Mysterious Aviator (13 page)

The boy shook his head. “I’m afraid not, sir. I was … rather upset.”

Dermott bit his lip, and tapped the cloth-covered packet. “You say that these were taken from the breast pocket? In that case they’ll be the important ones.”

Jackson nodded. “The body was considerably shot about,” he said. “Those were the only papers we could find. It’s possible that there may be other evidence in the machine. Maps, for example. I have had nothing touched.”

There was a pause.

“That’s very likely,” said Dermott at last. “I’ll come back with you to Gosport.” He glanced out of the window; it was still quite dark. “It should be getting light soon,” he said. We’ll start directly.”

He turned to me. “You were quite right this evening, Mr. Moran. Evidently, if the machine landed here on Thursday night, she repaired the trouble and got away again.”

Arner raised his head by the fireside. “Why does she keep on coming, night after night? She can learn all she wants to by one visit.”

Dermott shook his head. “I don’t know. We may find something to explain that in the machine.

“Anyway,” he said, “we’ve got her this time.”

He asked if his suitcase could be packed. I went out into the hall and found Sanders drowsing in the gun-room, and sent him off to see about it. When I came back, Dermott was going over the details of the affair again with the other two. Arner was still sitting before the fire, still taking little notice of what was going on behind him, still leaning forward and
polishing his glasses. I remember that at the time I was very much impressed with that little action of his. Of all the people in the room that night Arner was most able to appreciate the significance of that affair, and of all the people in the room he was the least excited, the most detached.

At last Dermott had finished. “Right,” he said to Jackson. “We’ll start at once. If you wouldn’t mind going out to the car….”

And when they were out of the room, he turned to Arner. “We’re in for the devil of a row over this night’s work, sir, I’m afraid,” he said. “We shall have questions in the House.”

“Which will certainly not be answered,” said Arner quietly. “But in regard to Russia … I don’t know. It depends on Allen now.”

I had a quick impression of the tremendous forces that were massing together for a catastrophe.

Dermott walked nervously down the room, and swung round at the other end. “I don’t see what else we could have done.”

“Nothing,” said Arner. “You could have done nothing more.” He rose to his feet before the fire, a short, portentous little figure. “This thing will have to take its course.”

And that was all of any importance that was said. In a minute or two Sanders came and told us that the Commander’s bag was in the car. Dermott rose to take his leave. Through the open door I saw Jackson and Mackenzie in the hall, buttoning up their coats.

“I am very sorry for that young man,” said Arner.

Dermott smiled. “He’s young. A good lad, but he’s not long out of Cranwell. He’ll get over it. Jackson’s very good with them. He’ll probably send him off on a month’s leave, and that’ll put him right.”

He drew on his coat, and went. I walked with him to the door, and waited outside at the head of the steps till I saw the lights of the car swing round to make a brilliant tunnel of the drive. The night was practically cloudless. The moon was sinking, and the east of the sky was getting a little grey.

I went back into the library. Arner had settled down again before the fire and was slowly turning the pages of the
Studio
, the big volume firmly posed upon his knees. In one hand he held his glasses before his eyes.

I asked if there was anything that I could do. At his instructions I fetched the telephone from the morning-room and plugged it in beside him, and set it on the table by his side.

And then: “You’d better go back to bed, Moran,” he said. “There’s nothing more.”

I hesitated for a moment outside the circle of light from his reading-lamp. “What about you, sir,” I inquired. “Won’t you go up to bed yourself?”

He shook his head. “I think I shall stay up for a little,” he replied, and by his voice I knew that he wanted to be alone.

I went out of the mansion by the garden door, and went round to the stable-yard and to my own house. It was about half-past five, and the sky was getting very grey. I knew that I should sleep no more that night, but I went into my bedroom and threw off my clothes, and got back into bed.

It was full dawn when I gave it up, got up again, and dressed. In the next room to my own I could hear Lenden’s steady breathing as he slept, even and regular. I went through into my sitting-room, and the first thing I saw in there was that black box of plates on top of the safe. Looking back upon it all now, I find it very curious to realise how careless of that thing we were. It might just as well have been inside the safe, but we left it lying about on top. As if it was of no consequence.

I moved across the room and took the thing up from the safe, turning it over absently in my hands. I was worried about Arner. I couldn’t get any sleep myself, but the thought that the old man might still be sitting over there in the library, still turning over the pages of the
Studio
in the bright morning, worried me more than a little. He was too old for that sort of thing. I decided to go over to the mansion again to see if there was anything that I could do for him; if I could persuade him to go up to bed.

But as I went, I slipped that packet of plates into the pocket
to my coat. I suppose I must have known even then what I was going to do.

I crossed the yard and entered the mansion again by the back door. There was a maid in the kitchen, yawning and fiddling with the grate; when she saw me in the corridor her mouth shut with an almost audible click. I passed on into the house.

There was nobody about. The library was empty, and that volume of the
Studio
was replaced in the shelf with the others. Arner had given it up. I went over to the window and drew the curtains; the rings went rattling back along the pole and the sunlight streamed in upon the room. It was exactly as I had always known it. As usual in that room, everything was more or less in its place but not quite; there was no indication of what had happened there during the night. There was nothing to show that I had not dreamed of Dermott and of Jackson, nothing to show that the evidence of that white young man was anything more than a distressing form of nightmare. Till my eye caught the whisky decanter and the scattered glasses, and I knew that it was all quite true.

I don’t know how long I stood there like that—I dare say it was only for a minute or two. It was long enough for the sense of a great responsibility to come upon me, and of a great loneliness. I had those plates in my pocket. It was up to me now; I had chosen to conceal the man who took them, and now I had to do something with the ruddy things. I couldn’t bring myself to let him get back to Russia with them, unhindered. I discovered, as I stood there in the library that morning, that it is one thing to assist in the escape of a renegade spy from justice, but quite another thing to play the part oneself.

And then I heard steps. They were on the stairs that went up at the far end of the hall in a wide, shallow flight, and then they were on the parquet of the hall itself. I knew that it was Sheila at the first sound. I would have known that two years before. I stood there motionless until she came; I heard her pause first at the door of the drawing-room, and then come on down the hall.

She came and stood in the doorway of the great room, and
looked around. I remember that she was wearing a pale blue jumper and a tweed skirt; she was dressed for the country. There was a patch of morning sunlight that fell across that door, and she stood there with the colours gleaming in her fair hair, staring around the room. For the moment she didn’t see me, but stood there, her lips parted a little, taking in the slight disorderliness of the room, and noticing the whisky glasses.

And in the end she saw me. “Mr. Moran!”

I moved across the room towards her. “Morning, Miss Darle,” I said. “You’re up bright and early.”

She glanced up at me, her eyes twinkling. “So are you,” she said demurely.

I nodded. “I do this once or twice a month,” I replied. “I like to see the men get about their work to the proper time.”

For a moment there was silence. “I believe you’re the best liar I’ve ever met,” she said at last. I was silent. “Mr. Moran, I want you to tell me, please. What’s been happening? Has Commander Dermott gone?”

I nodded.

“When did he go?”

“About an hour and a half ago,” I said. “He went away by road.”

That seemed to puzzle her. “I heard the car from upstairs. Why did he go away like that?”

I was silent.

She came a little closer to me, and stood there looking up into my face. “There’s nothing wrong, is there? Not frightfully wrong?”

I laughed. “It’s all about as wrong as it can be, Miss Darle,” I said. “But, as you say, I’m the world’s champion liar, and I’ve managed to put Dermott off the track. So I suppose that’s something.”

She had nothing to say to that.

“I came over to see if Lord Arner was still up,” I said inconsequently.

She shook her head. “I came down, and got him to go up to bed about an hour ago. He’s frightfully upset over something.”
She stared at me. “Something that happened after we went up to bed.”

I nodded. She waited for a minute to see if I was going to tell her anything, and then she said:

“I came downstairs soon after the car went away, when I heard you go over to your house. He was still up, and sitting in the chair here, looking at the
Studio
. And I made him shut it up, and go upstairs to bed….”

I was curious. “How did you know that there was anything going on at all?” I asked.

“Because you all made such a row that you woke me up,” she replied. “Mostly the telephone. And then I came half-way downstairs in my dressing-gown, and asked Sanders. And then they sent over for you. And after that the car came with the other two.”

It was very quiet in the library. In all the house there was nothing stirring then.

“Mr. Moran,” she said.

I looked down at her, and looked away again. She was looking very sweet that morning, in the sun.

“Won’t you let me know the whole thing? I know most of it. you know. And there’s always the chance that I might be able to help, some way or other.”

She certainly could. Almost unconsciously, while we had been talking I had made up my mind. I wanted a witness for what I was going to do then. And I knew that whether she thought me right or wrong she’d never let me down.

I glanced out of the window to the Home Farm across the meadow. “Mattock sent over to me to say that his old mare foaled yesterday morning,” I remarked. “We might walk over and have a look at that.”

She turned with me, and we went through the hall and out of the house into the bright morning.

The farm lies about half a mile from the mansion, and we walked slowly. And as we went, I told her everything that had happened, from the time when I had driven back from Winchester in the dark. I left nothing out. I went straight ahead
with the events as they had happened, and I didn’t look at her till I had finished. I didn’t want to see how she was taking it till she had heard the lot. Not even when I came to tell her about the dirty game that I’d been playing on Arner and on Dermott.

I was hoping that she’d pull me up over that. I was hoping that she’d stop me and turn round in the path, and tell me that I ought to be ashamed of myself. If that had happened, I’d have chucked it up there and then. That was to be the touchstone for my conduct, and I was waiting for it. In her I had an outside view and outside opinion, outside advice that I was ready to take. I’d done my best according to my lights, but I was very uncertain whether I’d done right. And so I say that if she’d told me that morning that I was playing a damn dirty game, I’d have gone back to Arner and told him the whole thing. And given Lenden up.

I wish to God I had. I was hoping that she’d tell me to, I think. But she didn’t. She stood there in the path looking up into my face when I had finished, and as I caught her eyes that hope flickered out and died. I knew then that I had to go through with it. I saw that she thought I’d done the right thing. I saw that she was proud of me, and I looked away again very quickly when I saw that. And the next thing was that she was speaking to me.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

I put my hand to the pocket of my coat and pulled out that packet of plates. “I’ve got all that matters with me, here,” I said.

She glanced at them for a moment, and then back to me. “I don’t mean about those,” she said. “But about the man.”

I stood there, fingering the plates. We were both of us thinking more about Lenden than about the espionage that morning. “He’s going back to Russia,” I said. “That’s quite definite. His mind’s made up. The only way of stopping him would be to give him up.”

She glanced at me curiously. “He’s a great friend of yours? In the war?”

I shook my head. “I hardly knew him. Only just casually in the Mess. But he’s a damn good sort, and I don’t see that one can give him up. It means imprisonment, and a pretty long spell. Maybe as long as ten years. And frankly, I don’t think he’s deserved it.”

She nodded slowly. “At the same time,” she said, “I don’t think you ought to let him get away to Russia with the information he’s got. That’s not playing the game, either.”

She glanced up again. “Can’t you persuade him to stay here now? We ought to be able to find something he could do.”

A little way from the path there was a fallen tree, one of two that had come down a fortnight before and that we were cutting up at our leisure. I moved over to it, and brushed the chips from the trunk, and sat down there in the sunlight. She followed, a little curiously, and stood beside me. “You can’t lead a grown man like that,” I said. “He’s got to take his own course. In that way there’s nothing to be done for him. I’m afraid he’s made up his mind to go back to Russia, and I don’t see that I can stop him.”