Page 128 - the-thirty-nine-steps

CHAPTER TEN

Various Parties

Converging on the Sea

A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate look-
ing from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the lightship
on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a bell-buoy. A
couple of miles farther south and much nearer the shore a
small destroyer was anchored. Scaife, MacGillivray’s man,
who had been in the Navy, knew the boat, and told me her
name and her commander’s, so I sent off a wire to Sir Wal-
ter.
After breakfast Scaife got from a house-agent a key for
the gates of the staircases on the Ruff. I walked with him
along the sands, and sat down in a nook of the cliffs while he
investigated the halfdozen of them. I didn’t want to be seen,
but the place at this hour was quite deserted, and all the
time I was on that beach I saw nothing but the sea-gulls.
It took him more than an hour to do the job, and when I
saw him coming towards me, conning a bit of paper, I can
tell you my heart was in my mouth. Everything depended,
you see, on my guess proving right.
He read aloud the number of steps in the different stairs.
‘Thirtyfour, thirty-five, thirty-nine, forty-two, forty-seven,’

128 The Thirty-Nine Steps