Death of an Airman

by Christopher St. John Sprigg

  It was only now that the Bishop understood that this alarming manoeuvre was intentional. Rotating with the attractive precision of a top, the aeroplane still fell. Its wings flashed alternately silver and red as now the under and now the upper surface caught the sunlight. The Bishop could see in the cockpits two black heads, absurdly small, which appeared and disappeared as the aeroplane revolved.

  The spin ceased abruptly; the tail seemed to drop, and there was the machine flying again as before. He heard a rising drone, and the aeroplane climbed. Then the drone died down again, and the aircraft glided over the hangars, landing in front of them with a swinging swish of the tail.

  It stopped, turned rockingly and lolloped over the aerodrome back to the hangar. Sally walked up to it when it arrived and the Bishop followed her.

  Furnace jumped out of the front cockpit. He was flying without goggles or helmet, with a pair of ear-phones and speaking-tube mounted on a headpiece. The Bishop looked at the instructor with curiosity.

  Furnace seemed to be near the forties and might have been a handsome man had not a scar run diagonally across his face from one temple to the opposite jowl. Each feature was distorted where the scar traversed it and his mouth was twisted in a perpetual lop-sided grin, which made his real expression enigmatic.

  “An aeroplane fire. He got chucked against a red-hot wire,” whispered Miss Sackbut, as she saw the Bishop’s eyes rest on the scar.

  The propeller stopped suddenly and a muffled object crawled clumsily out of the rear cockpit. This, the Bishop gathered, was the pupil. He was dressed in a bulky leather coat, enormous scarf, and large woolly gloves. He wore a flying mask, usually only adopted for high altitude or winter flying, which gave him a sinister appearance. The man looked portly, but when the coverings were peeled off he revealed himself as one of those lanky jockey-like youngsters, who might be any age between thirteen and thirty-five. At the moment there was rather a depressed expression on his peaky white face.

  “All right, George,” said Miss Sackbut to Furnace, “XT can be put away. There’s no more instruction to-day.”

  “A good job too,” answered Furnace irritably. “In my young days we used to go solo in two hours. Now everyone seems to want about twelve hours. In another ten years they’ll take a fortnight. By that time I’ll be in a lunatic asylum.”

  He shouted to a thin red-headed man in dirty and tattered overalls: “Here, Andy, put XT away.” He muttered something to Miss Sackbut that the Bishop could not catch.

  “I want you to meet a new pupil,” said Miss Sackbut, introducing him to the Bishop.

  “I am afraid I shall fulfil your worst fears,” remarked the Bishop diffidently. “I know in advance I shall be a bad pupil.”

  The malicious grin widened. The Bishop gathered that this time Furnace was really smiling. “Oh, don’t be frightened by my remark,” the pilot said more graciously. “Some of my best pupils are your age. You won’t learn quite so quickly as a youngster, but you’ll be all the sounder as a pilot. I don’t mind slowness in learning; but I’ve come to the conclusion, Sally, that Tommy knows what he ought to do and is just too lazy to do it.”

  The Bishop supposed that the muffled figure was Tommy.

  Furnace bent the headpiece of his ear-phones backwards and forwards with a nervous gesture.

  “I put him into a spin suddenly, and he got the machine out of it, and competently too. I’ll swear he knows more than he pretends.”

  “How odd,” remarked the Bishop politely.

  Furnace stared at him gloomily. “Pupils are odd. I taught a certain transatlantic flyer to fly. I was amazed at her aptitude. Honestly, I thought she was a miracle. I used to go everywhere boasting about it. Then Tarry Bones, of Aberdeen, came down here one day, and it all came out that she had already learned to fly up there with him under an alias.”

  The Bishop was baffled by this elaborate mystification, and Furnace saw it.

  “Don’t you see the idea? It would have appeared in all the papers: ‘Woman learns to fly in two hours.’ Good publicity! She’s never forgiven me for spoiling it.”

  The Bishop had seen Furnace’s eyes rest malevolently on Mrs. Angevin while he said this, and guessed she was the woman referred to. He began to feel sympathetic towards her.

  Furnace pulled off his ear-phones. He seemed exasperated. The Bishop might have taken it for a normal mood of the man, but he saw that Miss Sackbut was looking at him a little anxiously.

  Tommy Vane now joined the group, having got rid of his outer garments after a prolonged struggle.

  The young man smiled oddly at Furnace. “I say, Major, I don’t like this flying business at all! What was that quick one you pulled on me just now? I didn’t know whether it was me or the earth?”

  “Is that the first time you’ve been spun?” asked Furnace suspiciously.

  “You ought to know,” answered the youth. “All the flying I’ve ever done has been with you. And just now I thought we should die together. ‘They looped together and they span together and in death they were not divided.’ ” The youth chuckled happily to himself.

  Furnace’s expression was hard to fathom.

  “You put on opposite rudder quick enough when you saw you had to get her out yourself.”

  “I saw that in an article,” announced Tommy cheerfully. “‘How and Why in a Spin.’” He prodded Furnace in the stomach. “Anyway, you old devil, if you wanted to scare me you did all right. My tummy heaved about like an oyster. A large brandy is what I need—quickly. I think you ought to speak to him about it, Sally.”

  Throwing one end of his gaudy muffler over his shoulder, he started to walk off, a queer little figure with rounded shoulders and trailing trouser-legs.

  “The bar’s closed,” shouted Miss Sackbut after him.

  Tommy turned and placed one rather dirty finger beside his nose with a wink. “This is illness. What’s wrong with the first-aid chest? I know where it is.”

  “If he does pinch the brandy out of my office again, I’ll wring his dirty neck,” muttered Miss Sackbut fiercely.

  “What does Dolly want?” she exclaimed a moment later.

  It appeared that Mrs. Angevin had had enough of splendid isolation. She now walked over to the party, a welcoming smile on her face.

  She looked appealingly up at her former instructor and slapped Furnace gently on the arm with her gauntleted gloves. “Well, Instructor mine, what have you been doing? Poor Vane looked positively green. You’ve probably frightened him off flying for life. You didn’t let me spin until after my first circuit.”

  Furnace turned to her. He still smiled his artificial grin, but the Bishop noted that the hand in which he held his ear-phones whitened at the knuckles.

  “Kindly keep your observations about my instructing to yourself before strangers,” he said in a shaking voice. “They may not realize what anybody in aviation knows, that you’re the worst woman pilot in this age and country, which is saying something. One day you may make as good a pilot as Sally here. But not until you stop making every decent person’s gorge rise by turning yourself into a cheap circus.”

  Mrs. Angevin flushed brick-red. For one moment the Bishop, embarrassed beyond all words, and yet unable to get away inconspicuously, thought she was going to strike Furnace across the face with her gloves. Perhaps she was. But at that moment a clear and languid voice interrupted them. Lady Laura was behind him.

  “I really think that instructors should never meet their pupils again, don’t you, Bishop?” she murmured. “They’re so used to cursing and swearing at them while they’re learning to fly that they can’t get out of the habit afterwards. You wouldn’t believe the things George says to me when he forgets himself.”

  Furnace looked at her for a moment with an oddly hurt look in his eyes. He seemed about to speak, then he walked abruptly away without another word and disappeared into the
club-house.

  “Well, I never!” gasped Miss Sackbut. “He’ll be terribly sorry about this to-morrow, Dolly. I simply can’t understand what’s come over him.”

  “I can,” said Mrs. Angevin violently. “These unsuccessful pilots who think they ought to be at the top of the tree, and aren’t, all go the same way. Drink. Drink and jealousy. The man’s hardly sane.”

  She dragged on her gloves with a snort, nodded to Lady Laura, looked curiously at the Bishop, and walked away.

  “Bitch!” remarked Lady Laura, directly she was out of earshot—or, the Bishop thought, probably a little before. “Still, I’ve never heard George flare up like that before.”

  She turned to the red-headed man in tattered overalls, who was climbing into the cockpit of XT preparatory to taxying it into the hangar.

  “Get my Leopard Moth out will you, Andy? I’m going back to Goring this afternoon.”

  “Oke,” said the ground engineer.

  Miss Sackbut, accompanied by the Bishop, strolled thoughtfully back to the club-house.

  “I’m most awfully sorry this has happened,” said Sally dismally. “What will you think of our club? Mrs. Angevin was right; George oughtn’t really to have given Tommy practice in getting out of spins. Tommy’s very slow, and he’s still on straight and level flying after two hours’ instruction. Still, George probably had some good reason. What I can’t understand is his losing his temper like that. He’s always been a peaceable cove.”

  “Mrs. Angevin had an explanation,” said the Bishop dryly. He looked at Miss Sackbut with a steady gaze which she found a little disconcerting.

  “Oh, that was a beastly thing she said! He’s never been at all like that. It certainly is galling for a man of his war record—and his piloting ability, for they don’t always go together, guts and skill—it must be infuriating to be instructor at a low-down joint like our club, and to see people like Dolly and Randall making fortunes. But it’s all luck, that kind of thing, and George has always laughed at it. He’s always been as cheery as anything, and awfully popular with his pupils.”

  “He struck me as not at all the type to lose his temper,” admitted the Bishop.

  “He’s one of the best,” said Sally warmly. “But, to be perfectly frank, something has been getting him down during the last fortnight. He’s been brooding and quite different to his usual cheery self. I’m afraid he’s got a crush on Lady Laura, poor fellow, and if so I’m sorry for him. The Lord knows why I’m rambling on, telling you all this.”

  “The experience is not strange,” said the Bishop. “Evidently there is something in my face, of which I am unaware, which invites confidence. Well, I should like to start my instruction, if it is convenient, at noon to-morrow.”

  “Certainly. I’ll book it. Get fitted up with a helmet, goggles, and ’phones in town if you can. Merrivale’s are the best people. It’s better than borrowing them, although we can lend them to you if you haven’t time. I’m glad the scene to-day hasn’t put you off.”

  “Good gracious me, no! I’ve taken quite a liking to Furnace. Is that Lady Laura who took off so gracefully just now?”

  “Yes, she always takes off in a climbing turn. And that means she won’t die in bed,” added Miss Sackbut grimly.

  Chapter II

  Creation of a Corpse

  “Good morning, Miss Sackbut.”

  “Good morning, Bishop. You look magnificent in your flying helmet. At the same time, I shouldn’t wear it when you are not flying.”

  The Bishop had rather fancied the figure he made in a black helmet. He bowed his head and accepted the rebuke in Christian meekness.

  “I’m a little annoyed with George,” went on Miss Sackbut. “He’s taken XT and he’s still up.” She waved at a shadow fleeting across the thin clouds. “I don’t know why. He knows you are coming. I didn’t see him go up or I’d have ticked him off.”

  “Don’t trouble. I can wait.” He dropped into a large chair on the club veranda.

  Sally called to the red-headed ground engineer.

  “Andy! Did Major Furnace say how long he would be up for?”

  The ground engineer shook his head. “Just said he’d sweep the cobwebs out of his head, and then took her up. There he goes!”

  The frail shadow nosed up in a loop and rolled off the top of it. It seemed speeding straight for the aerodrome when the wings flashed silver in a vertical turn.

  Sally snorted. “Getting rid of that morning-after feeling, I suppose! He must have a thick head! If he doesn’t come down soon I’ll borrow Dolly’s kite and wave him down.”

  “Please, please!” expostulated the Bishop, smiling. “I have all the morning, and this is delightful to watch.”

  “Oh, you’ll be able to do all that after fifty hours,” said Sally airily. “Now he’s spinning.”

  Once again the scarlet-and-silver wings flashed and flickered as they had done yesterday, but this time the Bishop was not disturbed.

  “I thought the machine was in terrible difficulties yesterday,” he admitted. “What a delicate touch it must need to perform those swift evolutions.”

  Sally laughed. “Good lord, he’s not moving the controls! The aeroplane does it automatically.”

  The Bishop, when she spoke, had turned his head towards her. She looked a little abstracted.

  She was nervously tapping the side of the chair in which she was sitting. He suspected that this four-square, self-reliant young lady with the calm eyes and masculine manner was a good deal more nervous than she liked people to suppose. And now there was definitely something on her mind.

  The Bishop looked sharply at Furnace’s aeroplane again. It had lost a lot of height since they had first seen it. It was flickering down towards a bank of trees. It fell still lower.

  The Bishop heard a gasp beside him. Sally jumped to her feet, her face contorted with sudden alarm. “Here, George!” she said in a low, urgent voice. “Don’t leave it so late!” Then her face paled. She gave an agonized cry that lived for ever in the Bishop’s memory.

  “For God’s sake use your rudder!”

  Separated by thousands of yards of clear air, inhuman, remote, the flickering toy vanished behind the trees. There was no sound, no wisp of smoke, but only the empty air, and the silence.…

  Sally turned abruptly, without a particle of expression on her face. “Quick, the ambulance!”

  But Andy had forestalled her. There was a whir and a clatter, and straight out of the hangar sped the battered olive-green Ford which was at once fire-engine and crash tender.

  The Bishop saw the engineer, his face set, clinging on to the wheel as the car bounded over the uneven surface.

  The Bishop started to run towards the crash. Sally held him back. “You’ll never get there in time. Tommy’s with Ness,” she said, pointing to the gaudy scarf and huge leather coat of Ness’s companion, as the tender plunged across the aerodrome. “They’ll get him out. It’s no use running and winding yourself. Better come in the car. It’s over in front of the club-house.”

  As they walked hurriedly towards it, the Bishop saw in another corner of the aerodrome a man jump into a low green sports car parked beside a scarlet and yellow hut. The sports car was bumping across the aerodrome almost before the crash tender had vanished behind the trees at the scene of the crash.

  “That’s Randall, I think,” said Sally with forced calm. “He’s dashing across in Gauntlett’s Alfa-Romeo. He’ll know what to do.”

  The Bishop was not deceived by her matter-of-fact voice. There was a dazed look on Sally’s face. It was rigid with self-control. “George, of all people!” she said, as if to herself, in a profound surprise. She looked at the Bishop. “The controls must have jammed,” she went on, almost as if asking his reassurance. “It couldn’t have happened otherwise, not possibly!”

  “It’s no good, I can’t
stay here! I must do something! Come on. We’ll go over.” They got into her battered four-seater car.

  Lady Laura, her face white, came running out of the club-house, and without a word jumped into the back seats.

  They tore across the aerodrome, leaping from bump to bump, through a gap in the hedge that was a rutted cattle track, over more fields, down a long steady slope, until at last they came to rest beside the Ford.

  The Bishop saw the golden head of Captain Randall bowed over an outstretched figure beside which he was kneeling. Standing beside him, their heads also bare, were Andy and Tommy Vane. Tommy’s hands were bleeding unregarded over the saw he held in them, the saw with which they had extricated Furnace.…

  Randall placed his handkerchief over the dead man’s head. As Sally came towards them he met her and put his hands on her shoulders. There was a deep pity in his regard.

  “He was killed immediately, Sally,” he said gently. “The safety-belt must have broken on the impact, and his forehead was thrown against the dashboard.” His eyes met hers. “He must have died instantly,” he repeated. “Almost before he knew what had happened.”

  They put the limp figure in the ambulance.…

  “If any of us could choose the manner of our death,” said the Bishop gravely to Sally a little later, “I think it would always be to die in the calling one had chosen—the sailor on the sea, the farmer at the plough, the pilot riding the air he strove to master.”

  ***

  It was Tommy who dashed into town to get Dr. Bastable. Tommy returned in a dangerously short time, the tyres of his little red sports two-seater screeching as he drew up alongside the hangars.

  “Bastable’s out on a case. I’ve left a message,” he said. “Perhaps I’d better get another fellow though? I could go over to Market Garringham for Murphy.”

  “No, we’d better wait for Bastable,” answered Sally wearily. “He’s a member of the club and a pal of Furnace’s. I’d rather he did everything. Not that there’s anything to be done, anyway.”