Mysterious Aviator (23 page)

Finally Saven and Kitter got out on to the wing-tips, and we set to work to taxi her up the hill.

There was a south-westerly wind that night. I had decided
with Saven that we would take her up to the top of the down, and then along as far as we could get her to the east. That would give me about half a mile in a south-easterly direction for my take-off before I came to the telegraph wires bordering the road. I’d got to get her over those.

Those wires were a worry to me. The first three or four hundred yards of that run was flat; from there the ground sloped gently down to the road. I didn’t know how much run a machine like this would want; I only knew that that old B.E. that I used to fly in the war would have got off in about half that distance if she was ever going to get off at all. Things might have changed a bit, however, since last I flew. It scared me to think how long ago that was.

I knew what would happen if she didn’t clear the wires, of course. She would trip up on them and go crashing down nose first into the field beyond, and with all that petrol in the fuselage she was pretty certain to take fire.

It’s sometimes an encumbrance to know too much. The thought of that fire didn’t help me a bit.

We got her up on the top of the down all right, and then we began to manœuvre her into the correct position. Finally we settled her quite comfortably at the extreme end of the run, with her tail in among the gorse bushes that formed the limit of the good ground. That was the last that we could do with her for the present. I stopped the engine, took a last look round the cockpit, and clambered down to the ground.

Kitter and Saven were talking together by the wing-tip. They broke off as I approached, and Kitter came towards me.

“I’ve been talking to Saven, sir,” he said. “You don’t want to start away before it’s light, do you?”

I shook my head. “I’ll get away directly we can see the road from here.”

“You’ll go back to the Hall, an’ get a bit of sleep now, sir?”

He eyed me anxiously. “Reckon you’ll want a bit of sleep before starting, sir. Flying all that way. I’d come and call you when you want. There’s nothing more to do here, bar filling her up, and Saven and I can do that.”

I hesitated. “Somebody’s got to stand by the machine all the time she’s out here,” I said. “It won’t do for her to blow away now.”

“That’s so,” said Saven. “I tell you what. I’ll run you back to Under while Mr. Kitter stays out here, sir. Then I can get the petrol from my place, and come back. And then Mr. Kitter can come and call you when you want….”

I considered for a moment. “It will be light enough by half-past five,” I said. “I should have to be called soon after four.”

“That’s right, sir,” said Kitter.

And we arranged it so. I knew that a little sleep might make all the difference to the upshot of this flight; I was tired and, sleepy as it was, and I was most terribly worried about those telegraph wires. I should want to be absolutely on the spot when it came to getting over those, I thought. Curiously enough, I cannot remember that I worried very much about the other end of the flight. That was hopeless, I suppose.

We left Kitter with the pickets and the mallet in case the wind got up, and I went back to the Hall with Saven in the Talbot. He dropped me at the entrance to the yard, swung her round, and went back, by the way that he had come, to load the little car with petrol cans.

I went into my house. There was nobody there and the fire was nearly out; on the mantelpiece the clock showed five minutes to eleven. I kicked the fire together and threw on a little more coal, poured myself out a whisky and soda, and then I went over to the mansion.

Everyone had gone up to bed, for I had to let myself into the mansion with my key. The lights were all out, and in the darkness the great house was very still. I went up into the library and settled down there for half an hour; in the stillness of the house the small rustling of my movements startled me with their immensity. I was very tired.

I had only indifferent material for my study. There was a good map of France in the
Encyclop
œ
dia Britannica
, but to a lamentably small scale. I settled down to plot my course with that and with the “Maps of Europe,” which were on much too
large a scale to give me much assistance. I had no protractor, and only a slip of paper for a scale. But as I bent over the maps the old practice began to come back to me in flashes; there was the Mediterranean—a big mark to hit—and there was the straight course to it. I noted the compass bearing. For windage, I must try to correct my course by landmarks as I went along.

I stayed up there for half an hour, but there was very little that I could do. I tore the map out of the
Encyclop
œ
dia
and folded it carefully, and I tore out three pages from the “Maps of Europe”. Those three are still missing, and one can see the pruned edges in the volumes; I replaced that volume of the
Encyclop
œ
dia
, but the others were irreplaceable. And then, having done what I could to lay my amateurish course, I went back to my house.

In the sitting-room the fire had burnt up well, and was throwing great flickering shadows upon the walls and ceiling. I lit the reading-lamp by the piano and busied myself for a time in minor preparations for the flight. I had an old automatic pistol with a few clips of cartridges that I used to carry in the war in case of fire. I got out this thing, saw that the mechanism still worked freely, and slipped it into my pocket. Then I set to looking out warm clothing.

By a quarter to twelve all that was done. There was nothing for it now but to go to bed till Kitter came to call me.

I stood in the middle of the room, and stared around. Lenden would be in the train on his way south from Paris by now, getting on towards Dijon. I could picture him huddled in the corner of a French second-class carriage, nursing his new-found patriotism and the image of his wife, awake and dark-eyed in the night. I could see him in the long pauses of the train in the stations, his long hair ruffled and falling down upon his forehead, rubbing the dew from the window to try and find out how far he had gone upon his way, while the train went “Whew …” and a little horn sounded from the rear. I wondered if he was armed. I wondered what story he was going to tell at the Casa Alba.

I moved over to the piano and sat down, wondering impersonally whether I should live to see him again.

I sat there for a little time before the piano, thinking about the work I’d done in Sussex since the war, and the small noises from the fire made me company, so that I was not quite alone. And then, after a time, I stirred a little on the stool and began to play.

I cannot rememher what I played that night. There was almost certainly a strong vein of Chopin, and I dare say I played a little Grieg, because I was in that mood. I may have gone on playing for twenty minutes or so. And then, in a pause, I dropped my hands sharply from the keys and swung round on my seat. There was somebody coming in by my front door.

Long before she came in sight I knew that it was Sheila. She came and stood in the open doorway of my room, and I smiled at her from the music-stool.

“Good evening,” I said. “I hope I didn’t wake you up by my playing?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said. “I heard you playing, and so I came over.”

She moved closer to the fire, and crouched down before it. She had only a coat on over her pyjamas, and bedroom slippers on her bare feet; she had, in some queer way that I am not competent to describe, the appearance of having slept in her hair, and being only recently awake. And because she hadn’t got the proper quantity of clothes on, I didn’t go over to her, because I was afraid of making her feel awkward, and so we sat at opposite ends of the room, she crouched down before the fire and I on my music-stool. And for a little while we sat like that in silence.

And then she said—“Peter!”—and I went over to her by the fire, and drew up a chair near her.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to find you all evening, but nobody knew where you were.”

She paused for a minute, and then she said: “We’ve made a frightful bloomer over this thing, Peter.”

I nodded. “It was a mistake not to tell him that I’d exposed those plates. But it didn’t seem like that at the time, did it?”

She shook her head. “I thought it was the best way then, doing it like you did.”

“What’s happened to his wife?”

“She’s asleep—I think. I put her to bed quite early—about half-past nine. She’s quite happy about it now. She thinks he’s doing a perfectly splendid thing. Heroic. She’s most awfully proud about it all.”

I grinned, but there was very little laughter in me at that time. “That’s what it is,” I said mechanically. “Heroic.”

She twisted round and looked up at me puzzled. “It seems so funny,” she said. “I didn’t know that heroes were like that.”

“Nobody ever does,” I said.

There was a little silence then, and we sat together there before the fire in the dim light of my room. I had a vague feeling that she oughtn’t to be there at all at that time of night, especially in her pyjamas, and that instead of sitting there with my hand upon her shoulder I ought to be packing her off back to the mansion and to bed with a few delicate, well-chosen words. Instead, I did nothing about it, and we sat there till she turned to me again.

“Where do you suppose he is now?”

“In the train,” I replied. “Round about Dijon or Macon, or somewhere down that line. So far as I can see, he must be going out by Ventimiglia. That means going through Marseilles; he gets there about nine o’clock to-morrow morning, as I reckon it.”

She stared up at me pleadingly. “Isn’t there any possible way of getting at him to tell him? What was that you said about going after him to catch him up? Wasn’t it any good?”

I didn’t want much to tell her about that. I had meant to slip off in the early dawn before she was about and so prevent an explanation, but there was nothing for it now. “I think it may work all right,” I said, and smiled down upon her. “Anyway, it’s worth trying.”

She twisted round upon the floor and stared up into my face. “What is it? You can’t catch him now?”

I hesitated for a moment, and leaned forward and chucked a bit more coal on the fire. “There’s only one way of doing it, so far as I can see,” I said. “That’s by air. His aeroplane’s still out there on the down.”

“Oh …” she said softly. “Do you mean you’re going to fly it out there after him?”

Beneath my hand her hair was very soft. Like spun silk. “Why yes,” I said simply. “That’s the big idea. I’ve been out there all evening with Kitter, and with Saven from the Red Bear, getting the machine ready. I’m pushing off in her at dawn.”

I paused. “According to my reckoning, that’ll get me out there just before noon, or about noon. She’ll go all the way without a stop, that machine. The real trouble will be at the other end, I’m afraid—after I’ve landed. I haven’t got any papers for myself or for the machine. The machine hasn’t got any registration letters. I haven’t even got a passport. That means they’ll jug me for a cert in Italy, if they can get hold of me. After I’ve landed I’ve got to keep out of the way of everybody, and yet get into touch with Lenden before he reaches this house—the Casa Alba. That’s the real difficulty.”

She eyed me seriously. “It’s a ripping scheme, Peter,” she said. “If there’s anyone can make it work, it’s you.”

“It’s a fifty per cent chance,” I replied. “I don’t put it higher than that.”

“What are you going to do when you’ve landed?” she inquired.

I left her for the moment, got up and fetched my maps from the table, and came back and sat down as I had been before. She knelt up before the fire and leaned against my knee to see the maps. I spread out the large-scale one of that district and showed her the main features of the land.

“You see his hill behind Lanaldo,” I said. “Monte Verde, it’s called here. It looks to be all woody, and I think these little squiggles mean it’s pine trees. I’m going to put the machine
down up there—it’s about three miles from Lanaldo and looks to be pretty desolate. Then I’m going to work down through the woods—down here—across that little col and down that sort of ravine till I get out on to the main road—there. It looks as if there might be pretty good cover all the way. When I get to the road, I shall have to wait there in a sort of ambush. If he comes by Ventimiglia he’s got to get to the house by that road, and I suppose he’ll be in a car. I should be able to stop him there.”

I didn’t tell her the rest of the plan—which was simply that I was going to wait there upon the road till five o’clock. If by that time I had not succeeded in intercepting him, then I should have to assume that he had passed, and the only thing to do would be to go up quietly through the woods and see what was going on at the White House. I didn’t know what that might lead to, but it was with that in mind that I had resurrected my old automatic. I hoped to God that the cartridges were still all right.

She leaned across my knee, pulling the map towards her and studying it with brows wrinkled in a frown. “Peter, I don’t see where you’re going to land on Monte Verde from this map,” she said slowly. “I thought aeroplanes needed a great big open space for landing. It doesn’t look as if you’d find anything like that there.”

Girls in these days know too much. I didn’t quite know what to say to that.

“They don’t need so much room as all that,” I said uncomfortably. “Not the way I’m going to land this one.”

She looked up very quickly at that. “Do you mean you can’t land it properly out there?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”

I smiled at her in what I hoped was a reassuring way, though if anyone needed reassuring it was me. “There’s two ways of landing an aeroplane,” I explained. “One so that you can use it again afterwards, and one so that you can’t. The second one is quite a good way, if you don’t happen to want the aeroplane particularly.”

She was about to say something, but I stopped her. “In a
place like that,” I said, “it’s pretty certain that there’ll be clearings. If there’s a really flat, eligible bit of greensward, I shall put her down the first way, because I don’t like waste. But if there isn’t anything like that, then I shall put her down on the tree-tops. In the war, I always used to look for two things when I had the wind up or engine failure. A good big field, or, failing that, a wood. Trees are soft, you know.”