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