Mysterious Aviator (17 page)

“You see how it is with me,” he said. “I’m not a charity show for dud pilots. If Maurice Lenden can come in on those terms I think he’d be a damn good man for me. If not, there’s others who can learn the job. That offer that I made him two years ago—you can tell him it’s still open.”

I nodded. “Right you are,” I said. “In the meantime, we’d better fix an appointment when I can have a look at your books.”

“Oh.” He shot the ash from his cigar on to the carpet. “For a thousand?”

“I could find a thousand.”

He glanced at me very curiously. It was quiet in the lounge. “Lenden’s got no money of his own at all?”

“Not a bean. He was working in a garage, as a matter of fact, before he got the Russian job.”

“Poor devil,” said Robertson softly. He glanced at me again, still curious. “I don’t quite see what you stand to get out of this.”

“Ten per cent,” I replied. “Better interest than I’m getting for the money as it is.”

There was a long silence then. Robertson relaxed and lay back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. In a far corner of the room a couple of men began talking of the Grand National, and the odds they had been getting.

And at last he said: “You say you’ve not had anything to do with Lenden since the war?”

I was surprised by that question. I didn’t see what he was driving at. “No,” I said. “I hadn’t met him since 1917, not till a few days ago.”

“He’d be better on the survey than Dines,” said Robertson softly, half to himself. “And Dines could start in to work up the other side. We want that just as much, way things are opening up….”

He turned to me. “You don’t want to go putting money into a show like mine,” he said, very frankly. “Nor into any flying business for the next ten years. You’ll only go and burn your fingers. But, by Christ, if you’re willing to put up a thousand for him, it’d be a queer show if I couldn’t do as much, knowing him all these years.”

He spat a bit of tobacco out on to his lip, and removed it to the ash-tray. “You can tell Lenden there’s a job with me in the Argentine if he wants it,” he said. “I was giving him seven hundred when we went up the Patuca together. I can’t run to that now. Four-fifty, and a small percentage on profits. I’ll have to reckon that out.”

I nodded. “I’ll tell him. That’s very good of you.”

Robertson yawned. “Reckon it’ll pay me in the long run. He’s a wizard pilot. Tell him to come up here and see me—some time in the next week.” He ground the stump of that filthy cigar upon an ash-tray. “And now, what about a quick one?”

It was little after half-past ten, but he ordered gin and tonic for us both. And when it came:

“Here’s luck,” he said, and set down his glass. “Have you met Mrs. Lenden yet?”

I wrinkled my brows. “Mrs. Lenden?”

He nodded. “Mollie Lenden. But perhaps he hadn’t told you he was married?”

I shook my head. “He told me that he was divorced,” I said.

Robertson went diving into the inner pockets of his coat, and produced a sheaf of at least a dozen dog’s-eared letters. He laid this collection out upon his knee and picked out one. It was a letter on thick, pale blue paper, addressed in an upright, feminine hand.

He tossed it across to me. “That’s all I know,” he said shortly.

I opened that letter, and read it. It was quite a short one.

Ye Tea Shoppe
,
Winchester
.

Dear Major Robertson
,

I expect you’ve heard from people how things are between Maurice and me. I don’t know where he is now, and nobody seems to know at all. The last thing I can find out is when he left the Atalanta when it bust, and after that I can’t find out anything about him or what he’s doing or anything. And I thought that he’s sure to turn up in aviation soon because he loves it so and can’t stay away from it, and I thought if I wrote round to you and one or two of his other friends you could let me know as soon as you hear of him. I read the flying papers every week. Please will you try and find out where he’s gone to, and let me know as soon as you hear anything at all?

I wouldn’t have written to you like this but you’ve been so good to us all through that it seems different
.

Yours sincerely
,
Mollie Lenden
.

I sat there for a long time staring at this thing. There was no subtlety in it, no skill. It was the letter, I thought, of a very ordinary girl who had lost something that she valued, and was trying to find it again. I remember wondering whether she was going to pull it off. And then I thought of Lenden, and realised that whatever might be the outcome of it all, this letter was going to turn the whole of his affairs upside down again.

I turned to Robertson. “I see she signs herself Mollie Lenden. D’you know what happened about that divorce?”

He shook his head. “That’s all I know. I’ve been in the Argentine for the last two years. That reached me about a week before I started home. Matter of fact, I’d forgotten all about it till you mentioned him. D’you say she was divorced?”

I wrinkled my brows over it. “Lenden certainly told me that he fixed it up so that she was able to divorce him. But I see here that she still uses his name.”

Robertson wasn’t greatly interested. “I expect they had a bust-up and he cleared off for a bit,” he said phlegmatically. “Best thing to do, sometimes.”

I thought about it for a minute. “What about the Argentine?” I asked. “Can he take her out there with him if she wants to go?”

He set down his glass. “My wife’s coming out there with me this time. Fed up with being out there alone. But as for him….

“I dare say they can do it,” he said. “The difficulty is the screw I’m giving him. Yes, I think they might be able to work it, the way we live, if they’re damn close. Not unless.”

He picked up the letter and handed it to me. “Will you take on this show now?” he asked. “You’d better show him this, and maybe he’ll go along to see her.”

“Maybe he will,” I said absently. “It’s not far from my place.”

Robertson yawned. “Tell him to give me a ring before he comes,” he said casually.

There was nothing more to be said or to be done, and so I went away.

•          •        •      •

I got to Winchester at about four o’clock, wishing vaguely that I was a clergyman. They seem to have the knack of butting in adroitly. I was very conscious that I hadn’t.

It had seemed the only thing to do. I retired to my club after I left Robertson, picked up a novel off the table as I passed into the smoking-room, and sat there for half an hour trying to read it. At the end of that time, I turned back to the beginning and began again. By the time I had got to page forty for the second time, I had come to the conclusion that the only thing to do was to go down to Winchester that afternoon and find out how the land lay. Having once started butting in, I might as well go through with it.

The shop was in between the Close and the main street, in rather a quiet little by-way. At first sight one would not have known it for a shop at all. It was a square, uncompromising Georgian house that stood directly on the pavement; through the open windows of the ground floor one could see that the whole of the front rooms of the house had been knocked into one, and were set with little tables. A small, brightly-coloured sign over the door announced the calling of that house, and a little white notice on the door impressed upon me that it was under the entirely new management of Mrs. Mary Lenden. Home-made cakes, it seemed, were a speciality.

I got out of my car and went up the three steps into the big room among the little oak tables, and stood there for a minute waiting for something to happen. It was evident to me that the tea trade was slack in Winchester on Mondays; it was after four o’clock, but I was the only person in the room. And then there was a rustling in a back region, not unlike somebody laying down the
Daily Mail
, and a girl came out from behind a brightly-coloured curtain that hung across the back of the room.

“Good afternoon,” she said quietly. “Can I get you tea?”

I suppose she might have been twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, medium in height, and with brown hair that she wore long and dressed smoothly back over her head, giving her a very quiet air. She was dressed in a long white overall, and I stood there wondering for a minute if she were the girl I’d come to look for.

She looked at me inquiringly. My courage went trickling away through my boots, and I ordered tea.

I sat over that for half an hour. Not many people came into the shop; by half-past four there may have been half a dozen in the room. I was rather surprised at that because the tea was one of the best I’ve ever had the good fortune to sit down to. Mrs. Lenden knew her job all right, so far as that was concerned.

I very soon came to the conclusion that it was Mrs. Lenden that I had met as I entered. There was another of them there, a red-haired girl of about eighteen who seemed to do most of the running about. It couldn’t be her. Unless there were more of them behind the scenes, Mrs. Lenden must be the one that I had spoken to at first. And then, as she came through the curtain with a fresh supply of cakes to set on a little table by the wall, I noticed what I suppose I should have seen before if I’d had any sense. She wore a wedding ring.

That room faced the sun, a wide, airy place, and not too crowded with tables. There was a little jug of snowdrops before my plate, and the sun came in through the window by my side and lit up these flowers, and the light oak of the table, and the bright mats upon it. I nodded to her, and she came over to tell me how much I owed.

She stood beside me, and cast a rapid eye over the table. “Three cakes?” She considered for a minute. “That’ll be one and fivepence, then.”

I fished it out. “You are Mrs. Lenden, I suppose?”

She nodded. “We haven’t been open for very long. I took this shop over from the other people when they went away, about six months ago. Did you know it then?”

She was very grave and courteous and kind, and she stood there eyeing me directly.

I shook my head. “I’ve never been here before. But Major Robertson sent me down here. He told me that I’d find you here. You know him, don’t you? Sam Robertson. He’s back from the Argentine.”

If I had expected to surprise her, I was mistaken. She showed no change, but she nodded gravely. “Major Robertson is a very old friend of my husband’s,” she said simply. “We know him quite well.”

She wasn’t giving anything away, that girl.

“I know,” I said. “I saw him this morning. He gave me this, and told me to come and see you.” And I pushed her letter across the table towards her.

A donkey cart passed slowly by the window in the street outside, loaded with yellow bananas and red oranges, and all manner of bright things in the sun. She stood there fingering the letter, and she was silent for a minute.

“He gave you this,” she said at last. “Then you know something about Maurice?”

“He’s staying with me now,” I replied.

“He’s—he’s quite all right?”

I glanced up at her sharply, and looked away again. “He’s perfectly fit,” I said gently. “Just had a touch of malaria that’s kept him in bed for a couple of days, but nothing to worry about. He’s quite all right now.”

She nodded. “Did he get his mixture made up?” And then, as if she was ashamed to talk to me of trivialities, she said:

“You must come upstairs. Please, if you don’t mind. We can’t talk here.”

She had recovered, and seemed as impassive as she had been when she was giving me my bill. That was a way of hers. She never showed one very much of what she felt, even when things were very difficult for her.

She took me to a room on the floor above, looking out on to an uneven array of roofs and an untidy little yard at the back. It was their sitting-room. There were a couple of basket chairs,
and a low smouldering fire in the grate, and a little writing-desk littered with account-books and loose bills. Half sitting-room, half office, this was evidently where they lived.

In the room she turned to face me. “What’s your name? I’m sorry….”

“My name’s Moran,” I said. “I live over in Sussex, about forty miles from here. I was in the same squadron as Lenden in 1917.”

She wrinkled her brows.

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of me,” I said. “I hadn’t seen him since those days—till last week.”

“You’ve come from Major Robertson?” she asked.

I nodded. “He sent me here. Your husband’s in a bit of trouble, Mrs. Lenden. I went to Robertson because he seemed to be a pretty old friend, and because he was handy. In Town.”

She was quite collected now. “What’s the trouble?” she inquired. “Where’s he been?”

There was no point in beating about the bush. “He’s been in Russia,” I said frankly, “and that’s the trouble.”

And then there was a sudden commotion on the stairs, and there was the red-haired girl, who said there was a party of four asking for poached eggs, and there weren’t any eggs, and should she send Lizzie out for eggs or should she tell them that they couldn’t have eggs? And when that was settled and the commotion had died away downstairs again, Mrs. Lenden was silent for a little time, and then:

“I knew that was where he’d been,” she said at last. “It was the only place.” And then she turned to me. “Where is he now? What’s he going to do?”

“He’s staying in my house for the present. He’s going back to Russia to-morrow or the next day.”

“Why’s he going back there?”

“He’s got a job out there.” I paused for a moment, and then decided it was best to take that fence at once.

“From his point of view, there’s nothing to keep him in England. He hasn’t any ties or anything.

“You see,” I said gently, “he thinks he’s divorced.”

She dropped her eyes to the table. “I know,” she said quietly. “I know he does.”

There was a little silence then. She stood there with her eyes fixed upon the table, and I followed her glance. It was a heavy old refectory table backed up against the wall, and as I stood there waiting for her to say something I took notice of what was on it. Stacked up against the wall there were great heaps of weekly periodicals—I dare say there may have been a couple of hundred there, of all shapes and sizes. A few of them were scattered loose upon the table, and I glanced at the titles.