he knows Hannay will be, to give him a second black book. At the railway station, just seconds before he can reach Hannay, Scudder is murdered by the agents. With his dying breath he gives Hannay a message he doesn't understand. Hannay is mistaken by witnesses at the railway station as being the assailant and is arrested but is soon captured by the Prussians while being transferred to jail. During their interrogation of Hannay, they ask what he knows of the "Thirty Nine Steps". The Prussians allow him to escape in the hope he will lead them to the secret notebook. At St Pancras, Hannay manages to find Scudder's second notebook, but this turns out to be a dummy, with only a three-word riddle in it. Only Hannay can understand the riddle, which sends him to Scotland to find the real notebook. Hannay flees to Scotland on a train, but he is forced to make a daredevil escape on a bridge when the police board. Hannay attempts to solve the mystery whilst on the run from the police, led by Chief Supt Lomas (Eric Porter), and the Prussian agents, led by Sir Edmund Appleton, a Prussian sympathiser highly placed in the British government. On the Scottish moors Hannay, claiming to be on the run as part of a wager, meets Alex Mackenzie and her fiance, David Hamilton. On the run again, Hannay has to pose as a Liberal Party orator and ad lib a speech at an election husting. He indicates the identity of the Prussian agents to Alex Mackenzie and David Hamilton and with their help Scudder's book is found, but Hamilton is killed by the Prussians. The coded information is partly deciphered and the true plans of the Prussian agents are revealed. The agents intend to murder the visiting Greek Prime Minister by planting a bomb in parliament, thus leading to unrest in the Balkans and causing a world war. The "Thirty Nine Steps" refers to the number of stairs in the clock tower of Big Ben (from "Lauderdale Door to the clock itself"). When the police and Hannay reach the top of the clock tower, the agents have already planted the bomb and have locked the clock room. Hannay realises that the bomb is to be set off by the clock at 11.45am. To give the police more time, Hannay breaks the glass of the clock-face, climbs