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

detectives and double the police and Constantine
would still he a doomed man. My friends are not
playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion
for the taking off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He'll
be murdered by an Austrian, and there'll be plenty of
evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in
Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course,
but the case will look black enough to the world. I'm
not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every
detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will
be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the
Borgias. But it's not going to come off if there's a
certain man who knows the wheels of the business
alive right here in London on the 15th day of June. And
that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P.
Scudder."

I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like
a rat-trap, and there was the fire of battle in his gimlety
eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn he could act up to it.

"Where did you find out this story?" I asked.

"I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol.
That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in
a fur-shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a
Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little book shop off
the Racknitzstrasse in Leipzig. I completed my
evidence ten days ago in Paris. I can't tell you the
details now, for it's something of a history. When I was
quite sure in my own mind I judged it my business to
disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer
circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-American,
and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant.
In Norway I was an English student of Ibsen collecting
materials for lectures, but when I left Bergen I was a
cinema-man with special ski films. And I came here
from Leith with a lot of pulp-wood propositions in my
pocket to put before the London newspapers. Till
yesterday I thought I had muddled my trail some, and
was feeling pretty happy. Then..."

The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped
down more whisky.

"Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this
block. I used to stay close in my room all day, and only
slip out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for
a bit from my window, and I thought I recognized him
.... He came in and spoke to the porter .... When I came