Mysterious Aviator (12 page)

“There was a telephone call came through at about two o’clock, sir. A trunk call. You know, sir, the extension to the bell rings in my bedroom.”

I nodded sleepily. “Who was it for?”

“For Commander Dermott. I went to his bedroom, sir, and called him to answer it because they said it was urgent. It was a call from Gosport. Official business, I imagine, sir.”

I was suddenly awake. “What’s been happening since then?”

“There have been several other calls. The Commander went to see Lord Arner in his dressing-room after the first one, sir.
Lord Arner came downstairs about an hour ago. Commander Dermott is with him in the library now. I think the gentlemen have been speaking to London on the telephone.”

I slipped out of bed on to the floor. “Right you are,” I said. “I’ll be over in a minute or two.”

I dressed hurriedly when he had gone, and went across the stable-yard to the mansion. It was very cold outside. In the yard the moon was bright, a brilliant night with patches of loose cloud swinging across the moon in a strong westerly breeze. I paused for a minute, and looked around at the hurrying clouds and at the stars between. That was no night for espionage. There was no cover in the sky.

I found Dermott with Arner in the library. Both were fully dressed in morning clothes. They had made up the fire into a great blaze, and Dermott had drawn up a little table before it. He was sitting at this table when I went in, and he had it all littered with papers and a map. Arner was in his usual chair before the fire, the little table at his elbow.

“Morning, sir,” I said as I went in. “Nothing wrong, I hope?”

Dermott raised his head and turned towards me. “There has been a development of this spying,” he said. “My information is very brief. The machine has been over Portsmouth this evening for the third time, and dropped the usual flare. Exactly as before. They were ready for it this time. The machine was shot down by one of our own night fighters, and crashed in a field near Hamble.”

I didn’t speak.

Lord Arner turned to me. “Sit down, Moran,” he said. “It will not be long now before we hear the whole of this affair.”

Dermott turned again to his papers. “I’m expecting a report in a few minutes,” he remarked. “Jackson and the pilot are on their way here now—by road. They started about an hour ago.”

In the library it was very still. Arner was sitting huddled up in his great leather armchair before the fire, slowly filling a pipe. Dermott was silent and immersed in his papers at the table; I could not see what he was doing. I drew up a chair
upon the other side of the table, and sat down before the fire; for a long time the little roaring of the flames and the little crashes of the embers were the only noises that I heard in that great room. Presently Arner lit his pipe and threw the match into the grate and, reaching down, dragged out a heavy volume from the bookcase by his chair. He snapped on the reading-light beside him, opened the book upon his knees, and began turning the pages slowly, with long pauses, the blue smoke coiling thinly above his head into the darkness.

For over half an hour we must have sat like that, a silence broken only by the fire, by the rustle of Dermott’s papers as he made his notes, or by the occasional rippling as Arner turned a page. At last Dermott pushed back his chair, glancing from his watch to the clock.

“They should have been here by now,” he muttered.

Arner raised his head. “It is a very long way.”

“Forty-five miles,” said Dermott incisively. “Say an hour and a quarter.” He glanced down at his host as he stood before the fire, and his eyes rested curiously on the volume. For a minute he looked puzzled; perhaps that book didn’t quite fit in with his conception of a diplomat. But Arner had a picture of a Devon lane there, and he never stirred or looked up. In the last few days it seemed to me that he had aged very rapidly.

I listened for a moment in the stillness, and stood up. “There’s a car coming now,” I said.

They must have made pretty good time from Gosport. I went through the hall to the door and opened it as the car drew up—a big American five-seater, perhaps a Stutz or Chrysler. Two men in uniform greatcoats got out of it; in the light that streamed from the door I could see that one of them was very young. As young as I was when I used to play that game.

The elder of the two came up the steps first, and stood peering at me for a moment. “Wing-Commander Dermott?” he inquired.

“He’s inside, waiting for you,” I replied. “Come in.”

I showed them through the hall into the library. Dermott and Arner were standing there together before the fire.

“Evening, Jackson,” said Dermott. “Squadron-Leader Jackson—Lord Arner.” He turned to Jackson again. “And …”

Jackson motioned to his companion. “Flying-Officer Mackenzie, sir,” he said. This was a sandy-haired, pale-faced young man. I don’t think he can have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old. He was a well set-up, athletic-looking young fellow, but he was curiously white; as he stood there his eyes were wandering uneasily around the room. It seemed to me that he was nervous, and more than a little shaken.

“What about the letters?” said Dermott briskly. “You’ve brought them with you?”

Jackson nodded. “There are three or four, sir,” he replied. “So far as I have been able to make out, this pilot was a German subject, operating from Kieff. There is an addressed envelope.”

He laid down a large official envelope, and opened it on the table. From it he took two crumpled letters and a little flat packet wrapped in some coarse cloth. “These are the letters,” he said.

Dermott opened them one by one, and skimmed rapidly through the spidery writing on the pages. “These are in German,” he said to Arner, and dropped his eyes to the paper again. “From his wife.” He muttered a sentence or two in German, half to himself, and flicked over the page. “They are addressed to Leutnant Friedrich Keumer, at an address in Kieff. They contain nothing but local gossip and news of his children. What one would expect….”

He smiled at the paper, a little cynically. “‘Elsa has with Franz to the Steiner this afternoon gone,’ “he read. “‘So I am alone.’”

He laid down the letter.

Arner inclined his head. “A German pilot flying for the Soviet?” he inquired.

“I think so,” replied Dermott. He reached for the cloth packet. “What’s in this?”

Jackson was before him, and took it up. “More letters, sir.
Those that you have were found in one of the side pockets on the right-hand side. These are from the breast pocket on the left. I’m afraid you’ll find them in rather a mess.”

Dermott took the packet and unwrapped it carefully. Inside there was a sodden pulp of paper, reddish black in colour, and very sticky. He turned the mass over curiously with his forefinger, stared at it for a moment, and then wrapped it up again in the fabric.

“Can’t do much with these, I’m afraid,” he remarked coolly. “They’ll have to be treated.”

Arner nodded gravely. “Make that boy sit down,” he said. “He’s looking quite ill.”

I saw Mackenzie stiffen. “I’m quite all right sir,” he said.

Dermott and Jackson turned and stared at him. He was certainly very white.

I turned to Jackson. “You’ve had a long drive,” I said, “and it’s cold outside. What about a whisky?”

“That’s right,” said Arner. “Give him a whisky.” And while I was fiddling with the siphon and the glasses, Dermott turned again to Jackson.

“What was the machine?”

“A Breguet XIX with the Lorraine engine. She’s very badly crashed, and it’s dark. There was a camera, but the engine is on top of it at the moment. I left instructions that nothing was to be moved till dawn, on account of destroying any evidence. Till we can get a sheer-legs and lift the engine, we shan’t be able to get at the camera. The machine seems to be a single-seater, and fitted with an adjustable propeller. But that again—we haven’t examined.”

They began upon rather a lengthy technical discussion about the best means of salving any evidence in the wrecked machine. They congratulated each other on the fact that it had not caught fire.

“A German pilot,” said Dermott at last, “living in Russia, and flying a French machine.” He mused over it for a little. “We shall want to know more than that.”

He turned to Jackson again. “Did you have much difficulty in getting him down?”

“Mr. Mackenzie had better give you his report, sir.”

Mackenzie pulled himself up and set down his glass. There was more colour about him now; I’d made that whisky a good one.

“No, sir,” he said. “It went all right this time.”

Dermott eyed him for a moment. “How long did you take to get away?”

Jackson interposed. “The machines—three of them—were off the ground thirty-five seconds after the first alarm,” he said. “We have been practising that in the last few days. With Hucks starters.”

“That’s very good indeed,” said Dermott. “What happened then?”

“Mr. Mackenzie,” said Jackson.

The boy came forward. “There was a bright moon,” he said, “and the searchlights were holding the machine. I didn’t have to go and look for it.”

He paused.

“The searchlights picked up the machine almost at once,” said Jackson. “From Gosport, and from a destroyer off Southsea. As soon as the flare appeared.”

Dermott interposed. “The pilot first, Major Jackson.”

Mackenzie drew himself up nervously. “I took off as soon as the starter was clear,” he said. “Before the landing lights came on. Flight-Lieutenant Armstrong was next off the ground, I think. And then Hesketh.”

“On what machines?”

“I was flying the Nightjar, sir. Armstrong and Hesketh were on Doves.”

He paused to collect his story. “I came up with the Breguet about a minute and a half later, at about two thousand feet,” he said. “That was over Southsea. I think Armstrong was somewhere near me, but I don’t remember seeing him. The machine was still in the searchlights, but it was slipping about a good bit and very nearly clear of them. But there was a
good moon, and even if he’d got clear we’d still have been able to see him, I think. I switched on the fighting beam at once and pooped off a green Very light at him, as we’d arranged.”

Dermott inquired: “Did he take any notice?”

“Not that I saw, sir. He got clear of the searchlights almost directly after that. I could still see him faintly in the moonlight, and brilliantly whenever I got the fighting beam on to him, of course. He slipped right round then, and went away to the west, full out. I went after him.”

He paused again. “I didn’t gain much on him. I think he must have been very nearly as fast as the Nightjar, sir. I lost all touch with Poddy then. We left the Doves behind. We went away west for minutes on end, and when I’d closed up till he filled the ring of my sight in the fighting light I gave him a burst of tracer bullets, sir. Over his head.”

“Did he make any reply to your fire? At any time?”

The boy swallowed violently. “No, sir. I don’t think he had a gun.”

“Did your fire have any effect at all?”

“No, sir. I thought at first he was giving up after that, because he turned away and I lost sight of him for a moment. I thought perhaps he’d shut off, and was going down to land. And then I picked him up again. He’d turned north, and he was still going full out. We were over the Solent then, and somewhere west of Lee.”

Dermott eyed him keenly. “What happened then?”

“I was afraid he would get away, sir. I was running my engine full out with the supercharger. It’s not meant to be run like that below fifteen thousand feet, but I was afraid he’d get away from me. I couldn’t have kept up with him any other way.”

Jackson interrupted. “Mr. Mackenzie means that he could only rely upon his engine to give that excess power for a very short time. He had to act quickly, or not at all. As you know, sir—I had given explicit orders that the machine was to be shot down in those circumstances.”

Dermott nodded. “I know,” he said. “Mr. Mackenzie did quite right.”

He turned to the boy. “So then you shot him down?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a little silence. The pilot was staring uneasily around him, as though he was afraid to meet our eyes. “It was about half-way between Lee and Hamble,” he muttered. “I closed right up and gave him three bursts into the fuselage. He pulled her right up as if he was going to loop over me … and then he fell out of that into a spin with full engine on, I think, and went down like that. I saw him flicking round. And I saw him hit a tree….”

His voice died away into silence.

“You went back to the aerodrome?”

“No, sir. I flew about low over the fields for a bit, till I found what I thought was a pasture. It looked smooth enough, so I landed in it, with the flares. It turned out to be harrow, but I got her down all right.

“It was two fields from the crash,” he said. “I left the Nightjar with the lights on so that anyone flying over would see where I had put down. And I ran across the fields to the crash, sir. And as I went, I heard Poddy Armstrong land behind me.”

“You were the first person to reach the crash, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was the pilot still alive?”

“Yes, sir.” There was a short silence. “The machine was very badly crashed—the fuselage all telescoped on to him. I had to shift the top plane before I could get at the pilot. When I got that out of the way I tried to get him out of his seat, but his legs were caught somehow. And when I tried to move him, he cried out, sir.” The boy’s face was dead white. “So I had to leave him where he was, and I just did all I could to get him into a comfortable position and find out how he was hurt. You see, sir, it was all dark, and I couldn’t see very well what I was doing. I did all I could.” He stared round at us, as though he expected us to disbelieve him. “And he kept on
trying to tell me something, but I don’t speak German, and I didn’t understand. And then Captain Armstrong came. And a minute or two after that, he died.”

Arner turned away, and sat down quietly before the fire, and began polishing his glasses with a handkerchief.

“Can you remember anything of the sound of the words?” asked Dermott. “Enough to repeat what he was trying to tell you?”