My Heart Has Wings (15 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Several days elapsed
before Jan had an opportunity of speaking to Daker of her decision to leave the firm. She had mulled over it endlessly and was convinced it was the only thing she could do. It was dreadful to think her integrity had been questioned. She would never again feel at ease in her confidential capacity. The mysterious leakage in
Ariel
was still unexplained. There might be further leakages, and if there were, Daker could again have doubts of her. She was, she could see quite dispassionately, a security risk. And S.M. and Daker recognized this. The daughter of an out-of-work, hard-up, ex-newspaperman who had been an aeronautical correspondent, and now, presumably, lived by selling what scraps of aviation gossip he could pick up. Not exactly the ideal parent for the secretary of a brilliant aircraft designer up to the eyes in hush-hush projects!

“I’d never be sure I wasn’t being suspected of indiscretion ... or something worse,” Jan told herself. “I couldn’t bear it!”

And there was Mike. His treachery was a wound hidden deep in her soul; she couldn’t let herself dwell on it, but it was there, a nagging bitterness. She had been an ingenuous fool in her estimation of his friendliness
...
and worse than a fool, making a hero of him, imagining herself in love with him. Even how the thought of him could shake her heart like a leaf in the wind. An emotional hangover she’d got to snap out of! The sooner she was away from Scott-Manly’s, and the possibility of constant encounters with him, the better for her peace of mind.

But Daker was annoyingly elusive that week. Jan cornered him at last during a lull in a busy afternoon, following him, uninvited, into his office. He had just got back from a conference with Sir Mark on the chances at Merecombe, and in a few moments he would be off again; there was a telephone message on his desk, which Jan herself had typed, asking him if he would go over to the experimental hangar as soon as possible. Maybe it wasn’t a good moment to choose, but she couldn’t wait forever. And what she had to say would never be easy. Daker hated changes; the thought of having to find a new secretary would infuriate him.

He was poring over a weather chart spread out on his desk, and said, “Well, what is it?” in a discouraging tone when he caught sight of her.

Jan took a deep breath and plunged. “I’m sorry, Mr. Daker, but I’ve got to ask you if you will accept my resignation. I’d be glad to leave as, soon as conveniently possible.”

Daker looked up from the map. “What a time to spring a thing like this on me!” he shouted bad-temperedly.

“I’m sorry,” Jan repeated unhappily.

“Wh
a
t’s the matter with the job all at once?” Daker demanded. “If you feel you aren’t getting enough money
...”

“No, it
’
s nothing like that,” Jan interrupted quickly. She hadn’t worked out exactly what she was going to say in this interview, intent only on obtaining her release. And now she decided to be completely frank. If Daker was going to take an injured tone with her, he might , as well learn that she, too, had ample cause for grievance. “It’s this business about the publicity leakage in
Ariel
,”
she said. “It’s made me feel very uncomfortable. I’ve discovered that you thought I might have had something to do with it. I
thin
k
you might have told me, given me a chance to clear myself
...
”

Daker’s sallow face went a deeper shade of yellow —the nearest approach to a guilty blush it could achieve. “I didn’t want to upset you unnecessarily,” he offered. “I guessed the whole thing would blow over. It was S.M. who made heavy weather of it, and it was his idea, not mine, that you might be involved. After all, you were the obvious suspect—the only person with access to the information which appeared in
Ariel
.”

“Based on a memo you dictated to me,” Jan reminded him grimly.

“S.M. didn’t realize that, and I was careful to keep it from him, not wanting to stir up more trouble than was strictly necessary,” Daker said. “I couldn’t imagine you trading snippets of hush-hush gossip to some remote grubby little Continental publication.” He threw out his hands impatiently. “The whole thing seemed fantastic.”

“But you could imagine my father doing it,” Jan said doggedly. “You took me off security filing, and wire-recorders.”

“Only because S.M. insisted. I told him at the time I considered it an unnecessary precaution; that I had complete faith in you.”

He wasn’t being altogether straight with her, Jan felt; trying to smooth her down, get her to withdraw her resignation. If he had had faith in her, why hadn’t he told her at the time why he couldn’t let her do the security filing, instead of pretending S.M. had wanted Helen to take it on—for some wholly unconvincing reason? She said, “There were three carbon copies of that memo, and there are only two in the files now. I checked up on it.”

“Anything could have happened to those files while Mrs. Stanford was in charge of them,” Daker laughed, trying to make a joke of it. But Jan wasn’t going to be put off.

“Somebody took that memo,” she said, “and sent it to
Ariel.
Until we find out who it was I don’t see how I can prove my innocence.”

“You don’t have to prove your innocence,
”
Daker asserted wearily. “The whole thing is blowing over ... it wasn’t all that serious. The memo was probably quite simply mislaid. The fact that it seemed to be the basis for those paragraphs in
Ariel
might easily be a coincidence. The stuff
Ariel
printed could just as well have been the result of clever guesswork from someone with a smattering of technical knowledge
...”

“My father,” Jan said bleakly.

“I wish you’d forget about it,” Daker said. “I’ve told you my faith in you was and
is
unshaken.” The colour ebbed from Jan’s face. She hadn’t meant to bring Mike into it, the very thought of mentioning his part in this miserable business made her feel weak and sick, but Daker’s equivocal attitude infuriated her. Trying to make light of his complicity in the horrible suspicions that had been going on behind her back.
He might as well realize she knew the whole sorry story.

“Was it having faith in me,” she asked coldly,
“to send Mike Carliss to my home—under a guise of friendliness—to check up on my background?”

Daker’s dark eyes blazed. She had expected him to be embarrassed by this direct question, but he was furiously angry. “What makes you think I did that?” he demanded. “Who’s been talking to you
?
”

Taken off her guard by this counter-attack Jan began confusedly. “It was something Erica said
...
”

Daker picked up the weather chart and with a gesture of uncontrollable exasperation flung it across the room. “Erica’s a fool!” he declared. “The moment you have women in business this
is the kind of thing that crops up. They can’t keep their mouths shut, and Erica, for all her scientific brilliance, has no more sense than she
was
born
with. The truth is, I guess, that she’s
a
bit peeved because Mike has been paying you a certain amount of attention lately.”

Jan went a rich crimson. Watching her tell-tale colour deepen, Daker laughed, his anger evaporating as quickly as it had arisen. So that was the way the wind was blowing! The eternal triangle
...
with Mike Carliss at the apex, poor tyke. Well, they’d have to sort it out among the three of them. He didn’t particularly care how, Daker told himself, as long as it didn’t mean he was going to lose one of the best secretaries he’d ever had.

“Now
listen to me, Jan,” he admonished her.
“I know exactly
what Erica said to you, but if it has left you with the impression that Mike has been double-crossing you, you’ve got it all wrong. S.M., as you appear to have guessed,
did
question your father’s integrity. It seemed to the old man, raging around for likely suspects, that you might have dropped an incautious word about your work at home, meaning no harm, and that your father had used the information thus gleaned to provide him with a profitable sale to
Ariel.
Personally, I thought S.M. was on the wrong track and told him so. But knowing Mike was on visiting
terms
at your
home
I put the matter up to him and asked his opinion of Hart Ferraby and his journalistic activities ... if he thought there could be any connection in that quarter with the
Ariel
leakage.”

He paused for dramatic effect, and the silence lasted so long Jan couldn’t bear it. “What did he say?” she asked a little breathlessly.

“Knowing Mike, you surely can guess!” With maddening deliberation Daker crossed the office and retrieved the weather map from the floor.

“He fairly jumped down my throat!” he brought out at last. “Said he wasn’t in the habit of informing against his friends, and that if I thought he was going to do a spot of investigating for Security
while he was being received at Regency Terrace as a trusted guest, I had another thought coming to me. For make-weight he added that Hart struck him as one of the straightest guys he’d ever met, a poet rather than a journalist, with an unworldly, not to say unpractical, approach of life that was far more likely to produce saintliness than subversion. And as for the glowing things he said about you, Jan
...”
Daker gave her an impish grin and left the sentence eloquently unfinished.

“Anyhow,” he summed it up, “you couldn’t have had a better advocate. If you imagine he was anything less than a hundred per cent loyal to you in this business, you’re badly mistaken. He thinks you’re pretty wonderful!”

He became aware that she was staring at h
im
with wide, glazed eyes and that the colour had receded from her face, leaving her as white as a sheet.

“Doesn’t it please you hear Mike Carliss thinks I you’re wonderful?” he asked in a tone of banter.

“Yes,” Jan murmured, “It’s marvellous.”

“And I think you’re pretty wonderful too,” Daker assured her, still in the same light tone. But there was a strained edge to it as he added, “So for Pete’s Sake don’t let’s have any more, nonsense about resigning!” He waved a hand at her in good-natured dismissal. “Run along now, like a good girl, and let me get down to this weather chart. It’s the best we’ve had in weeks
...
and it looks as if we’ll soon be going places!”

Jan went back to her own office and sat down by the typewriter, staring into space. Mike had been loyal to her
...
and she had said all those awful things to him the other night, sending him away from her with the vilest of accusations ringing in his ears. She had wronged him terribly ... and she had killed their friendship stone dead, for he would never forgive her. He had been so disgusted with her he hadn’t even condescended to defend himself. “You really think I’m that much of
a heel!” he had said in stony acceptance, and left it at that.

Mechanically she slid a sheet of notepaper into the typewriter. There was a batch of letters in her notebook waiting to be transcribed. She gazed at the shorthand symbols despairingly. “Dear Sir In answer to yours of the 9
^th
...”

“Oh, Mike!” her heart cried, “what have I done?” His quiet dependable Jan. “You’re my luck,” he had said to her that night at the party. “My courage, I wish I could tell you what you mean to me
...”
But she knew already. He’d made it clear enough. It wasn’t love he wanted from her, but that placid, steady friendship which was all she had dared to offer him—and on which he had come to rely. And she had let him down.

Blinking back the tears, she began to type, working at top speed so that she wouldn’t have any room in her mind for the misery of her thoughts. Time enough to let them flood back on her later, when the day’s work was done. She’d better get used to them—the fruitless regrets and self-reproaches—they were going to be with her for a long time!

The inter-com at her elbow buzzed and she switched it on. Daker’s voice crackled at her, asking to be put through to Merecombe.

A few moments later, when he had finished the call he came out of his room, looking jubilant.
“
Mike will be taking the E.106a up tomorrow,” he announced. “It’s all fixed. The weather prospects are perfect, and so, at last, is the aircraft. Every possible adjustment has been made, every checkup completed. I’ll be flying down first thing in the
morning,” he went on, “and I’d be glad if you’d come with me. Bring an overnight bag, in case we have to stay down there. Okay
?
”

Yes, Mr. Daker,” Jan agreed shakenly, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. Mike was going to fly the prototype tomorrow and she
’
d be there to see him. Maybe Daker was offering her the trip to Merecombe as a sop to her pride, making her feel she was a trusted member of the firm once more. But she didn't care about that any more. The only thing that mattered in the whole world was that she was going to see Mike tomorrow. It was more luck than she deserved. Suddenly her heart was full of wild, inarticulate little prayers. If only she might have the chance to tell him before he started his flight how sorry she was for so cruelly misjudging him, there was
nothing more she would ask of life!

She stayed late at the office, clearing up routine work she would normally have done the next day. Supper was over when she got home and Carole was washing the dishes im the scullery.

“I thought you’d never get in; I’m bursting with news!” she called out when she heard Jan run down the basement stairs into the kitchen. “There’s veal stew keeping hot for you on the boiler, and your dessert is in the larder; some rather depressed plums and custard.”

There was a checked gingham cloth on one end of the kitchen table and Jan set the food there and sat down, too tired from the emotional stress of the day to be hungry for the not very appetizing meal.

Carole came in from the scullery, wiping her hands on a tea towel.

“I had to stay late at the office tonight,” Jan explained; “I’m going down to Merecombe tomorrow and there were lots of odds and ends to be done that I couldn’t very well leave.”

“Merecombe!” Carole echoed, impressed. “Does that mean there’s something exciting going on?”

Jan nodded. “I can’t talk about it.”

“I know. I won’t ask any questions
...
but I guess it’s something that concerns Mike.”

Jan gave her a wounded, desperate look, more eloquent than any answer.

“He’ll be all right, Jan,” Carole said. “I know he will. There’s a lucky ‘feel’ about Mike Carliss.”

“Don’t say that!” Jan cried sharply. “It’s tempting Fate.”

Carole laughed at her superstition. “You air people!” she said. “You’re as full of fetishism as a bunch of African savages!”

“What’s the great news?” Jan demanded, ignoring this imputation.

“Duke Smithley has been talking to Drayton Gower about Pa’s play—and Drayton is all worked up about it and wants to meet Pa right away. Duke has fixed a rendezvous for them at eight-thirty this evening at the Green Bottle.”

“
Drayton Gower!” Jan breathed the fabulous name in awe. A man whose daring, experimental film directing had made his name famous on both sides of the Atlantic. “But I thought Duke was going to give the play a tryout at The WaterMill
?
” she said.

“He thinks it’s too big a subject for a theatre, but an absolute natural for Cinerama. And Drayton, it
s
eems, agrees with him. He only read the script yesterday and he’s seeing Pa tonight. Coming all the way out here to meet him! Don’t you think that looks hopeful
...
more than hopeful
?
”

“Unless Father goes all difficult and decides his poetry is too precious to be reduced to the level of popular entertainment,” Jan suggested cautiously.

“He’s not taking that attitude at the moment. He’s thrilled to bits. Oh, Jan, he’s just got to pull this off—think what it would mean to us!” Carole’s small vivid face went tense with emotion. “I could go on at the art school next term
...
we shouldn’t have to sell the house. No more pinching and scraping ... no more unpaid bills.” She clenched her hands until the knuckles showed white. “If for any crazy reason Father lets this chance slip I’ll never forgive him.”

“He won’t let it slip,” Jan said. A Drayton Gower film production. Suddenly she could see it; a vast screen, all blue sky, a great sliver plane soaring into the sun. Mike over Merecombe Down!

Her breath came unevenly. “ ‘Born of the Sun’,” she quoted softly, “ ‘they travelled a short while towards the sun, and left the vivid air signed with their honour’.”

“What a theme for a screen play!” Carole sighed. “All power-dives and test pilots and glory. Only Drayton could put it over. And he’s got to do it. Even if it means Pa has to do a lot of revising, which is more than likely. Writing for theatre and cinema are two very different things. But you mustn’t let him be put off by that, Jan
...
you’ve got to keep him up to it. You’re the only one he will listen to
...”
Carole glanced at her wrist watch. “Incidentally,” she said anxiously, “it’s time he was heading for the Green Bottle. I wonder where he is?”

“Right here,” said Hart, coming into the kitchen, “and I’m afra
i
d I can’t keep that appointment with Gower tonight. I’ve just phoned Duke and told him so.” He brought it out jauntily, but there was a nervous glint in his eye. The storm of protest broke after an instant’s incredulous pause; Carole, near to tears, telling him he was crazy; Jan’s quieter, “But
why,
Father? Drayton Gower will already be on his way from town, Duke won’t be in time to stop him. He’ll be furious
...
and quite rightly when he finds you haven’t bothered to turn up. He’ll never give you another chance.”

“He will,” Hart said calmly, “if he wants my play badly enough. Anyway it’s a risk I’ve got to take. Gerda is upstairs in my study. She has just arrived—bringing some work I have got to help her with. A story we’ve been nursing along for some time. It’s broken today in full spate, and we’ve got to get down to it and despatch the details to Paris by tonight’s air mail.”

“And it’s more important to you than your play?” Jan asked, her voice shaking with su
p
pressed rage.

“In an extraordinary way
...
yes, it is.”

“Because Gerda wants you to do it!” Carole wailed.

“Because it’s something in which, through a promise given, I’ve become heavily involved.” Hart shrugged his thin shoulders. “I can’t explain it to you more fully at the moment. You must leave me to act as I think best.” He peered into the coffee-pot on the edge of the stove. “Could you let me have a cup of hot coffee and perhaps a sandwich for Gerda?” he asked. “She hasn’t had time to get an evening meal.”