# The Thirty-Nine Steps/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECTACLED ROADMAN
I SAT down on the very crest of the pass and took stock of my position.
Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills which was the upper glen of some notable river. In front was a flat space of maybe a mile all pitted with bog-holes and rough with tussocks, and then beyond it the road fell steeply down another glen to a plain whose blue dimness melted into the distance.
To left and right were round-shouldered, green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to the south—that is the left hand—there was glimpse of high heathery mountains which I remembered from the map as the big knoll of hill which I had chosen for my sanctuary. I was on the central boss of a huge upland country, and could see everything moving for ​miles. In the meadows below the road, half a mile back, a cottage smoked, but it was the only sign of human life. Otherwise there was only the calling of plovers and the tinkling of little streams.
It was now about seven o'clock, and as I waited I heard once again the ominous beat in the air. Then I realised that my vantage ground might be in reality a trap. There was no cover for a tomtit in those bald green places.
I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat grew louder. Then I saw an aeroplane coming up from the east. It was flying high, but as I looked it dropped several hundred feet and began to circle round the knot of hill in narrowing circles, just as a hawk wheels before it pounces. Now it was flying very low, and now the observer on board caught sight of me. I could see one of the two occupants examining me through glasses. Suddenly it began to rise in swift whorls, and the next I knew it was speeding eastward again till it became a speck in the blue morning.
​That made me do some savage thinking. My enemies had located me, and the next thing would be a cordon round me. I didn't know what force they could command, but I was certain it would be sufficient. The aeroplane had seen my bicycle, and would conclude that I would try to escape by the road. In that case there might be a chance on the moors to the right or left. I wheeled the machine a hundred yards from the highway, and plunged it into a moss-hole where it sank among pond-weed and water-buttercups. Then I climbed to a knoll which gave me a
view of the two valleys. Nothing was stirring on the long white ribbon that threaded them.
I have said there was not cover in the whole place to hide a rat. As the day advanced it was flooded with soft fresh light till it had the fragrant sunniness of the South African veld. At other times I should have liked the place, but now it seemed to suffocate me. The free moorlands were prison-walls, and the
keen hill-air was the breath of a dungeon.
I tossed a coin—heads right, tails left—and ​it fell heads, so I turned to the north, In a little I came to the brow of the ridge which was the containing wall of the pass. I saw the highroad for maybe ten miles, and far down it something that was moving and that I took to be a motor-car. Beyond the ridge I looked on a rolling green moor, which fell away into wooded glens. Now my life on the veld has given me the eyes of a kite, and I can see things for which most men need a telescope. Away down the slope, a couple of miles away, several men were advancing like a row of beaters at a shoot.
I dropped out of sight behind the skyline. That way was shut to me, and I must try the bigger hills to the south beyond the highway. The car I had noticed was getting nearer, but it was still a long road off with some very steep gradients before it. I ran hard, crouching low except in the hollows, and as I ran I kept scanning the brow of hill before me. Was it imagination, or did I see figures—one, two, perhaps more—moving in a glen beyond the stream?
​If you are hemmed in on all sides in a patch of land—there is only one chance of escape. You must stay in the patch, and let your enemies search it and not find you. That was good sense, but how on earth was I to escape notice in that tablecloth of a place?
I would have buried myself to the neck in mud or lain below water or climbed the tallest tree. But there was not a stick of wood, the bog-holes were little puddles, the stream was a slender trickle. There was nothing but short heather and bare hill bent and the white highway.
Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap of stones, I found the Roadman.
He had just arrived, and was wearily flinging down his hammer. He looked at me with a fishy eye and yawned.
"Confoond the day I ever left the herdin'!" he said as if to the world at large. "There I was my ain maister. Now I'm a slave to the government, tethered to the roadside, wi' sair een, and a back like a suckle."
He took up the hammer, struck a stone, ​dropped the implement with an oath, and both hands to his ears. "Mercy on me! My heid's burstin'!" he cried.
He was a wild figure, about my own size, but much bent, with a week's beard on his chin and a pair of big horn spectacles.
"I canna dae't," he cried again. "The surveyor maun just report me. I'm for my bed."
I asked him what was the trouble, though indeed that was clear enough.
"The trouble is that I'm no sober. Last nicht my dochter, Merran, was waddit, and they danced till fower in the byre. Me and some ither chiels sat down to the drinkin'—and here I am. Peety that I ever lookit the wine when it was red!"
I agreed with him about bed.
"It's easy speakin'," he moaned. "But I got a post-caird yestereen sayin' that the new road surveyor would be round the day. He'll come and he'll no find me, or else he'll find me fou, and either way I'm a done man. I'll awa back to my bed and say I'm no weel, but ​I doot that'll no help me, for they ken my kind o' no-weelness."
Then I had an inspiration. "Does the new surveyor know you?" I asked.
"No him. He's just been a week at the job He rins about in a wee motor-car, and wad speir the inside oot o' a whelk."
"Where's your house?" I asked, and was directed by a wavering finger to the cottage by the stream.
"Well, back to your bed," I said, "and sleep
in peace. I'll take on your job for a bit and see the surveyor."
He stared at me blankly; then, as the notion dawned on his fuddled brain, his face broke into the vacant drunkard's smile.
"You're the billy," he cried. "It'll be easy eneuch managed. I've finished that bing o' stanes, so you needna chap ony mair this forenoon. Just take the barry, and wheel eneuch metal frae yon quarry doon the road to make anither bing the morn.
"My name's Alexander Turnbull, and I've been seeven year at this trade, and twenty ​afore that herdin' on Leithen Water. My freends ca' me Ecky, and whiles Specky, for I wear glasses, bein' weak i' the sicht. Just you speak the surveyor fair and ca' him sir, and he'll be fell pleased. I'll be back or midday."
I borrowed his spectacles and filthy old hat; stripped off coat, waistcoat and collar and gave him them to carry home; borrowed, too, the foul stump of a clay pipe as an extra property. He indicated my simple tasks, and without more ado set off at an amble bedwards. Bed may have been his chief object, but I think there was also something left in the foot of a bottle. I prayed that he might be safe under cover before my friends arrived on the scene.
Then I set to work to dress for the part. I opened the collar of my shirt—it was a vulgar blue-and-white check such as plowmen wear—and revealed a neck as brown as any tinker's. I rolled up my sleeves and there was a forearm which might have been a blacksmith's, sunburnt and rough with old scars. I got my boots and trouser-legs all white from ​the dust of the road, and hitched up my trousers, tying them with string below the knee. Then I set to work on my face. With a handful of dust I made a water-mark round my neck, the place where Mr. Turnbull's Sunday ablutions might be expected to stop. I rubbed a good deal of dirt also into the sunburn of my cheeks. A roadman's eyes would, no doubt, be a little inflamed, so I contrived to get some dust in both of mine, and by dint of vigorous rubbing produced a bleary effect.
The sandwiches Sir Harry had given me had gone off with my coat, but the roadman's lunch, tied up in a red handkerchief, was at my disposal. I ate with great relish several of the thick slabs of scone and cheese and drank a little of the cold tea. In the handkerchief was a local paper tied with string and addressed to Mr. Turnbull—obviously meant to solace his midday leisure. I did up the bundle again, and put the paper conspicuously beside it.
My boots did not satisfy me, but by dint of kicking among the stones I reduced them to ​the granite-like surface which marks a roadman's foot-gear. Then I bit and scraped my finger-nails till the edges were all cracked and uneven. The men I was matched against would miss no detail. I broke one of the boot-laces and retied it in a clumsy knot and loosed the other so that my thick grey socks bulged over the uppers. Still no sign of anything on the road. The motor I had observed half hour ago must have gone home.
My toilet complete, I took up the barrow and began my journeys to and from the quarry a hundred yards off. I remembered an old scout in Rhodesia, who had done many queer things in his day, once telling me that the secret of playing a part was to think yourself into it. You could never keep it up, he said, unless you could manage to convince yourself that you were it. So I shut off all other thoughts and switched them on the roadmending. I thought of the little white cottage as my home, I recalled the years I had spent herding on Leithen Water, I made my mind dwell lovingly on sleep in a box-bed and a ​bottle of cheap whisky. Still nothing appeared on that long white road.
Now and then a sheep wandered off heather to stare at me. A heron flopped down to a pool in the stream and started to fish, taking no more notice of me than if I had been a mile-stone. On I went trundling my loads of stone, with the heavy step of the professional. Soon I grew warm and the dust on my face changed into solid and abiding grit. I was already counting the hours till evening should put a limit to Mr. Turnbull's monotonous toil.
Suddenly a crisp voice spoke from the road, and looking up I saw a little Ford two-seater, and a round-faced young man in a bowler hat.
"Are you Alexander Turnbull?" he asked "I am the new county road surveyor, You live at Blackhopefoot, and have charge of the section from Laidlawbyres to the Riggs? Good! A fair bit of road, Turnbull, and not badly engineered. A little soft about a mile off, and the edges want cleaning. See you ​look after that. Good morning. You'll know me the next time you see me."
Clearly my get-up was good enough for the dreaded surveyor. I went on with my work, and as the morning grew towards noon I was cheered by a little traffic. A baker's van breasted the hill, and sold me a bag of ginger biscuits which I stowed in my trouser-pockets against emergencies. Then a herd passed with sheep, and disturbed me somewhat by asking loudly, "What had become o' Specky?"
"In bed wi' the colic," I replied, and the herd passed on.
Just about midday a big car stole down the hill, glided past and drew up a hundred yards beyond. Its three occupants descended as if to stretch their legs, and sauntered toward me.
Two of the men I had seen before from the window of the Galloway inn—one lean, sharp and dark, the other comfortable and smiling. The third had the look of a countryman—a vet, perhaps, or a small farmer. ​He was dressed in ill-cut knickerbockers, and the eye in his head was as bright and wary
as a hen's.
"'Morning," said the last. "That's a fine easy job o' yours."
I had not looked up on their approach, and now, when accosted, I slowly and painfully straightened my back, after the manner of roadmen; spat vigorously, after the manner of the low Scot; and regarded them steadily before replying. I confronted three pairs of eyes that missed nothing.
"There's waur jobs and there's better," I said sententiously. "I wad rather hae yours, sittin' a' day on your hinderlands on thae cushions. It's you and your muckle cawrs that wreck my roads! If we a' had oor richts, you sud be made to mend what ye break!"
The bright-eyed man was looking at the newspaper lying beside Turnbull's bundle.
"I see you get your papers in good time," he said.
I glanced at it casually. "Aye, in gude ​time. Seein' that that paper cam out last Satterday, I'm just fower days late."
He picked it up, glanced at the superscription and laid it down again. One of the others had been looking at my boots, and a word in German called the speaker's attention to them.
"You've a fine taste in boots," he said. "These were never made by a country shoe-maker."
"They were not," I said readily. "They were made in London. I got them frae the gentleman that was here last year for the shootin'. What was his name now?" And I scratched a forgetful head.
Again the sleek one spoke in German. "Let us get on," he said. "This fellow is all right."
They asked one last question:
"Did you see any one pass early this morning? He might be on a bicycle or he might be on foot."
I very nearly fell into the trap and told a story of a bicyclist hurrying past in the grey ​dawn. But I had the sense to see my danger. I pretended to consider very deeply.
"I wasna up very early," I said. "Ye see my dochter was merrit last nicht, and we keepit it up late. I opened the house-door about seeven—and there was naebody on the road then. Since I cam up here there has been just the baker and the Ruchill herd, besides you gentlemen."
One of them gave me a cigar, which I smelled gingerly and stuck in Turnbull's bundle. They got into their car and were out of sight in three minutes.
My heart leaped with an enormous relief, but I went on wheeling my stones. It was as well, for ten minutes later the car returned, one of the occupants waving a hand to me. These gentry left nothing to chance.
I finished Turnbull's bread and cheese, and pretty soon I had finished the stones. The next step was what puzzled me. I could not keep up this road-making business for long. A merciful Providence had kept Mr, Turnbull indoors, but if he appeared on the scene ​there would be trouble. I had a notion that the cordon was still tight round the glen, and that if I walked in any direction I should meet with questioners.
But get out I must. No man's nerve could stand more than a day of being spied on
I stayed at my post till about five o'clock. By that time I had resolved to go down to Turnbull's cottage at nightfall and take my chance of getting over the hills in the darkness. But suddenly a new car came up the road, and slowed down a yard or two from me. A fresh wind had risen, and the occupant wanted to light a cigarette.
It was a touring-car, with the tonneau full of an assortment of baggage. One man sat in it, and by an amazing chance I knew him. His name was Marmaduke Jopley, and he was an offence to creation. He was a sort of blood stockbroker, who did his business by toadying eldest sons and rich young peers and foolish old ladies.
"Marmie" was a familiar figure, I understood, at balls and polo-weeks and country ​houses. He was an adroit scandalmonger and would crawl a mile on his belly to anything that had a title or a million. I had a business introduction to his firm when I came to London, and he was good enough to ask
me to dinner at his club.
There he showed off at a great rate, and pattered about his duchesses till the snobbery of the creature turned me sick. I asked a man afterwards why nobody kicked him, and was told that Englishmen reverenced the weaker
sex.
Anyhow there he was now, nattily dressed, in a fine new car, obviously on his way to visit some of his fine friends. A sudden daftness took me, and in a second I had jumped into
the tonneau and had him by the shoulder.
"Hello, Jopley," I sang out. "Well met, my lad!"
He got a horrid fright. His chin dropped
as he stared at me. "Who the devil are you?" he gasped.
"My name's Hannay," I said, "from Rhodesia, you remember?"
​"Good God, the murderer!" he choked.
"Just so. And there'll be a second murder, my dear, if you don't do as I tell you. Give me that coat of yours. That cap, too."
He did as he was bid, for he was blind with terror. Over my dirty trousers and vulgar shirt I put on his smart driving-coat, which buttoned high at the top and thereby hid the deficiencies of my collar. I stuck the cap on my head, and added his gloves to my get-up. The dusty roadman in a minute was transformed into one of the neatest motorists in Scotland. On Mr. Jopley's head I clapped Turnbull's unspeakable hat, and told him to keep it there.
Then with some difficulty I turned the car. My plan was to go back the road he had come, for the watchers, having seen it before, would probably let it pass unremarked, and Marmie's figure was in no way like mine.
"Now, my child," I said, "sit quite still and be a good boy. I mean you no harm. I'm only borrowing your car for an hour or two. But if you play me any tricks, and above all ​if you open your mouth, as sure as there's a God above me, I'll wring your neck. Savez?"
I enjoyed that evening's ride. We ran eight miles down the valley, through a village or two, and I could not help noticing several strange-looking folk lounging by the roadside. These were the watchers who would have had much to say to me if I had come in other garb or company. As it was, they looked incuriously on. One touched his cap in salute, and I responded graciously.
As the dark fell I turned up a side glen which, as I remembered from the map, led into an unfrequented corner of the hills. Soon the villages were left behind, then the farms, and then even the wayside cottages. Presently we came to a lonely moor where the night was blackening the sunset gleam in the bog-pools. Here we stopped, and I obligingly reversed the car and restored to Mr. Joplev his belongings.
"A thousand thanks," I said. "There's more use in you than I thought. Now be off and find the police."
​As I sat on the hillside, watching the tail-light dwindle, I reflected on the various kinds of crime I had now sampled. Contrary to general belief I was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless impostor, and a highwayman with a marked taste for expensive motor-cars.