by Nevil Shute
She came and stood in the doorway of the great room, and looked around. I remember that she was wearing a pale blue jumper and a tweed skirt; she was dressed for the country. There was a patch of morning sunlight that fell across that door, and she stood there with the colours gleaming in her fair hair, staring around the room. For the moment she didn’t see me, but stood there, her lips parted a little, taking in the slight disorderliness of the room, and noticing the whisky glasses.
And in the end she saw me. “Mr. Moran!”
I moved across the room towards her. “Morning, Miss Darle,” I said. “You’re up bright and early.”
She glanced up at me, her eyes twinkling. “So are you,” she said demurely.
I nodded. “I do this once or twice a month,” I replied. “I like to see the men get about their work to the proper time.”
For a moment there was silence. “I believe you’re the best liar I’ve ever met,” she said at last. I was silent. “Mr. Moran, I want you to tell me, please. What’s been happening? Has Commander Dermott gone?”
I nodded.
“When did he go?”
“About an hour and a half ago,” I said. “He went away by road.”
That seemed to puzzle her. “I heard the car from upstairs. Why did he go away like that?”
I was silent.
She came a little closer to me, and stood there looking up into my face. “There’s nothing wrong, is there? Not frightfully wrong?”
I laughed. “It’s all about as wrong as it can be, Miss Darle,” I said. “But, as you say, I’m the world’s champion liar, and I’ve managed to put Dermott off the track. So I suppose that’s something.”
She had nothing to say to that.
“I came over to see if Lord Arner was still up,” I said inconsequently.
She shook her head. “I came down, and got him to go up to bed about an hour ago. He’s frightfully upset over something.” She stared at me. “Something that happened after we went up to bed.”
I nodded. She waited for a minute to see if I was going to tell her anything, and then she said:
“I came downstairs soon after the car went away, when I heard you go over to your house. He was still up, and sitting in the chair here, looking at the Studio. And I made him shut it up, and go upstairs to bed. . . .”
I was curious. “How did you know that there was anything going on at all?” I asked.
“Because you all made such a row that you woke me up,” she replied. “Mostly the telephone. And then I came half-way downstairs in my dressing-gown, and asked Sanders. And then they sent over for you. And after that the car came with the other two.”
It was very quiet in the library. In all the house there was nothing stirring then.
“Mr. Moran,” she said.
I looked down at her, and looked away again. She was looking very sweet that morning, in the sun.
“Won’t you let me know the whole thing? I know most of it, you know. And there’s always the chance that I might be able to help, some way or other.”
She certainly could. Almost unconsciously, while we had been talking I had made up my mind. I wanted a witness for what I was going to do then. And I knew that whether she thought me right or wrong she’d never let me down.
I glanced out of the window to the Home Farm across the meadow. “Mattock sent over to me to say that his old mare foaled yesterday morning,” I remarked. “We might walk over and have a look at that.”
She turned with me, and we went through the hall and out of the house into the bright morning.
The farm lies about half a mile from the mansion, and we walked slowly. And as we went, I told her everything that had happened, from the time when I had driven back from Winchester in the dark. I left nothing out. I went straight ahead with the events as they had happened, and I didn’t look at her till I had finished. I didn’t want to see how she was taking it till she had heard the lot. Not even when I came to tell her about the dirty game that I’d been playing on Arner and on Dermott.
I was hoping that she’d pull me up over that. I was hoping that she’d stop me and turn round in the path, and tell me that I ought to be ashamed of myself. If that had happened, I’d have chucked it up there and then. That was to be the touchstone for my conduct, and I was waiting for it. In her I had an outside view and outside opinion, outside advice that I was ready to take. I’d done my best according to my lights, but I was very uncertain whether I’d done right. And so I say that if she’d told me that morning that I was playing a damn dirty game, I’d have gone back to Arner and told him the whole thing. And given Lenden up.
I wish to God I had. I was hoping that she’d tell me to, I think. But she didn’t. She stood there in the path looking up into my face when I had finished, and as I caught her eyes that hope flickered out and died. I knew then that I had to go through with it. I saw that she thought I’d done the right thing. I saw that she was proud of me, and I looked away again very quickly when I saw that. And the next thing was that she was speaking to me.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
I put my hand to the pocket of my coat and pulled out that packet of plates. “I’ve got all that matters with me, here,” I said.
She glanced at them for a moment, and then back to me. “I don’t mean about those,” she said. “But about the man.”
I stood there, fingering the plates. We were both of us thinking more about Lenden than about the espionage that morning. “He’s going back to Russia,” I said. “That’s quite definite. His mind’s made up. The only way of stopping him would be to give him up.”
She glanced at me curiously. “He’s a great friend of yours? In the war?”
I shook my head. “I hardly knew him. Only just casually in the Mess. But he’s a damn good sort, and I don’t see that one can give him up. It means imprisonment, and a pretty long spell. Maybe as long as ten years. And frankly, I don’t think he’s deserved it.”
She nodded slowly. “At the same time,” she said, “I don’t think you ought to let him get away to Russia with the information he’s got. That’s not playing the game, either.”
She glanced up again. “Can’t you persuade him to stay here now? We ought to be able to find something he could do.”
A little way from the path there was a fallen tree, one of two that had come down a fortnight before and that we were cutting up at our leisure. I moved over to it, and brushed the chips from the trunk, and sat down there in the sunlight. She followed, a little curiously, and stood beside me. “You can’t lead a grown man like that,” I said. “He’s got to take his own course. In that way there’s nothing to be done for him. I’m afraid he’s made up his mind to go back to Russia, and I don’t see that I can stop him.”
She nodded gravely. “And then he’ll tell them what he’s seen.”
I looked up at her quickly, and shook my head. “No. He can’t do that. He tried to tell me what he saw, and I don’t think the Russians will learn very much from that account. He’s too vague and confused, and he only got the shortest possible glimpse. But he’ll take the photographs back with him, of course.”
There was a momentary pause. I lifted the metal box, and turned it over in my hands.
“And by the time we’ve done with those,” I said, “the Russians won’t learn much from them.”
There wasn’t much difficulty about it. A little spring catch at one end of the box loosened the cover plate. Then there was a slide held by a sort of locking-pin, and underneath the slide there was a thin metal plate covered in black velvet. That pulled out in the same way as the slide, and under it I saw the greenish yellow of the first plate.
Sheila stood there beside me, very quiet, and watched me fiddling with the thing.
“Got to be damn careful to remember how this bag of tricks goes together again,” I muttered. “Don’t want to find any bits left over that I can’t put back.”
There were twelve plates in the box, each separated f
rom the other by a velvet shield. As each came out I laid it carefully upon the tree trunk in the bright sunlight, until at last I had them all laid out there in a row, and the box was empty.
Sheila stirred beside me. “You’re going to give them back to him?” she asked. “To take back to Russia?”
I nodded.
“How long does it take to spoil them?”
“About the hundredth of a second, I suppose,” I replied. “We’ll give ’em a couple of minutes, for luck.”
And when that was over, I put them back again. I laid each plate emulsion-side downwards, each with a velvet plate to separate it from the others, exactly as they had come out. Finally I replaced the slide and secured it with the locking-pin, and when I had snapped the cover plate in place, I turned to her.
“That takes the sting out of it, anyway,” I said. “There were only three lots of photographs taken, and they’re all accounted for now. There was the lot that he took on the first flight — and they were spoilt. There’s this lot that he took on the second flight, and I’ve done them in. And the third lot were shot down last night. The Air Force will look after those.”
She nodded. “Now he can do what he likes.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Now he can do what he likes.” And we turned and walked back to the house, forgetting all about the foal that we had come out to see. It wasn’t worth seeing, anyway. I told Mattock that that mare wasn’t fit to breed from, but he wouldn’t have it.
I left Sheila in the rose garden by the pool, and she went back to the mansion. I stood and watched her till she was out of sight, and then went over to my own place. There was nobody in the sitting-room. I took the pack of plates from my pocket and replaced it on top of the safe, exactly as I had found it.
Lenden was up and shaving. He came to the door of his bedroom when he heard me moving about.
“Morning,” he said, “I say, did you go out at about four o’clock this morning? I’ll swear I heard someone crashing around.”
I nodded. “I went over to the house.”
He was about to say something, but stopped. He was turning away, when he stopped suddenly and I saw him looking across to the safe. He moved across the room and took up the pack of plates that I had just laid down.
“Oughtn’t to leave these lying about,” he said.
In the town, a mile or so away, a church bell began to toll. I heard it faintly through the open window.
“This day is Sunday,” I remarked. “Are you staying over the week-end?”
He shook his head. “I must get up to Town to-day. I was thinking about it last night in bed. If they don’t hear from me soon, they may be sending out the reserve machine to do the job.”
I suppose I was tired, and a little sick from the narrative of the night. The cool way in which he referred to his movements stung me up properly.
It seemed to me that it was nothing to him that he was in my house, as my guest, and that he was talking of putting my country in the cart. My country — Sussex — that I’d sweated to make a good show of ever since the war. He was ready to throw all that away.
I leaned against the mantelpiece and grinned.
“The reserve machine,” I said cynically. “That’s the one that’s similar to yours. To be flown by a chap called Keumer. Leutnant Friedrich Keumer. A married man. Lives in Noremburg. Got two children called Elsa and Franz, and his wife writes to him every other day.”
He stared at me. “I never told you all that.”
I laughed unpleasantly. “No, you didn’t. Bit of a pal of yours, didn’t you say? Shares a hut with you, and all that?”
He nodded dumbly.
I jerked myself suddenly erect.
“Well,” I said brutally, “he’s dead. Got shot down over Portsmouth last night, doing your job. And crashed in a field by Hamble.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ALMOST BEFORE I had spoken, I was sorry. Lenden stood there staring at me blankly, razor in hand, his mouth drooping a little at the corners. He asked no questions, didn’t say anything at all. He just stood there dumbly, till I could stand it no longer, and he went a sort of yellow colour under his tan.
I moved over to the window and stood there with my back to him, looking out upon the garden. “I’m sorry I said that,” I said at last. “It’s been the hell of a night — and I’m a bit tired.”
He cleared his throat. “Tell me what happened.”
I turned round and gave him the account in a few short sentences. I put it as gently as I could. It came as a great shock to him, and he showed it. I can remember thinking at the time that this man Keumer had evidently been a closer friend than I had quite realised, and that it was curious that a man of his life and experience should suddenly appear so much alone. That is the only way in which I can describe his reception of my story. He was terribly alone. And when I saw him like that, his wife came into my mind, and it struck me to wonder if she had ever quite realised the injury that she did him when she went. Probably not, I thought.
He made no comment on what I had to say. He listened to the end, and waited for a little, staring irresolutely about the room. And then he moved towards the door.
“One thing,” I said, and he stopped.
“What’s that?”
“Give it another day. This is Sunday. You’ll do better to stay here till to-morrow, and see what’s going to happen. This may make a breach with Russia. It’s very likely. Arner thinks it will. There might even be war.”
I paused. “Give it another day.”
He stood there for a minute, irresolute. “Might be best,” he muttered. “I don’t want to get mixed up out there if there’s going to be a war.”
He glanced at me. “You don’t really think there’ll be war?” he inquired.
“I don’t see how there could be,” I replied. “But . . . I don’t know.”
He went back into his room, and I went and had a bath, and shaved. A little later we had breakfast together in my room, and during that meal Lenden hardly spoke at all.
And afterwards he began asking me questions about Keumer. He wanted to know how it had happened, but he was satisfied with a very brief account of that. Chiefly he wanted to know whether he had been able to give any messages, and whether he had had any personal papers on him at the time. I told him about the letters, but there was very little solid information that I could give him. For a time I couldn’t make out what he was driving at, until at last it became evident to me that Lenden was worrying over the settling-up of his friend’s affairs.
He was very muddled and confused about it, and yet in a way he was practical. “He wasn’t getting so much as I was,” he said, “and I know he hadn’t a bean in the world except his pay. If he had, he wouldn’t have been at Kieff. None of us would. It ran out to something like five hundred a year, I think. And he used to send over half of it home, so that he was always hard up. He never used to spend anything except on cigarettes. The sort of chap that likes sitting before a fire and smoking, and talking about his home and his kids. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to them now. . . .”
As we talked it became clear that he was set on doing something for that family in Noremburg, that he felt that it was up to him to do something. He said he knew they hadn’t any money, and he didn’t think they had any relatives that would be of any value to them. He didn’t know if there was any sort of poor relief in Germany; but, anyway, he couldn’t let Keumer’s wife go on the dole. He didn’t even know their address, except that they lived in Noremburg.
I suggested that Keumer had probably got his fee in advance and sent it home, as Lenden had done himself. Lenden didn’t think it likely.
“He was so damn casual,” he said. “He wouldn’t have bothered about it . . . I don’t know what to do.”
He said that Keumer used to take snapshots of the aerodrome and of the town and send them home to his wife, with long letters. He said that he had an album full of photographs of his wife and children, and
of his house and of his garden, that he used to show round upon the least encouragement.
“You see,” said Lenden, “we were more or less the same sort, and keen on the same things. I’d have had a place like that myself . . . one time.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he said.
That part of it, at any rate, was none of my business. I left him, and went over to the house. Lady Arner was at home, so it was no part of my duties to go to church that Sunday morning. She liked some representative of the family to be there; on occasions when the family were away it was my business to attend, presumably to ensure that the Padre read the lessons right. This morning I was free, and I went over to the gun-room to see if I could find the Sunday papers.
There was a copy of the Scrutator there, and one of the World’s News. I opened the Scrutator first, and glanced at the political news. There was nothing to add to the situation as I already knew it in regard to Russia. I skimmed through the remainder of the news on the chief page, and idly turned the lesser pages before abandoning it.
And there, in among the motor-car advertisements, I saw an article that brought me up with a jerk. It was headed:
THE ARGENTINE AIR SURVEY
(BY OUR AERONAUTICAL CORRESPONDENT)
At a meeting of the Royal Aeronautical Society held at the Royal Society of Arts on Friday last, at 8.30 p.m., Captain S. T. Robertson, M.C., gave a detailed account of the conditions governing the work of the aerial surveyor in semi-civilised countries. The lecture, which was of a highly technical nature, was entitled “The Survey of Inaccessible Areas”, and was the occasion of a large attendance.
There was a column and a half about it. It was all about grids and traverses and rectifying cameras, with a little about aeroplanes thrown in. I didn’t read it all through in detail. It was clear from the space devoted to the paper in the Scrutator that the lecturer was no slouch at the game, and that on air survey he must be regarded as a leading authority. That was certainly interesting; but what concerned me far more than the technical ability of the lecturer was the fact that Lenden’s old friend and employer of the Honduras affair was in England, and accessible.
