Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  Leglia nodded to me as I came in, and turned again to the messenger. The man was talking very quickly and earnestly, gesticulating freely with his gnarled and roughened hands. To my disappointment I could hardly understand a word of what he was saying; he spoke in some country dialect that was quite beyond me. I sat down on the end of the bed and waited.

  Once Leglia turned to me and nodded gravely. “Of all people,” he said, “you might have thought of this.” He thought that I was following the story.

  At last the tale was finished, and Leglia began asking questions. I hoped to learn something from these, but I could make nothing of the one-sided conversation that I could understand. At last the business seemed to be over. The man stood there in the wavering light as though awaiting his dismissal, a rough, queerly attractive figure, a man that one could depend on. Then he turned his head and glanced at the major-domo. Evidently there was more to come.

  The old man moved softly forward from the shadows. “Excellency,” he said, “Caterina, the sister of this man, would by now be married to the son of the harness-maker in Estalebona, had not the harness-maker intervened. He objects that the settlement that she can bring is not sufficient....”

  Leglia nodded comprehendingly. “How much does she bring?”

  “Excellency, she brings twelve hundred lire. But the father is a very vain man.”

  Leglia seemed to consider for a little. Then he turned curiously to the messenger.

  “The son,” he said. “Is it that she loves him?”

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “Lord,” he said, “it is necessary that my sister should marry to be happy, and this man has offered, and all would have been well but for the father.”

  Leglia nodded slowly. “I go very soon to Estalebona,” he said, “as soon as this matter is decided. Then I will talk with the father, and they shall marry with my goodwill and with the blessing of the Church.”

  The man knelt and kissed his hand.

  Then the major-domo shepherded him to the door. They went out, and the door closed silently behind them. I was left alone with Leglia.

  He stretched himself, and reached out for the cigarette-box by his bedside.

  “Well, old bean,” he remarked, “so that is that. You have understood what he has said?”

  “Not one ruddy word,” I replied. “It didn’t even sound like Italian to me.”

  He laughed and lit his cigarette. “The dialect!” he said. He threw away the match.

  “It is by aeroplane that they land the drugs in England,” he said quietly. “Of all people, to you that will be familiar. He has said that it is by a flying boat, with the wheels, that can land on the earth or on the water.”

  “Hell!” I said. “I might have thought of that.”

  The whole thing became obvious. I sat on the edge of his bed and stared into the great shadows of the room while the bits of the puzzle fell together into the pattern. That was the meaning of the rag and pliers that I had found on the beach at Marazan. Where the sand was soaked in oil was where they had beached the machine to load her up; it was possible that they had refilled her tanks there. The pliers to undo some portion of the cowling round the engine, the rag to wipe up the spilt oil.

  That was the only thing that Marazan Sound was any good for, for the operation of seaplanes. Drawing no more than a couple of feet of water, the machine could go anywhere in the Sound at any state of the tide. It would be easily possible to take off from the water in the Sound itself between White Island and Pendruan; in rough weather the Sound would always be calm enough to enable them to run the amphibian up on to the beach to load the cargo. The stuff would be brought to some point off the Scillies by the steamer. There it would be transferred to the motor-launch and taken to Marazan in the early part of the night, to meet the machine.

  It was very silent in the room among the wavering shadows.

  “Does the boat fly out from England?” I asked.

  Leglia nodded. “From England they fly in the early part of the night, to land at the islands in the darkness with the little lights. On the water they land, and to embark the goods — cargo. And then to fly inland into the middle of England, but never twice to the same place. Always it is many miles into the middle of the country that they will land with the cargo, where one would not think to smuggle.”

  “The machine comes out from England?” I asked. “Where does she come from?”

  “An English machine — yes,” he said. “But from where — I do not know. They are the sailors who have talked, and they have only seen that which happens in the islands.”

  “I see,” I muttered. “They load her up at Marazan, and then she flies back again — well inland somewhere.”

  He nodded. “That is so. Benedetto has told me that the load is not big, not more than two men can carry or that one man should carry on his back for a little way. That does not seem a great quantity.”

  “Eighty or a hundred pounds,” I muttered. “God knows how much that’s worth. They mix it with some white powder generally before they sell it — to make it go farther. Boracic or something. The girl I used to know.... They sniff it up from the end of a spatula. You don’t need much of it.”

  “Benedetto has told to me that there is no guard upon the islands,” he said placidly. “It is that they will recommence to smuggle on the next voyage.”

  I sat up with a jerk. “When’s that?”

  He shook his head. “It is not yet known. By the crew it is not known at all that they return to the Scillies, but by the — the officer below the mate. I do not know the name. He has told to Benedetto in the osteria that the crew would not voyage if it was that they knew that it was to England that they go again. The officer has said that there was trouble the last trip, with shooting. The crew of the ship have been frightened for prison, and for himself he is a little frightened and would like not to go back. But it is not yet known when they will sail. Perhaps in a week, perhaps a fortnight. Benedetto returns to Genoa tomorrow. In a few days we shall know more.”

  “By God,” I said, “we’ll make it hot for them next time!”

  I went back to bed. The next three days passed uneventfully; I didn’t see that I could do anything but sit still and wait for news. If it was really true that an attempt was to be made to run another cargo, the Scotland Yard people ought to know about it. Oddly enough, my mind kept running on the man that Sir David Carter had called Norman; a useful sort of chap, I thought, and one that I could work in with pretty well if it came to anything of a rough-house. I didn’t see how I could communicate with the Yard. Anything I did might give the game away; it was even possible that a letter might be intercepted. In any case, a letter could not put the urgency of the case as I could put it to them myself. I didn’t see that the preparations to give them a warm reception need take very long to fix up. Even if we had no word of the departure of the vessel till the day she cleared from Genoa, I could still be in London four or five days before she reached the Scillies. I decided that the only thing to do was to wait.

  I was much puzzled over the aeroplane. An aeroplane is a most conspicuous thing; all sorts of regulations hedge it round about, so that in England there is not the slightest possibility of concealing one’s ownership of a machine. I didn’t know of a single privately owned amphibian machine in England. An amphibian is a flying-boat or seaplane that is fitted with landing wheels to enable it to put down on land or water. I knew of two privately owned seaplanes and about a dozen privately owned aeroplanes of various denominations and vintages, but no amphibians. There are plenty of amphibians in the Air Force, but it didn’t seem likely that anyone could get hold of a Service machine for a job of this sort. No doubt one or two firms that specialized in building them would have a machine on hand for experimental purposes. It might be one of those.

  We waited for three days. Then came the news that Benedetto had been killed.

  I don’t think Leglia had suspected that the man was in any danger or he would hav
e gone about the matter differently. We heard about it early one morning. I was sitting with Leglia in the cloister when his old servant came hurrying from the gate. In a minute we had the whole story. Caterina, the sister of Benedetto, was at the gate. She had been visited by a priest that morning, who had broken to her the news of her brother’s death in Genoa. It seemed that he had been killed in a tavern brawl.

  Leglia asked me to go away while he saw the girl. I left him to say what he could to her, not envying him the job. I went up to the top room where we used to sit in the evenings and dropped into a chair to think what this meant for us.

  I didn’t get far. It was murder — of that there could be little doubt. I sat there and remembered the man as I had seen him in Leglia’s bedroom, “the silent man who loved him.” The thought that we had been sending him to his death fairly made me sick. This man was dead, murdered in our service. I was pretty sick about it, but for Leglia it was hell.

  I went down after an hour or so. He was sitting where I had left him, brooding in his chair. He refused to discuss the matter then.

  However, he wasted no time. “When one has had defeat in the front attack,” he observed, “one will send out to the flank, both sides at once.” That was all he told me, but that afternoon his flankers left for Genoa.

  I saw them before they went. It seemed that he was attacking from above and from below. One was the gipsy that I had seen before, the other was a puffy little bourgeois, a traveller in a line of cheap celluloid novelties. I don’t know what their instructions were, or why he chose them. I saw them passing the gate as they left the Palazzo after a long interview with Leglia. Then they vanished into the blue, and we were left to await their news.

  We had a long talk about it that evening sitting in the top room looking out over the river to the hills. Leglia hardly mentioned the dead man. He said briefly and conclusively that it was certainly murder, and laughed at the idea of the murderer being brought to stand his trial. The real point of interest was — how much did Mattani know? This we had no means of estimating till the return of the two flankers.

  I shall always remember the dreariness of that second period of waiting. Leglia was worried and uncommunicative; for myself, I roamed restlessly about the Palazzo and the town, wondering how much of my movements was known, wondering every time I went out if I should get a knife in my ribs, too restless to remain in the Palazzo, wishing most desperately that I could be up and doing. The evenings we spent in the top room, smoking and drinking the Madeira. During this time I saw very little of the sister or her aunt. I think they kept out of our way purposely. I don’t blame them for that; we must have been pretty poor company during that time of waiting.

  My mind kept turning to Mattani. To me he was an abstraction, a force in this matter without a personality. It was like blindfold boxing. It worried me very much, I remember, that I could only conjure up the vaguest idea as to the personality that I was up against. I had to rely on Leglia’s descriptions of the man; he told me that he was short and thickset, with a very bland manner. That tallied more or less with what Compton had told me. “If you ever have anything to do with Roddy,” he had said, “you’ll find him very pleasant to deal with. Very good company....” There was something about this description of the man that simply terrified me. I say that in all seriousness. I did my best to hide it from Leglia, but during those days of waiting I was miserable. I had the wind right up.

  The gipsy was the first to return. He came in the morning at the usual hour of levée; Leglia saw him in the cloister. He brought with him indisputable evidence that the murder had been committed at the instigation of Mattani, but he thought that it was not known that Leglia was concerned. He had heard no mention of me. The affair had happened in some pretty low pub in Genoa. Benedetto had entered the place and sat down with a drink at one of the tables, probably to wait for some sailor from the ship. It was a put-up job. One fellow went lurching across the room swearing that that was the man who had seduced his sister in some little inland village; two or three others had taken up the cry, shouting that that was the man. It was all over in a minute. There was a short scuffle, and in a moment the crowd were pouring out of the inn, so that by the time the keeper of the house and his daughter got to him they were the only people in the place. He died very soon.

  The innkeeper had denied all knowledge of the men, and it seemed that the police had not exerted themselves more than was necessary for the sake of appearances. As Leglia observed, it was in Genoa that it happened, and in Genoa Baron Mattani “had the Press.” The murderer had not been identified. According to the gipsy he was one of three men, all of whom had been present, all of whom were Fascists of the lower type and strong partisans of Mattani.

  Suspicion was certainly aroused, but the indications were that Benedetto had been considered to be an agent of the Americans, anxious to discover the date of the next appearance of the vessel in Rum Row. He had drawn suspicion on himself by his eager curiosity; I think he had probably been very careless. He must have found out something of importance, or they would hardly have flown to extremities to secure his silence.

  There was no information about the departure of the vessel to be gleaned from the gipsy. He had been able to discover nothing of that, judging it wiser, I suppose, to let things simmer down a bit.

  That was all he knew. He stood by while we talked it over in English, leaning against the balustrade in the sun, a picturesque, rather a dirty figure. Presently, tiring of a conversation that he could not understand, he began to whistle a little tune between his teeth, very softly, over and over again. It had a plaintive, eerie sort of lilt to it; I never think of that day but I recall that little tune. I could whistle it now.

  Presently it drew Leglia’s attention.

  He glanced at the man. “That is a sad song,” he said in Italian.

  The man smiled broadly, expansively. “Lord,” he replied in his vile dialect, “it is one of the songs of my people.” Then he began to sing, very softly and distinctly, to the tune that he had been whistling:

  “I am not of this earth,

  Nor born of mortal mother,

  But Fortune, with her turning, turning wheel,

  Hath brought me hither.”

  Leglia eyed him keenly. “My friend,” he said in Italian, “you shall tell me the meaning of your song.”

  The man laughed cheerfully. “Lord,” he said, “there is no meaning. My father sang that song to me, and my father’s father. Many of our songs are such.”

  He stopped laughing and glanced slyly at Leglia. “Yet, Lord, there are other songs? ...”

  He began to whistle some air that I had never heard before. He stopped after the first bar or two; there may have been something in Leglia’s eye, I think, that told him it would be unhealthy to proceed.

  “That is a song that one does not sing aloud,” said Leglia sharply.

  The man looked abashed. “Lord,” he said, “I am thinking of Benedetto.”

  For a minute Leglia was silent. Then, “I, too, am thinking of Benedetto,” he said quietly, and dismissed the man.

  Finally, after two more days, the little black-coated commercial traveller returned.

  His story was quite explicit. The date when he came to us was July 8th. His information was to the effect that there was certainly no guard on Marazan, and that a cargo was to be transhipped there on the night of the 16th-17th. He told us, beaming, that while primarily engaged upon obtaining this information he had been successful in obtaining an order for some incredible number of celluloid serviette-rings. One thing, he said placidly, always led to another.

  That evening I left for England. The Leglias bade me farewell each in their own way.

  “For Giovanni,” said his sister, “you will search diligently for a bride English, is it not so? I do not think that he will want for her to be very pretty, because already I have brought to him all the most pretty girls of Florence and he is — pah! Not at all interested. Like suet.”
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  “Captain, old thing,” said Leglia, “next year I come to England for a certain, and I shall enter you to fly me in a two-seater in the King’s Cup race, and we will have the perfectly marvellous time.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I GOT TO Paris at midday on the 9th and went out to Le Bourget. My luck was in here; a machine was leaving for Croydon in half an hour’s time. A touch of blarney with Kerret in the aerodrome office secured me the mechanic’s seat, and I crossed with Bluden as pilot in a little under two and a half hours. We were telling each other stories most of the way. It wasn’t until we landed that we realized that he had given the passengers palpitations by switching off the engine while we were over the Channel in order that he might listen the better to one of mine. At the time it never struck either of us, but we heard later that there was a fine to-do in the cabin when the engine stopped.

  It was about half past four when we put down at Croydon. I had some tea, and was in Whitehall by six. It was a Saturday afternoon and Scotland Yard looked pretty barren, inhabited solely by unintelligent and asthmatic sergeants recruited from the more remote parts of the country. One of them received my inquiry for Norman with an air of polite finality. It was, he said, Saturday afternoon.

  “Do you expect him back here today or tomorrow?” I asked.

  The sergeant ruminated, grunted, and rubbed his chin. “Well,” he rumbled benevolently, “Monday morning. He might be in Monday morning, and then again he mightn’t. It’s like that, you see, sir.” He beamed at me.

  “Is Sir David Carter here?” I asked.

  He looked troubled at that. “Strangers ‘ave to ‘ave an appointment to see Sir David,” he said. “If you’ll just put down your business on the form I’ll lay it on Major Norman’s desk. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll lay it on his desk, and then he’ll see it first thing Monday morning.”