My Heart Has Wings (16 page)

In stony silence Jan put the coffee-pot and some biscuits and cheese on a tray. Hart carried it away, looking bowed and old and tired. Failure, defeat, irresolution in every line of his sagging shoulders, it seemed to Jan. “To miss the chance of this brilliant sale of his play
...
for the sake of Gerda Byrrsen!” she whispered. She sank down limply into the nearest chair.

“He’s mad,” Carole groaned. “O
h
, Jan, this is the end” She put her head down on her arms and burst into tears.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Presently Jan began
clearing the table. Sitting there listening to Carole’s suppressed and bitter sobs wouldn’t solve the problem of her father’s behaviour. The more she thought about it, the more bewildering it became. “Maybe he’s stalling because he’s scared, subconsciously, of what the cinema might do to his poetry,
”
she hazarded. “So he has worked up all this stuff about Gerda needing his help with some urgent
copy
...
”

“But
think
of those Shakespeare films Gower has made,” Carole said. “If the cinema is good enough for Shakespeare, surely it’s good enough
for Pa
.
”

“Saying he was heavily involved ... because of a promise given’,” Jan pursued it. “To whom? Gerda Byrrsen! She told me some time ago that she was putting work in his way. I didn’t believe her. But he has been getting money from somewhere. He gave me ten pounds towards the grocery bill the other day.”

“Ten pounds” Carole echoed withe
ri
ngly.
“
If he’d kept his appointment with Drayton Gower tonight he might have been able to give you ten
thousand!”

In the gloomy silence that fell on them then they listened to the muted rattle of the typewriter overhead.

“I’d better go and get my bag packed for tomorrow,” Jan said at last. The thought of the journey to Merecombe, and all it involved, came back to her, the pain of her misunderstanding with Mike stirring sharply. In her preoccupation with her father’s exasperating behaviour she had almost forgotten it. There were times when life got itself so full of hurtful, horrible snags that you didn’t know which one to worry about first!

Slowly and heavily she went
u
p the basement stairs. As she reached the hall the study door opened and Gerda and her father came out. Gerda looked oddly excited. Her father, Jan saw, was carrying a large Official-looking envelope, and when he caught sight of her he turned it over, so that the blank side of it was towards her, concealing the address. That was one of the small, terrible details that came back to her later. But now she only thought that they’d got their urgent copy ready for the post and that if they didn’t hurry they’d miss the last mail clearance at the local post office.

“We’re taking this package to London Airport,” her father said, giving her a desperate glance, as though he were hoping she wouldn’t begin again about Drayton Gower. “A friend of Gerda’s is flying to Paris
...
and will deliver it to the office there tonight by hand.”

“It must be extraordinarily urgent,” Jan said coldly.

“It is,” Hart snapped back at her, and opened the hall door to reveal a waiting taxi, evidently ordered.

“We’ve got to hurry, Hart,” Gerda put in nervously. Waving an absent-minded farewell to Jan, she ran down the path, Hart following her. “I may be late back,” he called over his shoulder. “Don’t wait up for me.”

Jan went on up to her room. A taxi all the way out to London Airport would cost quite a bit. Who was paying for it? This mysterious Paris office that wanted stories flown over all in a rush? Not one of Gerda’s usual fashion stories, but something far more important, something with which Hart had to help. With a tired shrug, Jan tried to put the whole puzzling matter out of her head. She had better think about Mike instead, and what she was going to say to him tomorrow.

She had just finished her simple packing when the telephone rang, and she ran downstairs to answer it. It was installed in the study, on the writing desk, and as she picked up the receiver she noticed the disorder in which her father had left his papers. It wasn’t like him to be so untidy,' she thought absently, listening to Peter’s voice coming acr
o
ss the wire. He’d been on the river all day with a school friend, unkindly named “Bat’s Ears”, and called Bats for short, and he was ringing up to say they’d just got back to Bats’ house and could he stay to supper. Jan said she supposed he could if Bats’ mother didn’t mind, and hung up on a spate of assurances.

There was a discarded twist of typewritten paper in her hand. She had picked it up idly from the desk while Peter talked, and it was just as she was about to throw it into the wastepaper basket that she caught sight of the familiar cipher, “E.106a”, on a
corner
of the crumpled page. There was nothing in her mind but a blank feeling of astonishment as she smoothed the page out. But the shock came swiftly—like a sword-thrust right through her heart—as she read what had been typed
...
here in this room ... on her father’s machine. Her breath caught in her throat and something seemed to have happened to her eyes; the words before her danced and jumped and slid together. But not before their meaning had burned into her brain.

“When the daring new prototype E.106a takes to the air at Merecombe Down in Dorset tomorrow aeronautical research will once more have moved from the backroom seclusion of designing office and laboratory to the challenge—and danger—of practical tests.”

There was a lot more, but Jan couldn’t go on with it. And it was headed, “Memo from G.B. to C. Dupont, News Desk,
Ariel
.”

How long she stood there with the crumpled typescript in her hand Jan didn’t know. It might have been five minutes
...
and it might have been an eternity. She had heard about people’s blood running cold, and now she knew what it meant. She was cold all through as if there was ice in her veins, and her brain was a lump of lead inside her head.

The cushions in the armchair that stood beside the desk were rumpled, she noticed numbly, and a wisp of handkerchief lay on the seat. Picking it up, she held it from her gingerly between forefinger and thumb, as if it were something obscene. It smelled faintly of expensive French perfume and the initials worked in one corner were the same as the initials on the memo to C. Dupont. “G.B.”

With a shudder Jan dropped the handkerchief into the wastepaper basket
...
seeing Gerda now sitting here in the armchair, or the malevolent ghost of Gerda, leaning forward eagerly, watching Hart’s lean fingers tap out the message on the typewriter keys: “When the daring new prototype E.106a takes the air tomorrow
...
”

Her father and Gerda Byrrsen working together for Ariel,
sending out the “flash” of the next day’s hush-hush flight. She tried to think about it clearly
...
make it seem real, but it was no more than a shadowy image from some darkened evil dream. Only the cold tide of horror rising in her heart was real... real as death.

Slumping down into the armchair she forced herself to look once more at the crumpled page of typescript—a discarded carbon copy of the message even now on its way to Paris. For what else could it be? Slowly, incredulously, she read it through—a concise and extremely technical description of the construction of the secret aircraft. The kind of thing known only to Daker and his team of experts. How had her father managed to get hold of it? With a fresh stab of horror she remembered the missing memo that had provided
Ariel
with its first intimation of the new research plane. Had her father sent that too? It seemed hideously possible; the whole ghastly jigsaw puzzle suddenly fitting into place
...
his recent preoccupation with some mysterious journalistic work, his being in funds
...
mildly
...
with a promise of greater wealth to come. Was this what he had been counting on when he told her he would very soon be able to pay off all outstanding household bills? Blood money for selling his country’s secrets!

Wide-eyed, tight-lipped, sparing herself now no iota of its ugliness, she faced the situation. S.M. had been right in suspecting her father, and Daker’s doubts too were fully justified. She was what she had so indignantly denied it was possible for her to be ... a bad security risk to the firm, an employee with a subversive father actively engaged in espionage. They had been wholly reasonable in asking Mike to check up on her background, and in his unquestioning trust of the Ferrabys he had failed Scott-Manly’s. Cruelly she realized now how much wiser he would have been to have kept an open mind. His loyalty to the firm came before any other loyalty.

Her own loyalty to the firm came before any other loyalty, even before loyalty to her father.
Suddenly, piercingly she knew what she had to do. With a low moan she buried her face in her hands. Then straightening up, white-lipped but resolute, she uncradled the telephone receiver and dialled Daker’s number.

It was an almost unbearable relief when Mrs. Daker answered, saying Hugh was out and she wasn’t sure where he had gone, nor did she know when he would be in. Her bright matter-of-fact tones seemed like an echo from a world of sanity and peace
...
forever lost. “Hasn’t it been hot today?” she chirruped on cheerfully. “I must say I envy you and Hugh flying off for a breath of West Country air tomorrow!
... I’ll tell him you phoned, and if he conies in at anything like a reasonable hour I expect he’ll call you back.”

Jan hung up, her forehead wet with beads of perspiration. For an instant she rested, closing her eyes, then summoning once more her resolution she dialled Parker’s number. Parker, the Scott-Manly Press Officer, who would know, if anyone did, how you went about the rifling of the pockets of passengers arriving at Le Bourget
... for the purpose of intercepting a newspaper des, patch that was an offence against official secrecy.

If only, her heart cried weakly, Parker too might be away from home! If only there were some way in which she might yet escape from this terrible thing she was about to do!

But Parker wasn’t away from home. Parker was very much there, his voice incisive, impatient, cutting in on her faltering story almost before she had begun it
...
the tremulous intimation that she had reason to suspect that a woman journalist called Byrrsen had put on the night plane for Paris a package addressed to the magazine
Ariel
containing highly secret information about tomorrows’ test flight. Not yet mentioning her father’s part in the hideous business
...
saying as little as she could.

And then all at once there wasn’t any need to say any more.

“It’s all right, Miss Ferraby,” she heard Parker break in. “You did perfectly right to phone me, but don’t worry. I’ve got the whole thing under control
...”

“You knew about the despatch to
Ariel
?”
she gasped.

“Yes, I knew. We
’
ve been waiting for it. I can’t tell you any more at the moment, only that it didn’t leave London Airport this evening; we were able to intercept it. I’ve got to cut off now. I’ve got the Security people and a chap from Scotland Yard here with me, and we’re pretty busy sorting things out.” Then he added hurriedly: “By the way, your father is somewhat involved
in
all this ... I don't know if you’d guessed? He
’
s here with me, too, and he has asked me to tell you it
’
s not likely he’ll be able to get home tonight, but you aren’t to worry.”

There was a click of finality as the line went dead. Jan stared blankly at the receiver for a moment, then slowly hung up.

Carole put her head in at the door.
“I’
m just going to bed," she said. “I’ve had about enough trouble for one day and I need some sleep.

“I’ll
be u
p myself in a moment,” Jan said dully.

Enough trouble for one day! If Carole only knew! The missed appointment with Drayton Gower seemed trivial now. Sitting by the telephone, Jan felt a strange cold peace steal over her There was nothing more left to dread; t
h
e worst had happened. Even suspense was done with. Parker had intercepted the
Ariel
message ... and her father along with it! What would they do with him? Parker had spoken of
“
a chap from Scotland Yard”. That meant a detective, Jan supposed; some kind of superior policeman. Police, detectives, prison
...
they came to her mind vaguely, words written in the air; there was no reality behind them. She had had as much as she could absorb tonight in the way of shock.

Up in her room she moved slowly, carefully, through the familiar ritual of getting ready for bed, unconsciously holding on to the merciful numbness that had once more come over her. Beyond it lurked all she couldn't yet bear to face. In the morning she would find courage, but now, like a wounded creature, she only wanted to creep away into the darkness and hide. I’ll tell Carole tomorrow, she decided. Let her have this one more night in peace.

But in the morning it was late when she woke up ... a little surprised to find she had slept so well and so long; the deep, black sleep of the spiritually exhausted. The way, she thought with a shiver, condemned murderers are supposed to sleep on the night before their execution! A morbid analogy. And there was no time
just now for being morbid. If she was going to be at the works by eight-thirty, as Daker had bidden her, she’d have to hurry. Later, when she was in the bus on the way to Kingsford, she could speculate on what the day might bring forth. How much did Daker know of last night’s events? What would he say to her? Would he tell her that after all he had decided not to take her down to Merecombe
?
That he could no longer employ her as his secretary? It would be a very natural thing to do. Indeed she couldn’t imagine him doing anything else. Now that her father had been exposed as ... a spy
...
they wouldn’t be able to keep her on at Scott-Manly’s, even if they believed she had had no part in the betrayal of the firm’s secrets. But somehow that aspect of it didn’t
matter. She couldn’t work up any interest in what the firm might or might
not do about herself. It was what they would do about her father that mattered. Where
was he at this moment? Was he already under arrest?