Page 40 - the-thirty-nine-steps

across the ocean, and had killed my best friend, and were
now on my tracks.
I told the story well, though I say it who shouldn’t. I pic-
tured a flight across the Kalahari to German Africa, the
crackling, parching days, the wonderful blue-velvet nights.
I described an attack on my life on the voyage home, and
I made a really horrid affair of the Portland Place murder.
‘You’re looking for adventure,’ I cried; ‘well, you’ve found it
here. The devils are after me, and the police are after them.
It’s a race that I mean to win.’
‘By God!’ he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply, ‘it
is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.’
‘You believe me,’ I said gratefully.
‘Of course I do,’ and he held out his hand. ‘I believe ev-
erything out of the common. The only thing to distrust is
the normal.’
He was very young, but he was the man for my money.
‘I think they’re off my track for the moment, but I must
lie close for a couple of days. Can you take me in?’
He caught my elbow in his eagerness and drew me to-
wards the house. ‘You can lie as snug here as if you were in a
moss-hole. I’ll see that nobody blabs, either. And you’ll give
me some more material about your adventures?’
As I entered the inn porch I heard from far off the beat
of an engine. There silhouetted against the dusky West was
my friend, the monoplane.
He gave me a room at the back of the house, with a fine
outlook over the plateau, and he made me free of his own
study, which was stacked with cheap editions of his favou-

40 The Thirty-Nine Steps