Mysterious Aviator (14 page)

She nodded gravely. “And then he’ll tell them what he’s seen.”

I looked up at her quickly, and shook my head. “No. He can’t do that. He tried to tell me what he saw, and I don’t think the Russians will learn very much from that account. He’s too vague and confused, and he only got the shortest possible glimpse. But he’ll take the photographs back with him, of course.”

There was a momentary pause. I lifted the metal box, and turned it over in my hands.

“And by the time we’ve done with those,” I said, “the Russians won’t learn much from them.”

There wasn’t much difficulty about it. A little spring catch at one end of the box loosened the cover plate. Then there was a slide held by a sort of locking-pin, and underneath the slide there was a thin metal plate covered in black velvet. That pulled out in the same way as the slide, and under it I saw the greenish yellow of the first plate.

Sheila stood there beside me, very quiet, and watched me fiddling with the thing.

“Got to be damn careful to remember how this bag of tricks goes together again,” I muttered. “Don’t want to find any bits left over that I can’t put back.”

There were twelve plates in the box, each separated from the other by a velvet shield. As each came out I laid it carefully upon the tree trunk in the bright sunlight, until at last I had them all laid out there in a row, and the box was empty.

Sheila stirred beside me. “You’re going to give them back to him?” she asked. “To take back to Russia?”

I nodded.

“How long does it take to spoil them?”

“About the hundredth of a second, I suppose,” I replied. “We’ll give ’em a couple of minutes, for luck.”

And when that was over, I put them back again. I laid each plate emulsion-side downwards, each with a velvet plate to separate it from the others, exactly as they had come out. Finally I replaced the slide and secured it with the locking-pin, and when I had snapped the cover plate in place, I turned to her.

“That takes the sting out of it, anyway,” I said. “There were only three lots of photographs taken, and they’re all accounted for now. There was the lot that he took on the first flight—and they were spoilt. There’s this lot that he took on the second flight, and I’ve done them in. And the third lot were shot down last night. The Air Force will look after those.”

She nodded. “Now he can do what he likes.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Now he can do what he likes.” And we turned and walked back to the house, forgetting all about the foal that we had come out to see. It wasn’t worth seeing, anyway. I told Mattock that that mare wasn’t fit to breed from, but he wouldn’t have it.

I left Sheila in the rose garden by the pool, and she went back to the mansion. I stood and watched her till she was out of sight, and then went over to my own place. There was nobody
in the sitting-room. I took the pack of plates from my pocket and replaced it on top of the safe, exactly as I had found it.

Lenden was up and shaving. He came to the door of his bedroom when he heard me moving about.

“Morning,” he said, “I say, did you go out at about four o’clock this morning? I’ll swear I heard someone crashing around.”

I nodded. “I went over to the house.”

He was about to say something, but stopped. He was turning away, when he stopped suddenly and I saw him looking across to the safe. He moved across the room and took up the pack of plates that I had just laid down.

“Oughtn’t to leave these lying about,” he said.

In the town, a mile or so away, a church bell began to toll. I heard it faintly through the open window.

“This day is Sunday,” I remarked. “Are you staying over the week-end?”

He shook his head. “I must get up to Town to-day. I was thinking about it last night in bed. If they don’t hear from me soon, they may be sending out the reserve machine to do the job.”

I suppose I was tired, and a little sick from the narrative of the night. The cool way in which he referred to his movements stung me up properly.

It seemed to me that it was nothing to him that he was in my house, as my guest, and that he was talking of putting my country in the cart. My country—Sussex—that I’d sweated to make a good show of ever since the war. He was ready to throw all that away.

I leaned against the mantelpiece and grinned.

“The reserve machine,” I said cynically. “That’s the one that’s similar to yours. To be flown by a chap called Keumer. Leutnant Friedrich Keumer. A married man. Lives in Noremburg. Got two children called Elsa and Franz, and his wife writes to him every other day.”

He stared at me. “I never told you all that.”

I laughed unpleasantly. “No, you didn’t. Bit of a pal of
yours, didn’t you say? Shares a hut with you, and all that?”

He nodded dumbly.

I jerked myself suddenly erect.

“Well,” I said brutally, “he’s dead. Got shot down over Portsmouth last night, doing your job. And crashed in a field by Hamble.”

A
LMOST BEFORE
I
HAD SPOKEN
, I was sorry. Lenden stood there staring at me blankly, razor in hand, his mouth drooping a little at the corners. He asked no questions, didn’t say anything at all. He just stood there dumbly, till I could stand it no longer, and he went a sort of yellow colour under his tan.

I moved over to the window and stood there with my back to him, looking out upon the garden. “I’m sorry I said that,” I said at last. “It’s been the hell of a night—and I’m a bit tired.”

He cleared his throat. “Tell me what happened.”

I turned round and gave him the account in a few short sentences. I put it as gently as I could. It came as a great shock to him, and he showed it. I can remember thinking at the time that this man Keumer had evidently been a closer friend than I had quite realised, and that it was curious that a man of his life and experience should suddenly appear so much alone. That is the only way in which I can describe his reception of my story. He was terribly alone. And when I saw him like that, his wife came into my mind, and it struck me to wonder if she had ever quite realised the injury that she did him when she went. Probably not, I thought.

He made no comment on what I had to say. He listened to the end, and waited for a little, staring irresolutely about the room. And then he moved towards the door.

“One thing,” I said, and he stopped.

“What’s that?”

“Give it another day. This is Sunday. You’ll do better to stay here till to-morrow, and see what’s going to happen. This may make a breach with Russia. It’s very likely. Arner thinks it will. There might even be war.”

I paused. “Give it another day.”

He stood there for a minute, irresolute. “Might be best,” he muttered. “I don’t want to get mixed up out there if there’s going to be a war.”

He glanced at me. “You don’t really think there’ll be war?” he inquired.

“I don’t see how there could be,” I replied. “But … I don’t know.”

He went back into his room, and I went and had a bath, and shaved. A little later we had breakfast together in my room, and during that meal Lenden hardly spoke at all.

And afterwards he began asking me questions about Keumer. He wanted to know how it had happened, but he was satisfied with a very brief account of that. Chiefly he wanted to know whether he had been able to give any messages, and whether he had had any personal papers on him at the time. I told him about the letters, but there was very little solid information that I could give him. For a time I couldn’t make out what he was driving at, until at last it became evident to me that Lenden was worrying over the settling-up of his friend’s affairs.

He was very muddled and confused about it, and yet in a way he was practical. “He wasn’t getting so much as I was,” he said, “and I know he hadn’t a bean in the world except his pay. If he had, he wouldn’t have been at Kieff. None of us would. It ran out to something like five hundred a year, I think. And he used to send over half of it home, so that he was always hard up. He never used to spend anything except on cigarettes. The sort of chap that likes sitting before a fire and smoking, and talking about his home and his kids. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to them now….”

As we talked it became clear that he was set on doing something for that family in Noremburg, that he felt that it was up to him to do something. He said he knew they hadn’t any money, and he didn’t think they had any relatives that would be of any value to them. He didn’t know if there was any sort of poor relief in Germany; but, anyway, he couldn’t let
Keumer’s wife go on the dole. He didn’t even know their address, except that they lived in Noremburg.

I suggested that Keumer had probably got his fee in advance and sent it home, as Lenden had done himself. Lenden didn’t think it likely.

“He was so damn casual,” he said. “He wouldn’t have bothered about it … I don’t know what to do.”

He said that Keumer used to take snapshots of the aerodrome and of the town and send them home to his wife, with long letters. He said that he had an album full of photographs of his wife and children, and of his house and of his garden, that he used to show round upon the least encouragement.

“You see,” said Lenden, “we were more or less the same sort, and keen on the same things. I’d have had a place like that myself … one time.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

That part of it, at any rate, was none of my business. I left him, and went over to the house. Lady Arner was at home, so it was no part of my duties to go to church that Sunday morning. She liked some representative of the family to be there; on occasions when the family were away it was my business to attend, presumably to ensure that the Padre read the lessons right. This morning I was free, and I went over to the gun-room to see if I could find the Sunday papers.

There was a copy of the
Scrutator
there, and one of the
World’s News
. I opened the
Scrutator
first, and glanced at the political news. There was nothing to add to the situation as I already knew it in regard to Russia. I skimmed through the remainder of the news on the chief page, and idly turned the lesser pages before abandoning it.

And there, in among the motor-car advertisements, I saw an article that brought me up with a jerk. It was headed:

There was a column and a half about it. It was all about grids and traverses and rectifying cameras, with a little about aeroplanes thrown in. I didn’t read it all through in detail. It was clear from the space devoted to the paper in the
Scrutator
that the lecturer was no slouch at the game, and that on air survey he must be regarded as a leading authority. That was certainly interesting; but what concerned me far more than the technical ability of the lecturer was the fact that Lenden’s old friend and employer of the Honduras affair was in England, and accessible.

I turned to the
World’s News
, and idly glanced through the scandalous, indifferently printed pages. And there, dovetailed in between a murder and a rape, I came upon the reverse of the medal.

It didn’t strike me as amusing at the time. I sat there for a little in the gun-room, thinking it over, and then I went back again to my house.

Lenden had dragged out an old atlas from the litter on the floor beside the safe, and had opened it on the table at a map of Germany. He turned to me as I came in, and put his finger on the page.

“That’s it,” he said. “Noremburg. It’s right in the middle.”

I sat down on the edge of the table by his side. “Are you going out there?” I asked.

He looked up at me in perplexity. “I don’t know what to do. I never thought of anything like this.”

There was a little pause. “You’ll have to let that go,” I said gently. “You’ve got yourself to think about. There’s no possible way of finding out about his family short of going out there yourself. And you can’t do that if you’re going back to Russia.”