Mysterious Aviator
Page 25
“I’ve got it now,” I said, and lifted off the cover plate.
He was insistent. “Get the plates out, and give them to me one by one,” he said.
There was a slide there 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.
I lifted it out of the case and put it in his hand. He laid it on his chest in the bright morning sunlight and played with it for a little, holding it up and turning it about. And presently he laid it down.
“Now the next,” he said.
There were twelve plates in that box, each separated from the others by a velvet shield. I gave them to him one by one. He held each one for half a minute or so, turning them all ways to the light and never speaking at all, until we got to the tenth. And then:
“God damn it,” he said. “The sun’s going in.”
The brilliant sunlight of that Italian morning beat down upon us in the glade, drenching the country with its golden glow and drawing the scent out of the rosemary on which he lay. “It’s only a little cloud, old boy,” I said. “There’s lashings of light left to cook these plates.”
“That’s right,” he said faintly. “It was an awfully quick film they used. We had a lot of trouble developing the practice ones.”
I handed him the twelfth and last. “That’s the lot,” I said. “You’ve got them all there now. The box is empty.”
He fingered the last plate for a little, and laid it with the others. “That’s a bloody good job done,” he sighed.
He was silent for a minute or so. I thought it was the end, but he roused himself again. “You’re sure they’re cooked all right?” he inquired. “It’s getting so dark.”
“They’re done all right, old boy,” I said. “You’ve made a proper job of it.”
He sighed again. “Well, bust them up,” he said.
So I laid them together on the grass beside him and cracked them into very small pieces with the handle of my automatic. And the sound of the tinkling glass reassured him a bit, I think, because:
“Miss Darle,” he whispered. “I want to speak to Miss Darle.”
Sheila bent over him. “I’m here, Captain Lenden,” she replied, and wiped his face very gently with the water.
“That’s nice,” he said, and then he began to speak to her about his wife. And what he said was no concern of ours, nor has it any place in this account. It didn’t take very long, and at the end of it he said:
“You’ll tell her that?”
Very gently Sheila brushed the hair back from his forehead. “Why, yes, I’ll tell her that. But there isn’t any need, you know. She knows it all already.”
He sighed. “I know she does. But I want you to tell her again. Just that it’s all—all right.”
He closed his eyes as if for sleep, but presently he opened them again and said “Moran”. And I bent towards him.
“How did you come to crash my kite?”
“Doing a slow turn when I was coming in to land, old boy,” I said. “Something went wrong with it, and we spun into the deck from about three hundred.”
His voice had grown very faint. “You want to watch those slow turns on the Breguet,” he said. I had to put my ear practically to his lips to catch the words.
There was silence, and then he said: “You don’t want to use the rudder at all … hardly. Just the bank. And keep her nose stuffed down a bit and she’ll go round … nicely.”
About five minutes after that he died.
* In the end nothing was done about it at all, and they let him go back to England with me two days later.
APPENDIX
SO TO THE END. I have little more to add to this account, except two letters, which I think can hardly be omitted.
Six weeks after my return from Italy a raid was carried out upon Soviet House. A great mass of correspondence was examined and a selection of this material, dealing with matters of general interest, was made available to the public in a White Paper. Of the remainder, two letters were found to bear directly on the death of Maurice Lenden, and were brought to the notice of Lord Arner in connection with my own Statement. It is to be regretted that it has not proved possible to publish these interesting documents in their entirety.
The first letter is dated April 20th, 1927, and is signed, Ast. Strokoff. It is addressed from 132, Twenty-Seventh Avenue, New York, and a portion of it reads:
… In regard to the letters mentioned in your cable as being of especial importance, I have good reason to believe that everything was destroyed by Comrades Soller and Manek. I left the house and crossed the frontier with the others earlier in the night, so that I can say nothing definite about this. I shall be sending with Comrade Ogden a sworn statement upon the death of Manek, and I suggest that you should prepare a campaign of questions about this in the English Parliament as soon as he arrives. Comrade Jack Atterley, M.P. would be a good man to take this up, and you should write an article about it for the Worker. The facts are that Comrade Manek was foully murdered in cold blood by the man Stenning, who shot him repeatedly through the body while he was held prisoner by the Fascisti. I am urging Comrade Ventoli to press this matter in Italy, but it is necessary to work more carefully in that country than in England, owing to the injustice of their despotic government….
The extract from the second letter is quite short. It is dated from Moscow, April 22nd, 1927, and is signed by Sanarowa, Minister of Internal Preparation. As a memorial, I think it may not be altogether unworthy of the man:
… As for the airman, Maurice Lenden, this man proved difficult and uncertain in temper from the first, and by no means devoted to the Soviet doctrine. In the end he proved weak and treacherous beyond all belief, and has been the occasion of a considerable set-back to our activities in Europe. It is recommended that no further confidence be placed in renegades of this description….
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JULY 2010
Copyright © The Trustees of the Estate of Nevil Shute Norway
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published by William Heinemann in 1951, and subsequently published in London by Vintage, a division of The Random House Group Limited, in 2009.
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