Mysterious Aviator (31 page)

There was a long sigh beside me. Stenning stood up from the tree and glanced at me.

“That’s the end of Mr. Ruddy Manek,” he said brutally. And with that, he handed me my gun. He had done with it, and he went back to Lenden in the glade and knelt down beside him.

“Cheer-oh, Maurice,” he said quietly. “How’s ye’re wattle?”

He made a quick examination of his friend, and stood up. He spoke for a minute to Fazzini; I think he was telling him to send a man down to Rocchetta for a doctor. Then he slipped off his golf jacket, took off his shirt, and began very methodically to tear it into bandages.

“Stenning,” said Lenden painfully. The other stooped towards him, but did not stop his work. “I don’t see how you come in on this.”

“Flying for Airways now, old son,” said Stenning. “I brought Miss Darle out here yesterday. In a Fifty.”

Professional interest flickered for a moment. “Where did you put down? This is the hell of a place for landing.”

“Racecourse at Nice,” said Stenning. “You want to be careful there, if you’re ever using it. They’ve gone and cut it all up with little drains. You want to put down at this end, right by the rails.”

One of the Italians came up there with a little earthenware pot of water that he had got from some spring on the hill. Sheila dipped her handkerchief in it and wiped Lenden’s face again, brushing back the long hair that curled down over his forehead. “That’s awfully good of you,” he said. “It’s nice.”

His eyes wandered to me. “What’s up with your arm?”

I grinned at him. “It’s only sprained. I came out here in your Breguet and piled her up on landing. I’m sorry about that.”

“You’ve crashed my kite?”

I nodded. He thought about it for a minute, and then:

“When did you fly last?”

“In the war,” I said.

“And you got out here on that Breguet?”

I nodded again. “She got off the ground quite easily. That’s the part I had the wind up of, but once that was over I’d only got to sit still till we got here.”

He stared at me with wrinkled brows. “Born to be hanged,” he muttered weakly. “That’s what it is.”

He had to stop talking then, because Stenning got busy with his dressings. I was no good in that business with only one hand, and so I stood aside and left it to the others. Then, while that was going on, I walked over the hill to where Manek had been shot.

There were a couple of Fascists beside the body; they said something to me, but I shook my head. He must have been killed instantly. I wondered if in Italy that would be a manslaughter against Stenning.
^*

When I got back to the little glade the dressing was done. Stenning was on his feet again, his bare hairy arms smeared with blood which he was trying absently to remove with a pad of grass. I walked a little way aside with him. “We’d better get a stretcher of some sort,” I said. “He’s all right to move?”

He stopped wiping his arms for a moment, and looked me in the eyes. “I wouldn’t try it.”

There was no wind that morning. On the hill-side it was very still; I could hear the two Italians talking down by Manek, fifty yards away. I can remember standing there and noticing a great scent of rosemary and pines in the warm summer of that day.

“He’s dying?”

Stenning didn’t answer for a minute, but stood there wiping his arm mechanically, studying the spots of blood upon his skin.

“Yes,” he said heavily at last, “he’s dying. I don’t think he’s got a hope in hell unless it’s to keep still. And he knows it himself.”

And then he told me what was wrong, and what he had done about it. And I agreed with him, and we went back together to the dying man in the glade. Sheila was leaning over and speaking to him, and she motioned me to him as we approached.

He was very much weaker then. I stooped down beside him so that he wouldn’t have to raise his voice.

“I’m damn sorry to have let you in on this, Moran,” he said: “you shouldn’t have come out.” And then he said: “You ought to have put me down at the station that night, like I asked you.”

“Couldn’t do that, old boy,” I said quietly. “Not on a night like that.”

He shifted a little on his back, and in an instant Stenning was stooping anxiously to help him move. “It’s been a rum show,” he muttered when he was comfortable. “You’ve got crashed, and I’ve got shot up. And nothing gained. The whole thing a ruddy failure.” … There was a catch of disappointment in his voice. He was getting very weak.

I glanced anxiously at Sheila. Behind the range of his vision she shook her head.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “We’ve got the plates you took of Portsmouth, you know. We took ’em off Manek.”

For one moment, I thought he was going to sit up. “You say you’ve got the plates?”

“You lie still,” I said, and reached out for that black case. One of the Italians handed it to me. “They’re here, quite all right. The case hasn’t been opened.”

I put it into his hand so that he could feel it. He lay there fingering it for a moment, and then he handed it back to me.

“Open it up,” he said.

I could not have met Sheila’s eyes at that moment. I had all that I could do to keep a steady face myself. “D’you want me to expose these chaps?” I asked.

He inclined his head painfully. “There’s a little spring catch … on the end,” he said. “A little button.”

“I’ve got it now,” I said, and lifted off the cover plate.

He was insistent. “Get the plates out, and give them to me one by one,” he said.

There was a slide there 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.

I lifted it out of the case and put it in his hand. He laid it on his chest in the bright morning sunlight and played with it for a little, holding it up and turning it about. And presently he laid it down.

“Now the next,” he said.

There were twelve plates in that box, each separated from the others by a velvet shield. I gave them to him one by one. He held each one for half a minute or so, turning them all ways to the light and never speaking at all, until we got to the tenth. And then:

“God damn it,” he said. “The sun’s going in.”

The brilliant sunlight of that Italian morning beat down upon us in the glade, drenching the country with its golden glow and drawing the scent out of the rosemary on which he lay. “It’s only a little cloud, old boy,” I said. “There’s lashings of light left to cook these plates.”

“That’s right,” he said faintly. “It was an awfully quick film they used. We had a lot of trouble developing the practice ones.”

I handed him the twelfth and last. “That’s the lot,” I said. “You’ve got them all there now. The box is empty.”

He fingered the last plate for a little, and laid it with the others. “That’s a bloody good job done,” he sighed.

He was silent for a minute or so. I thought it was the end, but he roused himself again. “You’re sure they’re cooked all right?” he inquired. “It’s getting so dark.”

“They’re done all right, old boy,” I said. “You’ve made a proper job of it.”

He sighed again. “Well, bust them up,” he said.

So I laid them together on the grass beside him and cracked
them into very small pieces with the handle of my automatic. And the sound of the tinkling glass reassured him a bit, I think, because:

“Miss Darle,” he whispered. “I want to speak to Miss Darle.”

Sheila bent over him. “I’m here, Captain Lenden,” she replied, and wiped his face very gently with the water.

“That’s nice,” he said, and then he began to speak to her about his wife. And what he said was no concern of ours, nor has it any place in this account. It didn’t take very long, and at the end of it he said:

“You’ll tell her that?”

Very gently Sheila brushed the hair back from his forehead. “Why, yes, I’ll tell her that. But there isn’t any need, you know. She knows it all already.”

He sighed. “I know she does. But I want you to tell her again. Just that it’s all—all right.”

He closed his eyes as if for sleep, but presently he opened them again and said “Moran”. And I bent towards him.

“How did you come to crash my kite?”

“Doing a slow turn when I was coming in to land, old boy,” I said. “Something went wrong with it, and we spun into the deck from about three hundred.”

His voice had grown very faint. “You want to watch those slow turns on the Breguet,” he said. I had to put my ear practically to his lips to catch the words.

There was silence, and then he said: “You don’t want to use the rudder at all … hardly. Just the bank. And keep her nose stuffed down a bit and she’ll go round … nicely.”

About five minutes after that he died.