Stephen Morris (13 page)

The nose of the machine was crushed and shapeless. She must have hit very heavily upon it.

With the help of the spectators, Morris got her turned right way up. In the cockpit one end of the safety belt was broken from its stay; the instrument board in front of the pilot was split in two, and dials crushed and broken. On the seat lay a glove, one of Riley’s gauntlets, mutely eloquent. Morris picked it up and put it in his pocket.

He stood for a moment, fingering the broken belt, looking at the crushed instruments. One of the men came up and touched him on the arm. ‘Better get the wings off, hadn’t we?’ he said.

‘Oh … yes,’ said Morris. ‘Carry on. I’m going into the town now – at once. I’ll get a lorry there and bring it out. Carry on and get her ready.’

He commandeered the farmer’s Ford and was driven into Hurstony. He found the cottage hospital without much difficulty, and was ushered into a bare little waiting-room, a little sunlit palace of white paint and green distemper. Morris sat down and waited. Outside in the street a man was walking along selling the local newspaper, clanging a dinner bell to announce his advent; inside there was a quick step dying away along a tiled passage, and a faint odour of iodoform. Morris waited, uneasily. His hands were very dirty from the machine, his hair was rumpled, and he had no hat but the helmet in his hand.

He waited. The dinner bell died into the distance.

A heavier step sounded along the tiled passage; the door opened and Morris rose to his feet. It was a surgeon, a small, dapper little man with a sharp, tanned face, carrying a green pencil in one hand.

‘Good afternoon,’ said Morris.

‘Good afternoon.’ The surgeon glanced sharply at the helmet he carried in his hand. ‘You have come about the airman, Mr Riley?’

‘I’ve come to take all responsibility for him,’ said
Morris. ‘I represent his firm – the Rawdon Aircraft Company. I want to make all arrangements possible for his comfort – as regards money, if that is of any consequence.’

‘I see,’ said the other. He did not volunteer any remark, but stood tapping his pencil delicately on one thumb-nail, staring out of the window up the street.

‘How is he?’

The other glanced at him. ‘You are a personal friend of his? You have been very quick in coming.’

‘I know him pretty well,’ said Morris.

There was a pause; the surgeon mechanically tapped his pencil on his nail and gazed out of the window at a great cumulus of cloud, beginning to take a faint, rosy colour from the sunset. Somewhere a thrush was calling impudently through the evening; in the bare little room the silence grew pregnant.

‘I see,’ said Morris quietly. ‘He is very bad?’

The surgeon turned from the window and put the pencil in his pocket.

‘He is dying,’ he said simply. ‘You must telephone for his people.’

Riley died without regaining consciousness, early the following morning. Morris had telephoned to his invalid brother Benjamin, who arrived with his wife late that evening. But Riley said nothing intelligible. Once, indeed, he seemed to rouse a little and muttered something about bright colours and a spectroscope – it was queer that such an instrument should come into his head. But then, as the nurses told them, nobody could tell what a sick man would say.

His death made a lot of work for his brother. Malcolm had died without leaving any will, and his affairs were in terrible confusion. He had kept very much to himself since the war; nobody had much sympathised with his mode of earning a living and he had not talked about his schemes very much. When Benjamin came to examine his papers, he was amazed at the little he had known about this brother of his, and how much he must now pick up as best he could from old notebooks and receipted bills crushed into forgotten pockets. It was known, for example, that he had had a sort of venture in the Isle of Wight for a time, carrying passengers in aeroplanes. What nobody could discover was where the money had come from, whether there were any outstanding credits or liabilities, who his partners had been – if any. And this had been only one of many such mysteries. His firm at Croydon had written at once to square their account, and had enclosed a handsome cheque which he seemed to have earned by flying to Vienna – of all places. But they added the disquieting
information that he had been under contract to race for some firm (unknown) at Brooklands a week or two after his death. It was all very difficult for one who had no idea where or what Brooklands was beyond that it was a place where racing-motors went.

His very death had been something of a mystery. A man called Major Baynes had called and explained the circumstances of the business, and had suggested his willingness to secure some provision for any dependents. As there were no dependents, his financial responsibilities seemed to be entirely at an end. Malcolm had apparently been risking his life for sheer love of the thing. There had never been the least hint of romance about Malcolm, but in the hospital they had found round his neck a thin gold chain with part of a silver and opal pendant attached to it. This, for some reason or other, worried his brother very much; it suggested a whole host of undreamed of complications.

For some days Benjamin struggled with these difficulties from his couch; the sudden journey to Hurstony had knocked up his heart again, never at its best since he was gassed in 1915. He did not see his way in this business, and he was too ill to think much about anything. As a solicitor he was competent enough to deal with all the questions involved; as a man he did not seem to have the strength. Somebody ought to go down to this place Brooklands and find out what Malcolm had been doing down there, and if there was any property of his there. There might be a motor-car, perhaps several motor-cars. And somebody ought to go to this aerodrome at Croydon and see what was there – if anything.

In this extremity, Benjamin bethought him of Roger Lechlane. Roger was a cousin of sorts – anyway, he was one of the family, and could be trusted to make these inquiries delicately and tactfully. It seemed to him that
Lechlane would be a very good man to see about the active part of this business – that was, if he would take it on. He did not know very clearly what Lechlane was doing, or whether he would have time to spare for this business. But Lechlane was a secretary, and secretaries could get time off more easily than those who were bound by the routine of an office.

So Lechlane was summoned, and undertook to spend one or two odd days ferreting round these queer places in the suburbs. He returned after his first visit to Brooklands and dined with Benjamin at his flat.

‘I found out one or two facts of importance,’ he said. ‘He had a workshop down there – a sort of shed full of tools. One of those keys you gave me fitted the door; I marked it. I found a man who told me a good deal, too. He hadn’t any cars of his own there, only the tools that are in the workshop. He used to drive for the Phillips Company; you’d better send them a letter.’

‘I wish to goodness Malcolm had told me something about all this,’ said Benjamin fretfully. ‘There was a letter from the Phillips Company in that case of his – I forget what that one was about. There’s the case over on the sideboard – you might have a look through it and find that letter and read it out.’

Lechlane took the case and opened it. It was a battered old relic, stuffed full of letters and bills. Lechlane spread them out on the table; Benjamin watched him from the couch with half-closed eyes. Thank heavens he had found somebody to do the work of this business, under his direction. There could be no better man for the job; a friend of the family and a man, moreover, who knew something of Law.

‘This is it,’ said Lechlane. ‘It seems to be a bill for eighteen pounds sixteen and threepence – detailed, for repair to a car and general overhaul. That must be his two-seater, I should think.’

‘We can pay that out of the Croydon money,’ said Benjamin. ‘There was another letter about that car, came today. From some friend of his, a man called Morris who wrote from Southall, who wanted to buy the car at a valuation. I think that must be the man who was at the hospital that evening. I put the letter with the case, over on the sideboard.’

‘Better let him have it,’ said Lechlane. ‘You don’t want it, do you? It’s very shabby – not a car that one would care to go about in.’

Benjamin did not answer. Lechlane turned his attention to the contents of the case, mostly bills and receipts. These disposed of, he felt inside the case for anything that might have been overlooked. There was nothing in evidence. As he put it down, however, it seemed to be stiffer, to have more bulk and backbone than it should have, being empty. He picked it up and examined it more closely. There was a secret pocket in the lining, the sort of thing that might be intended to carry notes.

He pulled it out and two pencilled letters fell on to the table, one short and the other long. He opened the short one first; it ran:

The last words were scored out, and the letter ended in a small sketch of the head and shoulders of a girl, and another of a dropsical-looking pig. Lechlane turned to the other one.

This was a longer letter, written in a crabbed little hand upon two sheets, with many alterations and erasures. It took Lechlane quite a long time to read. When he had finished, he turned it over and read it a second time. Then he stole a glance at Benjamin. Benjamin was apparently in that comatose condition which precedes sleep; he was far from taking any active interest in the things of this world. Lechlane slipped the letter into his pocket.

‘Benjamin,’ he said distinctly.

The other opened his eyes.

‘I’ve sorted out these and put all the bills on one side. All told, leaving out that one from the motor company, they come to about twenty-two pounds thirteen shillings.’

‘Thanks,’ murmured Benjamin.

‘There was another pocket in this case,’ continued Lechlane, ‘but it only had a letter to a technical paper in it – a rough copy. It’s unfinished.’

‘Tear it up,’ said Benjamin. ‘I found a lot of that sort of stuff. What worries me is this aeroplane business of his; I seem to remember him telling me that he had three aeroplanes somewhere or other. It seems a lot.’

Two days later, Lechlane made a pilgrimage to Croydon aerodrome. He reported that evening to Benjamin.

‘It’s quite right about those aeroplanes,’ he said. ‘Only one of them seems to have gone – there are two there now. I saw them. And he had a partner in the business, a man called Stenning, a pilot on an air line to Paris. He’d just gone off when I arrived. I left a note suggesting that he should come here to supper next Sunday – I thought that would be the best thing to do. I expect he’ll know a lot, and anyway we can fix up this business of the aeroplanes then.’

So Stenning arrived on Sunday evening. It was a more
prosperous Stenning altogether than a year before. He had made good as an air line pilot, having that steadiness and shrewd mechanical sense which apparently enable a man to fly day in and day out without suffering the least ill effect. He took no liberties with himself physically; he had a thoroughly good job and he meant to stick to it. He was making money at the rate of seven hundred a year with plenty of holidays – his firm were careful with their pilots. There seemed no reason why he should not go on flying for another five years or so, and then get a management job on some aerodrome.

Supper over, they got to business.

‘There aren’t any liabilities,’ he said, ‘except the rent of the hangar, which we’ve been dividing. One always hopes to get somebody to buy those machines – we’ve got rid of one. Riley said we’d better keep them till next spring and then sell them for scrap if we’ve still got them.’

He told them all he knew of Riley’s other ventures.

‘Then there was no one else but you two in the Isle of Wight Company?’ asked Benjamin finally.

‘Only one, a friend of Riley’s from Oxford. We paid him regular wages. He had no legal share in it, though he got a percentage of the profits. A chap called Morris.’

‘That would be the man who wants the car,’ said Benjamin.

Lechlane lit a cigarette. ‘Seems to me,’ he said indifferently, ‘that I must have met him. Do you remember what his college was? The man I mean looked more like a corpse than anything else.’

Stenning stiffened a little. ‘He was a very good pilot,’ he said, awkwardly defensive. ‘I never knew his college. He was Oxford, Riley said. Riley said he knew a lot of mathematics.’

‘That’s the man,’ said Lechlane. ‘What’s he doing now?’

Benjamin frowned. He was a man with an orderly mind; to him business was business and any insertion of other affairs partook of the nature of adulteration. One could not be too careful in these matters in the Law. He chafed a little; it was not like Roger to go wandering down side tracks when they were discussing business, even if he did happen to have struck the trail of a personal friend. He might just as well have left it till afterwards. It was not – business.

‘He went on to the design side when he left us,’ said Stenning, ‘into the Rawdon Company. Riley told me that he was doing very well there – on design work and test piloting.’

‘Test piloting – isn’t that very dangerous work?’

‘I don’t know about that so much – not under ordinary conditions. Riley used to know pretty well exactly what every new machine would be like before he flew it. But anyway, this man isn’t counting on remaining a pilot – I know that. He’ll get on all right on the technical side.’

Benjamin leaned back in his chair. This was going on for ever, apparently. He wished now that he could have kept the matter in his own hands. It was always like this whenever relations had a hand in business. They were too infernally casual.

‘I know him a little,’ said Lechlane. ‘Tell me, have you any idea what he’s making now – or what he’s likely to work up to?’