Mysterious Aviator (16 page)

He agreed that she couldn’t stay there indefinitely. He told me that he had walked on over the down to have a look at her. Spadden was evidently sleeping in his house that Sunday afternoon, for Lenden saw nobody.

“She’s quite all right,” he said. “I slipped off the cover from the oil filter, and it was all bunged up with stuff from the inside of that bit of pipe. It’s a rotten bit of stuff, that pipe. Like garden hose. All she wants is a new bit, and the oil tank cleaning out, I suppose. There’s eight or nine hours’ petrol in the tanks still …

“Might want her again yet,” he said uneasily. “It’d be the easiest way of getting back to Russia.”

His walk had done nothing to resolve his mind. I made no direct answer to that, but presently I said:

“I’ve got to go to Town to-morrow.”

He was silent for a minute. “How long are you going to be away for?”

“It’s only a morning appointment. I ought to be back here by tea-time.”

“Any news of what’s happening about Russia?”

I shook my head. “Nothing at all.”

He relapsed into silence again, and presently we went to get ready for dinner. It was clear to me by that time that he was quite incapable of making up his mind. It was becoming more and more evident that he was reluctant to go back to Russia. I began to put considerable faith in the issue of this meeting with Robertson. It seemed to me that Lenden was in such a state of dither that he would go passively in any direction in which he
were pushed. I had some hopes that Robertson might provide the push.

We went over to the mansion. That was a quiet evening, one of a type that I had grown familiar with through the years that I had spent at Under. Supper on Sunday evening is always the same in that great candle-lit room; I trust it always will be. There was a cold chicken, a smoked tongue, a potato salad, a caramel pudding, and a Camembert. And rather a good Barsac. Beyond the candles the portrait of Arner’s grandfather stared down at me from above the mantelpiece, and I talked to Lady Arner about the garden and the tenants and Mattock’s foal—which I didn’t think much of. Mattock was a bit disappointed with that foal himself, as a matter of fact, and sold it over at Pithurst the other day.

Sheila had taken Lenden in hand, and was being very sweet with him. He was shy and restrained to begin with, I fancy, but by the time we reached the sweet the Barsac was at work, and he was talking to her quite fluently about his joy-riding experiences. I overheard some of it.

“Ten days in one place,” he said, “and then move on. Just the two week-ends. However well you’re doing, it never pays to stay longer than that. And it’s never any good to put on a special show on market day, like you’d think. Never do much business then. Just the Saturday and Sunday—they’re the big days. And little bits in the week….”

“I expect you get most people to come up at the big seaside places, don’t you?” inquired Sheila. “Places like Bournemouth and Brighton?”

He was entirely at his ease by now, and intent on telling her about the work he loved. “In a way,” he said. “You can burn your fingers pretty badly there, though—they’re mostly worked out. No, we stick more to the little places now—places about the size of Pithurst and Petersfield. You have to leave them for so long to recover. It’s never any good going back for four years. That’s the interval that you have to leave before you can do a good week’s business again. Four years….”

He mused a little. “Of course, some places you can go back
to year after year, and still take up as many as you can manage. Clapton … I’ve taken money there year after year. And then, some day we’ll get Bargate opened up.”

Sheila interposed a question. “Does Bargate go on and on?”

He smiled shyly. He had rather an attractive smile, though I hadn’t seen much of it since he’d been with me. But when he smiled, I remembered him as he used to be in the Service.

“Can’t go to Bargate at all,” he replied. “They won’t look at an aeroplane now. O’Dare did that in for us.”

“Why can’t you go there? Won’t they have you?”

He shook his head. “Corporation won’t hear a word about it—not since 1919. You can’t get permission to use a field within five miles of the place—not at any price. They’re not going to have the reputation of their town blasted by a lot of flying men. Never no more. I dare say they’re right.”

He sighed regretfully. “I’d make a fortune in six months if I could get a field at Bargate. I’d be able to retire….”

Sheila was intrigued. “What’s the matter with them? What happened?”

Lenden hesitated. “It was a bad show,” he said shyly. “It happened just after the war. O’Dare was the first of us to go to Bargate, and it was a little gold mine, I tell you. He got a field there just at the end of the promenade, by a bus stop. He was flying a three-seater Avro—he only had the one machine, and his ground engineer, and a clerk. And there’d never been any joy-riding in Bargate before, and the town was full of visitors. And every day when the boat came in from London they simply made one stream for his field. It was wonderful, I believe. He had a queue half a mile long from eight in the morning till dark, and the sole right for the place for the summer. He was in the air for thirteen hours a day, and in six weeks he’d cleared his expenses and paid for the machine and banked two thousand pounds clear profit.”

He was silent for a minute.

“What happened then?” asked the girl.

Lenden smiled. “He took to shooting the bottles off the shelf over the bartender’s head with his old service Webley,” he explained.
“In the Hotel Metropole, where all the Jews go. It was a shame that happened.”

“And then?”

“Oh, then it all came to an end, of course. They ran him and his aeroplane out of the town next day, and closed down the field. And now if you so much as fly over Bargate to take a photograph, you hear about it afterwards from the Town Clerk.”

He mused a little. “There’s a mint of money to be made there,” he said regretfully. “It’s virgin ground….”

I turned again to Lady Arner. We had bee disease in pretty well every hive that year; they used to come out on to the little ledge outside and die in shoals. I remember that she was very worried that we might not be going to get any honey of our own that year, and we talked bees and bee disease till the end of the meal.

And after supper, in the drawing-room, I played to them. I should probably have been playing that evening in my own house, if I had been there. Lady Arner and Sheila and Lenden pulled up chairs before the fire to study seed catalogues, or talk, or go to sleep, and I went over to the piano and sat for a little polishing the white keys and the rosewood before beginning.

I forget what I played that night—the usual things, I suppose. A little Chopin for myself, a little Schubert for Sheila, a little Verdi for Lady Arner and, incidentally, one or two of the songs from
Butterfly
. Lenden had got hold of one of Bunyard’s catalogues and was talking fruit trees with Lady Arner; she told me afterwards that he knew quite a lot about fruit trees, and wanted to know more. She was very much surprised when he told her that he hadn’t got a garden of his own. She knew nothing of his circumstances, but she had thought from the way he was talking that he would have been a great gardener.

That was the manner of that evening, and of a hundred similar ones that I have spent at Under. At the end of it we left the house, and strolled back to my place across the stable-yard.

We went into the sitting-room and had a whisky. I yawned.
“Got to get away before eight o’clock to-morrow,” I remarked, “if I’m to be in Town by ten. I’m driving up.”

I glanced across at him. “Have you made any plans?”

He shook his head. “I’m going to wait till to-morrow night. I expect you’ll hear a bit more about Russia up in Town, won’t you?”

I nodded. “Should do, if I see Arner.”

“In that case, I think I’ll wait till you get back.”

I set down my glass and got up on my feet. “Better take that dog of Kitter’s out again,” I said. “He’s getting as fat as butter.”

And so we turned in.

It saves quite a lot of time to motor up to Town from Under; I had breakfast at half-past seven and got away in the Morris by eight o’clock. It wasn’t a bad sort of morning—blue sky and clouds, with a stiffish wind from the north-east. I made pretty good time on the road, and by ten minutes to ten I was rolling into Knightsbridge.

As I had supposed, Robertson was a big man. He must have stood six foot two, and he was broad in proportion. He had a tanned, pleasant face, but he looked as hard as nails, and I judged that he would be a pretty tough chap to tackle if you got up against him. On the whole I liked the look of him as he came across the lounge to meet me, walking with a curious rolling gait. I found out later that that was the legacy of a crash.

He greeted me in his soft, hoarse voice, strongly flavoured with Americanisms.

“G’morning, Mr. Moran. I’m real glad to see you.” He moved away across the room. “Come on over here. There’s a quiet corner that we can talk business.” We settled into a couple of leather chairs. “Now, what’ll you drink?”

It was ten o’clock in the morning. I cried off that.

He laughed quietly. “Well then. About this business for your firm—Stevenson and Moran, I think you said?”

For a moment I wondered if I was going to be kicked out of the place. “I must explain that a bit,” I said. “The matter that I’ve come to see you about is pretty confidential—I didn’t want
to go into it over the phone. There’s no such firm as Stevenson and Moran, not that I know of. That was a yarn to get you to give me an appointment.”

He turned a very grey eye on me. “See here,” he said without heat. “Are you a drummer?”

I grinned, and shook my head. “I’m agent to Lord Arner, down in Sussex.”

He looked relieved. “I reckoned that you’d come to sell me something. It didn’t take me long to find that there was no such firm as Stevenson and Moran on the Baltic.”

“I’ve not come to sell you anything,” I said. “But I’ve got business to talk, all the same.”

He settled down into his chair and offered me a very black and diseased-looking cigar. “Fire away,” he said, biting the end off his own.

“It’s about a man called Lenden,” I said. “Maurice Lenden, I think he was out with you in Honduras.”

I had startled him. He paused in the act of taking the bit out of his mouth with finger and thumb, and stared at me.

“What about him?” he asked, depositing the tobacco in an ash-tray.

“What’s he like as a pilot?”

There was a long pause at that. “Now see here,” he said at last. “If you’re thinking of employing Maurice Lenden as a pilot, I’ll tell you what I think of him.” I wasn’t thinking of employing him as a pilot, but I let him run on. “You’ll find him a real wizard pilot. He’s right out of the top drawer. Barring the float that he ripped up when we were up the Patuca, I’ve never heard of him doing the slightest damage to a machine. Maybe he’s had luck in his forced landings, but if you want a damn fine, safe, careful pilot for any job whatever, then you’ve got the right man.”

He paused. “That’s as a pilot. If you try to run him as a manager as well, then your luck’ll be out, and I tell you that straight. He’s a damn good fellow, and straight as they’re made; but he couldn’t run a whelk stall to make it pay. He can’t manage his own affairs—let alone a business. He’s a pilot,
and a pilot only, and as a pilot he’s right up in the front line. But he’s nothing more.”

He turned to me curiously. “Do you know where he is now?”

“He’s down at my place, in Sussex.”

“Is he out of a job?”

“He’d probably take one if he could get it.”

“You’re not thinking of employing him yourself, then?”

I shook my head. “I came to see if you knew of anything that he could do.”

He was puzzled at that. He turned and stared at me curiously. “I don’t see that. Why didn’t he come up himself? Did he send you to see me?”

I blew a long cloud of smoke from that foul cigar. “No,” I said. “As a matter of fact, he didn’t. I came up here on my own to see how the land lay.” I paused. “As a matter of fact, he’s been in a bit of trouble.”

Robertson raised his eyebrows.

I eyed him steadily. “In confidence,” I said. “You won’t go and let him down?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s no business of mine what he’s been up to. But he’s a good pilot and a damn nice chap, and I’m sorry if he’s in trouble.”

That seemed good enough to me. “He’s just back from Russia,” I said. “By the back door. He’s been flying for the Soviet for some time now. There’s nothing really wrong, but the Foreign Office’d probably like to get him for a quiet talk before sending him to Dartmoor for a bit.”

He nodded slowly. “D’you know,” he said at last, “we reckoned it was something like that.” And was silent again.

After a bit he turned to me curiously. “I don’t quite see how you come into it,” he said. “Are you one of his wife’s people?”

I shook my head. “I came into it by accident. But I’ve met him before. In Ninety-two Squadron, in 1917.”

“Does he know you’ve come up here?”

“No.”

“What’s his own idea, then? What’s he going to do?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “He talks about going back to Russia.”

Robertson blew a long cloud of smoke, and flicked the ash from his cigar on to the carpet. “Doesn’t sound as if that’d do him much good. Not the way things are at present.”

I shook my head. “There’ll be a break with Russia.”

He glanced at me quickly. “D’you
know
that?”

“No. It’s bound to happen sooner or later, though. And it won’t do for him to get caught out there then.”

“No,” he said slowly. “By God it won’t.” He turned to me. “Does he understand that?”

“In a way. He’s very vague. His trouble is that he doesn’t see what else there is for him to do.”

I laid the unconsumed portion of that appalling cigar upon the ash-tray. “I understand that a year or two ago you offered to take him into partnership. When you were starting in the Argentine. He told me that.”

At that, Robertson leaned forward and began to talk. He said that he wanted me to get this quite clear. He didn’t employ pilots as staff—he only had one, or two at the most. He got them in as partners. He wanted capital—he was always wanting capital, and he paid ten per cent for it. His pilots had to operate away from him for months on end, and unless they had an interest in the business he couldn’t rely on the show being run properly when he was away. If Lenden could bring capital along with him—say a thousand pounds—he might be able to fix him up with a job, although he would be no party to getting him out of the country. Lenden would have to meet him in the Argentine.