40 pages • 1 hour read
John BuchanThe Thirty Nine Steps
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1915A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper”
As Hannay travels on a northbound train, he admires the landscapes and reads morning newspapers as well as Scudder’s notebook. Hannay realizes Scudder encoded the notebook using a cipher, which will require a linguistic or numerical key to understand. Though he knows decoding it will take some time, the prospect of a puzzle intrigues him. At Dumfries, Hannay switches trains to one bound for Galloway and realizes he is successfully blending in with the Scottish farmers. That evening, he waits until most of the other passengers have left his car before getting out at a “forgotten little station” (26). At this point, Hannay is enjoying planning his next steps and does not yet feel pressured by pursuit.
Hannay walks over the moors and spends the night in the hayloft of friendly farmers. The next morning, he walks to another remote station and travels back through the one where he disembarked the day before. He sees local police questioning the station workers and assumes they have been notified by Scotland Yard to look for him. From the newspapers, he learns he is wanted for questioning in Scudder’s death, now dubbed the Park Place Murder.
Fearing capture, Hannay jumps from the train car. At first, his walk is as pleasant as the day before. However, when he sees a small plane and assumes it is searching for him, he begins to feel “hunted” (31). The plane passes overhead several times, and Hannay must use vegetation for cover.
Eventually, Hannay comes upon a young man who recently inherited a country inn from his father but bemoans its remoteness and longs to write stories instead. Hannay takes advantage of the innkeeper’s imagination by telling him part of the truth of how he is being pursued. While the innkeeper runs errands for him, Hannay decodes the cipher in Scudder’s notebook using the name of the woman Scudder mentioned—Julia Czechenyi.
Two men come to the inn asking about Hannay, who later are revealed to be two of the three key members of the Black Stone. Hannay leaves a note for them to find, written in German (which Hannay knows), which mentions both Scudder and Karolides. Though the innkeeper convinces them Hannay has already left, Hannay suspects they will return. Hannay sends the innkeeper to bring the police to the inn, hoping to stage a confrontation that will get one or the other off his trail. Rather than waiting to see if the plan works, however, Hannay steals the Black Stone’s car and drives away.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Adventure of the Radical Candidate”
As he drives, Hannay considers Scudder’s notebook. He realizes that the spy told him only part of the story and that the truth is even worse than he feared. The Germans are stationing mines and submarines around the British coast and hope to take them by surprise before their navy is mobilized. In addition to assassinating Karolides on June 15, Black Stone wants to intercept intelligence being shared between England and a French representative.
Caught up in considering these details, Hannay nearly crashes into another car and drives off the road. The vehicle is driven by a man named Sir Harry, who both feels sorry for Hannay’s accident and needs someone to help him with a speech in a nearby town. Hannay plays along and goes to the rally, where he successfully plays off his promotion of Free Trade and entertains well enough with details about life abroad. Sir Harry’s speech suggests Germans could be British allies and blames the Tories, his political rivals, for demonizing the Germans. The local citizens seem interested in political reform but not especially impressed by Sir Harry’s ideas.
That evening at Sir Harry’s home, Hannay tells him the truth about his situation, hoping that Sir Harry’s political connections may help. Sir Harry sends a note to his godfather, Sir Walter, who is the permanent secretary to the Foreign Office. In the note, he tells Sir Walter to expect Hannay under the alias of Twisdon and signaling with the phrase “Black Stone” and the tune “Annie Laurie.” Hannay sets off to meet Sir Walter.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman”
Back in the countryside, Hannay hears the airplane again and fears being captured. A road repairman, Alexander Turnbull, or “Specky” to his friends, complains in a thick dialect that he would rather be in bed. His daughter was married the night before, and he admits that he is hungover. Despite his discomfort, Turnbull is working because he was notified that the new county road surveyor will be inspecting his work. Hannay offers to exchange clothes so Turnbull can nap while Hannay covers his duties, which Turnbull accepts without question.
After Hannay has worked for several hours, the surveyor appears. He briefly introduces himself, directs the Hannay to get to work on a neglected section, and departs. Not long after, the two Black Stone agents from the inn appear with a third man and ask Hannay (disguised as Turnbull) several questions. They note that though his boots are dirty, they are expensively made. They speak to each other in German and pass by a second time.
Another car stops, and Hannay knows this driver, Marmaduke “Marmie” Jopley, from socializing in town. Hannay calls Marmie “an offense to creation” and thinks he is a spoiled socialite full of “snobbery” (60). Having no qualms about taking advantage of Marmie, Hannay jumps into the back seat of the car, reveals his identity, and lets Marmie assume he murdered Scudder. Under threat of “a second murder” (61), Marmie drives him far out into the wilderness.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
Hannay and the allies he meets throughout these chapters illustrate How Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things. Hannay wears disguises, persuades locals to help him, and avoids being caught over several days of active pursuit. He attributes his success to the sharp eyes and fast legs he developed while working abroad. Additionally, the innkeeper steps out of his comfort zone by openly lying to spies and police. Both Hannay and the innkeeper benefit from thinking imaginatively. While earlier Realist writers often condemned Romantic idealism, Buchan celebrates heroism and the power of the individual.
The song Hannay will use to signal Sir Walter, “Annie Laurie,” is a Scottish folk song and a bold choice for calling the attention of an English official. Buchan likely was inspired to include it from his father’s interest in Border ballads, a musical genre popular in the area where Hannay is on the run. Scottish locals had a long history of contention with English authorities. The English military violently suppressed several rebellions over centuries, including the First War of Scottish Independence led by Robert the Bruce in the 1300s. About 100 years before Hannay’s adventure, the Highland Clearances forced Scots off their lands to be replaced by English landowners. Though, on the surface, “Annie Laurie” is merely a folk ballad about unrequited love, it establishes a minor theme of Scottish nationalism that runs throughout the novel. The historic context ties the song to resistance to authority. This choice suggests an attitude of patriotic individualism even as Hannay depends on British establishment figures Sir Harry and Sir Walter to achieve his goals.
Nature is a major motif of these chapters. It is an aid to Hannay, soothing his mood, providing cover, and housing kindly locals who offer him shelter. Hannay never feels directly threatened by the land, only somewhat stressed in Chapter 5 when he worries about being surrounded. As much as the natural landscape is detailed throughout these chapters, the wild is juxtaposed with markers of modernity. Hannay travels by car, train, and bicycle while being pursued by an airplane. These technologies help define the era of the story, as they are simultaneously widely available and noteworthy enough not to be taken for granted. Buchan also foreshadows how essential planes and trains would become in the English war effort during the Great War. Furthermore, Hannay regularly checks newspapers to keep track of his legal troubles and geopolitical developments. One newspaper he names several times, the Scotsman, highlights the theme of Scottish nationalism, as it began as a radical political paper in Edinburgh in 1817. Other allusions are made by the innkeeper to John Milton’s 1667 Paradise Lost and Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 The Jungle Book, two famed British texts, though from widely different eras and styles. Collectively, these details mark the novel as grounded in an era of modernity and globalization.
While he has been putting on disguises throughout his travels, Hannay goes even deeper into an assumed role in Chapter 5. He attempts not only to act like a Scottish road repairman but to become one. He wheels materials, strengthens the road, imagines Turnbull’s cottage to be his own, and speaks casually with passing locals. He acknowledges feeling motivated by necessity, and his belief that he must be thorough to avoid capture is confirmed when the Germans stop to question him about his boots. In their conversation, Hannay benefits from the complicated relationship between Appearance and Reality, since they believe him to be who he seems to be. This questioning adds suspense typical of the spy genre. It also confirms the Black Stone are a threatening antagonist as they nearly catch Hannay despite his head start and careful evasion.
