My Heart Has Wings (6 page)

“I’m afraid so,” Jan confirmed, thrusting a piece of chicken skin into Tiger-
B
oy’s opportunist paw. He scooped it up and ate it daintily.

When Jan carried the supper tray upstairs— with a fresh brew of coffee for all of them—Gerda was holding court, gracefully reclining in one of the deep chairs, the toreador hat discarded to reveal her thick, smooth, corn-coloured hair.

“But I’ve been a fan of
yours for ages, Mr. Carliss,” she was gushing in her husky, not quite English voice. “I’ve followed every one of your record-breaking flights with the greatest interest. That time you were forced down in the Sahara
—
flying one of the new turbo-jet air liners—I was absolutely heartbroken for you. It was such a shame you didn’t get all the way to Cape Town. Though, of course you did make it very soon afterwards.”

“Charming of you to remember it all so accurately,” Mike murmured, sounding, Jan thought, more than a little bored.

“And this terrific test flying you are now doing for Scott-Manly,” Gerda pursued. “Do tell me something about it. I’m completely crazy over anything to do with flying...”

Mike’s mouth went into a thin line. “I never discuss my work, Miss Byrrsen,” he said coldly. There was a momentary awkward silence. And then Hart laughed. “What’s come over you, Gerda? In the old days when you were sent out with me to do the feminine angle on a flying story you didn’t know an aileron from a propeller blade.”

“Well, I do now,” Gerda said dismissingly. “Jan darling, what divine sandwiches!”

Mike stood up. He’d got an early job on at the works in the morning, he explained. “I think I’d better be getting along, Jan, if you don’t mind.”

They’d have to do that river trip another time, Hart was murmuring in the general fluster of leave-taking.

“We certainly will,” Mike confirmed with a heartiness that did something to lighten Jan’s spirits. But Gerda had turned the last part of the evening, crashing in on them in her bumptious, egotistical way, making a dead set at Mike
...
talking all that rubbish about being crazy on flying just to attract his attention. She didn’t care a hoot about flying. All she cared about was her own dressed-up beautiful self. She had to be the centre of interest to any personable man who came within her orbit.

Bitterly Jan summed it up as she went with Mike to the hall door, and then, prolonging the moment of farewell, to the garden gate. The sun had set now, but the river still glowed in the twilight. Motor launches, punts, trim white excursion steamers filled with, singing home-going crowds fussed back and forth on the shadowy water. A family of swans cruised in the shallows beyond the towpath where Mike had parked his car.

“Thanks again, Jan; it has been a wonderful evening,” he said, but there were no undertones this time and his glance was impersonal.

Jan watched him get into the car, longing to say, “I’m sorry Gerda barged in
...
sorry we missed our river trip ... sorry my father worried you with his embarrassing ideas of heroic test pilots” But she could only murmur tritely, “It’s been grand having you, Mike. I hope you’ll come again.”

“You bet I will!” With a brief salute he was gone. She walked slowly back to the house to face the huge wash-up it wouldn’t be fair to leave for Mrs. Costello in the morning. And there was Gerda’s room to prepare. The unwanted Gerda— dropping on them, literally, out of the sky. But it had been on the whole an odd day, filled with unexpected happenings; Mike’s unusual friendliness, culminating in the birthday dinner party—and that strange moment of nearness when he had stood by her side with her mother’s photograph in his hands; the rejection of Electra with all its dreary implications still to be faced
...
Daker’s jumpiness after the emergency conference, those faintly disturbing new rules tightening up on security. She was going to miss doing the play-backs of Mike’s flight records, she thought.

Looking up at the placid fading sky, she felt her spirit darken with a sense of foreboding she couldn’t quite define. She was probably tired, she decided; if it had been a mildly eventful day, it had also been a strenuous one ... and there was still lots
to
be
done.

CHAPTER FOUR

Daker was already
at the office when Jan got there the following morning. Hurriedly sorting the post, she took the letters marked “Personal” into him. He was poring over a great stack of morning papers with an air of deep concern, and gave her a curt good morning. “Tell Carliss I want to see him the moment he arrives
,
” he said, and pushing the basket of mail aside went back to the papers. Jan wondered what it was that was holding his interest to the exclusion of his morning letters. Perhaps something had cropped up at the Air Council meeting that had hit the headlines. She wasn’t being inquisitive about it, but she had developed the sympathetic secretary’s knack of being aware of even the smallest indication of the unusual in her chief’s behaviour. In this way she was often one jump ahead of him when suddenly, and without bothering overmuch with explanations, he unloaded upon her some unforeseen development in office affairs.

Back at her own desk, she glanced through the window to see Mike’s car stopping outside the main administrative building. Erica got out of it. So that was that. Mike had recovered from his small fit of resentment over Paleski. And he and Erica had probably been having an early canter together. They frequently did, Jan knew, and Mike would breakfast at Sheldrake afterwards.

A moment or two later she heard his step on the th
r
eshold. She was opening letters with a paper knife, her slim capable hands working rapidly. There was a heavy mail this morning, and she was glad to be absorbed by it, barely glancing up as he strode in. To his cheery: “Morning, young Jan!” she answered briefly, determined to ignore by her manner any new quality in their relationship. Last evening he had been a guest in her home, but she was not going to presume on that. This morning they were back on the usual office footing, and it was important—to her own peace of mind—that she should remember that. She did not pause to ask herself if the sight of Erica getting out of Mike’s car just now had anything to do with this bleakly sensible attitude, but vaguely she was aware of an indefinable wound and knew only that she must summon against it what defences she could.

“How are the family this morning?” he was asking politely. “And the lovely Swedish visitor
...
the Garboesque Gerda?”

Jan laughed. “She was still asleep when I left. She is a little like Greta Garbo, isn’t she? And she must be almost the same age. No, I didn’t mean to be catty,” she added hastily as she caught the twinkle in Mike’s eye. “But age doesn’t seem to matter to that Swedish type of beauty. It’s the perfect bone structure, I suppose.” She slammed another letter down on the growing pile. “Mr. Daker said would you please go in to see him as soon as you arrive.”

Mike swivelled an eyebrow. “Good heavens, is he here already? I was hoping to get half an hour in the experimental hangar before he showed up. But I suppose he’s hurrying things along because of this ground test we’re doing. We’re having a special session with the E.106a this morning
...
did he tell you?”

“No.” Jan shook her head. “He was busy with the morning newspapers when I was in his office just now. He hasn’t given me any of the drill for the day.”

“We’re testing the hydraulic controls,” Mike said, and went into Daker’s room, the spring door closing slowly behind him.

Daker, at his desk, glanced up sharply, his rather elfin face puckered and yellow in the morning light. He looked, Mike thought, as though he hadn’t had a wink of sleep last night, or as if he were suffering from a hangover. Only that he was the most abstemious of drinkers.

“Jan said you wanted me,” Mike said. And added as the puckers in the worried face deepened, “Is anything wrong, old man?”

“Plenty,” Daker snapped. “I tried to get you on the phone last night when I got back from the Air Council, but you weren’t at your hotel.”

“I was at a birthday party,
”
Mike grinned. “In the home of our charming Miss Ferraby.”

“Good Lord!” Daker exclaimed, his dark eyes staring. He seemed quite fantastically amazed ... even shocked.

“Is there any reason why I
shouldn
’
t go
to birthday parties with the Ferrabys?” Mike demanded, a little annoyed.

“No,” said Daker. “Yes. How long has this been going on?”

“My dear chap, what an extraordinary tone to take! How long has what been going on? I happened to give Jan a lift last evening as she was leaving the works, asked her to have a bite of supper with me, as I was at a loose end, and she invited me to her home instead because it was her kid brother’s birthday. That’s the whole murky story in a nutshell, and without being unduly tetchy over it, I must say I can’t see that it’s any concern of yours.”

“As it happens it is pretty heavily my concern,” Daker said. He took from a drawer a much-thumbed copy of
Ariel
and handed it to Mike, opened at the relevant page. “Take a look at that marked paragraph,” he ordered.

Mike read the pencilled lines in silence and gave a low whistle. The lines of his jaw went tense. “Where did this come from?” he asked.

“S.M. brought it along yesterday
...
called an emergency conference and had us all more or less on the carpet It’s the first serious leakage we’ve ever had and he’s pretty savage about it, naturally.”

Mike turned the magazine over and studied the flamboyant cover.
“
Ariel
,”
he murmured. “Never heard of it before. Who runs it?”

“Nobody seems to know. That’s one of the things we’ve got to find out. It’s printed from an address in Paris, but that might mean anything. S.M.’s news-cutting agency sent it along to him; it seems copies are on sale in one or two of the shops around Leicester Square that go in for continental publications. It hasn’t, I suppose, a wide circulation in this country, but that doesn
’
t make this E.106a leakage any less annoying.
”
Daker gulped uneasily. “S.M is determined to run the writer of that paragraph to earth, and he’s convinced it’s a member of the works personnel. We went through all the possible sources of defection yesterday and the only possible trail we struck led t
o
... who do you think? Jan Ferraby
and her father.”

Mike made a strangled sound. “But that
’
s crazy, Daker
.”

“I
wi
sh it was!” Daker buried his crumpled face in his hands and from his muffling palms said, “There are parts of that paragraph that are lifted straight from a memo I dictated to Jan in this very office only a couple of weeks ago. That’s something, by the way, I’m keeping under my hat for the moment—for Jan’s sake. S.M. would go berserk if he knew.”

Mike sat down, with the limp air of a man who collapses. He was for the moment beyond speech, but his whole being rang with a wild, inarticulate, denial of this monstrous thing Daker’s words
affirmed. Jan with her crystal clear honesty was incapable of the treachery implied.

Daker raised his haggard face. “It was Parker who put us on the scent,” he said. “He knows, or knew, Hart Ferraby—and it was through that contact Jan entered the firm. Hart was air correspondent to the Morning News and chucked the job up about two years ago, because of some minor success he had had with a play he wrote. He was silly enough to imagine there would be other successful plays—and as it happened there haven’t been. So he has fallen back on a sort of down-at-hell journalism which scavenges for news so desperately
that
...
even picking his daughter’s brains on the Scott-Manly prototypes wouldn’t come amiss. At least that’s how it looks. Jan may not have realized she was giving the firm—and Air Ministry secrets—away by talking to him. Though I don’t see how she could have failed to realize it ... or how this memo, almost intact. Could have got into her father’s hands in error
. It’s pretty
grim, Mike, and one of the most difficult aspects of it is that S.M. doesn’t want Jan to know for the moment she is suspect, or that there has been any leakage. But you are warned to be careful what you say to her
...
and I’m to keep the more confidential stuff out of her hands Pleasant little set-up, isn’t it?”

“
I
t’
s damnable,” Mike said. His blue-grey eyes had sparks of crimson light in them and with one part of his seething brain he wondered at the resentment that swept over him. Hart Ferraby stooped and gentle and a little lost, with his head
in
the poetic clouds; Jan with her golden, truthful eyes; how could it be that they were involved in this thing?

“D
id they
strike you as
...
well ... on their uppers?” Daker asked.

In a flash Mike saw the gracious, shabby old house and with cruel, unbidden illumination guessed suddenly at the stringencies behind its
brave facade. That really dreadful sherry, the Burgundy dredged up from some cellar where it had been hoarded so long that it had grown sour and corked. The birthday dinner—and even the clever stuffing hadn’t quite disguised Mrs. Costello’s old hen—Jan had had to cook after office hours with no servant to help her. The remark about Carole’s painting came back to him—a long expensive training she would not be allowed to complete. “They didn’t,” he conceded unwillingly, “seem any too prosperous. It’s difficult to assess that kind of thing in a single casual visit
... and anyhow, dash it all, Daker,” the sparks in his eyes flamed angrily, “I wasn’t there as a spy but as a trusted guest.”

“I know, I know, old man. Keep your shirt on. But it’s just a little odd, this sudden desire on the part of the Ferrabys for your company. In the light of this
Ariel
stuff you must surely admit that. They’ll probably ask you to go again..
.”

“They have.”

Daker groaned. “Look, Mike, I like young Jan. I’m as anxious as you are to believe she is in the clear in this business. But
somebody
sent that memo of mine straight from this office, to a grubby little international rag, and, all personal considerations aside, we’ve got to find out who it is. This contact of yours with the Ferraby household is going to be useful. Keep it up. Cultivate Hart, cultivate Jan, string ’em along and get them off their guard, and I don’t mind betting you that if they’re not on the level they’ll be pumping you for more information.
Ariel
will be following up this prototype scoop, that’s a certainty, and they’ll be paying for it generously. That’s the usual bait. And the obvious one for a chap in Hart Ferraby’s straits. So watch out for any sudden signs of prosperity, watch out for every single pointer, and let me have your findings. It’s a dreary thing to ask you to do, old man, but we’ve got to get this thing cleared up as quickly as we can, and if we can do it quietly, without calling in Security, so much the better for all of us ... including, of course, young Jan.” Mike listened to this peroration with a stony expression, and when Daker had finished, he said, “So you think it’s fine for Jan having all this going on behind her back, without being given a chance to defend herself?”

“No, I don’t think it’s fine,” Daker snapped, “but what can I do about it?”

“Discover the truth. There are dozens of people who could have walked into your darned office and lifted that memo.”

“Then go and find them for me!” Daker shouted irritably.

“I will!” Mike shouted back, his temper flaring, and began to make for the door, as if he would set about the task then and there.

Daker made an exasperated sound. “Come back here, Mike, and don’t be an ass. This
Ariel
leakage is awkward, but it’s not worth our quarrelling over. All I’m asking you to do is to let me know if anything significant emerges in your contacts with the Ferrabys.”

Mike swung round. “The only thing that
can
emerge is their innocence and the fact that you and S.M. owe Jan and her father a profound apology for defamation of character.”

“We’ll be delighted to tender it,” Daker murmured laconically. “Meanwhile we’ve got these tests on hand this morning. And before we go over to the hangar, I’d be glad if you’d take a look at these notes of mine on the latest wind-tunnel computations.”

Mike bent over the desk, his face, and his mind, clearing. For the past twelve months the E.106a,
in
all the complex stages of its development, had dominated his every waking moment. And now, as he pored with Daker over diagrams and notes, the disturbing discovery that Jan Ferraby and her troubles could matter to him a good deal faded into the background.

He did not think of her again until some three hours later, when, the absorbing interest of the morning behind him, he strolled into her office to find her alone. Engrossed in her typing, she did not appear to be aware of his entrance, and for a moment or two he stood watching her. The smooth brown head bent patiently over the keys, a suggestion of weariness in the stoop of the slim shoulders, seemed to him suddenly unbearably touching. Hugh Daker’s acrid description of her father came back to him; a down-at-heel journalist desperately scavenging for news. The implications of insecurity, of a day-to-day struggle for existence, smote Mike sharply. One mild theatrical success nearly two years ago, and since then the mounting toll of failure, disillusion. And last night, Mike thought with a stab of regret he had been unnecessarily discouraging to Hart.

He hadn’t an inkling of domestic economics, but it didn’t need much imagination to realize the anxious contriving and managing it must take to keep a family of four, to say nothing of a sizable house, going in such uneasy circumstances. And this was Jan’s end of it—a burden she shouldered with a gay young
courage he could only marvel at. There had been nothing last night to hint at the grimness of the struggle. The shabby, gracious old house had hidden its deficiencies gallantly behind the music and wine and mild birthday feasting. They had pluck, these Ferrabys, and enough demands upon just now without the monstrous assault of Daker’s accusations!

Indignation and compassion flooded Mike's heart as he looked down at the bowed bright head. “Isn’t it time,” he said, “that you knocked off for lunch?”

Jan raised her head and smiled. “I’ve got to finish these letters for the early collection,” she said, adding with an absurd quickening of her pulses, “but I’m nearly through.” Was he going to suggest they lunched together?

Perching on the edge of Helen’s desk, he regarded her musingly. He said, “Something has been worrying my conscience, Jan. I’m afraid I was a bit abrupt with your father over that embryo play of his last night.”