Teaser Tuesdays: The Thirty-Nine Steps

This week my teaser lines come from John Buchan's classic adventure tale, The Thirty-Nine Steps. It's one of the books I'm reading for a couple of the challenges I still have to finish up this year, but it's also been on my TBR list for decades now.

The quote comes from Chapter One, and I'm not sure of the page number since I'm reading it on my iPad (it's Location 43-55 of the Kindle edition). At this point in the story, we've been introduced to the protagonist (and narrator of the story) Richard Hannay and he's being visited by an upstairs neighbor who seems in need of his help (I know this is more than two lines, but I didn't want to break up the passage):

There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.

'Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.'

Okey-dokey. Well, I can tell you that the neighbor is definitely NOT a vampire, ghost or zombie, but beyond that my lips are sealed.

Cover of the Penguin edition.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in a comment here.