The Thirty-Nine Steps

by John Buchan

I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom.

I gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer.

'Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.' I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe. 'What does it feel like?' I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal with a madman.

The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads. When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.

pogroms.

Then I got a corpse—you can always get a body in London if you know where to go for it.