Death of an Airman

by Christopher St. John Sprigg

  The engine’s roar ceased dramatically. He let go the controls. In the deadly silence that followed the nose of the machine aspired madly above the horizon. Up, up. The whispering of the wind died away. The silence was really ominous. It surely couldn’t last.

  Flick! With the vicious plunge of a mad horse the aeroplane dropped—dropped like a thing shot through the heart, and seemed, in doing so, to leave half the Bishop’s internal functionings behind it. And as if horrified by that mad plunge, creation began to spin dizzily round the front of the Bishop’s nose—the fields, the vast terrestrial counterpane, shot round like a great wheel below them; the horizon was the felloe and the roads the spokes, and all whirled round fast and faster in a devil’s Catherine wheel. The Bishop clutched the cockpit’s edge. Though they were diving headlong, the wind was still only whispering through the wires as if they were floating earthward like a spinning sycamore seed, and this seemed to make it yet more sinister.

  “The spin is now fully developed,” came Sally’s incredibly calm voice. “Notice that although we are in a diving position, the air speed is only forty-five miles per hour, and we’re still stalled. Now I’m coming out of the spin. I bring the stick just forward of neutral, and apply opposite rudder.”

  The great wheel that was the earth hesitated, and then quite abruptly stopped whirling. The whispering in the wires rose to a whistle. The nose scooped up towards the horizon. They were flying level.

  “You’ve got her,” said Sally. “Now do the same.”

  The Bishop shuddered, but the voice was inexorable. “Back with the stick. Come on, don’t be afraid—right back! Now kick the rudder! Harder! That’s right.”

  Again the deadly flick. Again the round world spinning on a devilish wheel.

  “Opposite rudder now. Decisive! Stick forward.”

  The great wheel stopped whirling. The wind in the wires rose to a scream.

  “Hi, you’re not a single-seater fighter!” yelled Sally. “You’ve put the stick too far forward. Wow, we’re doing one hundred and thirty miles per hour! Back a bit. Gently. Ease her. Centralize your rudder. That’s got her. Now again.”

  “Please not again!” murmured the Bishop into his speaking-tube.

  “Again!” said Sally firmly. “And don’t come out of it so fast this time.”

  Once again the wheel. This time the Bishop looked inside the cockpit.…

  “Much better! Now I’ll spin you! Off a sideslip. And you recover her.”

  Limply the Bishop obeyed. As they flew level again he picked up the speaking-tube. “That is the last spin,” he stated firmly. “I shall certainly be extremely indisposed if we spin again!”

  “Oh, all right,” said Sally, in tones that seemed disappointed. “Now, you see the aerodrome over there, about two points to your right? If you glide straight in from this height you will overshoot it, so approach it in a series of gliding turns, always keeping it in sight. Remember your gliding speed is fifty-five miles per hour. Neither more nor less. You’ve got her!”

  Still a little shaken, the Bishop glided earthwards raggedly, while his airspeed indicator flickered nervously between 50 m.p.h. and 70 m.p.h. Two or three hundred feet above the aerodrome Sally gave an exclamation.

  “There’s the Executive Committee just going out to Lady Crumbles’ car. I’d recognize that woman’s figure from ten thousand feet. I’ll take over now. I’m going to beat the woman up. Are you game?”

  “Certainly,” agreed the Bishop, blissfully unaware of what the process of “beating-up” consisted.

  He was soon to be enlightened. The nose of the aeroplane went down and the airspeed indicator needle quavered over to 140 m.p.h. They were diving straight at the trio, who for a moment were unaware of the approaching aeroplane. Then, as they got nearer, he saw the pink faces of the three turned up with startling awareness. Lady Crumbles began to run first, with a shaking waddle, and was followed by Walsyngham. The smaller figure of Sir Herbert Hallam, more used to the process of being beaten up, stood its ground, waving a hand.

  The Bishop clutched the side of his seat. Surely they were going to hit the ground! His inner being oozed away as the machine stood on its tail, then flicked over on one wing tip, both wings vertical, and rotated round the tip in a turn that for the first time made the Bishop realize what a high-speed manoeuvre on an aeroplane was like. Then the nose dropped again. But Lady Crumbles and her companion had disappeared.

  The Bishop’s subsequent landing was more than usually erratic, but, oddly enough, it was Sally who came in for reproof. Tommy Vane, who was on the tarmac, gave a reproachful look.

  “Was that our worthy manager and the Bishop! Guilty of such shocking bad manners! I seem to remember a ‘Notice to Pilots’ in our club-house strictly cautioning them against low flying—signed by our manager too. Also various verbal reproofs given by her to budding aviators. I’m shocked. Really shocked.”

  Sally looked a little embarrassed. “Well, damn it,” she said, “it was only Lady Crumbles! That’s justifiable!”

  “Is that the lunatic old fish who was in your office when I barged in?” asked Tommy anxiously.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Right. That does explain it! She suffers from suppressed sex, doesn’t she? She made a most definite set at me.”

  “You flatter yourself, Tommy. You reminded her of someone she knew. A spider or something.”

  “I feel most extraordinary,” interrupted the Bishop. “Although my body is certainly stationary, my interior appears to be still revolving, and the effect is profoundly unsettling.”

  “Brandy,” prescribed Tommy Vane. “I know the feeling.”

  “I think I will,” said the Bishop. “I do not often touch stimulants, but I certainly imagine I shall be the better for something of that sort.”

  Chapter IX

  Francophilia in Glasgow

  After consultation with General Sadler, Chief Constable of Thameshire, Inspector Creighton went to London and called on New Scotland Yard, with an introduction to Inspector Bernard Bray. Bray, according to the Chief Constable, was at the moment investigating the white-drug traffic in Britain for the Home Office, and it was possible he might be able to help Creighton as to the source of the cocaine presented by Furnace for analysis shortly before his death.

  As a policeman, Bray was a contrast to Creighton. Creighton himself appreciated it when he met him. Bray had been intended for the law, and would in due course have been called to the Bar, and fought or failed to fight his way into one of the few profitable practices of the legal profession. As it happened, the post-war slump had made it impossible for him to support himself during the long probationary period of brieflessness which every barrister undergoes.

  Instead, he had joined the C.I.D., which then, for the first time in its history, was endeavouring to get into its ranks men of the professional classes. Bray might have been a mediocre success in the legal profession—he certainly had a lucid and logical mind, even if he lacked other of the qualities of a great advocate—but he made a first-rate detective.

  This was a new type to Creighton. The rough-and-tumble of Creighton’s experience had taken off his edges and made him capable of being all things to all men, but he bore about him the social marks of his long apprenticeship in the ranks.

  The two men—the young one with the clear-cut incisive features and an easy manner, the older with the shrewd eyes surprisingly set in his heavy ruddy face, and the ingratiating voice of a shopwalker—took each other’s measure rapidly and, contrary to mutual expectation, liked each other.

  “I didn’t expect a drug case from Baston, and no one was more surprised than I was when the Superintendent mentioned your visit,” said Bray. “I don’t know more than the mere fact that some cocaine has turned up there unaccounted for. How did it come about?”

  Creighton explained the circumstances.

/>   “Murder!” remarked Bray, with a lift of his eyebrows. “We don’t often get that mixed up with drugs. Have you brought the stuff you found?”

  “Unfortunately we only know of it by hearsay. But as proof that it really existed, I’ve brought the chemist’s note of his analysis.”

  “That’s just as good,” said Bray. He studied the slip of paper. “H’m, some of those ingredients are familiar to me.”

  He pulled a file out of his desk and ran rapidly through it. He explained his purpose as his strong fingers turned over the papers.

  “Almost anything is used to adulterate ‘snow,’ you know, from icing to boracic powder. Generally there is a mixture of several ingredients. If we get two samples which analyse similarly it suggests that they both come from the same source of distribution. Of course it’s only presumption. Now in this case—ah, here we are?”

  He pulled out a paper and studied it for a moment.

  “This tallies exactly with your analyst’s report,” he said. “Two and a half parts cocaine, three and a half parts sugar, five parts bicarbonate of soda, four parts finely divided flour, a pinch of lime salts of some kind. Quite a decent percentage of cocaine compared with some we get. Evidently an honest drug dealer.”

  Bray smiled at Creighton. “Well, we have to establish a connection. Here is Exhibit A, found, you say, by a now dead flying instructor at Baston. Here is Exhibit B, which was found on the person of a pickpocket in Glasgow. Where’s the link?”

  Creighton shook his head: “Ay, it’s not easy on the face of it. But it does look like there might be something…How did your man get his drug?”

  “Unfortunately we don’t know,” admitted Bray. “These dopeys are all as close as the devil about their source of supply—afraid it will get cut off if they give it away, you see.”

  “Well, here’s another point you can help me on,” said Creighton. “Would it be that this fellow Furnace got on the track of his drug in the course of his job? Or is it nothing to do with the flying club? I mean, have you ever come across aviation in connection with your drug investigations?”

  “No,” answered the Yard man decisively. “Of course the doping type will take up aviation or motor racing as a new sort of thrill, but they’d not get past their medical examination when it came to becoming a pilot. I can’t imagine any profession where they’re less likely to be found.”

  Creighton looked despondent. He was about to gather up his hat and go when Bray gave an exclamation.

  “Fool that I am! Of course, aviation would fit in perfectly—on the distribution side! Distributing drugs by aeroplanes would certainly be a new problem for my department, and a damned difficult one. Now look here: how far would it be possible for Baston Aerodrome to be a centre for drug distribution?”

  “It’s a bit too frequented, I should have thought. And the club machines are busy all day. Wait a moment though! I saw a fellow named Gauntlett there, who runs an air taxi business. That sounds the sort of thing.”

  “It is the sort of thing,” said Bray excitedly. “By Jove, Creighton, I’ve a hunch we’re on to something. Know anything against this bloke Gauntlett?”

  “I’m afraid not. He’s supposed to be rich; his only convictions are for dangerous driving and low flying.”

  “Look here, come round with me to the Air Ministry. It’s just ten steps from here. Arendsen in the D.C.A. is a pal of mine, and he’ll give us the low-down on Gauntlett.”

  Creighton’s second visit to Gwydyr House proved to be as unencouraging as his first. Arendsen obligingly worried everyone in the D.C.A. for scandal and came back shaking his head.

  “Gauntlett has never been blown on here, Bernard,” he said. “All his business is perfectly aboveboard. Our A.I.D. people say his maintenance is O.K. He sends us detailed traffic and passenger returns, for which we bless him, as these are only voluntary for air taxi operators. He’s got a fleet of thoroughly modern machines and seems in every way what we’ve always thought him, a successful private charter operator. I think you’re on the wrong trail, old chap!”

  “I don’t see that he mightn’t use a perfectly legitimate business to cloak his dope-distribution,” argued Bray. “Can I have a look at the traffic returns you mentioned?”

  “Certainly. Here you are. Take a dekko. They seem to be copied from his journey log-books.”

  “They seem extremely comprehensive,” said Bray, looking up. “Is it usual to include dates of flights, time, and so forth?”

  “No, it isn’t,” answered Arendsen. “Sometimes all we get is ‘Carried 2000 passengers approx. in 1933,’ scrawled on a bit of old paper after we’ve applied for it ten times.”

  “Curious the detail he’s gone into. Almost as if he’s tried to account for every minute of his time!”

  “You suspicious old devil! And I suppose if he’d sent nothing you’d have said it suggested he had something to hide!”

  Bray laughed, but did not reply. He looked at the returns again.

  “A lot of newspaper deliveries, I see. Is that usual?”

  “Good lord, yes!” replied the Air Ministry official. “Most air taxi firms seem to live on it.”

  “What is the nearest aerodrome to Glasgow?”

  “Renfrew, for civil ’planes,” answered Arendsen.

  “H’m. See that, Creighton—a regular daily delivery to Renfrew?”

  “Look here,” said Arendsen, “where do you expect this stuff to come from—the Continent?”

  Bray nodded. “Marseilles probably.”

  “Well then, why don’t you go to Sankport in Kent. That’s the aerodrome where Gauntlett’s machines probably clear Customs when they come from France. I’ll give you a note to the people there, and you can sniff round to your heart’s content.”

  “Yes, but if he were smuggling, he surely wouldn’t go through a Customs airport?”

  “I think so. It’s not so easy as you might imagine to fly from France to England and vice versa without clearing Customs. An aeroplane is still a pretty noticeable object, you know, and there are few enough of them for us to keep a close tab on them. If I were to do a spot of aerial smuggling, I should rely on bluffing or bribing rather than dodging. In fact, I should take damn’ good care to go through a Customs airport. One or two johnnies have tried to smuggle stuff by air the other way, but we soon rounded them up.”

  “This seems to be leading us the devil of a dance,” commented Creighton as he sped down soon afterwards in an official car to Sankport Aerodrome.

  “It’s always the way in a dope distribution investigation,” answered Bray. “We shall be lucky if we keep in this country. I’m still not sure that the drug end is the quickest end to tackle your murder from, you know.”

  “I’m content enough to follow it for a little,” answered Creighton. They stopped before a pair of impressive concrete pillars. “Is this the place? It’s an imposing sort of aerodrome to find in this out-of-the-way spot, isn’t it? It makes Baston look quite small.”

  They had motored through the early hours of the morning in order to be in time for the arrival of the first aeroplane from Paris two hours after dawn. They got there with enough margin of time for the detectives to have a preliminary chat with Grierley, the Customs officer on duty.

  Grierley was, naturally enough, sceptical. “Good lord, no! Gauntlett’s O.K. I don’t know the fellow himself, but I know his pilots, and some of them are as likely to smuggle as I am. It’s an aboveboard business, Inspector, I’m certain. I remember the day Gauntlett’s chief pilot, fellow named Downton, came back with the contract with La Gazette Quotidienne. Ever since then they’ve been distributing these papers as regularly as clockwork. They come in bundles straight from the publisher without being opened. I’ve seen the seal on them. Still, we’re pretty careful here, and we go through them every so often just to make sure.”

  Bray looked disap
pointed. “Isn’t it an awfully expensive business, this newspaper delivery by aeroplane?”

  “Was that what made you suspicious?” laughed Grierley. “Oh, most papers do it, including the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, and so forth. It’s an advertising stunt. The idea is to have a few copies available in a foreign country early on the day of issue. It impresses readers travelling abroad with the circulation of the paper and its general up-to-dateness, and they talk about it when they get home. Of course, in the case of the Gazette, it’s French visitors to England they want to impress, and so they distribute the papers to any towns where there are likely to be visitors—London, of course, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, and Belfast I expect, and that’s probably all.”

  “You don’t think they could slip anything small past you, buried in the newspapers?” queried Bray.

  “We know our job, Inspector! I’ve been through Gauntlett’s bundles often myself. I’ll give you a golden sovereign for every speck of dope (it is dope you’re after again, I suppose?) that gets past me in them. Possibly you’re thinking of bribery. Well, you know how good the Customs record in that respect is, but even if it weren’t, there are so many of us here, and our rota changes so much from day to day, that you can count it out in this case.”

  “We’ve drawn blank here, I’m afraid, then,” said Creighton. “It’s really my fault for starting you off on this chase.”

  Grierley pointed to the sky. “Look, I think that’s one of Gauntlett’s new Dragons from Paris with the newspapers. I’ll go over the papers thoroughly and you can watch me do it if you like. Only be quick. You see those four single-engined monoplanes parked on the tarmac there—the scarlet-and-yellow ’planes? Well, the bundles are transferred to those aeroplanes and each flies off in a different direction to complete the delivery. One goes to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow. Another goes to Cardiff and Dublin. You get the idea? So don’t keep them waiting. I admire Gauntlett’s organization, and it wouldn’t be fair to interfere with it.”