Playing Soldier

'Hand me your key,' I said, 'and I'll take a look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but I have 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 start suspicions. The people who are after me are very smart. 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.'

Dead

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 Leipsic. 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.

The Conspiracy

'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.'

A Strange Man

'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?'

The Thirty-nine Steps

The Thirty-nine Steps es una novela de aventuras de 1915 del autor escocés John Buchan, publicada por primera vez por William Blackwood and Sons, Edimburgo. Es la primera de cinco novelas protagonizadas por Richard Hannay, un héroe lleno de acción, de carácter impasible y con un don para salir airoso de situaciones difíciles.

En el párrafo en inglés Hannay se sintió mal en Londres: el clima lo volvía melancólico, la forma de hablar lo enfermaba, no se ejercitó lo suficiente, y las diversiones le parecieron insípidas.

Más abajo ponemos una pequeña síntesis de la historia. El hombre llega desde Rodesia, en África, una colonia británica, a Inglaterra y naturalmente no se siente cómodo.

Para los que estudian inglés fijáte que es liverish y el sentido de stiff upper lip.

Treinta y Nueve Escalones

Hay novelas que muestran todo su esplendor una vez que se ha leído un buen número de páginas. Este no es el caso de “Treinta y Nueve Escalones”. Esta novela empieza a desarrollar la intriga, la emoción, el suspenso, desde el principio. Un hombre se acerca al protagonista para describir una conspiración internacional. Su vida peligra y el protagonista Richard Hannay… El autor es el escocés John Buchan y es considerada una novela clásica. Alfred Hitchcock la llevó al cine en 1935, Orson Wells la protagonizó en una adaptación para la radio, la BBC la puso en el aire y Glenn Ford también fue protagonista en otra adaptación. Señores, “Treinta y Nueve Escalones”…