My Heart Has Wings (14 page)

Jan had gone deathly white—the pupils of her hazel eyes dark and dilated.

“I wouldn’t have begun all this if I hadn’t imagined you already knew most of it,” Erica said impatiently.

Jan shook her
head. “No,” she said in a whisper. I didn
’
t know
...
anything like that. Mr. Daker showed me a copy of
Ariel
and I remember thinking the paragraphs about the E.106a were very like a memo he had dictated to me a few weeks ago. I thought it was all a bit odd, but I had no idea Sir Mark, Mr. Daker
...
Mike ... all of you suspected me of having betrayed official secrets!”
Jan’s throat
closed up convulsively and she couldn
’
t go on.

“
In a situation like
,
that
anyone
might have been suspected,
”
Erica pointed out reasonably
. “They
very soon discovered how
w
rong they were. Mike brought back the most reassuring reports of your father s integrity. Daker thought the test- pilot play sounded a bit fishy at
first ...
it would have been so perfect a cover for the kind of
questions a
p
otential snooper might want to ask.
But Mike decided that it was
all perfectly innocent.”

With shaking hands Jan began to gather the carbon copy of the thesis. “I think you’ll find it all correct,
”
she said stonily. She wished Erica would go away and leave her alone—with her mortal hurt. The pain in her heart seemed to be act
u
ally physical, robbing her of the power of thought
.
Mike coming to Regency
Terrace
to spy on them!

Erica took the typescript, looking a
little uncomfortable.
“
Thanks so much!” she said, a trifle
gushingly. “It was awfully good of you to get it done so quickly.”

Jan stood up and went over to the stationery cupboard. Opening it, she peered into it with simulated purpose; assuming an air of preoccupation so that Erica would feel dismissed. But
Erica hung on. “Please don’t be mad at me, Jan!” she begged humbly. “I’m sorry if I’ve said too much, but honestly I thought you realized most of what has been going on.”

“I didn’t, as it happened,” Jan said
in
a choked voice. “But I’m very glad you told me. Even if it is a shock to find I’m not
...
trusted ... in the firm
.”

“But you
are
trusted!” Erica protested. “Daker and Mike have really stuck up for you wonderfully all along. It was only Pa who had serious doubts of your integrity
...
because he didn’t know you personally. The leakage seemed to come from this office and it wasn’t surprising he wondered if you had been a bit careless. Please don’t be so touchy about it. It’s all over and done with.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Jan said dully.

“Just forget about it,” Erica advised breezily.
“
Life’s too short to worry over trifles.” Her glance went hungrily to the typescript in her hand, and she was reading once more those opening lines as she went slowly from the room.

Leaning against the door of the stationery cupboard, Jan closed her eyes and let the waves of pain wash over her. What a fool she had been, accepting Mike’s friendliness .at its face value
...
imagining he was interested in the play, that, he had enjoyed coming to Regency Terrace, finding its quiet homeliness congenial. She hadn
’
t been mad enough to put it any higher than that
...
but even that, it seemed, had been too high. He had been sent by S.M. to discover what kind of man Hart Ferraby might be. And he had accepted the assignment
...
trading on their hospitality to pry into their home life. Mike had done that.
Oh, it was all so clear now, the whole hideous pattern revealing itself; his sudden assumption of interest in her, seeking her out for no apparent reason, asking her that first evening to go to a cinema with him as a opening gambit.

The five o’clock whistle sounded. It seemed to come from an immense distance. In a robot fashion Jan responded to its prompting, closing the office for the night, going to the cloakroom to tidy up. Moving in a dream, she made her way along the perimeter road to the bus stop. She had no sensation of actually being on the bus. Suspended in time and space, her an
g
uished thoughts possessed her, working a queer fevered brilliancy, going back over every detail of the past few weeks: Daker taking her off the security filing, not allowing her to do the wire-recorder playbacks
;
it was so horribly simple now to see
why!
And that emergency conference S.M. had held about a month ago
...
everything dated from that. That was the evening Mike had cut Erica’s cocktail party to follow her along the road in his car and offer her a lift. No doubt he had explained his odd behaviour to Erica later on. Perhaps they had laughed together over it, making a joke of Mike’s new job as a sleuth.

Jan was at home by the time this hideous possibility presented itself—in the basement kitchen, with Tiger-Boy curling himself around her ankles, reminding her it was his suppertime. She went to the larder to find the rock salmon Mrs. Costello would have cooked for him, and it was the strong odour of the fish, she told herself, that made her feel suddenly sick. Hurriedly she set Tiger-Boy’s tin plate before him and went upstairs.

In the hall the telephone confronted her. There was a note on the pad beside it in Carole’s large picturesque script. “Dad is having a snack at The Green Bottle with Duke—and Peter and I are going to the pictures.”

Jan read the message through dully. She ought to be excited about that meeting with Duke. It looked as though his interest in the play was coming along nicely. But this evening she couldn’t care. She was, she discovered, shaking violently at the prospect of calling Mike up and telling him she wasn’t going to have dinner with him. If only she might never speak to him or see him again! She picked up the telephone receiver and then replaced it. Mike wasn’t at his hotel, she remembered, but at a conference at the Aero Club. She’d just have to leave a message for him at Les Trois Soeurs. The relief of not having to speak to him personally was so great that for a moment she felt almost happy.

When she had telephone the restaurant she left the house. If Mike tried to ring her up when he got the message there would be no reply. Would he be annoyed with her for breaking their date? she wondered. Why had he wanted to meet her tonight? To do a little further probing for the Security department, perhaps. The possibility struck her with the force of a physical blow. She would never again feel at ease in her work at Scott-Manly’s—or with Daker. It would be much better for her to leave the firm right away. She would hand in her notice tomorrow, she decided dully. By tomorrow Mike would have returned to Merecombe, and if she left the firm by the end of the week she would most likely have her wish
...
and never see him any more But the prospect brought curiously little comfort. Trudging along the towpath by the river she bent her head to the chilly wind. There were no gay steamers on the water this evening. The twilight was grey and bleak. Dried-up leaves scurried before her on the path—as though it were already autumn. Summer was over, her career at Scott-Manly’s was over
...
everything b
r
eaking up, slipping away f
r
om her. And soon the house in Regency Terrace would be gone too; giving up her well-paid job would be about the last straw to their shaky finances. Tears welled in Jan’s eyes. She let them fall, weeping now not for her lost work or lost home but for her lost faith in Mike Carliss. It was so achingly desolate to have nothing left for him ... not even respect.

It was almost dark when she turned her steps homeward. As she opened the garden gate she saw Mike coming down the path towards her, his lean face strained and stern.

She hadn’t expected he would come out to Regency Terrace to look for her. For a moment she felt panic-stricken. Then suddenly she was coldly angry. How dare he pursue her like this? Her brief message, cancelling their dinner engagement without offering any reason, had surely indicated she was in no mood for his company, and if he had any sense—or conscience—he ought to have guessed the reason why.

Sneak, spy, snake-in-the-grass; the childish epithets whirled through her mind, leaving her intoxicated with her indignation against him. He could never hurt her again. Nothing he said or did could matter to her now. She was finished with him. The discovery filled her with a heady sense of freedom. She stood still by the gate, letting him approach her.

“Why didn’t you come to Les Trois Soeurs?” he demanded bluntly. “I got your curt little message. Miss Ferraby regrets
... like
Miss Otis in the song. No explanation offered.” A temperamental eyebrow shot up. “Unlike Miss Otis, whose manners were impeccable
...
even on the steps of the gallows.” He grinned at the macabre parallel, his
stern
face softening. “What went wrong, Jan? I had to come to find out. I’m off to Merecombe once more in the morning, and goodness knows when I shall see you again.”

“
If
you
never see me again,” Jan said stonily,
“
that will be just fine!”

“Jan!” Mike exclaimed. “What on earth has come over you?” He peered at her in the gathering gloom, trying to read the expression on her pale, set face. “What can I have done to make you act in this way? It’s so absolutely unlike you!”

“For an experienced private detective,” Jan said, “you aren’t being very bright.”

Mike stared at her for a puzzled moment. “Since when have I become a detective?” he asked uneasily. The hint of guilt in his tone wasn’t lost on Jan.

“You should know!” she sneered
...
and stopped short. She hadn’t meant to take this cheap, sarcastic tone with him. She’d intended to be dignified
...
pained. Her breath caught in her throat with a sound suspiciously like a stifled sob. Why had she thought he could never hurt her again? Standing before her in the melancholy twilight, he looked tired, drawn, older than she had ever seen him look. And tomorrow he was returning to Merecombe, and all that Merecombe meant. Was it cruel of her to be worrying him over his personal matter on the eve of his big flight? She thrust the thought away from her, hardening her heart.

“Has somebody been making mischief?” he asked.

“Not
making
it,” Jan said sadly. “It was already made. It’s just that I happened to discover it.” Shaken, she paused, the full horror of Erica’s revelations striking her afresh. “It was a dreadful shock, Mike,” she said unsteadily. “I can still hardly believe it! I know your work is more important to you than anything else on earth ... that you would guard the E.106a and its secrets with your life. I can imagine how horrified you were when you saw those paragraphs in
Ariel
and how you would want to find out who was responsible for the leakage of information. All the same, what you did to us is unforgivable. I found out about it this afternoon, quite by chance, just after I’d said I’d have dinner wit
h
you
.
..
”

“And that’s why you stood me up?” Mike put in dryly.

Jan nodded. “I couldn
’
t have eaten with you. The food you offered me would have choked me.”

Mike gave a short laugh. “Piling on the melodrama a bit, aren’t you? I gather I’ve offended you mortally, but I still don’t quite know how.”

“You
do
know; perfectly well!” Jan cried. The smouldering anger within her suddenly flared to white heat. Her brain felt as if it were on fire. “Pretending to be so friendly with me,” she said, “because S.M. and Daker asked you to check up on my home background. Coming here to snoop on my father, find out his circumstances
...
and what he was writing. The test-pilot play sounded fishy to you, I suppose, so you pretended to be interested in it, offered to help with it— encouraging my father, no doubt, to ask indiscreet questions, setting traps for him.”

“But, Jan, wait a minute
...
!”

“Oh, I know you drew a blank.” Jan said, “and after several fact-finding visits told Daker you’d come to the conclusion we weren’t altogether the villains we were supposed to be. But that doesn’t make it all any the less despicable. Masquerading as our friend, accepting our hospitality, so that you could probe into our home life and go back to the works with reports for Daker
...
”

“You
really think I’m that much of a heel?” Mike asked with ominous quietness. His face beneath its tan was ashen colour and grim.

“What else can I think?” Jan cried.

“Plenty,” he said
“But you’ve made up your
m
in
d about me and that seems to be that. You’ve known
me ...
how long is it? Eighteen months? Lately I thought we’d begun to be pretty close to one another, that we understood one another; but it seems I was wrong. At the drop of a hat, the whisper
o
f a gossip, I’m the kind of skunk who
could give points to Judas Iscariot! Well, so long as we know
...”
He laughed mirthlessly. “I’ve got your real opinion of me now in no uncertain terms
...
and there doesn’t seem to be anything more to be said.”

He moved towards the gate, and Jan stood aside to let him pass, trembling so violently that she could not speak. As he walked towards his car she had an overwhelming urge to call him back, but she remained silent, her thoughts seething. What exactly had passed between them? Nothing that altered the essential facts. Mike had adopted an outraged attitude, but he had offered no apology, no explanation of his behaviour. Because there wasn’t one. The way he had acted over the
Ariel
leakage was too glaringly hideous for any justification. So he was brazening it out. In a way she was glad about that. If she had seen him humbled, begging her forgiveness, it would have been more than she could bear. There was no forgiveness possible. Nor did he want it from her. What he had done, he had done with full deliberation ... for the sake of the work to which he was dedicated. For the new prototype fighter E.106a he lived ... and would if necessary die. With his head held high he had gone away from her, his face set towards Merecombe and the great experimental flight.

Well, that, as Mike had said, was that! There was indeed no more to be said. Bracing her shoulders, stiffening her spirit, Jan went slowly back to the empty house. It was as though Mike’s obstinate pride had communicated itself to her, and even the comfort of tears now must be denied.