Walkthrough for

                            The Thirty-Nine Steps

                               by Jack Lockerby

                            Written by Richard Bos


  First, a few notes. 
  
  To start with, this is a PAWed game for the ZX Spectrum. Therefore, words
are significant to five letters rather than the more usual Quill's four. Do
note though that (and this is different from most PAWed games, and more similar
to Quilled ones) to speak to people, you do not use quotation marks. Instead,
you just SAY HELLO, and then choose from a number of options. This sort of
menu-based conversation system is quite common these days, but on the Spectrum
it was rather unusual. By the way, you do have to enter "A", "B" or "C" as full
commands, not just press the key.
  Obviously, since this is a walkthrough, spoilers are rife below. I'm not
taking you past every single clue and sight, but I do provide some commands
which give some hints while not being strictly necessary to get to the end. You
can find several more 
  Technically there are a few things to be careful of. As the intro says, the
game is real-time - which in this case means that time will pass even if you
don't type anything. This is mostly not a problem unless you walk away from the
keyboard, but be careful - when you're being chased, don't go and make a cuppa.
There are also a few slight bugs with out-of-place messages, but nothing game-
breaking. There are the usual strict phrasing requirements for certain
commands, but nothing excessive. More unusually, and puzzlingly for a PAWed
game, "it" doesn't always work as expected, so take care with that.
  On the up side, Thirty-Nine Steps uses several storage places for objects,
such as your pockets and a rucksack, but you don't have to specify these if you
want to retrieve an object. "Take knife from rucksack" works, but so does just
"take knife". And several abbreviations are available: N, S and so on, of
course, but also LE and EN for LEAVE and ENTER; G for GET, but not P for PUT;
and X (and EXAM, unusually in a five-letter PAW game) for EXAMINE, Z for WAIT,
and T for TELL TIME.
  It may be that it is helpful, for some puzzles, to have read the original
book. I have never read it myself. In any case, you need to solve some puzzles
for reasons that are completely unpredictable at that point in the game, but
which will have repercussions (much) later on; I presume that these would have
been less random for someone who has read the book. Unfortunately the book
itself was, as John Buchan himself admitted, a "shocker", with an at times
unlikely plot; the resulting game is sometimes unfair, particularly in its
inventory management. Railroading is common (even literally!).
  I haven't seen the Hitchcock film, either (or any other one, for that
matter), but as I understand it that followed the plot of the book only in
broad strokes, and took great liberties with the details. This game seems to do
the same - for starters, the names have been altered a little, for reasons that
escape me - but to a lesser extent. In any case, it is probably wise to read
the introductory text at least once, because the game starts in medias res.


So, we start with a dying man in our living room.

  Say hello to the man. (Book? What book? And make a note of that code; we'll
need it.). Take the now dead body, go north, and put it on your bed.
Get the key and go south. Take your keys (they're in your pocket) and drop
them. They're useless - and I'm not telling you why.
  Open the door, leave, go up, unlock the door, enter, and go north. Examine
the wardrobe, then feel under the wardrobe; search it as well. Get all, drop
the key, and put all in pockets - that will keep your hands free. Go south,
open the door, leave, down, open door, enter.
  Examine the table, take the pipe and box of matches, and smoke the pipe. Read
your newspaper (no need to pick it up) and remember that name. Go north.
Examine _and_ search the body, wear the belt, take the knife, unclench his
hand, and take the button.
  Stand on the cabinet, get the torch, and go down. Examine the cabinet. If
your pipe hasn't gone out, wait for it to do so. Then clean the pipe, and fill
it. Aha! There's that book. (And no, if we'd chosen not, on a whim, to smoke
the pipe, we'd never have known. "Shocker" is right.)
  Read the book. It's in code - it's a simple substitution code (if you want to
work it out for yourself, skip these sentences!), with "JULIA" as the code
letters for the vowels and the rest of the alphabet filled in in order,
starting with K - it's made harder to solve because Mr. Lockerby has
unfortunately made a coding error in one of the words.
  You have to write one of the decoded lines in the book to progress much
further into the game, and all of them to finish. Luckily, there are hints in
some things we've read already, in the title of the game, and in one hint I
haven't shown you but you do already possess. So, solve the code yourself, or:
write secret plans, write house, write near dumfries, write thirty nine steps,
write Ropier, write in danger.
  That done, put everything in your pockets, search your bed, read the diary
and drop it, and finally sleep. (Yes, next to the body. Nice.)

  Next day go south, open the door, and leave. Say hello to the milkman; choose
option A. Take the cans, go down, leave, east, south (never mind the robber,
we'll get our money back soon), south again and enter. Say hello, choose A.
  At the station, first go east and enter. Say hello. Remove the belt, show it,
and of course choose A; take out your get pipe, show pipe, and choose A. Wear
the rucksack, leave and go west and north.
  Say hello, choose A - Dumfries, go nw, and north, and open door. Sit back for
a wait - wait several turns until the train stops. Open the door - we have
several commands to spare but don't dawdle too much - go east, buy a paper,
read and drop it, then go west, and open the door.
  Wait again until the train starts and then arrives at another station, open
the door, go up, east and down, get your ticket from your pocket, go west, open
the door, and wait until it stops unexpectedly for some sheep. (You'll be told
about the sheep a few turns before the train actually stops - be patient.)

  Open door (you jump automatically). Wait - you must use that command
explicitly, just spending a turn does nothing - then dig, and take the pouch.
Go up, east, ne, east and down. You're being chased now, and can't afford to
waste a move even on a typo, so carefully go west, sw, se, sw, and east, and
hide. Wait again, then go up.
  The need for precision is now over. Go west and south, search rubble, and
take the detonator. Go north, east, ne, ne, se. Knock on the door - you must be
wearing the rucksack and carrying the stick. Now quickly go up, north twice,
open the door, and enter.
  Examine the cabinet, and read the leaflet. Remember this series of commands!
Then sleep. When you wake up, wait a few turns until the man turns up. Answer B
(as said above, as a command, not when asked to press a key). You're turned
out; go north twice and nw. Wait for the car to arrive; this one is friendly.
No, I have no idea how you could possibly know the difference, except maybe by
reading the book. In any case, answer A, of course.

  Go west 5 times and nw. Say hello and choose B. Take the tools. Mend the
road; you'll be moved on one location. Keep mending the road until you meet a
car, then say hello, choose A, and take the chisel. Mend the road a few more
times until you've repaired the whole stretch.
  Go back west 5 times and nw, drop the tools here, then wait around for the
surveyor to make an appearance. Next go north, east and enter. Say hello again,
and choose A. Leave, go west, south, se, east 5 times, then south, east twice,
se, south, sw (count the steps!) and up.
  Now for some precaution. Put the dynamite, detonator and chisel in your
socks (yes, a whole stick of dynamite!), retrieve your knife, torch and
matches, and put them in your socks as well. Next take everything from your
pockets, put it all in your rucksack, remove the rucksack, and hide everything
in the bush.

  Empty-handed, knock on the door. Wait until you're taken to a dark room;
there, get all from socks. (I have a problem, here, and I don't know if it's
with Mr. Lockerby or Mr. Bunyan. But in either case... a Scots conspirator
doesn't think to search you for a skean dhu!? For shame!) and turn on the
torch.
  Push the chest. Examine the wall and remove the brick. Now, remember that
leaflet? Make hole in dynamite, insert det in dynamite, insert dynamite in
hole. But where's the fuse? Push the chest again - it was underneath it - take
the fuse, and dig for some clay.
  Go back north, join fuse, pack clay in hole (which isn't the command as
written on the leaflet, but the only one that works), light fuse, go south,
hide, and wait for the explosion.

  Go up and north twice. Enter the mill, go up and down, leave - nothing there,
but... Go north, examine the dovecot, go up it, and lie down. Peep over the
wall - and use that verb, because if you "look over wall", you'll be spotted!
  Go down, south, se and south, take the plans, open the door and leave. Get
your rucksack, turn off the torch, put everything in the rucksack, and wear it.
  Go down, east, ne, se, east, se, north and east. Ring the bell. Say hello,
take the book, show the book, take the plans, and show the plans. Finally,
break the door.

And... you've saved the country. Just don't ask how much luck (or paranormal
prescience!) was involved.