ORAL PRESENTATION The 39 Steps by John Buchan is a thriller novel that takes place in the U.K. around late May and early June when Europe was close to W.W.1 around 1914. The main character, Richard Hannay, was confronted suddenly by Franklin P. Scudder, a freelance spy, who needed help and a place to hide. After Hannay welcomed Scudder into his apartment, he told Hannay everything he knew about a foreign office conference and a German plan to assassinate the Greek premier, Constantine Karolides, on the fifteenth of June. One day, Hannay came back from dinner with an old friend and found that Scudder was pinned to the floor of the smoking room with a knife through his heart. In that moment, Hannay realized that he was the main suspect and knew he needed to get away from the cops as …show more content…
Before he left, he grabbed Scudder’s black notebook where he had written, in code, everything about the plan. While on the run for a couple weeks, Hannay decoded Scudder’s notebook and later, ran into a man named Sir Harry who, after hearing Hannay’s story, decided to help. He sent a letter to his relative, Sir Walter Bullivant, who was a government official. He warned the government of the planned assassination. Later, with the help of a coastguard, Hannay, Sir Harry and Sir Walter Bullivant found a location that Scudder mentioned in his notebook. He described a beach house with a staircase that had 39 steps to the shore. Scudder also stated that the group of German spies would be at the beach house the day the water reached high tide at exactly 10:17. There seemed to be music and lights coming from the house, so they decided to see what was going on. They ended up walking into a party where three suspicious men immediately confronted them. Off the bat, Hannay could tell that they were part of “The Black Stone” but they all denied it. Just then, the lights switched