Page 48 - the-thirty-nine-steps

two later, with great guns and swift torpedoes, suddenly in
the darkness of a summer night.
This was the story I had been deciphering in a back room
of a country inn, overlooking a cabbage garden. This was
the story that hummed in my brain as I swung in the big
touring-car from glen to glen.
My first impulse had been to write a letter to the Prime
Minister, but a little reflection convinced me that that
would be useless. Who would believe my tale? I must show
a sign, some token in proof, and Heaven knew what that
could be. Above all, I must keep going myself, ready to act
when things got riper, and that was going to be no light job
with the police of the British Isles in full cry after me and
the watchers of the Black Stone running silently and swiftly
on my trail.
I had no very clear purpose in my journey, but I steered
east by the sun, for I remembered from the map that if I
went north I would come into a region of coalpits and in-
dustrial towns. Presently I was down from the moorlands
and traversing the broad haugh of a river. For miles I ran
alongside a park wall, and in a break of the trees I saw a
great castle. I swung through little old thatched villages,
and over peaceful lowland streams, and past gardens blaz-
ing with hawthorn and yellow laburnum. The land was so
deep in peace that I could scarcely believe that somewhere
behind me were those who sought my life; ay, and that in
a month’s time, unless I had the almightiest of luck, these
round country faces would be pinched and staring, and
men would be lying dead in English fields.

48 The Thirty-Nine Steps