Mysterious Aviator (21 page)

I couldn’t have found anything to say to her then in any case. But I didn’t want to say anything. The less I said the better, until I had heard the whole of what she had to tell me. And so I stood there looking at her dumbly, and she thought that I was embarrassed at her praise, and she smiled a little to make me feel less awkward. Even at such a time she could do that.

“It’s because you were so frightfully decent to him about it all that we’ve got just the one chance to put it right,” she said.

I nodded slowly. “I see,” I muttered, and stood there fingering the letter.

She went wandering in her narrative, and I didn’t dare to recall her to the point. “One reads about spies in books and things,” she said absently, “and it all seems—unreal. Not the sort of thing that could possibly happen in one’s life. And then—well, it does.”

She raised her eyes to mine. “Maurice didn’t think about being a spy,” she said. “Honestly—I know he didn’t. All he
ever thought about was the job—the flying, and whether he’d be able to keep his course all right, and how he’d be able to find out what the wind was doing, and what height he’d have to be when he let off the firework. And whether a thousand pounds was the right fee for all that night flying, and what he’d have got for a series of long night flights like that if it had been in England. You see, it’s his profession, and it’s all he thinks about. It’s—it’s the only thing he lives for, really.”

She paused for a minute, and then she began again: “I know him so well. I’ve helped him so often with his plans for long flights like that. I used to sit and write down things for him in the evenings when he was plotting his route on maps and things, and I used to make little lists of things that he mustn’t forget to tell the mechanics in the morning. We used to do everything like that together. And so you see, I do know. Honestly. He gets so keen upon a job, and he does his job so well for its own sake, that he forgets about the rest of it.”

I said something then. I don’t know what. At all events, she didn’t heed it.

“Do you know what we came over here for this morning?” she inquired. “To get those plates back again. And then he was going to expose them.” I think she may have thought from the expression on my face that I didn’t understand her. “You know, it’s an awfully quick plate, because it was for using at night. It’s quite easy to spoil a plate like that, and ruin the picture on it. You’ve only got to take it out of the case and expose it to the light for ever so short a time, and it’s done for. I know, because I used to have a Kodak once, and I spoilt some. And Maurice says it’s just the same with plates as it is with films.”

I crossed over and kicked the fire up into a blaze. “You were going to do that this morning?” I inquired. It was the shortest, the most non-committal thing that I could find to say.

She nodded. “We talked it all over last night, at Winchester. You see”—she glanced up at me wistfully—“we couldn’t possibly let those plates go back to Russia. It’s not the thing to do.
Maurice saw that for himself, just as much as I did. It only wanted someone to put it to him.”

There was a little pause at that. “It wanted you to put it to him,” I said. “I can’t say that I had much success.”

I really think that was a new idea to her. “I suppose that’s true,” she said. And then she went on to tell me how they had driven over from Winchester after an early breakfast, and had arrived not five minutes after the burglary had taken place.

“It was rotten luck, that,” she said quietly. “If we’d only been just a minute or two earlier—this wouldn’t have happened. You see, we were going to expose the plates at once—directly we got here. Maurice thought it’d be a good place if we were to lay them out on the window-sill for a minute or two.” She turned vaguely towards the curtained alcove. “This window-sill.”

“Bad luck,” I said.

There was a long silence after that. I broke it at last with the inquiry that I knew the answer to.

“Where’s Lenden, then? Did he go off after them?”

She nodded dumbly. “He wanted to,” she said, a little pitifully. “He said he couldn’t possibly let it go like that, and he said he knew which way they’d be going.” She pulled herself up, and stared at me gravely. “I think it was the right thing to do,” she said.

“It’s a damn risky thing to do,” I said practically. “Where’s he gone to?”

She had quite recovered her control. “He’s told you in his letter, I think. It’s somewhere between France and Italy. It’s the same way as he went to Russia, when he went out there first of all.”

I glanced furtively at my wrist-watch. There was still lashings of time to catch the Havre boat, but by this time he would be in Paris. He had an eight hours’ start.

I ripped open the letter. It was written in pencil on some sheets torn out of one of my ledgers with the cash lines running down the edge; I suppose that was the only paper he could find, being in a hurry. I have that letter beside me now.

Dear Moran
,

Mollie will be able to tell you all about what’s happened here. It’s those plates I took of Portsmouth. Somebody’s pinched them. I expect they’re in with the communists here, or something. And they’ve shot up your butler, and I’m terribly sorry that’s happened, old boy
.

I’m pushing off now to Dover to get the boat there. I think those plates are on their way to Russia, and there’s only one way that they can go. The way I went. You go first to the Casa Alba by Lanaldo; that’s a bit off the track, but it’s the clearing house and they tell you which way to go from there, and they fix you up with a new passport. The villagers reckon it’s smuggling across the French border and they do a bit of smuggling to keep up the blind, but it’s the clearing house really. All the funny business goes that way since the Kleunen show
.

I want to get to the Casa first and spill a line of innocence before the plates arrive. Then when they come I’ll be quids in, anyway enough to get my fingers on the plates with any luck. After that I don’t mind if they do blot my copybook for me, because it’ll be worth it
.

Now, I’m taking your car to Dover. I’ll leave it in your name at the nearest garage I can find to the boat, and say you’ll call for it in a day or two. You’d better bring the registration book with you to claim it
.

And now, there’s just one other thing. I’ve fixed things up with Mollie all right, and I want to say thank you for your share in that. If this show goes all right we’ll probably have a go at being married again, which’ll be just what the doctor ordered. And if it doesn’t, Mollie’s got enough money to get on with now, and then there’s the shop. But what we fixed up last night was that we’d do in these bloody plates and let the Soviet whistle for me. And we thought we’d go out to Germany pretty soon together, and we’d run it as a second honeymoon, and we’d hunt up old Keumer’s wife and make her a present of the thousand because I know she’ll be on the beach and I’d
like to do that for the old lad. Mollie knows all I do about where to find her
.

If anything goes wrong in this show I’d be most awfully glad if you’d try and do something about that for me, because it’s the only thing outstanding really, except for a fiver that I owe Morris of the Rawdon Aircraft Company, and you might see that he gets it. And I think that’s all
.

Thanks a lot for putting me up like you’ve done and all the rest. I wish to hell I was well out of this; but you see Mollie’s point of view, and it’d be pretty rotten for her having me about the place without this thing being squared up O.K
.

Yours truly
,
     
M. T. Lenden
.

I stood there staring at the last page of this letter long after I had read it through. I was afraid to look up, I suppose. By this time he would be in Paris. The Havre boat was the next; so far as I remembered, it left Southampton at about eleven o’clock. That would mean reaching Paris about ten o’clock in the morning. But by that time he would be in Marseilles, or Modane, or however it was he went. He was going out hell for leather, in order to “spill a line of innocence before the plates arrive”. There was no possible chance of catching him up that way.

And then I knew that Mollie Lenden had seen that I had finished the letter, and I must say something to her.

“He’ll be in Paris now,” I remarked. It was the only thing that I could think of to say. “I expect he’ll be catching a night train on from there.”

She nodded. “I expect so,” she said absently. “He’ll get out there to-morrow afternoon—to this place in Italy. That’s what he said.” And then she turned to me. “What was it that he took photographs of?” she asked. “Do you know?”

In the grate the fire was dying very red. “It was of Portsmouth,” I said. “It was something at the entrance to the harbour, but I don’t know what it was.”

She eyed me wistfully for a moment, till I knew what she was going to say. “It’s most frightfully important, isn’t it?”

There was only one way in which I could have answered that. “I don’t know what it is,” I said again. “But it was important enough for them to shoot down the next machine that came over to repeat the job.”

In the red glow from the dying fire she inclined her head, her lips quivering. I would have left her to herself then, but it semed that the least that I could do now was to assure her of the urgency. “I know,” she said at last. “That was Mr. Keumer’s machine.”

“They went so far as that,” I said. “Just murder, because he hadn’t got a gun to answer with. That wasn’t done for fun, you know.”

She had her eyes fixed on my face. “I know,” she said quickly. “I know it wasn’t.”

I had only half my mind on what I was saying to her. I hadn’t got a passport. I hadn’t been abroad since just after the war, and it had lapsed years ago. I knew that one could get into France without a passport by taking a cheap day-return ticket. But not Italy. To get a passport meant at least a morning’s delay in London. It meant that I couldn’t start after him till midday to-morrow. I should be twenty-four hours late. At least.

And suddenly she startled me with a question.

“You’re agent here, aren’t you?” Her voice was clear and strong again.

I nodded.

“Does that mean that you look after the land and the people?”

“In a way,” I replied. “The farms, and the rents, and things like that. Repairs, and a bit of stock-breeding, and any building that’s going on. I’ve got a finger in most pies in this part of the country.”

“Do you know the country very well?”

I couldn’t imagine what she was driving at. “Pretty well,” I said. “This part of Sussex. I was bred here—out past Leventer. My father was a doctor there.”

She eyed me for a minute, and then she said: “Well, you’re country-bred. What did you think of Maurice when he told you what he’d been doing?”

That came as a complete surprise. I was still thinking about that passport, as a matter of fact. “Why—nothing very bad,” I replied. “I don’t know that I thought about it much. Not till he told me himself what was the matter with him, and then I thought——”

She stared at me. “What was it that he told you?”

I had let myself into that blindly, thinking of other things. I could see no way out of it now but to tell her the truth.

“It wasn’t much,” I said gently. “It was just that he hadn’t got a stake in the country. He hadn’t got a home to go to, or a wife and kids, or anything like that. That was when he thought he was divorced, you see. And so he thought it didn’t matter a damn what he did.”

She had gone very white.

“One has to put oneself in his shoes,” I said slowly. “It’s different for me, and I think it’s different for you. I’ve got this place, and my job in this part of the world, and my friends. And you’ve got your shop, and your home, and Winchester. Little things—but what else would you call patriotism? Just being fond of the little things you’ve got at home, and that you don’t want to see changed. A house with a bit of garden that you can grow things in, and a dog or two, and all the little inconveniences and annoyances that you couldn’t really get along without. That’s your patriotism, and that’s all there’s in it. And that’s what Lenden hadn’t got.”

She didn’t speak.

I glanced down at the letter. I was still holding it in my hand, those blue red-lined leaves from the ledger. “And now,” I said, “you’ve gone and given him back his patriotism.” I bit my lip, and turned away towards the window.

I knew then what I’d got to do—the only thing that I could possibly do to put this thing right. It was only a fifty per cent chance at the best, but it was one that I had to take. I stood there for a minute staring out into the darkness beyond the
window and trying to master my cold feet, and for that reason I kept my back turned to her.

And then I heard a little noise behind me, and I swung round. She was crying. It was time that came, I thought. She had buried her face in her arms against the mantelpiece and she was crying there, quite quietly. I can remember that I wished to God that Sheila was at home.

I let her carry on for a bit, hesitating irresolute by the window. At last I crossed the room, and presently I touched her on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t cry like that, if I were you,” I said, as gently as I could. “There’s nothing to cry like that for, you know. It’s only that he’ll be away for a few days longer, till this thing’s cleared up.”

I suppose it was a silly thing to say. But she raised her head and began dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. And then:

“You don’t understand,” she muttered wearily. “It’s me … that’s been such a beast. He’d never have gone out there at all if it hadn’t been for me, and none of this would ever have happened. And now there’s this. It’s so frightfully dangerous, and I let him go—just as he’d come back home. He wouldn’t have gone if he’d thought I didn’t want it….”

She dropped her head down to the mantelpiece again.

“If those plates get back to Russia there’ll be hell to pay,” I said.

I had caught her attention. “I know,” she muttered.

I laid my hand upon her shoulder, and she stood up. “There’s nobody else in the whole world that stands a better chance of putting this thing right,” I said. “It’s up to him. He’s the only Englishman that has the entrée, that can get access to expose those plates now. You see that, don’t you?”