Pace’s swarthy face was blank and impassive as always. Creda looked a little pale and took more whisky than Noel, pouring it, expected her to take for he gave her a quick, surprised look. Pace lifted his glass and said, smiling:
“To the flight. And to the flyer.”
Averill, touching her lips to her glass, smiled back at Pace and said:
“Uncle Bill is an expert flyer. There’s nobody better.”
“Good,” said Pace and drank—dark eyes cold and expressionless above the rim of his glass.
There was a little commotion of good nights and of general movement toward the stairs.
Once in her own room, Eden closed the door and stood there for a moment, letting herself think.
The room was orderly and peaceful; the bed turned down, the light burning on the night table, a plate of sandwiches and a thermos of milk beside it. Roses from a vase on another table made a soft fragrance that took her back—if she had needed to be taken back—to that unexpected instant in the garden with Jim.
So small a thing. How could she give it emphasis! When Noel had kissed her, when big Bill Blaine had kissed her it was an equally brief little gesture. Wholly casual and trivial, nothing to give a second thought.
But because it was Jim, it was altogether different.
The strangest inner tumult possessed her. She moved at last and drifted to the window and stood there, trying to look down into the starlit dusk. Away down there, beyond that black and shadowy border, barely discernible now in the darkness, she had stood with Jim.
She wished, suddenly and honestly, that he had taken her in his arms when he kissed her. It was the only time it was ever to happen.
And that thought was as dangerous as words between her and Jim might have been. It unloosed other thoughts which must not be permitted existence. And it was again bitterly ironical that at that moment Averill came.
She knocked and came in and Eden went to meet her.
She was still dressed in the clinging white silk. She carried a cigarette and a glass of milk. She said with a smile that she had come for a little gossip.
“As we used to do,” she said, smiling thinly. “That is, unless you’re too tired. There’s milk in the thermos over there. Shall I pour a glass for you?”
She did so and brought it to Eden and insisted on lighting Eden’s own cigarette and made Eden take the chaise longue and stuffed laced pillows under Eden’s arms.
“There we are,” she said. She sat down on the foot of the chaise longue. “No, don’t move. I’m perfectly comfortable. This is like old times, isn’t it? Did you find everything you need? Ring for Celeste to help you undress. She never minds latish hours. Not that this one is late. Well, my dear, what do you think of my choice for a husband?”
Jim.
Eden drank slowly, giving herself time. “Do you like him?” insisted Averill, watching her. She must reply steadily and she must remember that Averill was quick and sharp as a cat. “Yes.”
“I thought so,” said Averill after an infinitesimal pause. “I think you can always tell when people like each other. Don’t you think so? There’s something—oh, something quite indefinable but quite unmistakable in the atmosphere.”
“Dear me. That’s almost second sight.”
“I’m not blind,” said Averill. “I thought you and Jim got along extremely well tonight.”
Decidedly, Eden thought rather desperately, she must pull herself together. It was always difficult to duel with Averill. It would be more than difficult tonight. She said:
“We had a little talk in the garden tonight—while the rest of you were talking of the plans—”
“I know,” said Averill, interrupting neatly and incisively. “That’s what I came to talk to you about.”
“Really, Averill! Why?”
A little light away back in Averill’s shallow brown eyes brightened. She said slowly and in her usual unrevealing, flat voice:
“Jim is wrong about the engine, you know.” It was as if a little voice warned Eden to be careful. She drank again and put down her glass slowly.
“Jim is—Jim seemed to regret the necessity to sell it,” she said cautiously.
“You needn’t explain Jim to me, darling,” said Averill. “I am to marry him, you know.”
Obviously there was no answer to that. “But it was terribly sweet of you to follow Jim down into the garden,” continued Averill. “I’m sure Jim must have appreciated it.”
For a fantastic moment Eden wondered if Jim’s kiss were visible on her mouth. And she had an equally fantastic impulse to say coolly: “Why, yes, Averill, I have every reason to think he did.”
She said instead: “Why, really, Averill, I don’t think there was much to appreciate. And in any case—”
“In any case, it’s nothing to you, you were about to say,” finished Averill and laughed softly. “But naturally, darling! How could it affect you! He’ll soon forget about it and will see that I’m right. He’s—” She stopped and snuffed out her cigarette in the crystal ash tray; her white, slender fingers were very steady. “He’s very much in love with me, you know. Seriously, Eden, don’t you think I’m a lucky girl?”
“Very lucky.”
“And you do like him?”
“Why, yes. Yes, of course, Averill.”
“I thought so. I did want you,” said Averill quite slowly, “to see him.”
Her words, soft, remote, yet full of meaning, hung in the air between them and became significant. Became suddenly so sharp and bright and salient that they clarified the whole situation.
For that was exactly what Averill did want. That was why she had asked her to come, why she had sent her a ticket, why she had insisted. To show her the man she, Averill, was marrying.
It was as if she had said: Look, observe this man, this wedding, all the luxurious and fortuitous circumstances of my life. All mine. Admit that I am enviable.
Thus paying up past scores. Chalked down long ago; stored carefully in her extraordinarily tenacious memory.
Well, if she had wanted to arouse Eden’s envy, she had succeeded. How thoroughly Eden only hoped Averill would never know.
Averill smiled and leaned over and patted Eden’s arm. “We’ve always been such friends, darling. I wanted you to see how happy I am. To see my lovely wedding. And I’m so terribly glad you and Jim liked each other.” Her fingers stiffened a little. She went on, still smiling: “You look really handsome tonight, Eden—although it never seems to me that green is quite your color. If Jim weren’t so very much in love with me, I would be afraid of your taking him away from me. As you did with Noel.”
“Don’t be absurd! That was very different.”
“Very different. Besides, that time, it wasn’t just four days before my wedding. No, I don’t advise you to try to take Jim.”
“I assure you I don’t intend to.”
“Eden, darling, don’t mind my little jokes.” Averill was smiling painstakingly. “It’s only because I’m so very happy. Tomorrow I must show you Jim’s wedding gift to me. An emerald. I chose it myself. Now go to bed, dear; don’t sit there dreaming as you were when I came in. Shall I ring for Celeste?”
“No. Thank you, Averill. Good night.”
The door closed.
After a while Eden got up and began to unfasten her dress. Her fingers were curiously awkward and fumbling. The strap of her sandal caught and tore.
No more looking out the window, dreaming. Dreaming—Averill had caught that, too.
She went to bed and tried to read and the print was a blur. At last she turned out the bed light and lay there in the darkness.
Curious, she thought once, how extraordinarily restless the house seemed that night. Twice at least she thought she heard someone pass her bedroom door. Once certainly she heard voices below her on the terrace, for her room was directly above the library.
Yet she must have slept eventually for it was with a desperate dragging of herself up from some nether worl
d of unconsciousness that she heard the maid’s knocking at her door.
It was barely dawn. But it was clear.
She dressed hurriedly, drinking the coffee the maid brought to her room, putting a warm white sports coat over her green sweater and white tweed skirt.
Averill, neat and smart in a pale blue knitted suit with a thick yellow coat, was waiting with Creda in the hall. There was no hint of the little scene of the previous night in her words or manner. But then nothing had been said—nothing and everything. Outside the luxurious big car was already drawn up at the steps. The others, Averill said briefly, had gone on. And she wasn’t going up with Bill after all.
“Jim thought the mechanic, Mike Strevsky, ought to go. He’s worked on the engine and he wanted to. It didn’t matter so much to me. It was only sentiment.”
They said little on the way to the field. It was barely light but the sky was a great clear bowl above them. Creda looked haggard, twice her age, with deep circles under her soft brown eyes; she smoked constantly and nervously. Averill’s marked features were sharp and a little stern. But then four o’clock in the morning was not a flattering hour for anyone.
It was, however, nearer five when they reached the field, and much lighter. They went through the gates. There were clusters of men here and there—not many of them. Workmen in brown overalls; a handful of cars.
The field itself was a great rectangular plot of ground, well drained and well fenced, lying behind the sprawling red brick building that housed the Blaine Company plant. It was entered only by padlocked gates, by the factory itself and by air.
There were not many cars and not many people. And at one side, near enough so they could distinguish Jim and Noel and Major Pace among the cluster of men beside it, was the plane.
Eden caught a quick breath at sight of the sleek, silver-colored plane; it was trim, beautiful, almost alive—vibrant and eager to be off, for the propeller was already whirring and, even before the chauffeur cut off their automobile engine, they could hear the smooth, powerful beat of the engine in the plane.
The sun was up, making a clear black shadow of wings upon the field. Jim, head bare and a brown leather jacket tossed over his shoulders, was talking to Bill, who looked huge in his jacket and helmet. Noel was talking, too, eagerly. Major Pace unslung field glasses.
“Let’s get out of the car,” said Averill. “We can see better.”
They did so; the beat of the plane engine seemed instantly louder. Eden had eyes only for the plane and for the tall, leather-jacketed figure there beside Bill. Then, all at once, Bill climbed into the cockpit where another man already waited for him.
Eden touched Averill’s arm.
“Isn’t there an ambulance—” she shouted above the din in their ears.
Averill shook her head without looking at Eden.
“It’s not a test flight.”
Bill waved to someone below. Quite suddenly, the little crew of brown figures moved backward, the engine roared and the plane taxied gently across the field like a great dragonfly and then rose.
Smoothly, effortlessly, superbly.
The sun shone against the silver sides; the blue sky outlined its grace.
The plane rose and soared and made a great circle. All below stood as if transfixed, watching. Listening to the more distant, smooth hum of the engine.
It came down nearer, swooped like a beautiful, tremendous bird and rose again in another and greater circle. Rose higher and higher.
Averill said in a hushed way: “He must be ten thousand feet—”
And presently the chauffeur standing beside them said “He’s higher still. It must be fifteen—”
The plane was smaller and still smaller. A black object now moving against glaring blue sky.
A black object that began to grow larger again.
“Bill’s doing stunts,” said Averill.
“Stunts—” said Creda and stopped as if her breath had caught.
And then the chauffeur said, “Oh, my God.” His voice rose and he screamed: “Oh, my God, there’s smoke. It’s on fire—”
Eden saw it now, too. Smoke; a flame darting became instantly flames, banners of terror, of disaster.
“He’s sideslipping—he’s trying to keep the flames out of the cockpit—he can’t slip all the way down—oh, my God!” shouted the chauffeur and ran a few steps heavily, blunderingly, and stopped. For he could do nothing.
That was the worst of it. There was nothing anybody could do.
Eden couldn’t move. Someone—Creda?—clutched hard at one of her hands. Nobody could move except those men running out on the field—and they too were helpless, unable to stop it, unable to do anything but watch.
The flames spread like wind; the thing that had been a plane, that had been a black object in the sky, was nearer, a flaming mass.
Bill Blaine was a skilled and expert flyer. In the seconds allotted to him, he did everything skill and experience dictated.
He sideslipped; he sideslipped again.
He cut off the engine when he could do no more.
Just before it struck someone screamed and screamed again. And then there was an earth-rocking crash at the end of the field. A sickening crash—and clouds of black smoke.
It released that paralysis of horror and helplessness.
Instantly men were running, shouting. Somewhere, suddenly, the scream of a siren rose.
Averill covered her face with her hands. Creda relinquished Eden’s numb hand, turned around, took a step toward the car as if she didn’t know what she was doing and went down in a stumbling heap on the ground.
Eden must have bent over her. The chauffeur was running toward the smoke, sobbing hoarsely and loudly. Everybody was running—Averill, too. Eden tried to lift Creda and succeeded in half dragging her to the running board of the car where she sat down and put Creda’s head in her lap and tried to rub Creda’s wrists and could only stare with a horror of fascination at the black smoke out on the field. After a while a red fire truck hurled across the field, men clinging to the sides of it. Somewhere in the distance an ambulance was already wailing raucously, coming nearer.
She was sick and shivering. She put her arm over her eyes and tried not to look. On the ground below lay a key and she picked it up.
It was a key to a Yale lock and Eden fumbled it and turned it in her fingers and then forgot it while she stared in spite of herself at the pandemonium before her, at the sleek white ambulance bumping now across the field, at the black smoke. Away up above in the cloudless blue dome a skylark mounted and sang.
Chapter 5
FROM THE FIRST FRACTIONAL instant when that burst of flame, so swift to envelop the plane, was seen there had been perhaps little hope that Bill Blaine would be able to save himself and he hadn’t been able to do so. The end was swift, between two breaths. All of them thought first and mainly of Bill Blaine. And then of the mechanic who had gone with him.
“Both men,” said Noel hours later, “died instantly when they crashed. It happened—like that.” He was lighting a cigarette as he spoke and he flicked the light from his match with a nervous, quick gesture. “Bill had only an instant or two of comprehension. None of pain; I could swear to that. Do believe me.”
Another somber silence followed his words. The hours intervening between the nightmare of the early morning and the scene in the Blaine library later in the day were vague and confused in Eden’s memory. She remembered that Averill and the chauffeur had returned at last, alone, to the car where she still sat with Creda on the running board. The chauffeur had looked sick and white. Averill was like a pale automatic doll. She’d said simply: “They are both dead. We’ll go home now. The others will come later.” And the chauffeur had driven slowly, as if it was a funeral cortege, all the way home with nobody speaking. Once there, Averill had got a doctor for Creda; Creda was now, mercifully, drugged and supposed to be sleeping.
And then they had waited for the others. Once Averill had said queerly
: “I intended to fly with Bill. If Jim hadn’t stopped me I would have gone.”
That was all. It was afternoon when the others came. Noel white, eyes brilliant with excitement; Jim white, too; his face like a mask. Pace apparently unmoved except his little heavy-lidded eyes were so observant.
Dorothy Woolen came along with them and someone remembered to introduce her, Jim’s secretary, to Eden; Eden looked at her briefly and without much interest—a plump, phlegmatic, colorless girl, with pale face and lips, pale, straight, blonde hair done with a braid around her head, pale green eyes with no expression in them. She wore a dark, neat suit and was curiously self-effacing.
They had done everything, Noel said, that was to be done. And he tried again to reassure them; the merciful thing had been the swiftness of it.
“Neither of them knew,” he repeated. “There wasn’t time.”
Jim got up and went to the window and stood with his back to the room and his hands plunged into his pockets.
“The thing is,” he said, “it oughtn’t to have happened.”
“Mr. Cady,” said Major Pace suddenly, “just what happened? Why did the plane crash?”
Jim turned around.
“I don’t know. There was nothing wrong anywhere. Bill wouldn’t have taken her up—we wouldn’t have let him take her up if there’d been any question. But there wasn’t—”
“We’ve covered everything,” said Noel wearily. “There’s nothing to account for it. We’ve had the engine running as long as fifty hours on the testing table. This morning she was in perfect shape. We started her going and she ran for perhaps fifteen minutes or so before the take off. Sweet as honey. You were there, Pace. You heard.”
“But you, Mr. Cady,” persisted Pace in a gentle voice. “What’s your opinion?”
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