England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days.
Presently I observed someone leave the house and saunter along the cliff. When I got my glasses on him I saw it was an old man, wearing white flannel trousers, a blue serge jacket, and a straw hat.
I took my head in my hands and thought. There must be some way of reading this riddle. What did Scudder mean by steps? I thought of dock steps, but if he had meant that I didn’t think he would have mentioned the number. It must be some place where there were several staircases, and one marked out from the others by having thirty-nine steps.