Mysterious Aviator (7 page)

I filled a kettle and put it on the fire to boil. “Room’s ready when you are,” I said. “You’d better go to bed—and stay there. I’ll get you a hot-water bottle, soon as this boils.”

“It’s damn good of you,” he muttered. He went through into the bedroom and began to undress.

Presently the kettle boiled. I took the bottle in to him and found him in bed; he was very grateful in an inarticulate sort of way. I cut him short, went out of the room, and left him to go to sleep.

Back in the sitting-room I stood for a minute looking at myself in the glass over the mantelpiece. I can’t say it was a pretty sight. I was still in evening kit, but my tie had worked up towards one ear, and my trousers were smeared with mud from the down. The room was littered and squalid in the grey light; the electric lights unwholesome, and the remains of supper on the table an offence. Only the white keys and rosewood of the piano by the window appeared clean in that room.

I went into my bedroom, undressed, and had a bath. That pulled me round a bit. Half an hour later, when I had shaved, dressed, and flung open the window in the sitting-room, I was more or less myself again.

It was a cloudless morning. Over the kitchen garden the sun was rising through the mists left by the rain and in the stable eaves the birds were beginning softly, like a bit of Grieg. I went to the door of my house and looked out over the yard. Nobody was stirring yet, nor would be for half an hour to come, unless some under-housemaid in the mansion.

I had a job of work to do before breakfast, but I needed the help of one or two labourers for it, and I knew that it was no good going out to look for them for a bit. I shut the door and went back to the sitting-room, and kicked the dying fire together, and stood over it for a little. And then, since there was nothing else to do, I sat down again at the piano.

The morning was coming up all sunny and bright. It must have been chilly at the piano, for the window was open beside
me, but I didn’t seem to notice it. I had arranged that corner of the garden to have a fine show of daffodils that spring; it was a wild part where the family didn’t come much. I could see them just beginning to poke up through the grass. There were primroses there—buckets of them—and a few snowdrops. I sat there looking at them for a bit, half-asleep; through the trees in winter you can see the grey whaleback of the down as it sweeps up above the house and the village.

I was sick of my own work. I strummed a bar or two, and played Chopin for a little, till I grew tired of him. I sat there for a bit then, and thought I’d better get out into the yard and start up my car. I had that aeroplane to hide. But I sat there for a little longer before moving, and presently I found myself rippling through the
Spring Song
. It was the cold that started me off on that, I suppose. That, and the flowers.

I must have become engrossed in it again. I know I ran through it several times quite softly, rippling through it and wondering if I should ever write anything myself one-tenth so good. It should be played lightly, that thing. Very lightly, and a little staccato. I don’t know for how long I went on playing. It may have been for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till some slight sound made me turn my head. Lenden was standing in the doorway in my pyjamas, his hand resting on the jamb to steady him, his face dead white.

I dropped my hands from the keys. “Better get along back to bed,” I said. “You’ve got the hell of a temperature.”

He moistened his lips. “For Christ’s sake, stop playing that infernal thing. I can’t stick it any longer.”

I stared at him, puzzled. “Why not? What’s the matter?”

He avoided my eyes. “I thought you might be doing it on purpose,” he said uncertainly. “If you weren’t…. The way you went on and on.”

I smiled, got up from the piano, and crossed the room to him. “As for you,” I said, “you’re bats—that’s what’s the matter with you. You’re imagining things. I’m going out now to hide that aeroplane of yours where it won’t be seen from the road, before anyone else gets to know about it. You’re going to go
back to bed and go to sleep, pretty damn quick.”

He turned from the door. “All right,” he said wearily.

“I’ll have some breakfast sent over for you about ten o’clock. Bit of fish, or something.”

I paused. “And don’t be a ruddy fool.”

I
WENT OUT INTO THE YARD
to start up the car. It was very fresh and cold outside; I left the engine to run warm while I went back into the house for a coat.

Then I got going on the road for the downs. The wind and the rain of the night had gone completely and left only a thin mist about the hedges in the rising sun. I passed through the main street of Under and let the car rip along the road for Leventer.

I saw the machine when I was a mile away. There she was, stuck right up on top of the down, insecurely tethered and swaying a little in the light wind. She was a landmark for miles around. I stopped the car near to where I had picked up Lenden and began to walk across the down towards her, hoping most earnestly that no one else had passed that way since dawn. It wasn’t very likely.

There was a barn in the hollow of the down below the machine, about half a mile distant from her in the opposite direction to the road. I passed her without stopping, and went on down the hill. I thought it might be possible to get her down the slopes and tether her behind the barn. She would be out of sight of the road there, and as secret as it was possible to make her, short of dismantling her altogether. It realised, as I walked, that it might come to that in time. If she was to be disposed of secretly, the only way would be to take her to bits and burn her piecemeal.

The slopes were easy enough on the way down to the barn. There would be no difficulty about getting her down the hill into seclusion. If ever she were needed again, it would even be possible to taxi her up the hill again under her own power till level ground was reached for her to take off. At that time I didn’t think that there was the least chance of that ever happening,
but there was very little doubt that it could be done if necessary.

I had a bit of luck then. Spadden, the farmer, came out of the barn as I approached; a grizzled, uncommunicative man of fifty-odd. He had a couple of sheep in there with bad feet, he told me. He had had the vet. out to them from Leventer the day before, in a terrible fright that it was foot-and-mouth; the vet., it seemed, had laughed heartily, given him a poultice, drunk a stoup of ale, and departed. Spadden told me all this as he greeted me beside the barn and as he was showing me the beasts. He was a good sort, was Spadden. He’d always given me a square deal, and I knew he wouldn’t talk.

I put it to him bluntly. “Been up on the down this morning?” I inquired. He hadn’t. “Well, I’ve got an aeroplane up there.”

He nodded slowly. “Nasty dangerous things,” he said at last. “You don’t want to go messing about with them no more. Thought you’d had your fill in the war.”

I laughed. “It’s nothing to do with me. I’ve not been flying it. But I know the pilot. He’s an old friend of mine; he landed here late last night. He’s had to go to London in a hurry; I said I’d look after it for him, and see that it was picketed down somewhere in shelter from the wind. He said he reckoned to leave it here a week.”

It was a thin tale.

“Aye,” said Spadden phlegmatically. “Where’ll we put it?”

I thanked God for him. “Bring it down into the hollow here,” I said, “and picket it under the lee of the barn. It’s quiet enough down here.”

“Aye,” he said again. “It’s quiet down here.” He stared around. “Never a great wind down here. If you put it here the sheep’ll be worrying it.”

“They can’t hurt it.”

“Reckon they’ll rub.”

“Let ’em,” I said. There was very little chance, I thought, that anyone would ever want to fly it again.

He went off and fetched one of his labourers, and then we
went trudging up to the top of the down. There we cut loose the lashings that held her, lifted the tail shoulder-high, and began to wheel her down to the barn. It was all downhill, or we’d never have got her there. We must have put her down a dozen times for a spell. She was a big machine, that Breguet, and a heavy one to handle on the ground. I know that by the time we got her down to the barn I—for one—was wishing most heartily that I’d never set eyes on her.

There was everything we needed in that barn, right on the spot. We drove stakes into the ground beneath the wing-tips with a wooden mallet, and lashed her to them loosely to enable her to ride a little in the wind. We lashed sacking down over the engine, the propeller, and the cockpit. I made a proper job of the controls. By the time I’d done with her she was a fixture, and fit to lie out there for a winter without taking any great harm. Apart from the sheep, that is.

I made a rough examination of her before I left. There was an oil pipe broken in the engine mounting; a bit of rubber piping that connected the oil tank to the engine, perhaps an inch in diameter, frayed and burst. There was a great slaver of oil all about that had come from this pipe. That was the trouble that had brought him down. Something must have made the pipe burst, I supposed; some stoppage in the circuit, but what it was I did not know.

I left her then. Spadden said he’d keep an eye on her and see that she didn’t suffer too much from the sheep. I took the occasion to urge him not to talk about her. But there was little need for that. He didn’t want a lot of sightseers wandering about all over his land.

I went back to Under for breakfast well satisfied with myself. The machine couldn’t be seen from the road, and I had left her in as great concealment as could be contrived in England. It is no easy matter to hide an aeroplane. It is a most conspicuous thing, and every village constable seems to have an official interest in it, on all occasions.

I drove back to the Hall, put my car in the coach-house, and went across to my own place. They had made my bed and had
begun to lay the table for breakfast. I looked into my spare room. Lenden was asleep in bed, flushed and breathing heavily. I closed the door softly and went out.

Then I crossed the yard and went to the gun-room in the mansion. The morning papers generally tarry a while there on their way to the breakfast table; whenever I want to know any particular item of news in a hurry, I go and look through them there before breakfast. I spread them out upon the gun-room table that morning and glanced quickly through the lot, half-hoping to find a second paragraph about fireballs over Portsmouth. I found nothing at all.

I gave it up at last, rang the bell and sent for Sanders, the butler. He came in due course, grey-headed, lean, and infinitely well bred.

“Morning, Sanders,” I said. “I brought a gentleman back with me from Winchester last night, and stuck him in my spare room. I expect the maid told you.”

He inclined his head gravely. “She did, sir.”

“Well,” said I. “I think he’s going to be ill.”

He looked concerned. “I am very sorry to hear that, sir.”

“Yes. So am I. As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s anything very bad. Touch of malaria, I should think—he’s not long back from the East. Shivering fits, and a temperature. He took enough quinine to kill a dog when we got in last night, and went off to bed. I’ve just looked in on him now. He’s asleep.”

I paused, and thought for a minute. “I’ve got to go to Pithurst for a sale to-day—I can’t miss that. I’ll be out to lunch. He’ll probably stay in bed all day, I should think. Will you see Mrs. Richards about it, and get him some lunch taken over? Something pretty light—bit of fish, or something. I’ll see if there’s anything he wants before I go. And I’ll be back about tea-time.”

“Very good, sir. He might fancy a grape-fruit, with the fever.”

I nodded. “Good scheme. You might send one over in the middle of the morning, if he’s awake.”

He went away, and I turned again to the papers. Relations with Russia were more strained than they had been since the time of the General Strike; the
Mail
, in particular, was very insistent on the subject.
The Times
was frankly concerned over the reception of our Note. I spread it out upon the gun-room table and became immersed in the leading article. I don’t generally read the leaders in
The Times
. They’re not much in my line. I’ve never taken much stock of politics or legislation or the affairs of state. But that day it was different. I wanted to find out exactly how matters stood, and as I sat there that morning, on the edge of the gun-room table in the sunlight, reading that leading article, I realised that things had gone further in the direction of a breach with Russsia than I had dreamed.

Lenden was awake when I got back to the house. I looked in at the door of his room for a moment before breakfast. He was very hot and restless in bed. He remarked thickly that he had a ruddy mouth like the bottom of the parrot’s cage.

He said there wasn’t anything that he wanted.

“Better stay where you are for the present, then,” I replied, and retired to my bacon and eggs.

I looked in on him again before I went out. He was feeling very thick and rotten, and was evidently in for a pretty sharp bout of fever. I sat chatting with him for a bit, and then rang up the housekeeper and asked her to send over a thermometer. He had a temperature of about a hundred and two.

In ordinary circumstances I’d have sent for a doctor at that point. You can’t afford to go messing about with a temperature like that. Lenden wouldn’t hear of it. He said he knew what had to be done—lie in bed and take quinine and neat brandy till it went off. That seemed very reasonable to me; in any case, it was the treatment that had cured this thing before. It might have been rather difficult to explain him to the doctor, too; I didn’t want his presence in Under advertised more than necessary, until I knew what he was going to do.

He didn’t want anything to eat. I made him comfortable and went over and had a chat with Mrs. Richards, the housekeeper. I wasn’t very happy about leaving him in a strange
house in that condition, and told her to send over someone every couple of hours or so to see that he was all right. More than that I couldn’t do; I left him some books and a decanter of brandy, got out my car, and went off to my office in Under.