The 12.30 from Croydon (3 page)

‘Having a nap, is he?’ he said to Weatherup.

‘Yes, sir. He generally goes off for a few minutes after lunch, so I suppose it’s force of habit.’

‘It won’t do him any harm.’

‘No, sir. This is a good deal for a man of his years and health.’

Just then the attendant came round.

‘We’re landing at Beauvais,’ he told everyone. He did not explain why, but the whisper went round that there was fog in Paris.

Almost immediately Rose felt the plane falling, gently, like an easy lift. The motors still kept on droning as before, but the cloud layer was coming up rapidly. There was nothing unpleasant in the motion, it was so easy and gradual. Presently the motors slackened speed till Rose could see the quivering of the propeller blades. Then they dropped into the cloud and were once more surrounded by opaque whiteness, through which only the wing and wheel were visible.

They fell on and on through the cloud, the motors going on and off more than once. Suddenly they saw the ground. They were close to it now, not more, Peter estimated, than three or four hundred feet up. Once again the motors roared out and they continued flying across the fields at this height.

Expecting as they were to come down to earth at any moment, the flight now seemed endless. But at last Rose could see their objective, a large field with another white ring, this time very big indeed, and containing the word BEAUVAIS in huge letters. Still they kept up, passing nearly over the aerodrome. Now the plane seemed to want to land and made some disconcerting swoops and dives. Then it banked. The wing took up an angle of forty-five degrees with the ground, and they swung slowly round in a great circle. Suddenly they dropped, easily. The ground rushed up to meet them. They were within fifty feet of it, forty, thirty, ten.

The ground had been slipping past pretty quickly, but only now could Rose see their real speed. It seemed tremendous. The ground absolutely dashed past. It was faster than any train she had ever been in.

As they slipped over the edge of the aerodrome they seemed not more than four or five feet up, and almost at once the great wheel touched and began to revolve as it had at Croydon, so quickly that Rose could scarcely see its patch of mud. They were down; down without the slightest shock or sensation of landing! Indeed it was less steady as they taxied across the grass, gradually reducing speed. Then quite slowly they moved up to the aerodrome buildings and – the flight was over!

‘Well, Rose, how did you like that?’ her father queried as he got up and began fumbling for his handbag and coat.

‘Oh, daddy, it was lovely!’ she cried. ‘Lovely! I want to go back this way.’

‘I hope we shall,’ he answered. ‘Will you take your coat?’

She stood up and took the coat, looking at the passengers all doing the same thing. Her grandfather was still asleep and Weatherup bent over him. Then he straightened up and spoke hurriedly to her father.

‘What?’ Peter answered very sharply, glancing at the old man. Immediately he turned to Rose and said quickly: ‘Now, Rose, out with you! Look sharp now; you mustn’t keep everyone waiting.’

Rose was amazed. This wasn’t the way her father usually spoke, and besides she wasn’t keeping anyone waiting. But his face bore an unusual expression, and when she saw it she thought it better not to argue, but to get out at once. He helped her down.

‘Wait there for me,’ he went on. ‘I shan’t be long’, and he climbed quickly back into the plane.

But he was: a long time. All the other passengers had come out and walked off before he reappeared. Then his face was very grave.

‘I’m sorry to say your grandfather has been taken ill,’ he said. ‘We shall have to carry him out of the plane. Will you come over to the office and wait for us there.’

It was not till later that Rose learned that Andrew Crowther had been dead when the plane came to the ground.

Some four weeks before Andrew Crowther’s tragic air journey his nephew Charles Swinburn sat in his leather-covered chair in the head office of the Crowther Electromotor Works at Cold Pickerby gazing unseeingly at a Thorpe Engineering Company’s calendar which adorned the opposite wall of the somewhat dingy room. Above the neatly lettered card headed ‘August’ was a spirited reproduction in bright flat colours and jet shadows of a titanic crane hoisting a brobdingnagian locomotive over the cliff-like side of a mammoth ship. Yet this spectacular feat did not rivet Charles Swinburn’s attention as it deserved and had been designed to do. In the first place he had seen it every day for nearly eight months, and in the second he had something more pressing to think about.

Something serious surely, to judge by the harassed expression on the man’s face. He was in his early prime: as a matter of fact he had just celebrated his five-and-thirtieth birthday. The skin of his pale oval face was still unmarked by lines of care and his dark hair remained free from grey. Beneath his high, if somewhat narrow, forehead his eyes, sparkling with intelligence, looked out upon the world. Good features these, as was his nose. But there was a falling off in the lower part of his face. His mouth was not firm enough and his jaw was too narrow. The face indeed showed a strange mixture of intellectual power and moral weakness.

Charles Swinburn had cause to look anxious. He had cause to look more than anxious. For he was pondering a very dreadful problem. He was trying desperately to find a way in which, with safety to himself, he could bring about the death of his uncle, Andrew Crowther.

To murder his uncle! That had lately become his obsession. Slowly the desperate circumstances in which he found himself had forced him to the terrible conclusion that if his uncle’s life were not forfeit, he would lose his own.

A fortnight earlier no thought of crime had entered his mind. A fortnight earlier this terrible solution of his difficulties had not even occurred to him. Then, as now, he had sat in his office with an equally harassed expression on his face, but his anxiety had been then the anxiety of an honourable and law-abiding man.

There was good cause for his distress then, as now. Charles Swinburn was suffering from an extremely common complaint, so common indeed as to justify the adjective epidemic. He was in fact hard up. For some months things had been growing steadily worse, and now he was actually in sight of ruin.

He was the sole owner of the works, in the private office of which he was now seated. He manufactured small electromotors for driving low-powered machines from klaxons and gramophones to the more modest forms of machine tools. When he had received the business as a legacy from his father it had been small but flourishing. It was still small, but now its prosperity had departed. With the slump had come a gradual reduction of orders, Charles’s profits had diminished till at last came the unhappy time when he found himself actually at a loss on the week’s work. At first he had made good the deficit from his private account, but as things continued to grow steadily worse he saw that he could not continue to carry the business. His private fortune was practically gone and he was in debt to the bank, and if things did not mend he would be faced with the necessity of closing down.

With an abrupt movement he rose to his feet, and taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocked a safe which stood in the corner of the office. The room was of fair size with two tall windows, facing which was Charles’s table desk, with the usual shaded light, telephone and wicker correspondence baskets. Beside the fireplace stood a deep leather-covered arm-chair, provision both for Charles’s less energetic moments and for his more important clients. More humble callers were accommodated on the small chair before the desk. The furniture was good, but the paint was shabby and the walls required repapering.

Charles took from the safe a locked book bound in black leather, placed it before him on the desk and opened it with a small key. It was his private ledger, of the existence of which neither his confidential clerk nor his manager had any idea. In it were recorded the damning facts which were now giving him so furiously to think. His staff knew that things were in a bad way, but no one but himself had any inkling how serious the position really was.

For some time Charles continued working with the figures in his book, then he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Before calling ‘Come in!’ he slipped the book into a drawer and became immersed in the papers which had been beneath it. A thin elderly man in threadbare black, with a pessimistic expression on his sallow face, entered and stood in a hesitating way before the desk.

‘Well, Gairns?’ said Charles, contriving to banish his depressed expression and to speak cheerily.

James Gairns was the chief of Charles’s clerical staff, nominally confidential clerk, accountant, and general office manager, really Charles’s office boy and general attendant. Charles made a show of consulting him on everything, but he actually did all the important business himself. Gairns was utterly honest and trustworthy and carried out his routine duties efficiently enough, but he had no initiative and could not be trusted with power. With resignation, but an obvious expectation of the worst, he followed Charles’s lead in anything outside the ordinary course. Professionally speaking, he was as old as the works themselves, having been a foundation member of the staff. For ten years he had remained a clerk, then in a moment of mental aberration Charles’s father had promoted him chief, and he had occupied the position ever since, a matter of three-and-twenty years.

‘Well, Gairns?’ said Charles again.

Gairns slowly rubbed the palm of his right hand with the tips of the fingers of his left, a trick which from much repetition had got on Charles’s nerves.

‘I wondered, sir, if you had heard from Brent Magnus Limited lately?’

‘I lunched with Mr Brent yesterday.’

Gairns continued to rub his hands. ‘Oh then, there’ll be nothing in it,’ he went on despondently.

‘Perhaps,’ Charles suggested, ‘you’d tell me what you’re talking about?’ When in Gairns’ company Charles always felt at his mental and moral best.

‘It’s only that I saw Tim Banks.’ This was the Brent Magnus Ltd head clerk. ‘I had occasion to slip round to the bank; about that cheque of Fleet’s: you know, sir?’

‘I know. Yes?’

‘On the way back I met Tim Banks. He was just going into the bank. He stopped and we chatted for a moment.’

‘Well? For goodness’ sake, get on, man!’

Gairns began to rub his hands again. ‘He asked if we’d heard from Mr Brent yet. I said, not so far as I knew. He said, well, we would be hearing soon. I asked what was up and he wouldn’t say; not at first he wouldn’t. But I pressed him and then he gave me the hint. “Mind you,” he said, “I’m only giving you a hint and you don’t know nothing till you hear from Mr Brent.”’

‘What was the hint?’ Charles demanded patiently.

‘We’ve lost the contract.’ Gairns shook his head sadly.

‘What!’ Charles exclaimed. ‘You don’t say so! Was Banks sure?’

‘He seemed so.’

Charles made a sudden gesture. ‘Damn it all, Gairns, that’s pretty bad news!’

Gairns shook his head hopelessly.

‘What was our tender?’ Charles went on. ‘Seventeen hundred and ten pounds! Good heavens, Gairns, we can’t afford to lose a seventeen hundred pound contract these times. It was going to be a help to us, that contract.’

Charles sprang to his feet and began to pace the room. This was certainly very unexpected and disagreeable news. The firm of Brent Magnus Ltd was an important toy-making concern, employing a large staff. The machines for making the toys were all small, and were operated by an elaborate system of shafting, the driving of which consumed nearly as much power as the machines themselves. The directors had just decided to throw out this shafting and to replace it by a separate electromotor for each machine. They had advertised for tenders for the work, and as the largest motors made by Charles were just big enough, he had tendered. He had cut his price to the last sixpence and had been hopeful of success.

It was a blow, and Charles could not entirely hide the fact. He presently ceased his pacing of the room and threw himself once more into his chair. ‘Sit down a moment, Gairns.’ He pointed to the small chair. ‘We must talk this over.’

Gairns seated himself gingerly on the edge of the chair and sat waiting for what was to come. Here was a difficulty, and it was Charles’s part to meet it and his, Gairns’s, to assist by doing what he was told. The idea of offering a suggestion did not occur to him. It was fortunate for him that he was not called on to do so, for as a matter of fact he had none to offer. Indeed he did not even see that there was anything to discuss. The order was lost. Very regrettable, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Charles, however, had other ideas.

‘I’m afraid, Gairns,’ he began, ‘that this affair will bring up a question which I have been thinking over for some time, and which I’d much rather not mention. Which of those two clerks, Hornby or Sutter, is the better man?’

Gairns slowly rubbed his hand. ‘Hornby or Sutter?’ he repeated. ‘Well, they’re both good young fellows enough, as young fellows go in these days, that is.’

‘I asked you which was the better.’

‘Hornby’s better at the books. His posting’s neat and he doesn’t make mistakes, or not many of them anyhow. But Sutter’s the best man when it comes to handling anything out of the common. If you have a message up town you send Sutter.’

Charles saw that he must get down to it. ‘The reason I ask you is that I’m afraid you’ll have to let one of them go.’

Gairns was appalled. He blinked at his employer. ‘Let one of them go, sir? That wouldn’t be easy with all the work that has to be done.’ He could scarcely believe Charles was in earnest. There had always been the typist, the office boy, and two clerks, and to make so fundamental a change would alter the whole of the established routine.

‘I know it won’t be easy,’ Charles went on. ‘I hate to think of getting rid of either of them, for I know they’re both good men. But I’m afraid we can’t help ourselves. We simply can’t afford to go on as we are doing. We’ve got to save somewhere. You know as well as I do that every firm’s doing it.’