The Thirty-Nine Steps

I spent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a boulder where the heather grew long and soft. It was a cold business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat. These w...

A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the lightship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a bell-buoy. A cou...

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...

I had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine May weather, with the hawthorn flowering on every hedge, and I asked myself why, when I was still a free man, I had st...

You may picture me driving that 40 h.p. car for all she was worth over the crisp moor roads on that shining May morning; glancing back at first over my shoulder, and looking anx...

I sat down on a hill-top and took stock of my position. I wasn’t feeling very happy, for my natural thankfulness at my escape was clouded by my severe bodily discomfort. Those l...

Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills, which was the upper glen of some notable river. In front was a flat space of maybe a mile, all pitted with bog...

I came down to breakfast next morning, after eight hours of blessed dreamless sleep, to find Sir Walter decoding a telegram in the midst of muffins and marmalade. His fresh rosi...

Sir Walter got up and left the room while we looked blankly at the table. He came back in ten minutes with a long face. “I have spoken to Alloa,” he said. “Had him out of bed—ve...

I sat down in an armchair and felt very sick. That lasted for maybe five minutes, and was succeeded by a fit of the horrors. The poor staring white face on the floor was more th...

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 inciden...