Mysterious Aviator (28 page)

They talked interminably. It was clear that they were uneasy about something, but I couldn’t make out what it was that was worrying them. There was some factor in the situation that I didn’t appreciate; something that made them most unwilling to take any action. It was maddening.

Nine o’clock struck on the bells of the campanile, and then the quarter. Now and again they turned to me, and asked me something that I couldn’t answer. Did I know the name of the chief Russian in the Casa Alba? How long had this been going on for? What was their object in coming to Lanaldo? I could give no satisfactory answer to any of these questions, and at last
their low whispering began to peter out. I don’t think they had come to any decision.

I think if that had been the whole story of that night, I should have failed to stir them. I had no strength left with which to combat what I took to be their indifference, what I now know to have been their business interests. But at that point a man came to the barred, open window that faced into the square, and peered into the room, and said something in Italian. I caught the word “Inglesi”.

All three of them crossed to the window, with a glance at me. They interrogated the fellow for a minute, and then Ribotto turned to me.

“Your friends, they have come to find you,” he said. “You have expected them—yes?”

I raised my head heavily, and stared at him. “I’ve got no friends here,” I said. “There’s nobody in this part of the world that knows me. Who’s asking for me?”

He smiled broadly, and shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know. They have said they are friends to you,” he remarked. “It is by your name they have asked where you are. They have arrive on the terrace. A man and a young lady, both the two of them English people. With a motor-car.”

The man at the window said something.

“Yes,” said Ribotto again to me. “From Nice they are come.”

Fazzini said something to the man, who moved away across the square into the darkness.

“In a few minutes they will be come here,” said Ribotto. “He has sent to bring them. We will then see them, whether they are truly friends to you.”

But I had little doubt about it from the first. I couldn’t place the man at all, unless it were some Englishman that she had picked up on the way. I tried to reckon up how Sheila could have got out in the time. Short of flying out as I had done, I didn’t see that it was possible.

I first saw them through the window, when they were half-way across the square. I knew nothing of the man who walked beside her. He was obviously English; a broad-shouldered,
stocky sort of chap with a very hard, tanned face. He was dressed in a golf jacket with light fawn breeches and gaiters. At home, if I had met him in the village, I would have set him down as a horse dealer or a vet. from Leventer, but I couldn’t place what he was doing here.

I heard them at the door, and turned painfully to face their entrance. “Evening, Sheila,” I said. “You’ve been pretty quick.” It was about sixteen hours since I had kissed her on the down.

She came quickly to my table. She was wearing her leather motor coat, a blue one with a furry collar that brushed my face as she stooped to kiss me on the forehead. I could not move to meet her.

“Peter, dear,” she said, “you’re hurt. They told us outside.”

The man that she had brought with her was already talking rapidly to Fazzini in Italian that had a very English ring to it, helped out with frequent gesture and a word or two of French. He was speaking to them most energetically and with more confidence than accuracy, but it did the trick. They understood what he was saying all right.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

She bent towards me, and spoke quietly in order that we shouldn’t interrupt their business. “His name’s Captain Stenning,” she said. “Directly you left this morning, Kitter and I drove up to London. I’ve got a passport, you see, so I didn’t have to wait for that. I simply couldn’t just sit there in Under and wait till I heard from you, Peter.”

I smiled at her. “You mean you flew out?”

“Mm. I went to Imperial Airways, and they got me a special machine from the Rawdon Company, and we left Croydon at about ten o’clock. Captain Stenning was the pilot they sent with it. We had to stop at Paris for petrol, and directly that was done we went on again, but we could only fly as far as Nice. I had a little talk with him at Le Bourget when he wasn’t cursing the French mechanics. And I asked him if he knew Lenden, and he knows him quite well. And then at Nice I told him all about it, and he offered to come on with me and see it
through, if I’d let him. I was all alone, and I thought it’d be a good thing, and so we left the aeroplane with the people there, and came on by car.”

She glanced across at him. He was still talking nineteen to the dozen to Fazzini, but there was a humorous set to his hard face, and Ribotto was laughing quietly. “He’s frightfully rough,” she said, and smiled. “He was swearing most dreadfully all the time we were at Le Bourget, but we got through the Customs and the machine filled up and all in twenty minutes from the time we landed till we were in the air again. And in all that hurry, he got me a cup of tea and a lunch basket. It was just the same at Nice. He’s a lovely man when you’re in a hurry.”

She bent over me. “What’s the damage, Peter?” she inquired. “This arm looks all funny.”

I pressed her gently back. “You’re requested not to handle this exhibit,” I replied. “That shoulder’s where it hadn’t ought to be, and I’ve bust some fingers. Bad for the piano, I’m afraid.”

She slipped off the table. “Peter,” she said, “I’m going to get you a doctor.”

I stopped her. “No you’re not,” I said. “We’ve got to get this thing straightened out before anyone starts mucking me about.”

I raised my head. “Captain Stenning.”

He broke off his conversation, and swung round on me.

“Glad to see you,” I said. “Can you make out what’s the matter with these blokes? I’ve been trying all I’m fit to get them to go and have a look at the Casa Alba. They agree it ought to be done, but I can’t shift them.”

He laughed sharply. “That’s just what I’m coming to. It’s the smuggling, I think,” he said curtly. “All the frontier towns live on it, these days.” He turned again to Fazzini and began rallying him in Italian with a torrent of words and gestures. The Italian replied with a shy smile. Already these two were good friends.

And presently they came to some agreement. Fazzini and one of the others left the room together, and the man called
Stenning came lounging over to my table and sat down on it casually, swinging one leg. “Well, Fats is all right now,” he said casually. “He’s going to raid the house for us.”

He stared down at me, and at my arm extended on the table. “You look as if you’re suffering from impact. Miss Darle here tells me that you came out on one of the Breguet Nineteens. You want to be careful with that chassis. D’you tip her up on the ground?”

I laughed ruefully. “No,” I said. “I spun into the deck.”

He stared at me. “From what height?”

“About three hundred feet.”

“Christ,” he said succinctly. “Might have bust your ruddy neck, cart-assing about like that.” He was staring at the hump of my coat. “D’you mean to tell me that’s your shoulder sticking up like that?”

“I expect so,” I replied.

He swung his leg off the table. “We’d better put that back, for a start,” he said. “Can’t leave the ruddy thing like that all night.”

I didn’t move. “We’ll get along a doctor in a minute or two,” I said. “What’s happening about this raid?”

He shrugged his shoulders, and got back on to the table. “As you like. None of the Dago doctors I’ve had anything to do with could bring a kitten into the world without an accident. But have it your own way.”

I hadn’t thought of that. First-class medical attention in Lanaldo was a good bit to hope for.

Sheila moved forward. I think—and hope—that Stenning had forgotten that she was there while he was talking to me. “Can you put it back?” she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders again. “I can’t say till I’ve had a look. It may be too much swelled up. Probably is, after this time. I’ll soon tell you whether I can or not—and if I can’t, I’m damned if I’d let any doctor here muck about with it. Better leave it like it is till you can get it seen to properly.”

There was a pause. He had said all that he was going to upon that subject, and it sounded good sense to me.

“Ever done it before?” I asked.

He blew a long cloud of smoke. “Lord, yes. Shoulder—twice, no, three times. I play rugger for the ’Quins. But lacrosse is the game for that.”

I glanced at Sheila and saw her nod to me, ever so slightly. “You’d better have a cut at it,” I said. “But let’s get this other thing squared up first. What’s happening? Where’s Fazzini gone off to?”

Stenning lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the old one, and offered the case to me. I refused. “Fats is all right,” he said. “He’s a two-fisted he-man.”

“I know,” said Sheila dryly. “I heard you tell him so, in Italian. He’s gone to telephone, hasn’t he?”

Stenning spat a shred of tobacco from his lip. “He’s not allowed to go messing about like that on his own,” he said. “He’s gone to telephone to his boss in San Remo. This is an international affair. But you’ll find he’s a stout lad, that. He’s all for it now.”

“What was the trouble before you came?” I asked. “You said something about smuggling.”

Stenning laughed shortly. “This town lives on running things across the border,” he said. “It’s the local industry. Take that away from them, and you put the whole ruddy place on the dole. Well, this Casa Alba of yours is a sort of agency for them, from what I could make out. Fixes the freights and all that. They’ve got everyone in the district squared to shut their mouths, and paying damn good money. I tell you, these lads don’t like the idea of raiding that house one little bit.”

I could see it clearly now. “Lenden told me that they ran the smuggling as a blind,” I muttered. “Of course.”

“That’s right,” said Stenning. “And a damn good blind too. It’s kept everyone here as quiet as a mouse about what goes on in that house, for God knows how many years. Not that they didn’t smell a rat now and again. Old Fats there, it wasn’t any news to him that they were Russians. But they could shut their eyes to it. And now you’ve come along and put them in the cart properly over it.”

I thought about it for a minute. “What’s made them change their minds? Why don’t they just shove us all down the sink and forget about us?”

He flicked the ash from his cigarette. “Because they’re Dagoes,” he said sharply. “North Italians, and a ruddy good crowd with a sense of responsibility and a sense of humour. I tell you—if we’d been five miles the other side of the border in a French village and told them to go and raid a place like that, we would have been down the sink and no mistake. But this lot, you can jolly them along and make them see the joke of it.”

He eyed me seriously for a minute. “You’d better get up on your hind legs and say the kind word to Fats when he comes back,” he said. “I’ve said it already, but it’d look well coming from you. They’re going to halve the income of the town by this raid—pretty well. And all old Fats said about it was——” he shot off a phrase of Italian, thought for a minute, and translated—“That it’s a bloody shame, but it can’t be helped.”

He thought for a minute. “Give me the Dagoes,” he said quietly. “These North Italians, anyway.” He chucked the stump of his cigarette out of the window and turned to me. “Let’s have a look at that shoulder of yours while we’re waiting,” he said. “Fats may be some time.”

I don’t know where that man picked up his medical skill. He was the son of a most tragic marriage between a Naval officer and a chorus girl, I believe. Later in the evening he told me something of his life; he had been a chauffeur before the war. The beginning of the war found him building cycle-cars—the Stenning-Reilly car—in a lean-to shed at Islington. He enlisted, and in 1916 he was commissioned into the R.F.C. I might have met him, because when we came to compare notes I found that his squadron was only twenty miles down the line from my own, but I can’t say that I remember him. There were so many of that type. He had been a civil pilot since the war, and knew Lenden well.

He took off his coat before starting on me: I remember
noticing the Froth-blower cuff-links that he was wearing. And then he set my shoulder like a professional. The worst part of it was getting the clothes off, because we didn’t want to cut them more than necessary. He had a very sure and gentle touch, that chap. I think that may have been the effect of his manual profession; I only know that the worst of my twinges came from Sheila when she was assisting him. I know that’s a rotten thing to say, but it is true. He had the surest hands of anyone I’ve ever met.

We got the shoulder opened up at last, and he made a very careful examination, prodding the swellings with those sure fingers. In the end he stood up. “Ruddy good job you’ve kept it still,” he muttered. “That’ll go back all right.”

He spoke for several minutes to the clerk and to Ribotto in mixed Italian and English. He wanted the chemist and not the doctor, but he’d forgotten the word for chemist and Ribotto had forgotten what chemist meant. That got cleared up at last, and the clerk was despatched across the square with a message.

Then he set to work to put my shoulder back. The first shot failed, and I was very nearly sick on the table. The second time it went all right. By the time I had stopped seeing whorls and spots the shoulder was back in place all right, and I could move it a very little.

After that we started on the fingers. Stenning wasn’t satisfied with the splints that the chemist brought with his bandages. By a torrent of Italian and pantomime he got what he wanted in an incredibly short time—a pair of tinsmith’s shears and a biscuit tin. Out of that he set to work to fashion three little troughs of tin for each finger to lie in on a bed of cotton-wool. After that exhibition I was content to let him set them for me, and they stayed like that until I reached London.

Fazzini came back as we were finishing those, and began talking to Stenning in Italian. They spoke together for a few minutes, and then Stenning turned to me.