by Nevil Shute
She hadn’t heard that, and I had to explain it. Something in what I said must have made her smell a rat, though, for her next question put me in a corner.
“Then there’s nothing more that we can do, is there?” she said.
I shall always remember that, because the tone of relief that she used startled me. It wasn’t natural. I glanced down at her sharply, and I think perhaps I saw rather more than I was meant to. One remembers these things.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I had some idea of going to look up a pal of mine, a bloke called da Leglia. He lives in Florence.”
She caught her breath. “Oh ...” she said. “You can’t go there. Sir David said that you would have to be careful.”
“I shall be,” I said. “Damn careful.”
She turned away, and stood for a bit looking out at the strings of scarlet omnibuses that passed below, shaking the house. At last she said, without taking her eyes from the window:
“Don’t you think it would be best to leave it to the police now?”
“They’ll never get him, of course,” I remarked.
“Why not?”
“Look at it,” I said. “They can’t extradite him — for the present, anyhow. He simply refuses to be extradited, and that’s that. As for getting at him any other way, they’re so handicapped. They’ve got to play fair. They stand for England. If they could get to know that he was in England some day, I dare say they might be able to do something about it. They can’t very well set about enticing him to come to England. At the same time, we know that he does come here from time to time. I’ve not had time to think about it much, but I fancy we might be able to work something on those lines if we went about it in the right way.”
She glanced sharply at me. “You mean that you’d decoy him here and set a trap for him?” she said.
“That’s about it.”
“They’d hang him, wouldn’t they?”
“With any luck,” I said.
She turned back to the window. “It would kill his mother,” she said quietly.
I had forgotten all about the old couple at Guildford. I’ve never had much to do with family matters, so that this remark of hers put me all at sea. I tried to assimilate the idea for a bit. I tried to see it from her point of view, but I couldn’t make it go. I really couldn’t see in that any reason for letting Mattani go free. I was still worrying over this when she turned to me again.
“Leave him alone,” she said. “It would be frightful for them if anything happened to Roddy — on top of this.” She stood fingering one of the buttonholes of my coat, and looking up at me.
And then, at long last, I knew what the trouble was.
“Look here, Joan,” I said gently. “D’you think that’s quite straight? Because I don’t.”
I saw her flush up scarlet, but I went on before she had time to answer, and that gave her time to collect herself.
“It’s not Compton that I’m thinking about altogether,” I said. “I’d do my best to get Mattani hung for that, certainly, but if it was only that I’d leave it to the police. What worries me is the dope. We’ve got to stop that coming into England, you know, and the only real way to stop it is to get hold of Mattani. I don’t know how many loads he’s run in up to date — either two or three. I don’t know how much he runs of it at a time or what the profits are; but I’m damn sure of this, the profits are something perfectly enormous. He’ll go on doing it, you know. He may wait six months till the fuss has died down, but he’ll begin again. We’ve simply got to stop that stuff getting into the country like that. So far as I can see, the only satisfactory way of stopping it is to hang Mattani.”
She flashed out at me. “Don’t talk about it like that.”
I was hardly listening to her. “Sorry,” I said absently. I was thinking of the days just after the war, when I had been living at a fair rate, when it was all rose-coloured for us because we had not been killed. I was thinking of the girl that I had met then, and the fine times we had had, that first summer after the war. I was thinking of how it all came to an end.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen anyone that you cared for really well on in dope, have you?” I said. “I did ... once.”
She looked at me in a troubled sort of way. “It’s their own fault if they take it,” she said uncertainly.
“I don’t think so,” I said quietly. “They take it — they take it because there’s nobody to tell them any better. The sort of people who want looking after, only there’s nobody to do it. The Wimps and Flossies, trailing about Shaftesbury Avenue in the evening, looking for a bit of fun. The ones that come from Golders Green and think they’re seeing life when they dance all night in some damned cellar. They’re mostly women. They take it because they think it makes them bright. Because they think it makes them pretty. They fairly lap it up. It’s only because they haven’t got anyone to look after them. They haven’t a chance. It’s not playing the game to put the damn stuff in their way. It’s a Chink’s game, Chinks and Dagoes.”
I might have added Belgians to the list, but I’ve never talked about that business. She didn’t say anything to that rigmarole for a long time, but at last she looked up at me curiously.
“Do you really want to go to Italy for that, Philip,” she said— “for those people?”
“I’m afraid so,” I replied.
“Why then,” she said quietly, “you must go. And I must wish you luck.”
I looked at my watch; it was about half past four. I wanted to take her out to tea, but I couldn’t think of anywhere to take her to except the Piccadilly Hotel, and that didn’t seem to fit in somehow. She said she knew a place. We went down the road and got out my car from the garage, and drove to a place off Baker Street where I had the satisfaction of stuffing her with food. She confessed that she had dispensed with lunch.
Then we drove to Paddington and I put her in the train for Wycombe. I promised to keep in touch with her and let her know what happened in Italy; she made me promise to give her lunch when I had any news. At least, the lunch was my idea. In return, I made her promise to stay in Stokenchurch till she heard from me. Having made sure that there was some reasonable chance of our meeting again, I let her go, and the train steamed out of the station.
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. I 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 scrapheap.
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 fitter 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 realized 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; farther 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 daytime 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 deckchair 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 cabin 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 scrutinized 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 Modane 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 dinnertime 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 realized 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.