The Thirty-Nine Steps Read Online Free PDF Page B

the cushions.
    ‘And that’s a’ I get,’ he moaned. ‘A heid better than hell fire, and twae een lookin’
     different ways for the Sabbath.’
    ‘What did it?’ I asked.
    ‘A drink they ca’ brandy. Bein’ a teetotaller I keepit off the whisky, but I was nip-nippin’
     a’ day at this brandy, and I doubt I’ll no be weel for a fortnicht.’ His voice died
     away into a splutter, and sleep once more laid its heavy hand on him.
    My plan had been to get out at some station down the line, but the train suddenly
     gave me a better chance, for it came to a standstill at the end of a culvert which
     spanned a brawling porter-coloured river. I looked out and saw that every carriage
     window was closed and no human figure appeared in the landscape. So I opened the door,
     and dropped quickly into the tangle of hazels which edged the line.
    it would have been all right but for that infernal dog. Under the impression that
     I was decamping with its master’s belongings, it started to bark, and all but got
     me by the trousers. This woke up the herd, who stood bawling at the carriage door
     in the belief that I had committed suicide. I crawled through the thicket, reached
     the edge of the stream, and in cover of the bushes put a hundred yards or so behind
     me. Then from my shelter I peered back, and saw the guard and several passengers gathered
     round the open carriage door and staring in my direction. I could not have made a
     more public departure if I had left with a bugler and a brass band.
    Happily the drunken herd provided a diversion. He and his dog, which was attached
     by a rope to his waist, suddenly cascaded out of the carriage, landed on their heads
     on the track, and rolled some way down the bank towards the water. In the rescue which
     followed the dog bit somebody, for I could hear the sound of hard swearing. Presently
     they had forgotten me, and when after a quarter of a mile’s crawl I ventured to look
     back, the train had started again and was vanishing in the cutting.
    I was in a wide semicircle of moorland, with the brown river as radius, and the high
     hills forming the northern circumference. There was not a sign or sound of a human
     being, only the plashing water and the interminable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly
     enough, for the first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me. It was not the police
     that I thought of, but the other folk, who knew that I knew Scudder’s secret and dared
     not let me live. I was certain that they would pursue me with a keenness and vigilance
     unknown to the British law, and that once their grip closed on me I should find no
     mercy.
    I looked back, but there was nothing in the landscape. The sun glinted on the metals
     of the line and the wet stones in the stream, and you could not have found a more
     peaceful sight in the world. Nevertheless I started to run. Crouching low in the runnels
     of the bog, I ran till the sweat blinded my eyes. The mood did not leave me till I
     had reached the rim of mountain and flung myself panting on a ridge high above the
     young waters of the brown river.
    From my vantage-ground I could scan the whole moor right away to the railway line
     and to the south of it where green fields took the place of heather. I have eyes like
     a hawk, but I could see nothing moving in the whole countryside. Then I looked east
     beyond the ridge and saw a new kind of landscape—shallow green valleys with plentiful
     fir plantations and the faint lines of dust which spoke of highroads. Last of all
     I looked into the blue May sky, and there I saw that which set my pulses racing …
    Low down in the south a monoplane was climbing into the heavens. I was as certain
     as if I had been told that that aeroplane was looking for me, and that it did not
     belong to the police. For an hour or two I watched it from a pit of heather. It flew
     low along the hill-tops, and then in narrow circles over the valley up which I had
     come. Then it seemed to