The Thirty-Nine Steps: A Classic Spy Thriller by John Buchan
Chapter 1: 1) Hannay was a man born in Scotland and raised in Bulawayo. He is single and enjoys traveling to see a little of the world. He served as an intelligence officer for the British army in the Boer War in South Africa before returning to Britain. 2) Hannay had been living in London for a few months, where he found life more boring than in Rhodesia. 3) Scudder needed Hannay’s help because he had nowhere to go, as someone was watching him. Since they lived in the same building, Scudder asked Hannay to let him hide in his flat. Scudder faked his death using the body of a homeless man and placed it in his flat. 4) Karolides was the only leader in Europe who had the slightest chance of preventing war. Scudder had discovered an anarchist plot to assassinate the Greek leader, Karolides, when he came to London on June 15. Chapter 2: 1) When Hannay returned from his club, he found Scudder lying on the floor with a long knife through his heart. The drawers were open, and books and papers lay all over the floor. 2) Scudder’s murderers were looking for a small black notebook. They did not find it because Scudder had hidden it in Hannay’s tobacco jar. 3) Hannay decided to go into hiding because he thought the police did not believe his story about the anarchists and about Scudder faking his own suicide and the death of the homeless man. He also feared that if the police did not arrest Scudder’s murderer, then he would be next. 4) Hannay decided to go into hiding in Galloway because it is an area with few cities and a lot of wild countryside.
Chapter 3: 1) Hannay found it difficult to read Scudder’s notebook because it was written with many numbers and a few words, a kind of code. 2) Hannay planned to exit the train when it stopped at the beginning of a tunnel, thinking it was a place where nobody would see him. He changed his plans so that nobody would follow him. 3) Hannay thought the plane was looking for something because it was flying backwards and forwards very slowly. 4) The young man on the bridge was the innkeeper of the house that Hannay was pointing to. Chapter 4: 1) The key to the code in Scudder’s notebook was the letters in the name of Julia Czechenyi. 2) One man was tall and dark, and the other man was young and blond. They told the innkeeper that they were friends of Hannay. 3) Hannay asked the innkeeper to go to Melilla to describe those two men to the Chief of Police, and tell him that they were involved in the murder in London, and that they would come to the Inn early tomorrow. Chapter 5: 1) Hannay discovered that June 15 was going to be a decisive point in history, but not because Karolides was going to be assassinated. This was to be the excuse for a world war. Germany would find an excuse to attack Britain. 2) The Black Stone was a group of German spies who intended to steal the plans for Britain’s naval defenses when the French and British commanders met. 3) Sir Harry helped Hannay to climb back up to the road and offered to take him home to change clothes and eat something. 4) Sir Walter Bullivant knew that Hannay was the real man if he gave him the code word Black Stone and whistled the old Scottish song Annie Laurie. Chapter 6: 1) Hannay decided to stay where he was and let his enemies search for him, but he would not be found. 2) Hannay offered to do the work of a roadman during the day while the roadman was going to rest. 3) The two men who had come to the inn did not recognize Hannay when he was working on the road because he had gotten the clothes of a roadman and also rubbed a little dirt on his face to look like he had been working for hours. 4) Jopley helped Hannay because Hannay threatened to be killed next, and then Jopley was frightened and did everything he asked. Chapter 7: 1) The next morning, Hannay woke up early and saw two men searching. Hannay took very little time to go to the police. 2) Hannay thought it was strange that the old man on the veranda was not surprised to see him or angry to be disturbed. The old man was very quiet. 3) Hannay saw the old man close his eyes halfway, like a hawk, then remembered that Scudder wrote about an old man who closed his eyes halfway, who was his most dangerous enemy. 4) Hannay said that his name was Ainslie because, as he realized it was a trap, he wanted to try to fool the old man by making it look like he was the wrong person. He could not be sure that he was Hannay.
Chapter 8: 1) The old man wanted to bring to the farmhouse the two men who had seen Hannay working as a roadman to be safe, so they could identify him and see if it was actually Hannay. 2) Inside the storeroom, Hannay opened a closet in which he found explosives, which he used to break the wall and get out of the storeroom. 3) Hannay was wrong because something hit him on the shoulder, then he lost consciousness. When he woke up, he was really hurt in the man and the head. He coughed a lot from the smoke and dust caused by the explosion. 4) Hannay noticed that on the hillside behind the farmhouse there was a small airfield hidden by trees. He was angry because he thought that his enemies could watch Britain’s coast from this hill.
Chapter 9: 1) Hannay stayed with the roadman for ten days because he was ill and tired. 2) Hannay did not enjoy walking to market because he was worried about the Black Stone and the terrible events planned for June 15. 3) Sir Walter knew that Hannay was not a murderer because Hannay was whistling the old Scottish song”Annie Lauri”. 4) Sir Walter believed that Scudder’s story about the German spies was false, because he thought it was hard to believe that someone wanted to kill Karolides, and probably wanted to know the plan for our naval defenses. Chapter 10: 1) The change was to change the positions of the naval defenses. He worried that his enemies would steal the plans, if so, the plans would be useless. 2) Hannay took the place of Sir Walter’s driver so that nobody would recognize him and he would go unnoticed. 3) The Chief of Police told Hannay that he could return to normal life as usual. 4) Hannay thought that the First Lord was an impostor, by the way in which the First Lord looked at him, Hannay felt in his eyes that the First Lord recognized him. Chapter 11: 1) Sir Walter and the other men at the meeting did not notice that the First Lord was an impostor because they did not pay attention, they were too busy looking at the plans. 2) Hannay found in Scudder’s book a track of where the Black Stones were hiding. The track was that they were going to leave the country by boat, and there would be high tide at 10:17 pm. 3) Whittaker brought a guard at one o’clock because he knew very well the eastern coast (the east coast) and helped them know all the places on the southeast coast where several sets of steps go down to the beach. 4) Hannay took charge of catching the Black Stone because he was the only one who had lived his entire story from the beginning and because he had experience of difficult missions in the army. Chapter 12: 1) Hannay thought that Trafalgar Lodge was the house used by the Black Stone because he and Scaife counted the steps on each set, and the house with thirty-nine steps was called Trafalgar Lodge. 2) Hannay recognized a gesture in one of the men and recognized the three to the instant. The thin man was the assassin, the fat man was the spy who had made pass for the first master of the sea (The first is A Lord) and the elder to be the man who had caught him. 3) Hannay doubted at first, but then saw the old man touching with his fingers on his knee, as did the old man at the farmhouse. That said it all. 4) Franz jumped out the window and escaped. He blew up the stairs. These collapsed and Franz escaped in the motorboat.