"THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS" - читать интересную книгу автора (Buchan John)

drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he
set it down.

"Pardon," he said, "I'm a bit rattled to-night. You see, I
happen at this moment to be dead."

I sat down in an arm-chair and lit my pipe.

"What does it feel like?" I asked. I was pretty certain
that I had to deal with a madman.

A smile flickered over his drawn face. "I'm not mad--
yet. Say, sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon
you're a cool customer. I reckon, too, you're an honest
man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I'm going
to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever
needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in."

"Get on with your yam," I said, "and I'll tell you."

He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then
started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it
at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But
here is the gist of it:--

He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college,
being pretty well off, he had started out to see the
world. He wrote a bit, and acted as war correspondent
for a Chicago paper, and spent a year or two in South-
Eastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine linguist,
and had got to know pretty well the society in those
parts. He spoke familiarly of many names that I
remembered to have seen in the newspapers.

He had played about with politics, he told me, at first
for the interest of them, and then because he couldn't
help himself. I read him as a sharp, restless fellow, who
always wanted to get down to the roots of things. He
got a little further down than he wanted.

I am giving you what he told me as well as I could
make it out. Away behind all the Governments and the
armies there was a big subterranean movement going
on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had
come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went
further, and then he got caught. I gathered that most of
the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists
that make revolutions, but that beside them there were
financiers who were playing for money. A clever man
can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited