JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated). Buchan John
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"Oh, if my love were sailor-bred"
"A' are gane, the gude, the kindly"
The Battle of the Somme, First Phase
The Battle of the Somme, Second Phase
Nelson’s History of the War Volume I - V
The African Colony: Studies in the Reconstruction
A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys
NOVELS
THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
Richard Hannay’s First Adventure
CHAPTER 2. THE MILKMAN SETS OUT ON HIS TRAVELS
CHAPTER 3. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LITERARY INNKEEPER
CHAPTER 4. THE ADVENTURE OF THE RADICAL CANDIDATE
CHAPTER 5. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECTACLED ROADMAN
CHAPTER 6. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST
CHAPTER 7. THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN
CHAPTER 8. THE COMING OF THE BLACK STONE
CHAPTER 9. THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
CHAPTER 10. VARIOUS PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA
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; СКАЧАТЬ