Page:Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (Grosset Dunlap, 1915).djvu/29

 "I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look like death. That wasn't difficult, for I'm no slouch at disguises.  Then I got a corpse—you can always get a body in London if you know where to go for it.  I fetched it back in a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room.  You see I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest.  I went to bed and got my man to mix me a sleeping-draught, and then told him to clear out.  He wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn't abide leeches.  When I was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse.  He was my size, and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place.  The jaw was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver.  I daresay there will be somebody to-morrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas, with a revolver lying on the