The Thirty-Nine Steps: (Annotated Edition)

There is talk of war in Europe; it is May, 1914, and Richard Hannay, a Scot, is starting afresh in London after time spent in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He is gregarious and talks to strangers in passing, but one seems to attach himself more than the average casual acquaintance. Franklin P. Scudder is an American who is convinced that the world is about to erupt into war. He tells Hannay that he is actually dead, which of course intrigues Hannay, because it is not often one finds oneself talking to a dead man. Scudder elaborates and tells Hannay that he is a freelance spy and has faked his own death in order to be able to conduct his investigations more safely. He tells of a group of Germans chasing him, and Hannay offers to allow him to stay at his flat for a little while. Unfortunately this does not seem to throw the Germans off the scent; one evening, a man who lives in Hannay's building is murdered, and a couple of days after that, Hannay returns home to his flat to find that Hannay too has been murdered, stabbed in he heart. This worries Hannay. What if the murderers come back for him or think he is somehow working with Scudder? He is also worried because he realizes he will be the prime suspect in the murder of a man staying in his flat. All things considered he decides it will be safer to head back to his native Scotland. He is convinced that the German spies are now watching him, and because of this he talks the milkman into letting him borrow his uniform so that he can sneak out of the building without being noticed. It works, and he manages to get to the train station to leave town. He is already thinking like a spy, and although he is going to a remote town called Galloway, he tells the ticket clerk that he is going to the small town of Newton Stewart. Once in Galloway, he finds a shepherd's cottage that is deserted and decides to stay there. However, he learns from reading the newspaper the next day that he is indeed a wanted man, and the police are looking for him in connection with the deaths of two men in his apartment building. He decides to keep moving; the police will probably believe him to have gone to the west coast, so the most logical thing for him to do is go to the east instead. Part way across the country by rail he jumps the train, and finds an inn to stay at for the night. When two men arrive at the inn looking for him, he steals their car whilst they are inside asking questions about him.