house opposite, and there at a first-floor window was a face. As the
loafer passed he looked up, and I fancied a signal was exchanged.

I crossed the street, whistling gaily and imitating the jaunty
swing of the milkman. Then I took the first side street, and went

up a left-hand turning which led past a bit of vacant ground. There
was no one in the little street, so I dropped the milk-cans inside the

hoarding and sent the cap and overall after them. I had only just
put on my cloth cap when a postman came round the corner. I gave

him good morning and he answered me unsuspiciously. At the
moment the clock of a neighbouring church struck the hour of seven.

There was not a second to spare. As soon as I got to Euston
Road I took to my heels and ran. The clock at Euston Station

showed five minutes past the hour. At St Pancras I had no time to
take a ticket, let alone that I had not settled upon my destination. A

porter told me the platform, and as I entered it I saw the train
already in motion. Two station officials blocked the way, but I

dodged them and clambered into the last carriage.
Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the northern

tunnels, an irate guard interviewed me. He wrote out for me a
ticket to Newton-Stewart, a name which had suddenly come back

to my memory, and he conducted me from the first-class compartment
where I had ensconced myself to a third-class smoker,

occupied by a sailor and a stout woman with a child. He went off
grumbling, and as I mopped my brow I observed to my companions

in my broadest Scots that it was a sore job catching trains. I had
already entered upon my part.

'The impidence o' that gyaird!' said the lady bitterly. 'He needit a
Scotch tongue to pit him in his place. He was complainin' o' this

wean no haein' a ticket and her no fower till August twalmonth,
and he was objectin' to this gentleman spittin'.'

The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life in an
atmosphere of protest against authority. I reminded myself that a

week ago I had been finding the world dull.
CHAPTER THREE

The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper
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 stayed on in London

and not got the good of this heavenly country. I didn't dare face
the restaurant car, but I got a luncheon-basket at Leeds and shared

it with the fat woman. Also I got the morning's papers, with news
about starters for the Derby and the beginning of the cricket season,

and some paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were settling down
and a British squadron was going to Kiel.

When I had done with them I got out Scudder's little black
pocket-book and studied it. It was pretty well filled with jottings,

chiefly figures, though now and then a name was printed in. For
example, I found the words 'Hofgaard', 'Luneville', and 'Avocado'

pretty often, and especially the word 'Pavia'.
Now I was certain that Scudder never did anything without a

reason, and I was pretty sure that there was a cypher in all this.
That is a subject which has always interested me, and I did a bit

at it myself once as intelligence officer at Delagoa Bay during the
Boer War. I have a head for things like chess and puzzles, and I

used to reckon myself pretty good at finding out cyphers. This one
looked like the numerical kind where sets of figures correspond to

the letters of the alphabet, but any fairly shrewd man can find the
clue to that sort after an hour or two's work, and I didn't think

Scudder would have been content with anything so easy. So I
fastened on the printed words, for you can make a pretty good

numerical cypher if you have a key word which gives you the
sequence of the letters.

I tried for hours, but none of the words answered. Then I fell
asleep and woke at Dumfries just in time to bundle out and get into

the slow Galloway train. There was a man on the platform whose
looks I didn't like, but he never glanced at me, and when I caught

sight of myself in the mirror of an automatic machine I didn't
wonder. With my brown face, my old tweeds, and my slouch, I was

the very model of one of the hill farmers who were crowding into
the third-class carriages.

I travelled with half a dozen in an atmosphere of shag and clay
pipes. They had come from the weekly market, and their mouths

were full of prices. I heard accounts of how the lambing had gone
up the Cairn and the Deuch and a dozen other mysterious waters.

Above half the men had lunched heavily and were highly flavoured
with whisky, but they took no notice of me. We rumbled slowly

into a land of little wooded glens and then to a great wide moorland
place, gleaming with lochs, with high blue hills showing northwards.

About five o'clock the carriage had emptied, and I was left alone
as I had hoped. I got out at the next station, a little place whose

name I scarcely noted, set right in the heart of a bog. It reminded
me of one of those forgotten little stations in the Karroo. An old

station-master was digging in his garden, and with his spade over
his shoulder sauntered to the train, took charge of a parcel, and

went back to his potatoes. A child of ten received my ticket, and I
emerged on a white road that straggled over the brown moor.

It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as
clear as a cut amethyst. The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs,

but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on
my spirits. I actually felt light-hearted. I might have been a boy out

for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-seven very
much wanted by the police. I felt just as I used to feel when I was

starting for a big trek on a frosty morning on the high veld. If you
believe me, I swung along that road whistling. There was no plan

of campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this blessed,
honest-smelling hill country, for every mile put me in better humour

with myself.
In a roadside planting I cut a walking-stick of hazel, and presently

struck off the highway up a bypath which followed the glen of a
brawling stream. I reckoned that I was still far ahead of any pursuit,

and for that night might please myself. It was some hours since I
had tasted food, and I was getting very hungry when I came to a

herd's cottage set in a nook beside a waterfall. A brown-faced
woman was standing by the door, and greeted me with the kindly

shyness of moorland places. When I asked for a night's lodging she
said I was welcome to the 'bed in the loft', and very soon she set

before me a hearty meal of ham and eggs, scones, and thick sweet milk.
At the darkening her man came in from the hills, a lean giant,

who in one step covered as much ground as three paces of ordinary
mortals. They asked me no questions, for they had the perfect

breeding of all dwellers in the wilds, but I could see they set me
down as a kind of dealer, and I took some trouble to confirm their

view. I spoke a lot about cattle, of which my host knew little, and I
picked up from him a good deal about the local Galloway markets,

which I tucked away in my memory for future use. At ten I was
nodding in my chair, and the 'bed in the loft' received a weary man

who never opened his eyes till five o'clock set the little homestead
a-going once more.

They refused any payment, and by six I had breakfasted and was
striding southwards again. My notion was to return to the railway

line a station or two farther on than the place where I had alighted
yesterday and to double back. I reckoned that that was the safest

way, for the police would naturally assume that I was always making
farther from London in the direction of some western port. I

thought I had still a good bit of a start, for, as I reasoned, it would