CHAPTER 1: A MAN IN DANGER
I was born in Scotland, but when I was six, my family left the country and emigrated to Rhodesia. I grew up in Bulawayo, the capital of the young country, and later served as an intelligence officer for the British army in the Boer War in South Africa. By 1914, when I was thirty-seven, I had made quite a lot of money. Since I was still unmarried, IK decided to see a little of the world and began by returning to Britain. At the time my story begins, I had only been living in London for a few months, but I was finding life in the city very boring compared to my life in Rhodesia. I was even considering takin a job in Greece or perhaps going to Albania. I thought that life there might be more exciting than life in …ver más…

Scudder parecía un poco menos nervioso después de que la puerta estaba cerrada. Él me siguió hasta el salón de mi casa.
"¿Cuál es el problema, Scudder?" Le pregunté.
"He fingido mi propio suicidio, Hannay", dijo. "Yo nedd a todos a creer que estoy muerto, por algunas semanas por lo menos."
"Dime lo que ha sucedido", le dije, tomando un puro y ofreciendo una a Scudder, como me senté a escuchar.
I wasn't sure that I believed the story he told me, but it seemed possible since everyone was talking about the probability of war in Europe.
Scudder was the war correspondent in Europe for a group of American newspapers. They had their European offices in London, so he kept a flat in my building.
In the course of his work, Scudder had discovered an anarchist plot to assassinate the Greek leader, Karolides, when he came to London on June 15. The couldn't assassinate him in his own country because he had several men guarding him carefully.
"Karolides is the only leader in Europe who has the slightest chance of preventing war", said Scudder. " The anarchists are planning to destabilise Europe and get Britain involved in a war between Germany and Russia. I got final proof of their plans when I was in Paris ten days ago. The anarchists began to suspect that I knew about their plan and tried to follow me back to London. I travelled all over Europe to try and escape from them. I left Paris disguised as a young French-Canadian and then sailed from Hamburg disguised as a