Mysterious Aviator (22 page)

She had her eyes fixed on mine. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I see that.”

I dropped my hand from her shoulder. “Well,” I said, “there you are. It’s a damn fine thing that he’s up to, and a thing that you can be proud of. He’s the only man who has the power to put this thing right now, and he’s gone out to do it. I don’t reckon that’s a thing to cry about.”

And then I heard a car in the yard outside, and from the beat of the engine I knew it was Sheila in the little Talbot. And I can remember that I was very thankful.

I smiled down at Mrs. Lenden. “There’s a friend of mine outside,” I said. “A girl. I’m going to send her in to you, and she’ll take you somewhere where you can wash your face and blow your nose. And I wouldn’t cry any more. Not if I were you.”

I left the house and went out into the yard. Sheila’s car was there, standing beneath the stable lantern on the wall; the headlights made two narrow pencils of light out into the darkness of the garden. I crossed the yard to her.

“Evening, Miss Darle,” I said. “I’m afraid we’ve had some trouble here.”

I told her briefly what had happened, in the dim light from the lantern on the wall. She listened to me in silence till I came to the part about Lenden going off to Italy. Then she broke in.

“Do you mean to say that he’s gone off to Italy to get those plates back?” she inquired, and in the half-light I saw her brows wrinkled in perplexity.

I nodded. “He’s going to expose them.”

“But, Peter,” she said, “they’re exposed! We did it that morning over by the farm.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then I laughed. “I know they are,” I said.

She stared at me wide-eyed. “Is it dangerous?”

I was sick of evasions, and there was no need for them with Sheila. “I think it’s about as dangerous as it can be,” I said. “If he gets into that house among the Russians and makes any effort to destroy those plates, I wouldn’t give twopence for his chance of coming out of it alive.”

She had nothing to say to that.

I dropped my foot from the running-board of her car, and stood up. “It’s up to us now,” I said heavily. “I’m going after him. There’s just one sporting chance of catching him up before he gets there, if I get away at dawn. I’m reckoning
to catch him just the other side of the Italian frontier.”

She nodded. For the moment she was satisfied with that, and I went on to tell her about Mollie Lenden.

“All right,” she said at last. “I’ll go in and see her, and look after her. I’ll take her up to my room, and she can lie down for a bit. She’ll be sleeping here to-night, won’t she? I can lend her things.”

“I expect so.” And then I hesitated a little. “You’ll be careful what you say, though?”

“What about?”

I eyed her steadily. “I haven’t told her that we exposed the plates ourselves. It didn’t seem much good telling her that. And I funked it.”

She stood there for a minute, chewing the corner of her glove. “I don’t think it’s any good telling her that just yet,” she said. “It won’t help her much, will it?” She glanced up at me in the dim light. “It was very sweet of you to think of that, Peter,” she said softly. “Very kind, and very considerate. You know, you’re rather a dear.”

And then she turned, and went away across the yard towards my house. I stood there watching her until she disappeared.

P
RESENTLY
I
WENT INTO THE HOUSE
, and up into the library. There was a copy of the
Encyclopœdia Britannica
there; I opened it at a map of Italy and stood staring vacantly at the Ligurian Riviera. I had been along that coast as far as Monte Carlo from Nice; farther than that it was quite unknown to me. In the end I had to turn to the Index for information about Lanaldo. I found it on the map then. It was one of a dozen very small towns up in the hills, rather more behind Ventimiglia than Men tone.

That map was on too small a scale. I had taken on the job of re-arranging the library one winter, so that I knew my way about. There was a series of atlases there called “Maps of Europe”. I dragged out one of the volumes and found quite a good map of the country behind San Remo, to a scale of about two miles to the inch.

My heart sank as I studied it. Lanaldo lay about six miles inland from the sea, and about three from the French frontier. It stood on the side of the Roja valley, about three hundred feet above the main road that runs up the valley from Ventimiglia to the north. No road was shown leading to the town itself. I knew what that meant. It would be one of the walled, cavernous little mountain towns of that neighbourhood, where every street serves as a sewer and every cellar as a stable. That would not have worried me, but that I knew the sort of country that those towns stood in.

As I stood there studying the map upon the table before me I was appalled at the mountainous nature of the country. Literally, it was all up on end. Beyond the bed of the river, I could see nothing to indicate flat country of any description there. Behind the town the hills rose up into a peak about three thousand feet high, called Monte Verde; the country
was simply studded with things like that. There was no possible place where one could put down an aeroplane, unless it were in the bed of the river. And I knew what sort of landing that would be.

I lingered for a little while longer over the map. The scale was too small to show houses, but I was able to make a pretty good guess at the probable position of the Casa Alba. I decided that if it were a centre for Soviet activities it must be near the road; if then its address was Lanaldo, it must be on the road immediately below the town. I didn’t think that there’d be much difficulty about finding the house if once I got out here.

I left the maps lying open on the table, meaning to come back and consult them again later in the night. In the stable-yard I found Kitter putting away Sheila’s car. We should want that car before the night was out, I thought.

“Kitter,” I said, and he turned and came towards me. He was a young chap, and very smart on his job; I don’t suppose he was thirty. “Ever had anything to do with aeroplanes?”

He shook his head. “No, sir. I was with the Tanks in the war.”

I nodded. “I’ve got a machine out on the down, this side of Leventer. She wants a new bit of oil pipe—about a foot of seven-eighth stuff, or it may be inch. Rubber pipe. Can you find that for me—to-night?”

“For an aeroplane, sir?”

I nodded.

He shook his head. If he was at all startled, he didn’t show it. “Young Saven might have a bit at his place, sir. I’ve got nothing like that.”

He was a sound man, and I knew that he’d be for me in this thing. I rested one foot upon the running-board of the Talbot and stared at him reflectively. “This has been a damn bad day’s work, Kitter,” I said quietly.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

I put it to him frankly then. I forget exactly what I said, but told him straight out that there was fishy business on hand,
and that it hadn’t been quite an ordinary burglary.

And then I told him something about the Breguet, and I told him that I was going to fly it out to Italy at dawn.

And I told him a little more than that—that if he was to help me he’d be putting himself well within the reach of the law, and it might be that I shouldn’t be able to get him out of the mess. I told him all that, and that it was up to him to make his own decision as to whether he gave me a hand with that machine or not. And at the end of that he scratched his head and said:

“I don’t know where you’d go to get a bit of pipe like that,” he said. “There’s just a chance that we can get a bit off young Saven.” And then he said: “Will we be working all night, sir?”

I nodded. “Most of it, if I’m to get away at dawn.”

He considered for a minute. “I think we ought to get young Saven in on this, sir,” he said. “I do, straight. He’s only just come out of the Air Force.”

“Can he keep his mouth shut?”

Kitter laughed. “He’d kill his grandmother for the chance to handle an aeroplane again, sir. Tell him this is on, and he’ll never rest till he sees you in the air. If he gets to know that the police’ll stop you flying if they get on to it … I do think we ought to have Saven, sir.”

And so we had Saven, and we got out Sheila’s car and ran down to Under in it, and ran Saven to earth in his father’s pub. Kitter went in to broach the matter with him while I went on to the police station. They kept me there discussing the burglary for over half an hour; in the end we came to the conclusion that Sanders must have disturbed the burglars before they had had time to get to work on my safe. I signed a deposition that they had stolen my cash-book, since Sanders had admitted to seeing them with something black. The Inspector congratulated me that nothing more important was missing.

I got away from there at last, and went back to the pub. Kitter and Saven were in the little garage in the yard, turning
over a heap of scrap and junk in the light of a candle stuck in a bottle.

Saven turned to me as I came in. The flickering candle flung great shadows around the little place as I stood in the doorway, peering around among the wrecked and derelict ten-pound cars that Saven deals in.

“Evening, Saven,” I said. “Kitter told you about this machine?”

He came forward, and nodded. He was a little short man, quite young, and with a shy, bird-like manner. “He told me as you wanted a bit of oil union for it, sir. This stuff the right size, do you think?”

I took the pipe he handed me. “I couldn’t say till we try it on the job.”

“What’s the machine, sir? That’s what they use on Avros, and the like o’ that.”

I shook my head slowly. “She’s a Breguet Nineteen.”

In the flickering darkness he stared at me in amazement. “The French Breguet—what they done the long-distance flights on?”

I nodded. “That’s the machine.”

“Lord, sir,” he said. “She’s as big as a Fawn.”

I nodded. “I’ve never seen a Fawn,” I said. “But this one’s pretty big.”

I had aroused his interest thoroughly. “How would it be if I was to come along with you and fit this bit o’ pipe, sir?” he inquired. “I’ve never worked on one o’ them, but I’ve got a ticket for most of our Service types, and I expect it’s about the same.”

In the darkness I was suddenly aware that I was very tired. “I came to ask if you could give a hand,” I said.

We went out of that place and got into the car. Saven was talking to Kitter in low tones. From what I heard, Kitter was telling him he’d got to keep his mouth shut. I thought, as I drove, that the gods had been very good in sending me a couple of first-rate mechanics at this time. With their help I had just a sporting chance of getting this machine into the air; without
them the odds would have been so heavily against me that I do not think I should have had the courage to go through with it. They were local men, both of them, born and bred within ten miles of the place where I was born and bred myself. West Sussex, all of us. I had known of them, and they of me, since we were ten years old. I knew they wouldn’t let me down in this affair, however fishy it might seem to them, and that knowledge heartened me.

It was very dark, but a fine, overcast night. I remember that I turned to Kitter once during the drive. “We’ll take this car right up to the barn,” I said. “We shall need the lights.”

And so we left the road not very far from the spot where I had picked up Lenden on that first night of all, and we went wandering over the grass upon an ancient track, barely distinguishable in the darkness, down the incline of the slopes. It was rough going but we went slowly, and so we arrived at the barn at about eight o’clock in the evening of that night. Behind the barn the broad overhanging wings of the Breguet loomed deserted in the headlights, exactly as she had been when I saw her last.

“Lumme!” said Saven. “She isn’t half a size!” He turned to me as I got out of the car. “Did you say you’re going to take her up yourself, sir?”

I nodded at him in the dim, white light. “That’s the big idea.”

He seemed about to say something, but didn’t say it. We swung the car round behind the barn until the lights bore on the engine cowling of the Breguet, and then we got to work. It was a pleasure to watch Saven on the job. In five minutes he had stripped the cowling with our help and had got a clear idea of the run of the petrol and oil systems. He had brought with him in the car a great assortment of stuff, with many tools.

By nine o’clock the job was done. He had examined every oil and petrol pipe, and had remade the majority of the flexible unions. He had examined the water system, and had run over every other component of the engine very systematically. And
then, at the last, he dropped down from the nose of the machine and stood wiping his hands upon a bit of rag.

“Well,” he said quietly. “She should run now.”

It took us about twenty minutes to get her started. She went off with a rush then and surged forward against the pig-trough that we had fitted for chocks, till Saven caught her on the throttle. We let her run warm for a bit, and then we ran her up to full power. She ran up sweet and true, for all her week out in the open. In the end Saven throttled her down, and we saw him begin to clamber from the cockpit. He hesitated up there for a minute, and then climbed slowly to the ground.

“She’s running very sweet,” he said. He turned to me. “About the petrol, sir. Will she have enough for what you want?”

I had been thinking about that. “Lenden said she had fuel left for seven hours,” I muttered. “We’d better make it up to ten. What’ll she use an hour?”

He eyed her thoughtfully. “I couldn’t rightly say. Twenty-five gallons an hour, cruising, perhaps—maybe thirty. Say we’ll want another forty to forty-five tins of Shell. That’ll mix up with the stuff what’s in the tank, if it’s Aviation, and she won’t notice the difference, I don’t think.”

I nodded. “Can you get that quantity to-night?”

He said he thought he had that much in store.

I clambered up into the cockpit, and Saven came up and sat on the cowling beside me, and for a quarter of an hour he coached me in the massed controls till I knew every tap in the petrol system and every gadget on the dash by heart, with its appointed function in the scheme of things. Essentially the flying controls were the same as when I used to fly. Those were straightforward, and my skill was the only criterion for their proper use. The engine and fuel controls had to be learned by heart, and he coached me till I was word-perfect. It worried me that all the labels were in French.