Mysterious Aviator (11 page)

“We think so.”

I thought about it for a minute. “There are a great number of places in that area where an aeroplane could land, even at night,” I said. “But surely, it’s a bit premature to assume that she landed at all. She may only have started to fly silently. If she could do that once she could do it again.”

He shook his head. “That has been suggested. But against that we’ve got what happened at the Nab. You know what happens when a pilot finds his engine flagging—a stoppage in the petrol supply, perhaps. He throttles his engine down, and then opens out again to try and clear it. You do it on a car, just the same. And if he can’t get it right, he turns towards the best country for a forced landing and climbs to gain height before it peters out altogether, so that he can have time to look about for a safe landing-ground while he’s gliding down.”

There was a long silence. At last:

“That all fits in,” I said. “I must say, it looks as if something of the sort had happened. Still, that’s two days ago. I
can hardly believe that the aeroplane can still be here. I must have heard of it before this.”

I paused for a moment. “You see,” I said quietly, “I hear everything that goes on here.”

He inclined his head. “Quite so. Frankly, I don’t expect to find the aeroplane. That would be too much to hope for. Too good to be true. I think it most likely that the pilot landed, contrived to rectify the trouble, and got away again. Very likely I’ve come down here on a wild-goose chase. But the least evidence about this thing will be of value to us now.”

“You’ve named a mighty big area of country,” I muttered.

The candles were flickering in some draught about the table, throwing great dancing shadows in the corners of the room, and glinting on the silver. I dropped my head into my hands, and sat staring at my plate for a minute or two. I was thinking of Lenden. I’m not a strong man myself, nor a clever one. I had to make my decision in that moment; I’m damned if I know now whether I did right or not.

I raised my head. “The funny thing is that I was out that night myself,” I said. “I was driving back from Winchester with a friend. We didn’t get in till about two in the morning. But I saw nothing of all this.”

Now that, to me, sums up the whole essence of that evening—the earlier part of it, at any rate. Looking back upon it now, after all these months, I don’t know that I regret it.

“A further point,” said Dermott. “Do you know of anyone disaffected in the neighbourhood? Anyone who might be expected to give assistance in such a case?”

“You mean, anyone with Russian sympathies?”

He nodded.

I shook my head slowly. “We’re an agricultural county, you see. I don’t know of any red-hot Bolsheviks here. We’ve got a few cranks, of course. There’s a chap here in Under, a hairdresser, who talks Communism in the market on Saturdays. He doesn’t count. No, there’s nobody that I know of.”

Lord Arner nodded gravely. “That is also my opinion.”

“You don’t see much chance of a conspiracy?”

“No,” I replied, “I don’t. Quite frankly, from what you’ve said, I think that if that machine had trouble that forced her to land she must have put it right and got away again without anyone being any the wiser. Otherwise, I think I must have heard of it.”

There was a long silence, and then:

“It doesn’t look very promising,” said Dermott ruefully. “It was an off-chance from the first, of course.”

I began to describe to him the various possible landing-grounds in that part of the country. They were innumerable on the downs, and very many in the farming land. For the better part of an hour I led him in a random, detailed discussion of the neighbourhood. I told him everything that I could think of about the area that he was interested in, and I told him nothing that was of any value to him at all.

We gave it up at last, and went through into the drawing-room. It must have been about ten o’clock by then. We had settled that in the morning I should take Dermot for a run over the area in a car, and point out to him what I considered to be the most favourable landing-grounds. But I had done my work pretty well. By the time we left the dining-room I could see that he regarded the whole matter as a useless quest, and that he was already wondering whether it would not be better for him to get back to London straight away. Lord Arner said roundly that he thought we should find nothing at all.

I didn’t think that I should have much difficulty in concealing the Breguet from an investigation conducted in that spirit.

In the drawing-room we all had to brace ourselves a little to be entertaining for an hour before bed. As the easiest way out of a difficult position—for we were all preoccupied that night—Arner picked on me. I wasn’t sorry to sit down and play to them; it saved the necessity for talking. Lady Arner has a great attachment to light opera. I remember playing Saint-Saëns for her that evening, with a considerable effort to take the treacle out of
Mon cœur se lève à ta voix
, and a little Verdi. Then I went wandering for a bit, and I remember playing
One Fine Day
. Now that was a funny thing. She liked that best of all, but
would never ask for it. She used to ask for
Mon cœur
and for bits of
La Traviata
, and she liked Schubert; but I cannot remember that she has ever asked for
Butterfly
, although she likes it best of all.

The evening came to an end at last—that part of it, at any rate. Lady Arner gathered her things together presently and went up to bed, taking Sheila with her; I think our acting must have been pretty poor. Arner rang the bell and we had a whisky and soda together, rather a silent one, and then I said good night and went back to my house across the still, moonlit stable-yard.

Lenden was up when I got back, and sitting in a chair before the fire in my pyjamas and dressing-gown. He told me that he was much better, and had got up while they made his bed. And had stayed up. I could see that he was better; he had shaved and looked altogether more himself.

I mooned uncertainly about the room for a bit, and then lit a cigarette and sat down. “This fellow Dermott,” I said.

Lenden looked up quickly. “What about him?”

“He’s after you, all right. They’ve got quite a good idea of what you did and where you came from. They know you landed somewhere near here.” I paused. “Dermott came to get me to help try and find you.”

“Oh.” He stared at me darkly. “Did you?”

I chucked the match into the fire. “No,” I said after a minute. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“What did he want you to do?”

I leaned back in my chair. “Just to help him get any information there was to be had. They know the machine landed in this part and they came to me—as a sort of private detective, I suppose. Because I hear all the gossip. Because if anyone knew anything, it would be me. That’s why they came. We had a long talk about it. They don’t know you by name, and they’re not sure where the machine came from. They know you had engine trouble and had to land. That’s all. They think now
that you must have put it right and got away again.”

He stared morosely into the fire. “So I would have done if I’d had a bit of pipe. It’s only a little thing. But I’d got nothing. Not a tool of any sort. One never thinks of carrying tools in an aeroplane.”

He sat there brooding in his chair for a long time after that. It must have been a long time, because I remember that his cigarette went out between his fingers. Till at last:

“I don’t know why you went and did that,” he said slowly. “Why didn’t you tell them that I was here?”

I turned to him in blank amazement.

“It’d have meant about ten years in quod for you if I had,” I replied curtly.

Apparently that was quite a new idea to him. He looked across at me vaguely. “Would it?”

I laughed shortly. “It ruddy well would. I used to be a lawyer.”

He was silent then for a minute, staring into the shadows of the room beyond me. “Even so,” he said quietly, “it might have been the best thing to have done.”

I got up irritably and stood with my back to the fire. “I’m damned if I see that,” I said. “You’re out of the wood now—practically. This chap Dermott will go away to-morrow. I’ve just about finished with him. I’ve only got to run him round a bit in the car and keep him away from the Breguet, and then he’ll go. You’ll have nothing to worry about then. We’ll burn the Breguet, and then you’ll be free to do what you like.”

He took me up at once. “What do you suppose that’s going to be?”

That point hadn’t occurred to me before. I stood there eyeing him for a minute. And then I made a sudden movement. “It’s no business of mine,” I said impatiently. “I don’t know what you’re going to do.”

He laughed, not very pleasantly. “Neither do I.”

After that there was a long silence in the room. Presently I went over to the piano and sat down absently, but I didn’t play. I sat there fingering the keys, polishing them with my
handkerchief, and wondering what the devil was going to happen to him. It hadn’t struck me before that that might be a bit of a problem.

“Does anyone in England know you went to Russia?” I inquired.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t tell anyone. And I went out on a forged passport.”

I dropped my hands from the keyboard. “Then I don’t see that it matters. You can stay in England if you want to.”

He turned on me. “England’s no damn good without a job. It’s all very well for you to talk, in a place like this. But for me—the last job I had was in the garage. Ruddy good fun, that.”

I was silent.

And presently he began to talk. “You see, it’s not as if I had a home in England now,” he said. “I’ve got nowhere to go to … or anything. It’s been damn good of you to let me lie up here like this, and it’s given me a chance to think things out, lying in bed all the time. And I think I’d better go back to Russia.”

I moved over to the sideboard, a little ashamed of myself. “Have a drink,” I said.

He took a whisky and sat down again before the fire. “I know what you’re thinking,” he muttered. “You think I ought to go to Scotland Yard like a Briton and give up these ruddy photographs. Well, I’m not going to. I’m going back to Russia with them.”

I set down my glass. “Do whatever you like,” I said phlegmatically. “Do what you think’ll do you most good.”

He disregarded that. “I’ve thought it all out. I’m going back to Russia. There’s good jobs to be had out there, and I’m in one of them. It’s a good country if you can learn to hold your tongue. It’s good pay, and you can live decently. More than you can in this damn country. I’ll take on again with them and stay out there for another five years or so, and then maybe I’ll come back and put what I’ve saved into a business.”

“You could do that now,” I said.

He turned and stared at me. “What about these plates?”

I fingered my tumbler for a minute. “Forget about them. You don’t want to go mucking about with that sort of thing if you’re going to stay in England.”

He shook his head slowly. “That’s not the way I do business,” he said. “I’ve always played what I thought was the straight game, and I’m damned if I’ll chuck it now.”

I nodded. I had a feeling that perhaps he might be looking at it like that. Business is business.

“Send back the thousand, then,” I suggested. “To Arcos.”

He stared at me blankly. “I don’t see the point of that. That means I’d have no money and no job.” He paused. “I’d be a damn sight better off in Russia. I’m getting eight hundred a year there, you know. Sterling.”

I eyed him thoughtfully. “There’s one other way,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Send the plates by post to the Soviet Embassy to send back to Russia, but stay in England yourself. With the thousand.”

There was a bit of cork in his tumbler. He sat there for a long time studying this thing, swishing it round and round the edge of the glass. Till at last:

“I don’t think that would work,” he said slowly. “You can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds like that. It’s what every bloody little pimp and dago does. You can stick to the service and be a hundred per cent Englishman—or you can go into business with the other side. It’s got to be one thing or the other. You can’t have it both ways. And I’m free to choose. If I’d got a wife, and a home to go to, and a chance of kids … it might be different. Maybe I’d chuck it up then, and stay in England and hope something would turn up—like I used to. But … I don’t want to do that now.

“I want to get away from the whole bloody issue,” he said, a little plaintively. “I thought all this out before I went to Russia first of all, and I’ve been thinking about it again now. And I don’t see any reason to change.”

He drained his glass and set it down upon the table. “It’s the kids,” he muttered. “If there was any chance of a home and kids … it’d be different.”

I got up from my chair and put my glass upon the mantelpiece. “Do what you like,” I said absently. “I expect you’re right.”

And with that we went to bed. I undressed slowly that night, wondering what I ought to do about it. I didn’t much care for the thought of Lenden getting away with those photographs and taking them back to Russia. And I had an idea, too, that he didn’t want to go himself. I thought then, and I still think, that it would have been a relief to him if I had gone over to the mansion there and then and given him up to Dermott. I wish to God I had.

I got into bed, and pretty soon I fell asleep.

I was roused by Sanders in the middle of the night. I sleep pretty heavily, and I woke up slowly to find him shaking me by the shoulder. “Mr. Moran. Mr. Moran, sir.”

I opened one eye and leaned up on one elbow. “What’s the trouble?” I muttered.

It was still quite dark outside. The old man was inadequately dressed in a shirt and trousers covered by an overcoat, but dignified withal. “Lord Arner would be glad if you would go over to the library, sir. He sent me to wake you.”

“Good God!” said I. “What’s the time?”

“About four o’clock, sir.”

I rubbed my eyes and sat up in bed. It was very cold. “Right you are,” I said. “I’ll be over in about ten minutes. D’you know what’s happening?”