Mysterious Aviator (10 page)

At about half-past seven I went over to the house.

There was nobody about downstairs. I passed the open door of the dining-room on my way through the hall, and paused for a minute. The table was laid for five. That room would seat fifty without inconvenience, I suppose; the house is Georgian. But Arner entertained very little; in all the years that I had been at Under I don’t suppose that I had seen that table laid for more than ten people. It was his fancy always to dine by candlelight; I remember that the white and silver table in the shaded light from the candelabra made a little gleaming oasis in the darkness of that great room.

Sanders was there, wandering reverently around the table. Now and again he would pause to shift a salt-cellar an inch or two, or to pick up a spoon, breathe on it, and polish it. He told me that Commander Dermott had arrived. He was dressing.

I passed on to the deserted drawing-room. There was a bright fire in the grate; I switched on a light and went and stood before it. I had had great kindness from the Arners during the seevn years that I had been at Under. One of my uncles married a second-cousin of Lady Arner. They had chosen to regard that as a close tie, and had treated me more as a member of the family than as a salaried official of the estate. I remember thinking about those things as I stood there before the fire that evening, waiting for the family to come down. I was wondering what sort of a show I was going to put up.

That quarter of an hour came to an end before I had decided in the least what I was going to do. Lady Arner came down
first, followed by Sheila Darle in a little green filmy dress that made her look a child. Lady Arner was frankly curious about this Wing-Commander that her husband had brought down. She wanted to know what he had come for; I wanted to know that, too, but with the best will in the world I couldn’t tell her. She said that Arner had had a very heavy day in Town, from which I inferred that things were none too bright at the Foreign Office.

And then, till the others came, we talked about her garden—the one subject of which she never tired. She was a great gardener. She used to spend all the summer grubbing about in an old skirt, and an old straw hat, and a pair of gloves, with Watson, our head gardener, in attendance. I can remember winter evenings when she would sit from half-past eight till eleven before the fire in the drawing-room, pencil in hand, with catalogues from Carter, Sutton, and Bunyard on her knee. Dreaming and, as often as not, falling asleep. She didn’t go to London much.

Arner came down at last, with Dermott, and we went in to dinner. Dermott was a younger-looking man than I had expected; he must have been about six foot two in height, and thin. He was clean-shaven, with thin fair hair, blue eyes, and long, young face. He looked very little over thirty. I was introduced to him.

He greeted me frankly. “Good evening, Mr. Moran,” he said. “I’ve been hearing about you from Lord Arner. He tells me that you were in the R.F.C. in the war.” He had a pleasant, quiet voice.

“That’s a good long time ago,” I replied. “I’ve pretty well forgotten all about it.”

He smiled, a little anxiously. “You haven’t kept up with flying?”

I laughed. “Lord, no,” I said. “Give me pigs.” And we sat down to table.

Dinner was a constrained meal. Arner sat at the head of the table, a sombre little figure with rather untidy thin grey hair, and a monocle on the end of a black silk ribbon. This
evening he was evidently tired, and seemed in some way to have grown smaller and older. Things must have been going very badly up in Town that day. He spoke very little. There was some understanding between him and his guest; both were preoccupied, though Dermott was talking rather at random to Lady Arner. Clearly there was business to be done, and both of them were only waiting till the ladies had left the room.

That happened at last. I got up to open the door for them to pass out, and closed it softly behind them. Sanders placed the port convenient to Lord Arner, and disappeared into the gloom. I came back to the table and sat down.

Arner motioned us to the cigars, but did not take one himself immediately. Instead he leaned a little forward with his elbows on the table and put both hands to his forehead, raising his head and drawing his hands down his face till he was staring straight ahead of him again. I knew that motion.

I took a cigar. “Things bad in Town, sir?”

He dropped his hands on to the table. “Middling,” he said rustically. “Middling. Remind me to order the
Studio
for Curzon Street, Moran.”

I nodded. “I’ll see about it to-morrow,” I replied.

I knew what he meant by that. He had in the library at Under all the bound volumes of the
Studio
since the beginning. When he was worried or upset over anything he used to go in there and sit down beside the fire, and turn these volumes over slowly. When he came to a picture that he liked he would sit staring at it for a long time without moving. He liked water-colour reproductions best, I think, and especially garden sketches, water-colours of herbaceous borders, and paintings with delicate, bright colours. Sometimes he would pass the heavy volume across to me when he had found a drawing that he particularly admired.

He roused himself. “Look here, Moran,” he said. “I’ve brought Wing-Commander Dermott down from London to have a talk with you. He’s in the Intelligence Service of the Royal Air Force.”

He dropped his head into his hands again. “You know the
trouble with Russia,” he said wearily. “It’s been going on for years now—been brewing for the last eighteen months. I had a long talk with Faulkner to-day. Well, it’s come to a head at last, I think. When we must force the issue. There was a Cabinet all yesterday afternoon, and again this morning. There’s been an espionage at Portsmouth. That’s what Dermott’s come down about. And we think it’s them….”

He stared at the decanter. “If that should be established, it might prove to be the deciding factor. The least thing can swing the balance now. This thing has been done by an aeroplane. Dermott will tell you about that. I was sent for this afternoon to the Air Ministry. They are of the opinion that one of the aeroplanes engaged in this espionage was brought down on Thursday night. They think it landed in this part of the country. They’ve named an area. In the square formed by Pithurst, Leventer, Courton Down, and Under.”

“That’s all our land,” I said quietly.

He turned to me. “I know. That’s what I want you to consult with Dermott about. This thing’s too delicate to be handled by the local constable. But you know the country and the people better than I do myself. Much better than the police. You know every hedge and field on the estate, and you know the tenants. I told them at the Ministry that if an aeroplane had landed on my ground and they wanted to find out about it quietly, you were the man to see. I told them I’d bring Dermott down with me, and he could have a talk with you.”

He turned to Dermott. “You’ll want to go over the ground to-morrow, I suppose?”

“I shall be able to say more about that when I’ve had a talk with Mr. Moran, Lord Arner.”

Arner nodded wearily. “You’d better carry on straight ahead. Moran is completely in my confidence. You can speak plainly to him.”

I shifted uneasily in my chair.

Arner reached out slowly for a cigar, and lit it. Dermott turned to me. “I understand that you were a pilot in the war, Mr. Moran,” he said.

“Of a sort,” I replied. “I was never anything to write home about.”

He smiled. “Still, with that experience you’ll probably be able to give me a lot of help. First of all, I think I’d better give you the outlines of this—this espionage. You’ll see better then what we want to know.”

He paused. “There’s something going on at Portsmouth,” he said at last, and seemed to consider for a minute. “A certain operation. At the Ministry—the Air Ministry—we do not consider this operation to be our concern at all. We regard it as purely an Admiralty matter. You’ll appreciate the position. There’s very little to be gained by discussing this—operation.”

I nodded. “I can take that for granted.”

“Right. Now, a part of the work necessary in the carrying out of this scheme is maritime, and is so placed as to be in full view of the shore. Generally speaking, all operations that concern harbour defences and matters of that sort are regarded as secret, but usually that secrecy is only relative. You see what I mean. If a fort is to be built, the Admiralty can go on saying it’s secret till they’re blue in the face—but there it is, and any passer-by can see the muzzles of the guns sticking out.”

He blew a long cloud of smoke. “In this instance—which is in no way connected with the defences of the port—secrecy really is most urgent. It’s vital. For that reason, since a part of the operation can be seen from the shore, it was arranged to carry out the necessary maritime work at night.”

He paused, and eyed me steadily. “Twice in the last week this work has been overlooked, and possibly photographed. Each time an aeroplane, the nature of which we don’t yet know, has flown over and dropped a large magnesium flare.”

I nodded slowly, without taking my eyes from his face.

“The first time it happened was on Monday night. The flare appeared suddenly at a height of about two thousand feet, and burnt for perhaps a minute. It came as a complete surprise. There was a tendency at first to put it down to a natural phenomenon—a meteor of some sort. That’s all nonsense, of course.”

I wrinkled my brows. “If it was an aeroplane, surely you’d have heard it,” I remarked. “They make the devil of a noise.”

“Unless they are silenced. There’s been a lot of progress made in that direction—in this country.”

“I hadn’t heard of that,” I said. “I’ve been away from flying for so long.”

He knocked the ash from the end of his cigar on to a plate. “The same thing happened last Thursday night,” he said. “This time the machine was seen. It got too close to the light, and was seen clearly for a few seconds in the light of its own flare. We were fully alive to the situation then, and certain anti-aircraft measures had been put in hand. Well, they didn’t come off. The machine got away without being identified.”

I blew a long cloud of smoke. “I imagine you’ll make it pretty hot for him if he comes again,” I remarked.

“If he comes again,” repeated Dermott. “He may not. We’re by no means sure that he got away on Thursday. In fact, we think he landed. Here.”

I paused for a moment before replying. “I see,” I said at last. “What makes you think that?”

“Two bits of evidence. The lighthouse-keepers at the Nab Tower report that they heard the engine of an aeroplane come on suddenly, not so very far away. They’ve got an acoustic apparatus there that tells them roughly the direction of any sound. It’s a simple thing; they use it for ships in fog. They turned it on to this aeroplane.”

He smiled. “Now, their evidence is rather interesting. They say that the sound was steady for half a minute or so—just the normal noise of an aeroplane. It seemed to be coming straight towards them. Then they heard the engine shut off, and opened out again. That happened three times. Then the machine seemed to stop coming towards them and apparently turned towards the coast, travelling in a northerly direction till they lost it. None of our own aircraft were in the vicinity at the time.

“Apart from that,” he said, “we have definite evidence that the machine turned inland.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“We had a bit of real good luck. A sergeant fitter from the Gosport squadron was on leave that night, and was cycling with his girl between Chichester and Arundel. He’s a Chichester man. He heard this aeroplane come over him, and he saw it. There was a moon behind some clouds—thin clouds, so that there was a light patch in the sky. He got off his bicycle when he heard the machine, and as he was looking round he saw it cross this patch of light.”

I moistened my lips. “That’s a bit of luck,” I said.

He nodded. “Just one chance in a hundred—but he saw it. The machine was flying due north, and by his account it was climbing to gain height rapidly. He says it was a large single-engined biplane, possibly with extensions to the upper wing. As an Air Force sergeant, he could tell a good deal from the noise of the machine. He was of the opinion that the engine was a twelve-cylinder, water-cooled, broad-arrow type—three banks of four—of about four or five hundred horse-power, fitted with a large, slow-running propeller, driven through an epicyclic gear with a reduction of at least two to one, and with a double exhaust-manifold that carried the gases well down the fuselage.”

Lord Arner laid down his cigar and drew one hand across his eyes. “Now that, to me,” he said, “is one of the most curious features of Commander Dermott’s story. I find it most remarkable that this man should be able to give full details of the engine in an aeroplane merely from the sound as it flew over him. Most remarkable, and most extraordinary.”

He relapsed into silence.

Dermott paused for a minute, and then continued: “He only saw the machine for a few seconds, but he continued to hear it for several minutes. When it crossed the moon from him he judged it to be at a height of about three thousand feet, and climbing rapidly. He heard its engine for two or three minutes longer, by which time it was a considerable distance to the north of him. The engine was then shut off, and he heard nothing more.”

I nodded slowly. “The machine landed?”

“Apparently.”

“Did the sergeant make any effort to find the machine?”

“No. When he heard the engine shut off he judged the machine to be four or five miles to the north of him. It was a quiet night, you see. To look for the machine in those circumstances was hopeless for one man—and besides, he was on leave and he’d got a girl with him. He thought he’d seen a forced landing by one of our own night-flying aircraft on a practice flight. So he cycled on to Chichester and parked his girl, and rang up his commanding officer at Gosport to give him the information.”

He was silent.

“That is all the evidence?” I asked…

“That’s all.”

I laid down my cigar and leaned forward on the table. “And from a study of the map you think he put down in the area Lord Arner mentioned? Pithurst, Leventer, Courton Down, and Under?”