by Nevil Shute
I got my car and drove out to the aerodrome. I found Morris in his office, and I found him pretty terse. It seemed that the police had been up at the aerodrome every day while I had been away. He said it was getting the place a bad name. He remarked that he was fed up with me. If I didn’t like the job I could chuck it up, but while I remained in it I would behave myself, write up my log-books at the end of each flight, and keep out of reach of the law.
I gave him as good as I got, and for ten minutes we went at it hammer and tongs. It was quite homely; I had been missing my weekly bout with Morris. I pointed out to him that the whole business came from his infernal policy of taking orders for five times as many machines as were available, then waiting till a machine came in, turning it round, and pushing it off into the air again in ten minutes. For myself, I said, I’d had enough of it. If Morris wanted to carry on like that he could find some other ruddy fool to fly for him. Personally, I was lucky to be alive. In future I’d be a damn sight more careful how I risked my neck for the firm on their rotten machines. As for the engines, the whole lot were fit for nothing but the scrap-heap.
He became personal then, and remarked that if I drank a little less I might fly a little better. Anyway, the Rawdon Aircraft Company wasn’t a social club, and if my Dago friends wanted to find me they could go to my flat and not come hanging about the aerodrome. When Morris descended to personalities it usually meant the end of any bickering, and I wasn’t surprised when he offered me a cigarette and telephoned for tea. We settled down then, and he told me the news. Collard was in the North, and his dog had produced a litter of puppies in the night watchman’s hut. He was having my machine repaired that had been brought back from Stokenchurch.
‘That’s the way,’ I said bitterly. ‘Put a patch on it and it’ll be as good as new.’ He didn’t rise to that. ‘By the way, what was that you said about my Dago friends?’
‘Keep ’em off the aerodrome,’ he grunted.
I lit another cigarette from the stump of the last. ‘Haven’t any Dago friends,’ I said. ‘What did they look like?’
‘Dagoes,’ he said lucidly. ‘One tall and one short. The tall one did all the talking. He was all right, but the other looked as if he’d slit you up as soon as look at you. I thought they wanted a machine at first and had them shown in here, but what they wanted was to know all about you. I shot ’em out pretty soon. They were back again next day, but I didn’t see them.’
‘What day was that?’ I asked.
He thought for a little. ‘Tuesday was the first day,’ he said. ‘Tuesday and Wednesday they came.’
I nodded slowly. That would have been after Compton had seen Mattani in Leeds and before he had reached the Scillies. It seemed as though they had realised that I was working with him and were trying to get a line on me. They had been unsuccessful then, but they would be able to locate me now all right. I had an unpleasant feeling that that might be so much the worse for me.
Morris looked at me curiously. ‘Friends of yours?’ he inquired.
I shook my head. ‘Dare say I owe them money,’ I observed. I turned to him. ‘Are we doing much work? I shall want a bit more holiday in a day or two.’
He looked pretty sour at that. ‘How much?’ he said.
‘I don’t really know. A week or so. Perhaps a fortnight. I’ve got to go abroad for a bit.’
He looked sourer than ever. ‘It’ll be very inconvenient,’ he said. ‘Where are you going to?’
I got out another cigarette and lit it before I answered him. He was a stout fellow at the bottom, was Morris.
‘See here,’ I said. ‘If I tell you where I’m going, I don’t want it to get out and round the town. If it does, I may be a stiff little corpse before I get back. I’d hate that. I’d like you to assimilate that idea first of all. I’ve been mixed up in some pretty funny business during the last few days—as you may have guessed.’
He nodded. ‘I wish to hell you’d behave yourself,’ he said fretfully. ‘It was obvious that the police didn’t want you for a little thing like that. I wish you wouldn’t go dragging in the firm every time you get into trouble. The directors wanted to know all about you at the Board Meeting on Wednesday. It makes it damned awkward for me.’
I laughed. ‘I’ll resign, and go to Croydon, if you like.’
‘I don’t want you to do that,’ he said. ‘We only want a little peace and quiet.’
‘I’ll see what we can do about it,’ I promised. ‘Now look here. I don’t expect you to believe me for a minute, but I’m on the side of the angels this time.’
He grunted sceptically. ‘Don’t bring them here,’ he said. ‘This is a business office.’
I disregarded that. ‘It’s been a long story,’ I said slowly, ‘—too long to go into now. But I’m serious over this. So far as I can see, I stand quite a good chance of a bullet in my guts before I’m through.’ I saw him stiffen to attention. ‘Now look here. I’m going to Italy, and I want to get there on the quiet. Can you fix it with the people at Croydon for me to take one of the regular Air Line machines over to Paris one day next week?’
He looked at me gravely. ‘Not if you’re wanted by the police in England.’
‘I’ll give you my word that I’m not.’
He still looked doubtful. ‘If you’ll promise not to bring the firm into it in any way? Right you are. I can fix that for you. Only the outward trip, I suppose?’
I nodded. ‘That’s it. That’s damn good of you, Morris. The next thing is, it’s just possible that I may have to get home pretty quick. If you hear from me any time in the next month, will you send a machine out? I want this to have priority over any other orders. It may be damned important. I’d like Collard to bring her out. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you fix that?’
‘If you’ll pay for it,’ he said.
‘How much?’ I inquired cautiously.
‘The usual rates.’
‘Less the usual twenty per cent?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m damned if I will. I don’t want to get the firm mixed up in any smutty business of yours. Besides, it’s a priority order.’
We had the devil of an argument over that. Finally I made him see reason to the tune of seven and a half per cent; further than that I couldn’t get him to go. I wasn’t sure that I should want a machine; I wasn’t sure that I could pay for it if I did. It gave me a comfortable feeling to have it in readiness, though. It might be the means of getting the game into my own hands. And anyway, they say that one always plays a better game when one has had the forethought to fix an ace to the under side of the table with a bit of chewing-gum.
I went back to the flying for a week. Rather to my surprise nothing at all happened to me. For the first two or three days I went about in the panic of my life that somebody would throw something hard at me from round a corner, but nobody did. I avoided going out at night as much as possible; the day-time I spent almost entirely on the aerodrome. We were always pretty busy in the summer.
Then one day Openshaw, the chief pilot at Croydon, rang me up and asked me if I would mind taking a machine over to Paris on the following day. There was no hint that this was anything but a normal request, due to pressure of work. I wondered how Morris had worked it. I said that it would be rather inconvenient, but that I’d do it if he was really hard up for a pilot. Then I rang off, and went away and sat in my deck-chair on the aerodrome in the shade of one of the hangars to think about it.
Well, I was for it now.
I went over to Croydon early next morning. The machine was one of the single-engined ten-seaters that have done more than any other type, I think, to put civil aviation on its feet as a paying proposition. The load was a typical one. There were two American ladies, one of them with the inevitable Kodak, both very shrill. There was a honeymoon couple, as I judged, and the load was completed by three assorted business men, two of them foreigners, all with their little bags. I watched them bundled in and sorted out into their places in the c
abin by the attendants, watched the door closed. Then, with a couple of men heaving on the tail in the blast from the propeller, I turned her and taxied out across the grass.
I took the whole length of the aerodrome to get off. It was some time since I had flown a Thirty-four, and unsticking was never her strong point at the best of times. Once off the ground she climbed well. I swung her round on to her course, climbed to about a thousand feet, and leaned forward behind the windscreen to light my cigarette.
It was an uneventful journey. There was a little loose cloud at about three thousand feet; I poked up through that on my way to the coast and came out above it. It was some months since I had flown on the Paris route; that gave the trip a little interest and saved me from boredom. I crossed the Channel near Folkestone at a height of about five thousand feet and trundled on on the familiar route through France till the haze over Paris showed up on the horizon, about two hours after leaving Croydon. I found Le Bourget and put her down gently on the grass, half sorry it was over.
I didn’t stop in Paris, but caught one of the night trains on to Italy. I had brought a suitcase with me, and I left my flying kit at Le Bourget. By a little judicious bribery during the afternoon I managed to secure a corner seat on the train, and I spent a moderately comfortable night as we trailed down through France. It was a hot night. I slept fitfully; in the intervals I sat smoking and trying to remember what I could of Leglia. It was many years since I had seen him—not since the war. He had never met me in Paris as he had said he would; on my part I had been a little shy of forcing myself on a man who was so much my superior socially, the war being over. If I had ever been in Florence I should have gone to look him up, but though I had flown to Italy many times, it had never happened that I had put down at Florence. It lies a little off the commercial track of modern Italy.
Dawn came as we were approaching the foothills of the Alps; in the early morning we began to wind our way slowly up to the Mont Cenis. It was most awfully pretty. I had never travelled much upon the Continent in the ordinary way, and in the air there is no scenery. Mountains become mere lumps of land, hazards, to be scrutinised for their physical features, compared anxiously with a hatched and contoured map, and ticked off as they are passed. These valleys were different. The little villages standing among the pine trees by the bed of the river tickled me immensely; it was something different, the sort of thing that I had never seen before. I leaned out of the window as the train went puffing up round the bends in the valley, and thought that it would be a good scheme to come out here one day, simply to walk about those hills and explore them. I remember that I thought it would be a good place to bring Joan to.
We got to Mondane at about eight o’clock, and then on down the valley to Turin. All day we went meandering on through Italy, and it wasn’t till dinner-time that the train drew into the station at Florence.
I had dined in the train. I didn’t want to go to any hotel in Florence if I could possibly avoid it; to spend a night in a hotel meant registering, displaying my passport, and generally broadcasting my identity. I didn’t want to do that. It struck me that there was a very fair sporting chance that I had reached Italy unobserved; it seemed to me that I might remain in the country for several days before Mattani and his crowd realised that I was there at all. On the other hand, it was quite on the cards that they knew all about me already. In either case it seemed that the best thing I could do was to go straight to Leglia.
I pushed my way through the crowd at the station, fending off the guides and porters who came clawing at my baggage, and found a carriage. My Italian is pretty rocky, but on this occasion I spoke it to some effect. The moment I mentioned the Palazzo Leglia the old ruffian on the box stopped leering at me, hopped down from his seat with a surprising display of agility, and opened the door for me to get into the carriage. I got in, a little bewildered at this unwonted servility; by the time I was fairly settled he had whipped up his horse and we were bowling along through the town at a smart trot.
The drive didn’t take long. Not very far from the Piazza della Signoria the driver turned down a narrow side street, and stopped in front of a veritable barrack of a house.
It really was a most formidable-looking place. It was built of stone and filled the whole of one side of the narrow street, towering up into the sky. I don’t know how old it was, but even in that clean air the stone was black with age. There were a few tall, dark windows looking out on to the street, all heavily barred with ornate steelwork that was rusty and eaten up with age. I could see no sign of life about the place. The door was a massive double gateway, as stained and old as the rest of the building. By the door there was a mounting-block, and there was a rusty torch extinguisher on the wall like a candle-snuffer.
Before I had time to get out, the driver tumbled down from his box and rang the bell. It went jangling mournfully somewhere inside the place. Almost immediately one half of the door swung open, and I was faced with a grave old gentleman in evening dress. He had white hair cropped very close to his head.
I mustered my wretched Italian to my aid. ‘Il Signore Giovanni de Leglia, è a casa?’ I said.
He said something that I didn’t quite catch, with a rapid dignity; I think he was asking me my business. I got out my note-case and produced a card; he went fumbling in the tail pockets of his coat till he produced a pair of iron-rimmed spectacles with which to scrutinise it. That gave me a minute’s grace, and in that time I concocted a wonderful sentence to the effect that my business was urgent and could not be delayed. I fired that off at him; he waited patiently till I had finished, and then gave utterance to that magic formula that pervades all Italy.
‘Subito, subito,’ he said gravely.
I made my driver understand that he was to wait for me, and passed in through the gates, which closed behind me. I found myself in an open courtyard with a cloister running round the walls; in the centre there was a fountain playing, with goldfish in the bowl below, and the place was bright with flowers. The major-domo rang a bell and presently a boy appeared; I was left in his care while the old retainer crossed the courtyard and disappeared from view, my card in his hand.
I thanked my stars that Leglia was at home. I put great faith in Leglia; though I hadn’t seen him for all those years, I was positive that he would be able to help me. Looking back now, I am a little surprised at that. I’m too old to cherish illusions; I don’t generally trust people so much as that. This time I did, and I wasn’t let down.
After ten minutes or so the old man returned, and motioned to me to follow him. As we passed through the cloister I noticed an invalid chair standing in a corner. It was the sort of thing that can be manipulated up and down stairs; it had cushions in it and seemed to be in frequent use. I wondered idly which of Leglia’s family was forced to adopt this means of locomotion. I thought that in all probability it was his mother. I knew nothing about his family or his private affairs at that time.
The journey through the house seemed endless. It was an immense place, full of the sort of furniture that makes a house look like a museum. We went through corridor after corridor, now and then up a flight of stairs, always mounting a little higher till we were well above the level of the surrounding houses. I could see that much from occasional glimpses of the town as we passed windows. At last we came to a heavy door at the end of a wide stone passage. We were on the top floor then; so much was evident from the rafters that supported the roof, stained and carved like the roof beams of a church. The old man opened this door, stood aside for me to pass into the room, and closed it softly behind me.
It was a high, vaulted room, with a wide polished floor. There was a window at the far end opening on to a balcony; beyond that there was a fine view over the roofs of the city, the river, and the country beyond rising into hills. I looked round for Leglia. For a moment I could see nothing of him, and then I saw that he was lying on a couch just inside the window.
I went striding across the room towards him. As I wen
t it was strange to me to see how old he looked. The years had made more difference to him than I could have dreamed.
He greeted me gaily.
‘Stenning, Captain,’ he cried. ‘This will be magnificent, to meet again.’
‘By Gad, Lillian,’ I said. ‘I’m damn glad to see you.’
And then I saw why he had not got up to meet me, why he had never met me in Paris as we had arranged, why the years had pressed so heavily upon him.
He was a cripple. Both legs had been amputated above the knee.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LEGLIA was genuinely pleased to see me. Within three minutes his retainer had been recalled with instructions to collect my bag and to dismiss my carriage; while I remained in Florence there was only one place where I could stay. It was with some difficulty that I avoided a second dinner. He switched off that and spoke rapidly to his man; I couldn’t follow what was said, but in ten minutes’ time a great platter of fruit arrived, with a perfectly corking bottle of Madeira. Then he set me up with a cigar, and I settled down in a chair by his couch to listen while he talked.
It appeared that his accident had happened very soon after he left us in France. It was the usual sort of thing; ninety per cent of the crashes at that time were things that never should have happened. He told me that he was teaching a young Infantry officer to fly on some underpowered, dual-control machine. There came the irritable moment when, staggering off the ground, he had shouted down the speaking-tube to his pupil—‘If you’re going to fly the machine, fly it at a decent speed—if not, for God’s sake leave it alone!’ He told me how he felt the wretched man pull the control stick back, how he gripped it and pushed it forward half a second too late, how he felt the machine slow up and lurch down ominously on to one wing tip, how he shouted: ‘Let go everything. You’ve done it now!’ They hit nose-down on to a little mound. Leglia was in the front seat; as the fuselage telescoped, the engine came crashing back into the front cockpit upon his legs. The other man got off unhurt.