Page 125 - the-thirty-nine-steps

from the scribble of a dead man I was trying to drag a secret
which meant life or death for us.
Sir Walter had joined us, and presently MacGillivray ar-
rived. He had sent out instructions to watch the ports and
railway stations for the three men whom I had described to
Sir Walter. Not that he or anybody else thought that that
would do much good.
‘Here’s the most I can make of it,’ I said. ‘We have got to
find a place where there are several staircases down to the
beach, one of which has thirty-nine steps. I think it’s a piece
of open coast with biggish cliffs, somewhere between the
Wash and the Channel. Also it’s a place where full tide is at
10.17 tomorrow night.’
Then an idea struck me. ‘Is there no Inspector of Coast-
guards or some fellow like that who knows the East Coast?’
Whittaker said there was, and that he lived in Clapham.
He went off in a car to fetch him, and the rest of us sat about
the little room and talked of anything that came into our
heads. I lit a pipe and went over the whole thing again till
my brain grew weary.
About one in the morning the coastguard man arrived.
He was a fine old fellow, with the look of a naval officer, and
was desperately respectful to the company. I left the War
Minister to cross-examine him, for I felt he would think it
cheek in me to talk.
‘We want you to tell us the places you know on the East
Coast where there are cliffs, and where several sets of steps
run down to the beach.’
He thought for a bit. ‘What kind of steps do you mean,

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