Mysterious Aviator (30 page)

We passed a couple of Fascist sentries at the gate, and pressed on to the floor. It stood open for our approach, showing a very wide, empty hall paved with great square slabs of red and white marble like a chessboard, roughly smoothed and unpolished. There was nobody to be seen.

One or two papers rustled across the marble floor as we went in.

O
N THE RIGHT
of the hall as we went in there was a door, leading into a dining-room. I paused on the threshold and looked in. The lights were all on, flooding the room with light, but the room was deserted. There was an unfinished meal on the table and places for about ten people, in great disorder.

We went on down the hall. From a side passage we heard the sound of voices, and we pressed on till we came to a room that was full of a light blue smoke and an acrid smell. Fazzini was there with a couple of his officers and a few men; they seemed to be holding a court over a white-faced, contemptuous stranger, held in the grasp of a couple of Fascists. One of them was going through his pockets.

Stenning barked a question or two at Fazzini, got a few short replies, and turned to me.

“This is the last of them,” he said. “The only one they found in the house. Burning things.” And I saw that the ornate, square stove that stood out in the middle of the room was full of charred paper. There was a great safe by the door, open and empty but for one or two ledgers and a little stack of printed matter.

I moistened my lips. “Ask him what’s happened to Lenden.”

Stenning spoke rapidly to Fazzini. The Italian answered him at some length. Then Stenning spoke to the prisoner.

The man smiled, and said nothing.

For a minute Stenning and the Italian stood there motionless, staring threateningly at the prisoner. The deadlock was evident. Then Fazzini said something, apparently in explanation.

“By God,” said Stenning harshly, “then we’ll ruddy well
make
him talk.” He spoke rapidly with Fazzini for a minute. The Italian smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. I don’t think
physical violence to a prisoner was much in his line, though he was willing to give us all the assistance that he could.

Stenning stepped forward threateningly, and spoke to the prisoner again. I heard the words “Il Capitano Lenden, l’Inglese,” followed by a few more words. He paused for a moment, and repeated the question very slowly and distinctly.

The man gave a little contemptuous laugh—and Stenning’s fist crashed straight into his face with the whole weight of his body behind it. The prisoner was thrown backwards with his guards against the wall, coughing and streaming blood. I have never seen a more brutal blow struck.

Fazzini stirred uneasily, and said something in Italian. Stenning turned to reply, and if ever I saw the devil in a man’s eyes it was then. He said something harshly to Fazzini, who seemed to acquiesce, and then he swung round on Sheila and myself.

“You’d better get out of the room if you don’t like it,” he snarled. “We can’t stay here all the bloody night. I want to know what’s become of Maurice, and this fancy man’s going to tell me in a minute.” He turned to me, and jerked his head to the door. “Get the girl out of the room.”

He swung back to where the prisoner was still spitting by the wall. I turned to Sheila. “Come on, dear,” I said. But she stood rigid in the doorway, her face very white and set.

“That beast!” she said. “Peter, you can’t let this go on.”

I met her eyes. “Yes, I can,” I replied. “If he won’t tell us what’s happened, it’s probably something pretty sticky. Stenning’s quite right. We can’t wait all the ruddy night.”

She wavered, and I took her by the arm and led her away down the passage to that empty dining-room. There was a bottle of some red wine there, half-emptied; I poured out a glass for her and made her drink it. We said nothing to each other, but after a little she began to busy herself with re-arranging the coat about my bandaged arm.

In an incredibly short space of time Stenning was with us again, followed by Fazzini and one or two of his men. “That fancy man wants a new arm,” he said harshly. “I’ve gone and broken that one for him.”

I felt Sheila stir beside me, but I touched her on the shoulder. “What about Lenden?”

He wiped his bleeding knuckles absently upon his trousers. “Lenden got away about an hour ago,” he said. “An hour to an hour and a half. He took the plates with him—managed to get hold of them in the confusion, when they had the safe open. And shot off for the hills.”

“D’you know which way he went?”

Stenning jerked his thumb eastwards. “That way. Fazzini says there’s a hill path over to Rocchetta that way—in the next valley to this. That’s the way he’s gone.”

“D’you
know
that?”

“Yes. Half an hour after he’d got away they got news here that someone had seen him on that path. A couple of these Russians went after him then—maybe three-quarters of an hour ago. They’re not back yet.” He paused. “Manek—a chap called Manek was one of them. That’s the name that Trades Union bloke was talking about, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “A big chap with a fat white face, I think. He’s a gunman.”

“Probably,” said Stenning. “Anyone here got a gun?”

I tugged my old automatic clumsily out of my pocket. “You’d better take this thing,” I said. “It’ll be more good with you than with me.”

He took it, and stood for a moment in thought. “We’ll get Fazzini to wake up the Rocchetta crowd on the telephone,” he said. “Then we’d best push on up the hill after Mr. Ruddy Manek, and have a look what he’s up to.”

He swung round to Fazzini, and they talked rapidly together for a minute. One of the officers joined them, and then we were all back in that room with the safe, where a weeping man with a hideously battered face and helpless arms was being roughly tended by his Fascist guards. One of the officers stood to the telephone on the wall. In a minute or two he said something.

“Still working,” said Stenning. “That’s all right. Now we’d better get away up that hill, and pretty damn quick.” He
swung round on me. “What about you and Miss Darle? D’you think you can keep up?”

Sheila broke in. “We’ll try. Give us a man as a guide to stay with us in case we drop behind.”

“Right,” said Stenning, and swung round into a brisk conversation with Fazzini.

With Sheila’s help I slipped off my overcoat and jacket, and started on that walk in my cardigan. Sheila left her overcoat. Already the light was growing in a cloudless sky; in another hour the sun would be up. It was going to be a hot day on the hills.

We started from the house immediately—six Fascists and ourselves. Stenning and Fazzini marched at the head, Sheila and I brought up the rear. They set the devil of a pace up that hill. All the Italians were as hard as nails; Stenning was in fine training, and Sheila can outwalk most men that I know. I was the one who felt it most. I dare say I was as fit as any of them normally, but I was very tired and the exertion played hell with my arm and fingers. Still, I managed to keep up.

The track led straight up the hill-side from the Casa, winding up among the olives and the carnations. We went straight up at a five-mile-an-hour walk, and as we went the dawn lightened upon us so that in half an hour it was light. By the time we had left the terraces and were pressing on up one of the spurs of Monte Verde the path had shrunk to a foot-track that made us walk in single file.

That country was all pine trees and rosemary. It was cool walking in the early morning, and we made fine speed over the ground. Presently we topped one of the spurs and got a view of the mountainous country to the north and east; it was at this point that the sun rose upon us. Over the foot-hills to the right there was a wide expanse of steely, misty sea, just beginning to show up.

I had thought that we should dip down into the opposite valley for Rocchetta there, but the path went winding on up the side of Monte Verde in a more gentle incline. Soon we came to a place of grassy slopes, and the path began to wind along the
hill on the edge of a set of miniature precipices, thirty or forty feet deep. It was sinuous here, so that one would round a spur with no knowledge of the path ten yards ahead.

I was getting very tired by then, and the arm was hurting me more than a little. I was plodding along in the rear, intent only on keeping up, when there was a sort of scuffle from the front of the line, a burst of Italian and a good round oath from Stenning. Pressing forward in the clamour, I saw what had happened.

Standing against the rock wall of the path, their hands crooked above their heads, there were two men. A Fascist was standing by them and going through the contents of their pockets, while Fazzini and Stenning held them covered by their automatics and interrogated them in Italian.

They had been coming down the path towards us, and we had run straight into them.

One of the men was very broad in build, but I should not have called him fat. He had a broad, white Mongolian face; a powerful man of his type and something of an athlete. The other one was plainly Italian; I found later that he was a local man.

The Fascist who was searching Manek took from him an automatic pistol; the Russian eyed it phlegmatically as it passed from hand to hand. Stenning slipped out the magazine and glanced into the breech.

“About four shots fired,” he said quietly. He smelt the barrel. “And not so long ago.” He turned to Fazzini. “You must make the little one talk, Captain,” he said in Italian. “This one is no talker.”

Fazzini stood closer to the little Italian and began speaking to him, automatic in hand, the barrel pressed close to the prisoner’s stomach and waggling a little. I do not know what he was saying, but they were townsmen and one can see the trend. I was watching Manek as he stood there covered by Stenning and I saw his head turn anxiously, perhaps threateningly, to the man beside him. Stenning said something harshly, and the man looked stolidly to his front again.

But by now the little man was talking and gesticulating volubly.

I saw Stenning’s face harden to a mask as he jerked his head for me. “They’ve shot up Maurice,” he said curtly. “Shot him up, and left him on the hill. We’ve got to get on. This chap says he’s alive, all right.”

There was a sudden cry from one of the Italians who had gone ahead a little way up the path. He was coming back with a black case in his hand, a rectangular black box made of some oxidised metal. I reached out my sound hand and took it from him as he approached. It was closed and intact.

The Russian’s eyes were fixed on it intently. “What’s that?” asked Stenning.

“The plates,” I said. “They must have dropped them back there when they heard us coming.” He glanced at me inquiringly, and I shook my head. “They’ve not been touched, so far as I can see.”

“We’d better get along,” said Stenning. He jerked his pistol at the Russian. “Get on up that path. And, by God, you give me half a chance and I’ll put a bullet in your guts. Get on.”

We pressed on up the path, Manek leading with Stenning’s pistol hard against the base of his spine. Behind them came Fazzini with the Italian prisoner, walking free and talking all the time. The rest of us followed in a tail. By that time the sun was getting up above the hills and clearing away the mists. In another hour it would be hot.

We carried on like that for half an hour or so longer. Then we came out upon the true shoulder of the hill; before us lay the valley of the Nervia with Rocchetta below. The path went level here and crossed a couple of little grassy swards among the pines. And in this place we came to a little ten-foot cliff below the path that dropped down to a glade of rosemary and brush, a little sort of cup with a grass floor that trended away down the hill below. The guide stopped, and said something.

“This is the place,” said Stenning quietly.

And there, at last, we found him.

He had been shot upon the path, because we found blood
there. And then he had rolled, or they had tipped him over the edge of this little cliff into the bushes below. He had crawled forward a little way from the rock face and he was lying face downwards on a patch of grass. I saw him raise his head and stir a little at the sound of our voices, and the clatter of the two Italians who were scrambling down to him.

Stenning swung round to the remaining Fascists and pointed to Manek with his gun. “Guard him well,” he said harshly in Italian, “for, by the Mother of God, if that man dies he hangs for it.”

Then we went scrambling down into the little glade.

He had been shot from behind at very close range; each of the three bullets had passed through the upper part of his body. He was fully conscious, and knew us all. Very gently we turned him over and began cutting his clothes away to get to his wounds, and while we were doing that he spoke to me.

“Manek’s been to the pictures,” he said thickly. “He did it with his little gun.”

Sheila sat down beside him, lifting his head and making a pillow for him with a coat that one of the Italians offered her. And then she began wiping the blood and dirt from his face with her handkerchief, brushing the long black hair back from his forehead.

“Manek won’t use his little gun again in a hurry, old boy,” I said. “We’ve got him safe up top there.”

And as I spoke there was an uproar from the cliff above our heads, and Stenning and I started from the glade. Manek had kicked his guard in the stomach and made a dash for it. He came leaping down the hill towards the valley, some twenty yards from where we stood.

There was a sharp report beside me, and I swung round.

Stenning was leaning against a tree, his face hard set. I saw the smoke curling from the barrel of my automatic, as he steadied his hand against the trunk, and I saw him fire again. That shot flicked the ground by the feet of the running man, but he never stayed.

Stenning fired three shots more, three shots in very quick
succession. I saw the fugitive check for an instant. He seemed to stumble; it was as if he had put his foot on a loose stone. Then he pitched forward on to his face and went slithering face downwards down the steep slope of the hill, till the curve of the ground hid him from our sight.