by Nevil Shute
I felt rather helpless. “I haven’t the least idea,” I said. “If he did, what of it?”
“I merely call your attention to the lines on which his mind appears to run,” he replied. “I believe he has been Chairman of the Surbiton branch of the Society for Psychic Research, and that much of his leisure time has been spent in the detection of ghosts. I understand that he has been in trouble with the police arising out of his activities with the British Israelites. He has more than once forecast the coming dissolution of the world to members of my staff, over the lunch table. We now have a — er, an allegation by the officials of C.A.T.O. that Mr. Honey is mentally unbalanced. I must say that I should like to see that allegation disposed of before I am required to waste much of my time in an examination of his work upon the Reindeer tailplane.”
I said, “Very well, Mr. Prendergast. The most that I can do is to let you know tomorrow morning when we shall be ready to meet you to discuss the Reindeer tail. If then you prefer not to attend the meeting that we offer, that, of course, is your affair entirely. As regards these allegations against Mr. Honey we shall, of course, investigate them fully, and if we find that they have substance in them we shall reconsider our position. If we find that they are irresponsible slanders, we shall maintain our attitude, which is that till this matter is cleared up to the complete satisfaction of all parties, no Reindeer aircraft should fly more than 700 hours.” I put a little vehemence into the last words.
“Will you please transfer this call to your Director?” he asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” I said. “He isn’t here this afternoon.”
“That is a great pity, Dr. Scott. I had hoped to avoid troubling the Minister. Would you ask the Director to telephone to me as soon as it may be convenient to him?”
“Certainly,” I said. “I don’t suppose that that will be until tomorrow morning, by which time I hope the matter will have become rather clearer.”
He rang off, and I sat staring at the piles of work in my IN basket. The attack was developing, and it was going to take the form that Mr. Honey was mad, and all his work upon the Reindeer tail was worthless rubbish. Inevitably it would come out that we had put it up to the Inter-Services Atomic Research Board, and that Sir Phillip Dolbear had thought nothing of it; that was bound to happen at some stage of the affair. Moreover, we had nothing positive to put upon the credit side. I had a hunch that he was right, a hunch derived from a study of the accident report on the first Reindeer and from a study of the little man himself. But could my hunch stand up against the formidable array of evidence now massing up that Honey was irresponsible, and that his work was therefore worthless? Would the truth emerge that the Reindeer tail was quite safe after all? And if so, what would my position be?
The only other thing that happened on that most unpleasant afternoon was that Ferguson came through again, to say that C.A.T.O. were adamant that they would not carry Mr. Honey back across the Atlantic in one of their aircraft. He said that they were taking a firm stand upon the question of safety. They had no facilities in the aircraft or upon their staff for the control of passengers who might become unbalanced in the air, and in view of this man’s record they would have nothing more to do with him. “They just won’t carry him, and that’s all about it,” Ferguson said. “I don’t see that we can force them, in the circumstances. And I don’t see that we can ask a foreign or Dominion line to take him, either. We’d have to go back to the Treasury for that, and that would mean explaining all the circumstances there.”
I bit my lip. “We must get him back,” I said. “Until we have him here, we can’t have a really effective meeting on the technicalities of this fatigue story. And everybody’s clamouring for a meeting now.”
He said, “Well, the only other way would be to get him back by means of R.A.F. Transport Command. And that’s really going just a bit above my head, you know. I think that that would have to be put through by your Director, on a higher level.”
“All right,” I said. “That’s how we’ll have to do it.”
The Director came into his office soon after five; Miss Learoyd got the news, and I went down at once to see him. He was in a calm and cheerful frame of mind, and greeted me warmly. “Good afternoon, Scott,” he said. “I came back by Kew and spent an hour in the Gardens. You really ought to go and see them now — the rose gardens are perfect, and they’ve got the most magnificent hedge of sweet peas that I have ever seen in all my life. You really ought to go. It’s very delightful there at most times of the year, of course, especially in spring, but really I think I prefer the formal effects that you get in a made garden in July. I think I do. However. You’ve got something for me?”
“I’m afraid I have,” I said. “I’ve got a major row.”
He made me sit down, and I told him all about it. It took a quarter of an hour. “Well, there it is,” I said at last. “I think that the immediate thing is to get Honey back here at once, and for that I’m afraid we’ll have to ask for the assistance of Transport Command.”
“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t let him go on now and do his job in Labrador?”
I met his eyes. “Do you think that anything he did in Labrador would be accepted as a valuable contribution, sir — after this?”
He stared out of the window. “It’s a question of fact ... But I think that I agree with you, it might be better to recall Honey and send out somebody to Labrador whose findings would be readily accepted by our critics.” He turned to me. “We depend entirely on the evidence from the Labrador crash, do we not? We have nothing else to show, except Honey’s theoretical investigations, which Sir Phillip Dolbear won’t accept?”
I shook my head. “Nothing, unless you count this photograph.” I had the accident report with me; I opened it upon his table and we studied the one print that showed the port tailplane front spar fracture at the fuselage. The print was an enlargement from a Leica frame, carried up already to a size at which the detail was becoming fuzzy; it would obviously go no bigger without losing definition. At that, the bit that interested us was no more than one-eighth of an inch long, and the really vital part considerably less than that. We studied it together with a magnifying glass. “It certainly looks like a fatigue fracture,” he said quietly. “It might come up more clearly in the stereoscope.”
He turned to me. “That’s all the evidence we’ve got to go upon, until we get this portion back from Labrador?”
I nodded. “That’s right, sir. That, and what we think of Mr. Honey as a reliable research worker.”
“And what do you think of that, now?”
There was a long pause. “I think the same as I did,” I said heavily at last. “I think that there’s a very fair chance that he’s right. The fact that one Reindeer last night flew up to 1,430 hours or so before he wrecked it means nothing, of course; it might have been due to fail in the next hour. We don’t yet know the full story of why he raised the undercarriage. But if, as I suppose, he felt it was the only way to stop that aircraft flying any more, I think that he was right. In his shoes I should probably have done the same, if I had had the guts. That hasn’t shaken my opinion of his work.”
“It was a very extreme step to take,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s obviously going to make a lot of trouble.”
“It makes a lot of trouble when airliners crash, and people lose their lives,” I said.
He walked to the window, and looked out upon the aerodrome, deep in thought. “I made a mistake in this thing, Scott,” he said at last. “I should have sent somebody upon this job who had more personality. I ought to have sent you. Honey’s an inside man. I can quite see that in the circumstances that obtained at Gander, when the aircraft was due to fly on, he would have had difficulty in enforcing his point of view. Probably, in view of what both you and he feel on the likelihood of this fatigue trouble, he did as well as he could be expected to. He probably did right. But it will make a lot of trouble for us; I can see that comin
g.”
“I’m very sorry about that, sir,” I replied.
He smiled. “It’s none of your making.”
“I feel it is,” I said. “If I could have handled things a bit more cleverly, all this could have been avoided.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll get over it.”
“What about Honey?” I asked. “I presume that he’s at Gander now. Will you start up something with Transport Command to get him back?”
He glanced at the clock. “Not tonight. I think I’d like to sleep upon it, Scott, and take some action in the morning. It won’t hurt Honey to stay there for another twelve hours or so.” He smiled at me. “You sleep on it, too. Take your wife out tonight, and forget about all this.”
I moved with him towards the door. “I can’t do that,” I said. “I’ve got another spot of Honey trouble on my plate at home.” And I told him all about little Elspeth Honey falling downstairs in the middle of the night.
“But wasn’t anybody looking after her?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s one of the things that hasn’t been cleared up.”
I went back to my office and started my day’s work, and for a merciful two hours I had respite from the telephone so that by seven o’clock I had got well down into my IN basket. I gave it up then, and went home. Shirley was in the bedroom; she heard me in the little hall and came out to meet me.
“She’s much better,” she said in a quiet voice. “She’s awake now.” We went into the sitting-room. “Flight-Lieutenant Wintringham brought along the stuff from the chemist, and I’ve given her some of the Veganin, because her headache was so bad. She’s been sick, but the doctor said that would happen. I think she’s getting on as well as can be expected.”
I grunted. “Well, that’s one thing going on well, anyway.” I glanced at her. “Her father’s in a stinking mess over at Gander.”
“Mr. Honey is? Why, Dennis?”
“I’m not quite certain why,” I said. “But what happened was this. He pulled up the undercart of a Reindeer while it was standing on the ground. Retracted it.”
She stared at me. “You mean, so that it sat down on its tummy?”
I nodded wearily. “That’s right.”
She said, “What a naughty little man!” And then she laughed, and freed from the strain of the day, I hesitated for a moment, and then laughed with her. “Oh,” she said, “I would like to have seen him doing it!”
“All very well,” I said at last. “But you just wouldn’t believe the trouble that it’s made.”
“Is the damage very serious, Dennis?”
“I simply don’t know, yet.” I thought for a moment; somebody had once told me that the contract price of each Reindeer was £453,000. “I suppose the repair bill will be something like fifty thousand pounds,” I said ruefully.
“Oh, Dennis, how bad of him! However did he come to do it?”
I started to tell her, and she went and got me a drink, so that I finished telling her about it in a more cheerful frame of mind. And then we went into the bedroom to see Elspeth.
She was lying in our bed, drowsy with the drug, but she opened her eyes when we came in. “Hullo, Elspeth,” I said. “How are you getting on?”
She said, “I put on Daddy’s warm dressing-gown and I trod on it and fell down.” And then she said, “Will you tell Daddy that I want him?”
“He’s coming back at once,” I said. “He doesn’t know you’re ill yet, but he’s coming home tomorrow, or the day after at the latest.”
The little girl said, “Was there a burglar?”
“A burglar — in your house last night, do you mean? I don’t think so.” Beside me Shirley shook her head. “There was nobody there this morning but you, and everything was quite all right.”
She said, “I heard a burglar, so I put on Daddy’s warm dressing-gown but I trod on it and I fell down.”
“Don’t worry about burglars now,” I said. “You just get well again before your daddy gets back. He won’t want to find you in bed, will he?”
She shook her head slightly on the pillow. The little movement drew my attention to the mop, its white cotton head, now rather grubby, on the pillow near her own. Shirley had found it in her bed and brought it round, to comfort her in her loneliness amongst strangers.
“Are you quite warm now?” I asked.
She said, “I’ve got three hot-water-bottles, all rubber ones.”
“Fine. Do you want any supper?”
“No, thank you, Dr. Scott. I was sick three times and Mrs. Scott held my head. May I go back and sleep in our house tonight?”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” I said. “I think you’d better stay with us till you’re quite well again.”
“I must go back to our house,” she said in agitation, “because it’s empty and there’ll be a burglar because of Daddy’s work. It’s very valuable, and burglars come and break into empty houses and steal valuable things. Please, Dr. Scott, may I go back and sleep in our house? I’m quite all right now.”
“Your daddy’s work will be quite safe,” I told her. “Burglars don’t come to steal that sort of valuable thing, because they can’t sell it. They come and steal silver spoons and things like that.”
“Would they steal electro-plate, Dr. Scott? It’s just like silver.”
“No,” I said, “they never steal electro-plate.”
“But there was a burglar last night, Dr. Scott, because I heard him. And I put on Daddy’s warm dressing-gown, and I trod on it, and I fell down.”
This was where I had come in. I told her that I’d have a talk with Shirley and decide who was going to sleep where that night, and I left her, and went and found Shirley in the kitchen. “I simply must eat something,” I said. “I haven’t had any lunch.”
“Oh Dennis! Look, supper will be ready in about ten minutes. Have a couple of biscuits, and go in and eat them with Elspeth.”
I took the biscuits, but before I got to Elspeth there was a little wail, and Elspeth was in trouble again. What’s more, she hadn’t got her basin handy. I called to Shirley, “All right, you go on cooking; I can cope with this.” And I did, and I can testify that there’s no better anodyne to worry than coping with a vomiting child.
Presently supper was ready; I went to it with a reduced appetite, partly on account of the biscuits. While we were eating I told Shirley about the burglars. “That poor kid’s got burglars on the brain, Dennis. She’s been talking about them ever since she woke up. She’s terribly upset that somebody will come and steal Mr. Honey’s work on the Great Pyramid.”
“Is that what’s on her mind?”
She nodded.
“But that’s absurd,” I said weakly.
“I know it is. But that’s what’s on her mind. She’s got a great sense of responsibility.” She turned to the dresser and picked up a dirty half sheet of notepaper. “I do think it’s a blasted shame,” she said vehemently. “I went round to get her night things while Wintringham was here, and this is what I found in the kitchen.”
It was an ill-written note. It read:
Dear Miss,
I find I wont be able to come tonight as my husband is took poorly.
Yours respectfully,
E. Higgs.
I gave it back to her. “Just like that,” I said.
“Just like that,” she said angrily. “I’m keeping it to show to Mr. Honey.”
I thought for a minute. “About these bloody burglars,” I said. “I’ve got to sleep somewhere, anyway, and so have you. I could sleep round there tonight, if that would help.”
“I think it would help, Dennis,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I don’t quite know where else you are to sleep tonight, unless you went to a hotel. I thought I’d sleep on the sofa here.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go round and sleep there.” At any rate, I thought, it would be quiet, and I could take the PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF AIRCRAFT FLYING AT HIGH MAC
H NUMBERS with me.
“I’m awfully sorry,” Shirley said. “But I think it might be quite a good thing if you did sleep there. I kicked the glass out of the kitchen window this morning, to get in to her, so there really might be a burglar tonight. I mean, the house is wide open.”
I went round there after supper, in the dusk. I found a piece of three-ply and a hammer and some tacks, and tacked the plywood up to the frame of the broken window; then I carried my bag up to the front bedroom, Honey’s room, and made the bed. I took the typescript of my thesis from the bag, and went down to the sitting-room, meaning to settle down in the one armchair that the house possessed and concentrate upon it.
The house was still and quiet, but I could not concentrate. The Honey matter was so urgent that here, surrounded by all Honey’s personal belongings, I could not bring my mind to bear upon the aircraft flying at high Mach numbers. That afternoon various responsible people had stated bluntly their opinion that Mr. Honey was mad. I had taken my stand on my opinion that his work was valuable; very soon the matter would be decided one way or the other. If I was right there would be a complete disruption of C.A.T.O.’s Atlantic service. If events should prove that Honey’s work was worthless, my position would be very much in question; it would hardly be possible for me to continue in charge of the Department after having been proved wrong in such a major row as this was going to be.
Probably I should have to leave the R.A.E., leave Government service altogether, having put up such a black as that. I should have to start again in industry; possibly it would be better to make a complete break, and emigrate and start again in aviation in Australia, or in Canada perhaps. If Honey’s work was worthless, that would be my future: to leave the country, go down in salary and in prestige, and start again in a strange place. But then, was Honey’s work worthless?
