Versailles settlement, Britain faced Irish upheaval, labour militancy culminating in the 1926 General Strike, and the 1929 financial crash. As Unionist MP for the Scottish Universities (1927–1935), he promoted cautious internationalism through the League of Nations while tracking the rise of Bolshevism and Fascism. His narratives explore the politics of capital, commodity booms (especially oil), and media manipulation, as well as cults and pseudo-science fashionable in the 1920s–1930s. Automobiles, telephones, and airplanes compress distance, and cosmopolitan conspiracies meet stoic provincial virtues in clubland drawing rooms and remote moors.
Scotland—its past conflicts and modern transformations—anchors both historical and contemporary tales. The Covenanting struggles (from the National Covenant of 1638), the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, and Border reiver lore furnish plots and moral debates in romances of conscience and loyalty. Glasgow’s shipyards and the Gorbals tenements epitomize industrial modernity, social mobility, and civic philanthropy that shape middle-class protagonists and the youthful "Die-hards." Country-house estates, fishing villages, and Highland glens register tensions between laird and merchant, Gaelic and Lowland identities, kirk discipline and folk survivals. Scots idiom and ballad measures, learned from Scott and the Border tradition, give cadence to prose and verse.
Buchan’s parallel career as historian and biographer stabilizes the adventurous imagination with archival discipline. Studies of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650), and of Sir Walter Scott situate heroism within civil war and literary tradition; Lord Minto links Canadian governorship and Indian viceregal politics; The King’s Grace 1910–1935 frames George V’s reign as an imperial commonwealth balancing reform and continuity. A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys (1922) curates exemplary courage across centuries, while The Path of the King (1919) traces leadership from Viking halls to Abraham Lincoln. These inquiries supply moral templates and historical textures that recur in the novels and stories.
Transatlantic experience culminated in his Canadian vice-regal service. Created Baron Tweedsmuir in 1935, he served as Governor General of Canada until his death in Montreal on 11 February 1940. Touring the Prairies, the Northwest Territories, and the Pacific coast, he promoted northern exploration, libraries, and documentary film, inviting John Grierson in 1939 to establish what became the National Film Board. Set against Dominion autonomy affirmed by the Statute of Westminster (1931), his later fiction contemplates migration, wilderness, and healing in the Canadian Shield and subarctic. Anglo-French relations, Indigenous encounters, and resource frontiers broaden themes of duty, exile, and renewal.
Publishing practices and cultural debates help explain both reach and tone. Writing for Blackwood’s, popular magazines, and Nelson’s reprint lists, he crafted brisk forms—club tales, chases, and historical vignettes—fit for serialization and wartime pamphleteering. The Runagates Club frames storytelling as civic ritual; poems in Scots and English honor frontier stoicism and seafaring endurance. His memoir Memory Hold-the-door (1940; US title Pilgrim’s Way) arranges a life through exemplary figures. Thrillers of gentleman-amateur intelligence anticipate later genre traditions from Eric Ambler to Ian Fleming. The oeuvre reflects its age’s imperial hierarchy and anxieties even as it insists on character, friendship, and public service.
Synopsis (Selection)
The Thirty-Nine Steps
Civilian Richard Hannay is thrust into a spy conspiracy and must evade both police and enemy agents across Scotland to stop a secret from leaving Britain.
Greenmantle
Hannay and friends infiltrate wartime Europe to thwart a German plan to spark a pan-Islamic uprising, journeying from Berlin to the Near East.
Mr Standfast
Hannay hunts a pacifist front masking German espionage on the home front before a climactic mission at the war’s end on the Western Front.
The Three Hostages
In peacetime, Hannay tracks a charismatic criminal who has abducted three young people, pitting intuition and nerve against hypnotic villainy.
The Island of Sheep (The Man from the Norlands)
An old oath pulls Hannay into protecting a young heir from Norland raiders, culminating in a siege on a remote northern island.
Huntingtower
Retired grocer Dickson McCunn stumbles on a plot against a Russian princess in a Scottish village and rallies the Gorbals Die-hards to her aid.
Castle Gay
McCunn and the Die-hards are drawn into a comic-political imbroglio when a reclusive press baron is targeted by rival factions in rural Scotland.
The House of the Four Winds
McCunn’s young allies are swept into a Ruritanian revolt in Evallonia, balancing chivalry, publicity, and intrigue to restore lawful rule.
The Power-House
Advocate Edward Leithen confronts a cosmopolitan conspirator who believes civilization is a thin crust, testing Leithen’s nerve in London’s shadows.
John Macnab
Three bored gentlemen, including Leithen, issue a daring poaching challenge on Highland estates, turning sport into a caper of honor and ingenuity.
The Dancing Floor (The Goddess from the Shades)
Leithen aids a young heiress plagued by cryptic warnings and island superstitions, uncovering a modern plot behind archaic rites.
The Gap in the Curtain
Guests who glimpse next year’s newspaper struggle with fate, chance, and interpretation as they live toward their foretold headlines.
Sick Heart River (Mountain Meadow)
Terminally ill Leithen searches the Canadian North for a missing man and finds redemptive purpose in a harsh, luminous wilderness.
Sir Quixote of the Moors
A 17th-century soldier, torn between duty and love, faces moral tests on Scotland’s Covenanting moors.
John Burnet of Barns
A young laird is betrayed and exiled, fighting to reclaim name and estate amid 17th-century feuds and frontier trials.
A Lost Lady of Old Years
An impressionable youth falls under the spell of a dangerous beauty during the 1745 rising, with loyalties perilously entangled.
The Half-Hearted
An indecisive aristocrat seeks purpose in politics and love, finding courage in a remote frontier crisis.
A Lodge in the Wilderness
A country-house dialogue-novel where imperial thinkers debate policy, economy, and citizenship, sketching a vision of a federated Empire.
Prester John
A young Scotsman in South Africa uncovers a charismatic uprising led by John Laputa and races to stop revolt and a treasure raid.
Salute to Adventurers
In 17th-century Scotland and the New World, a pragmatic merchant confronts intrigue, fanaticism, and the call of enterprise and adventure.
The Path of the King
Linked historical episodes trace a talismanic thread of leadership across centuries, culminating in the ideal of modern, democratic kingship.
Midwinter
During the 1745 rising, a Jacobite courier undertakes a perilous winter journey across hostile England with aid from unexpected allies.
Witch Wood
A young minister in a Covenanting parish suspects a coven in the forest and risks ruin to confront hidden evil.
The Blanket of the Dark
In Tudor England, a youth learns he may be a rightful heir and must choose between the commons’ hidden world and a perilous claim.
A Prince of the Captivity
A disgraced officer remakes himself through clandestine service and audacious interwar missions, testing endurance and ideals.
The Free Fishers
A coastal fraternity of smugglers and pilots is drawn into a political conspiracy in early-19th-century Scotland.
The Magic Walking Stick
A boy acquires a stick that grants swift travel and marvels, embarking on episodic adventures with moral turns.
The Courts of the Morning
Buchan’s adventurers battle a technocratic tyrant in a South American republic, waging a covert war of sabotage and propaganda.
Short Story Collections (Grey Weather; The Moon Endureth: Tales; The Runagates Club)
Collections mixing Scottish romance, eerie folklore, and adventure yarns—ranging from early moorland and border tales to clubroom tall stories told by Buchan’s recurring characters.
Standalone Short Stories (The Far Islands; Fountainblue; The Last Crusade; The Wife of Flanders; The King of Ypres; The Keeper of Cademuir; No-Man’s-Land; Basilissa; The Strange Adventure of Mr. Andrew Hawthorn)
Notable tales span supernatural encounters, frontline sketches, and romantic or quest narratives, recurring themes being courage, landscape, memory, and myth.
Poetry (To the Adventurous Spirit of the North; The Pilgrim Fathers; Ballads for Grey Weather I–II; The Moon Endureth: Fancies; Poems, Scots and English; plus selected lyrics)
Lyric and ballad verse celebrating northern landscapes, stoicism, friendship, youth, and art, blending Scots idiom with classical poise and reflective devotion.
The African Colony: Studies in the Reconstruction
An analysis of South Africa after the Boer War, addressing reconstruction, race relations, and the problems of imperial administration.
Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great War
An accessible history of the Empire’s contribution to WWI, highlighting key fronts, leaders, and home-front mobilization.
The Battle of Jutland
A concise narrative and assessment of the 1916 North Sea clash, weighing tactics, losses, and strategic outcome.
The Battle of the Somme, First Phase
A campaign chronicle of the opening stages of the 1916 offensive, combining battlefield description with contemporary assessment.
The Battle of the Somme, Second Phase
Continuation through the autumn operations, evaluating gains, costs, and the lessons of attritional warfare.
Nelson’s History of the War (Volumes I–V)
Early volumes of Buchan’s serial history of WWI, tracing diplomacy, land campaigns, and the sea war with contemporary immediacy.
Scholar Gipsies
Essays on the learned wanderer in literature and life, meditating on freedom, scholarship, and the margins of society.
A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys
Vivid retellings of true escapes—from prisoners of war to hunted fugitives—celebrating resourcefulness and nerve across centuries.
Montrose: A History
A full-dress life of the Marquis of Montrose, charting his dazzling campaigns and fate in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
Lord Minto, A Memoir
Biography of the 4th Earl of Minto, surveying service in Canada and India and the challenges of liberal imperial governance.
Sir Walter Scott
A critical life of Scott, linking his work to Border traditions, his business crisis, and his shaping of the historical novel.
The King’s Grace 1910-1935
A popular history of George V’s reign, portraying monarchy, war, and the interwar Empire amid constitutional and social change.
Memory Hold-the-door
Buchan’s reflective memoir of upbringing, public service, authorship, and friendships, written near the end of his life.
Unforgettable, Unforgotten (Anna Masterton Buchan)
A family memoir by Buchan’s sister, offering affectionate portraits and domestic scenes that complement his public narrative.
JOHN BUCHAN – Ultimate Collection: 28 Novels & 40+ Short Stories (Including Poems, War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs) - Illustrated
RICHARD HANNAY SERIES
THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
Richard Hannay’s First Adventure
Table of Contents
DEDICATION
TO THOMAS ARTHUR NELSON (LOTHIAN AND BORDER HORSE)
My Dear Tommy,
You and I have long cherished an affection for that elemental type of tale which Americans call the ‘dime novel’ and which we know as the ‘shocker’—the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last winter I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself. This little volume is the result, and I should like to put your name on it in memory of our long friendship, in the days when the wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the facts.
J.B.
CHAPTER 1 THE MAN WHO DIED
I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn’t get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. ‘Richard Hannay,’ I kept telling myself, ‘you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.’ It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Bulawayo. I had got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days.
But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go about with, which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn’t seem much interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on their own affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom.
That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to give my mind something to work on, and on my way home I turned into my club—rather a pot-house, which took in Colonial members. I had a long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an article about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I rather fancied the chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in the show; and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be said for most of them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon. I remember wondering if I could get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.
About six o’clock I went home, dressed, dined at theCafé Royal, and turned into a music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering women and monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear as I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had some interest in life that kept them going. I gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer. At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape.
My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langham Place. There was a common staircase, with a porter and a liftman at the entrance, but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was quite shut off from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came in by the day. He arrived before eight o’clock every morning and used to depart at seven, for I never dined at home.
I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at my elbow. I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim man, with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of a flat on the top floor, with whom I had passed the time of day on the stairs.
‘Can I speak to you?’ he said. ‘May I come in for a minute?’ He was steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing my arm.
I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the threshold than he made a dash for my back room, where I used to smoke and write my letters. Then he bolted back.
‘Is the door locked?’ he asked feverishly, and he fastened the chain with his own hand.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he said humbly. ‘It’s a mighty liberty, but you looked the kind of man who would understand. I’ve had you in my mind all this week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?’
‘I’ll listen to you,’ I said. ‘That’s all I’ll promise.’ I was getting worried by the antics of this nervous little chap.
There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.
‘Pardon,’ he said, ‘I’m a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.’
I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.
‘What does it feel like?’ I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal with a madman.
A smile flickered over his drawn face. ‘I’m not mad— yet. Say, Sir, I’ve been watching you, and I reckon you’re a cool customer. I reckon, too, you’re an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I’m going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in.’
‘Get on with your yarn,’ I said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’
He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn’t get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is the gist of it:
He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college, being pretty well off, he had started out to see the world. He wrote a bit, and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a year or two in South-Eastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine linguist, and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts. He spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen in the newspapers.
He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the interest of them, and then because he couldn’t help himself. I read him as a sharp, restless fellow, who always wanted to get down to the roots of things. He got a little further down than he wanted.
I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out. Away behind all the Governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further, and then he got caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that beside them there were financiers who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.
He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me—things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads.
When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.
‘Do you wonder?’ he cried. ‘For three hundred years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und zu Something, an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you’re on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, Sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tzar, because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga.’
I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left behind a little.
‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘They won up to a point, but they struck a bigger thing than money, a thing that couldn’t be bought, the old elemental fighting instincts of man. If you’re going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing. Those foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven’t played their last card by a long sight. They’ve gotten the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they are going to play it and win.’
‘But I thought you were dead,’ I put in.
‘Mors janua vitae,’ he smiled. (I recognized the quotation: it was about all the Latin I knew.) ‘I’m coming to that, but I’ve got to put you wise about a lot of things first. If you read your newspaper, I guess you know the name of Constantine Karolides?’
I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that very afternoon.
‘He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is the one big brain in the whole show, and he happens also to be an honest man. Therefore he has been marked down these twelve months past. I found that out—not that it was difficult, for any fool could guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to get him, and that knowledge was deadly. That’s why I have had to decease.’
He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was getting interested in the beggar.
‘They can’t get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of Epirotes that would skin their grandmothers. But on the 15th day of June he is coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken to having International tea-parties, and the biggest of them is due on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned the principal guest, and if my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring countrymen.’
‘That’s simple enough, anyhow,’ I said. ‘You can warn him and keep him at home.’
‘And play their game?’ he asked sharply. ‘If he does not come they win, for he’s the only man that can straighten out the tangle. And if his Government are warned he won’t come, for he does not know how big the stakes will be on June the 15th.’
‘What about the British Government?’ I said. ‘They’re not going to let their guests be murdered. Tip them the wink, and they’ll take extra precautions.’
‘No good. They might stuff your city with plain-clothes detectives and double the police and Constantine would still be a doomed man. My friends are not playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for the taking off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He’ll be murdered by an Austrian, and there’ll be plenty of evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will look black enough to the world. I’m not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the Borgias. But it’s not going to come off if there’s a certain man who knows the wheels of the business alive right here in London on the 15th day of June. And that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P. Scudder.’
I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like a rat-trap, and there was the fire of battle in his gimlety eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn he could act up to it.
‘Where did you find out this story?’ I asked.
‘I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur-shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers’ Club in Vienna, and in a little bookshop off the Racknitzstrasse in Leipzig. I completed my evidence ten days ago in Paris. I can’t tell you the details now, for it’s something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I judged it my business to disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English student of Ibsen collecting materials for lectures, but when I left Bergen I was a cinema-man with special ski films. And I came here from Leith with a lot of pulp-wood propositions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers. Till yesterday I thought I had muddied my trail some, and was feeling pretty happy. Then… ‘
The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down some more whisky.
‘Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this block. I used to stay close in my room all day, and only slip out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for a bit from my window, and I thought I recognized him … He came in and spoke to the porter… When I came back from my walk last night I found a card in my letter-box. It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on God’s earth.’
I think that the look in my companion’s eyes, the sheer naked scare on his face, completed my conviction of his honesty. My own voice sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next.
‘I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to sleep again.’
‘How did you manage it?’
‘I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look like death. That wasn’t difficult, for I’m no slouch at disguises. Then I got a corpse—you can always get a body in London if you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room. You see I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to mix me a sleeping-draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn’t abide leeches. When I was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse. He was my size, and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I daresay there will be somebody tomorrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas, with a revolver lying on the bed-clothes and a considerable mess around. Then I got into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies. I didn’t dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides, it wasn’t any kind of use my trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind all day, and there seemed nothing to do but to make an appeal to you. I watched from my window till I saw you come home, and then slipped down the stair to meet you… There, Sir, I guess you know about as much as me of this business.’
He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and yet desperately determined. By this time I was pretty well convinced that he was going straight with me. It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of judging the man rather than the story. If he had wanted to get a location in my flat, and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a milder yarn.
‘Hand me your key,’ I said, ‘and I’ll take a look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but I’m bound to verify a bit if I can.’
He shook his head mournfully. ‘I reckoned you’d ask for that, but I haven’t got it. It’s on my chain on the dressing-table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn’t leave any clues to breed suspicions. The gentry who are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You’ll have to take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you’ll get proof of the corpse business right enough.’
I thought for an instant or two. ‘Right. I’ll trust you for the night. I’ll lock you into this room and keep the key. just one word, Mr Scudder. I believe you’re straight, but if so be you are not I should warn you that I’m a handy man with a gun.’
‘Sure,’ he said, jumping up with some briskness. ‘I haven’t the privilege of your name, Sir, but let me tell you that you’re a white man. I’ll thank you to lend me a razor.’
I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an hour’s time a figure came out that I scarcely recognized. Only his gimlety, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows. Further, he carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model, even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech.
‘My hat! Mr Scudder—’ I stammered.
‘Not Mr Scudder,’ he corrected; ‘Captain Theophilus Digby, of the 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I’ll thank you to remember that, Sir.’
I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought my own couch, more cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things did happen occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis.
I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce of a row at the smoking-room door. Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty.
‘Stop that row, Paddock,’ I said. ‘There’s a friend of mine, Captain—Captain’ (I couldn’t remember the name) ‘dossing down in there. Get breakfast for two and then come and speak to me.’
I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a great swell, with his nerves pretty bad from overwork, who wanted absolute rest and stillness. Nobody had got to know he was here, or he would be besieged by communications from the India Office and the Prime Minister and his cure would be ruined. I am bound to say Scudder played up splendidly when he came to breakfast. He fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just like a British officer, asked him about the Boer War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about imaginary pals. Paddock couldn’t learn to call me ‘Sir’, but he ‘sirred’ Scudder as if his life depended on it.
I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and went down to the City till luncheon. When I got back the lift-man had an important face.
‘Nawsty business ‘ere this morning, Sir. Gent in No. 15 been and shot ‘isself. They’ve just took ‘im to the mortuary. The police are up there now.’
I ascended to No. 15, and found a couple of bobbies and an inspector busy making an examination. I asked a few idiotic questions, and they soon kicked me out. Then I found the man that had valeted Scudder, and pumped him, but I could see he suspected nothing. He was a whining fellow with a churchyard face, and half-a-crown went far to console him.
I attended the inquest next day. A partner of some publishing firm gave evidence that the deceased had brought him wood-pulp propositions, and had been, he believed, an agent of an American business. The jury found it a case of suicide while of unsound mind, and the few effects were handed over to the American Consul to deal with. I gave Scudder a full account of the affair, and it interested him greatly. He said he wished he could have attended the inquest, for he reckoned it would be about as spicy as to read one’s own obituary notice.
The first two days he stayed with me in that back room he was very peaceful. He read and smoked a bit, and made a heap of jottings in a note-book, and every night we had a game of chess, at which he beat me hollow. I think he was nursing his nerves back to health, for he had had a pretty trying time. But on the third day I could see he was beginning to get restless. He fixed up a list of the days till June 15th, and ticked each off with a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand against them. I would find him sunk in a brown study, with his sharp eyes abstracted, and after those spells of meditation he was apt to be very despondent.
Then I could see that he began to get edgy again. He listened for little noises, and was always asking me if Paddock could be trusted. Once or twice he got very peevish, and apologized for it. I didn’t blame him. I made every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly stiff job.
It was not the safety of his own skin that troubled him, but the success of the scheme he had planned. That little man was clean grit all through, without a soft spot in him. One night he was very solemn.
‘Say, Hannay,’ he said, ‘I judge I should let you a bit deeper into this business. I should hate to go out without leaving somebody else to put up a fight.’ And he began to tell me in detail what I had only heard from him vaguely.
I did not give him very close attention. The fact is, I was more interested in his own adventures than in his high politics. I reckoned that Karolides and his affairs were not my business, leaving all that to him. So a lot that he said slipped clean out of my memory. I remember that he was very clear that the danger to Karolides would not begin till he had got to London, and would come from the very highest quarters, where there would be no thought of suspicion. He mentioned the name of a woman— Julia Czechenyi—as having something to do with the danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get Karolides out of the care of his guards. He talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man that lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly somebody that he never referred to without a shudder—an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk.
He spoke a good deal about death, too. He was mortally anxious about winning through with his job, but he didn’t care a rush for his life. ‘I reckon it’s like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out, and waking to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the window. I used to thank God for such mornings way back in the Blue-Grass country, and I guess I’ll thank Him when I wake up on the other side of Jordan.’
Next day he was much more cheerful, and read the life of Stonewall Jackson much of the time. I went out to dinner with a mining engineer I had got to see on business, and came back about half-past ten in time for our game of chess before turning in.
I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as I pushed open the smoking-room door. The lights were not lit, which struck me as odd. I wondered if Scudder had turned in already.
I snapped the switch, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the far corner which made me drop my cigar and fall into a cold sweat.
My guest was lying sprawled on his back. There was a long knife through his heart which skewered him to the floor.
CHAPTER 2 THE MILKMAN SETS OUT ON HIS TRAVELS
I sat down in an armchair and felt very sick. That lasted for maybe five minutes, and was succeeded by a fit of the horrors. The poor staring white face on the floor was more than I could bear, and I managed to get a table-cloth and cover it. Then I staggered to a cupboard, found the brandy and swallowed several mouthfuls. I had seen men die violently before; indeed I had killed a few myself in the Matabele War; but this cold-blooded indoor business was different. Still I managed to pull myself together. I looked at my watch, and saw that it was half-past ten.
An idea seized me, and I went over the flat with a small-tooth comb. There was nobody there, nor any trace of anybody, but I shuttered and bolted all the windows and put the chain on the door. By this time my wits were coming back to me, and I could think again. It took me about an hour to figure the thing out, and I did not hurry, for, unless the murderer came back, I had till about six o’clock in the morning for my cogitations.
I was in the soup—that was pretty clear. Any shadow of a doubt I might have had about the truth of Scudder’s tale was now gone. The proof of it was lying under the table-cloth. The men who knew that he knew what he knew had found him, and had taken the best way to make certain of his silence. Yes; but he had been in my rooms four days, and his enemies must have reckoned that he had confided in me. So I would be the next to go. It might be that very night, or next day, or the day after, but my number was up all right. Then suddenly I thought of another probability. Supposing I went out now and called in the police, or went to bed and let Paddock find the body and call them in the morning. What kind of a story was I to tell about Scudder? I had lied to Paddock about him, and the whole thing looked desperately fishy. If I made a clean breast of it and told the police everything he had told me, they would simply laugh at me. The odds were a thousand to one that I would be charged with the murder, and the circumstantial evidence was strong enough to hang me. Few people knew me in England; I had no real pal who could come forward and swear to my character. Perhaps that was what those secret enemies were playing for. They were clever enough for anything, and an English prison was as good a way of getting rid of me till after June 15th as a knife in my chest.
Besides, if I told the whole story, and by any miracle was believed, I would be playing their game. Karolides would stay at home, which was what they wanted. Somehow or other the sight of Scudder’s dead face had made me a passionate believer in his scheme. He was gone, but he had taken me into his confidence, and I was pretty well bound to carry on his work.
You may think this ridiculous for a man in danger of his life, but that was the way I looked at it. I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.
It took me an hour or two to think this out, and by that time I had come to a decision. I must vanish somehow, and keep vanished 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 to Heaven he had told me more, and that I had listened more carefully to the little he had told me. I knew nothing but the barest facts. There was a big risk that, even if I weathered the other dangers, I would not be believed in the end. I must take my chance of that, and 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 day of May, and that meant twenty days of hiding before I could venture to approach the powers that be. I reckoned that two sets of people would be looking for me—Scudder’s enemies to put me out of existence, and the police, who would want me for Scudder’s murder. It was going to be a giddy hunt, and it was queer how the prospect comforted me. I had been slack so long that almost any chance of activity was welcome. When I had to sit alone with that corpse and wait on Fortune I was no better than a crushed worm, but if my neck’s safety was to hang on my own wits I was prepared to be cheerful about it.
My next thought was whether Scudder had any papers about him to give me a better clue to the business. I drew back the table-cloth and searched his pockets, for I had no longer any shrinking from the body. The face was wonderfully calm for a man who had been struck down in a moment. There was nothing in the breast-pocket, and only a few loose coins and a cigar-holder in the waistcoat. The trousers held a little penknife and some silver, and the side pocket of his jacket contained an old crocodile-skin cigar-case. There was no sign of the little black book in which I had seen him making notes. That had no doubt been taken by his murderer.
But as I looked up from my task I saw that some drawers had been pulled out in the writing-table. Scudder would never have left them in that state, for he was the tidiest of mortals. Someone must have been searching for something—perhaps for the pocket-book.
I went round the flat and found that everything had been ransacked—the inside of books, drawers, cupboards, boxes, even the pockets of the clothes in my wardrobe, and the sideboard in the dining-room. There was no trace of the book. Most likely the enemy had found it, but they had not found it on Scudder’s body.
Then I got out an atlas and looked at a big map of the British Isles. My notion was to get off to some wild district, where my veldcraft would be of some use to me, for I would be like a trapped rat in a city. I considered that Scotland would be best, for my people were Scotch and I could pass anywhere as an ordinary Scotsman. I had half an idea at first to be a German tourist, for my father had had German partners, and I had been brought up to speak the tongue pretty fluently, not to mention having put in three years prospecting for copper in German Damaraland. But I calculated that it would be less conspicuous to be a Scot, and less in a line with what the police might know of my past. I fixed on Galloway as the best place to go. It was the nearest wild part of Scotland, so far as I could figure it out, and from the look of the map was not over thick with population.
A search in Bradshaw informed me that a train left St Pancras at 7.10, which would land me at any Galloway station in the late afternoon. That was well enough, but a more important matter was how I was to make my way to St Pancras, for I was pretty certain that Scudder’s friends would be watching outside. This puzzled me for a bit; then I had an inspiration, on which I went to bed and slept for two troubled hours.
I got up at four and opened my bedroom shutters. The faint light of a fine summer morning was flooding the skies, and the sparrows had begun to chatter. I had a great revulsion of feeling, and felt a God-forgotten fool. My inclination was to let things slide, and trust to the British police taking a reasonable view of my case. But as I reviewed the situation I could find no arguments to bring against my decision of the previous night, so with a wry mouth I resolved to go on with my plan. I was not feeling in any particular funk; only disinclined to go looking for trouble, if you understand me.
I hunted out a well-used tweed suit, a pair of strong nailed boots, and a flannel shirt with a collar. Into my pockets I stuffed a spare shirt, a cloth cap, some handkerchiefs, and a tooth-brush. I had drawn a good sum in gold from the bank two days before, in case Scudder should want money, and I took fifty pounds of it in sovereigns in a belt which I had brought back from Rhodesia. That was about all I wanted. Then I had a bath, and cut my moustache, which was long and drooping, into a short stubbly fringe.
Now came the next step. Paddock used to arrive punctually at 7.30 and let himself in with a latch-key. But about twenty minutes to seven, as I knew from bitter experience, the milkman turned up with a great clatter of cans, and deposited my share outside my door. I had seen that milkman sometimes when I had gone out for an early ride. He was a young man about my own height, with an ill-nourished moustache, and he wore a white overall. On him I staked all my chances.
I went into the darkened smoking-room where the rays of morning light were beginning to creep through the shutters. There I breakfasted off a whisky-and-soda and some biscuits from the cupboard. By this time it was getting on for six o’clock. I put a pipe in my pocket and filled my pouch from the tobacco jar on the table by the fireplace.
As I poked into the tobacco my fingers touched something hard, and I drew out Scudder’s little black pocket-book…
That seemed to me a good omen. I lifted the cloth from the body and was amazed at the peace and dignity of the dead face. ‘Goodbye, old chap,’ I said; ‘I am going to do my best for you. Wish me well, wherever you are.’
Then I hung about in the hall waiting for the milkman. That was the worst part of the business, for I was fairly choking to get out of doors. Six-thirty passed, then six-forty, but still he did not come. The fool had chosen this day of all days to be late.
At one minute after the quarter to seven I heard the rattle of the cans outside. I opened the front door, and there was my man, singling out my cans from a bunch he carried and whistling through his teeth. He jumped a bit at the sight of me.
‘Come in here a moment,’ I said. ‘I want a word with you.’ And I led him into the dining-room.
‘I reckon you’re a bit of a sportsman,’ I said, ‘and I want you to do me a service. Lend me your cap and overall for ten minutes, and here’s a sovereign for you.’
His eyes opened at the sight of the gold, and he grinned broadly. ‘Wot’s the gyme?’he asked.
‘A bet,’ I said. ‘I haven’t 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, and you’ll have that quid for yourself.’
‘Right-o!’ he said cheerily. ‘I ain’t the man to spoil a bit of sport. ‘Ere’s the rig, guv’nor.’
