Typing practice book cover: The Thirty-Nine Steps

11 CHAPTERS

Ongoing Story

The Thirty-Nine Steps

Published in 1915,The Thirty-Nine Stepsis a thriller set in Britain on the eve of the First World War. The novel’s protagonist, Richard Hannay, is an expatriate Scot who has just returned to London after many years in South Africa working in the mining industry. He finds England extremely dull and is just considering returning to South Africa when he is accosted by another inhabitant of the block of flats where he...

Campaign Progress

In Progress

Word Count40,825

Est. Practice1167 min

CHAPTERS

Dedication

My Dear Tommy, You and I have long cherished an affection for that elemental type of tale which Americans call the “dime novel” and which we know as the “shocker”⁠—the romance where the incidents defy...

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I - The Man Who Died

I returned from the city about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago...

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II - The Milkman Sets Out on His Travels

I sat down in an armchair and felt very sick. That lasted for maybe five minutes, and was succeeded by a fit of the horrors. The poor staring white face on the floor was more than I could bear, and I ...

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III - 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 n...

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IV - The Adventure of the Radical Candidate

You may picture me driving that 40 hp car for all she was worth over the crisp moor roads on that shining May morning; glancing back at first over my shoulder, and looking anxiously to the next turnin...

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V - The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman

I sat down on the very crest of the pass and took stock of my position. Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills, which was the upper glen of some notable river. In front was ...

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VI - The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist

I spent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a boulder where the heather grew long and soft. It was a cold business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat. These were in Mr. Turnbull’s k...

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VII - The Dry-Fly Fisherman

I sat down on a hilltop and took stock of my position. I wasn’t feeling very happy, for my natural thankfulness at my escape was clouded by my severe bodily discomfort. Those lentonite fumes had fairl...

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VIII - The Coming of the Black Stone

I came down to breakfast next morning, after eight hours of blessed dreamless sleep, to find Sir Walter decoding a telegram in the midst of muffins and marmalade. His fresh rosiness of yesterday seeme...

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IX - The Thirty-Nine Steps

“Nonsense!” said the official from the Admiralty. Sir Walter got up and left the room while we looked blankly at the table. He came back in ten minutes with a long face. “I have spoken to Alloa,” he s...

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X - Various Parties Converging on the Sea

A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the lightship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a bell-buoy. A couple of miles farther so...

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