So Disdained (15 page)

"One thing," I said, and he stopped.

"What's that?"

"Give it another day. This is Sunday. You'll do better to stay here till to-morrow, and see what's going to happen. This may make a breach with Russia. It's very likely. Arner thinks it will. There might even be war."

[Pg 100]
I paused. "Give it another day."

He stood there for a minute, irresolute. "Might be best," he muttered. "I don't want to get mixed up out there if there's going to be a war."

He glanced at me. "You don't really think there'll be war?" he inquired.

"I don't see how there could be," I replied. "But . . . I don't know."

He went back into his room, and I went and had a bath, and shaved. A little later we had breakfast together in my room, and during that meal Lenden hardly spoke at all.

And afterwards he began asking me questions about Keumer. He wanted to know how it had happened, but he was satisfied with a very brief account of that. Chiefly he wanted to know whether he had been able to give any messages, and whether he had had any personal papers on him at the time. I told him about the letters, but there was very little solid information that I could give him. For a time I couldn't make out what he was driving at, until at last it became evident to me that Lenden was worrying over the settling-up of his friend's affairs.

He was very muddled and confused about it, and yet in a way he was practical. "He wasn't getting so much as I was," he said, "and I know he hadn't a bean in the world except his pay. If he had, he wouldn't have been at Kieff. None of us would. It ran out to something like five hundred a year, I think. And he used to send over half of it home, so that he was always hard up. He never used to spend anything except on cigarettes. The sort of chap that likes sitting before a fire and smoking, and talking about his home and his kids. And I don't know what's going to happen to them now. . . ."

As we talked it became clear that he was set on doing something for that family in Noremburg, that he felt that it was up to him to do something. He said he knew they hadn't any money, and he didn't think they had any relatives that would be of any value to them. He didn't know if there was any sort of poor relief in Germany; but, anyway, he couldn't let
[Pg 101]
Keumer's wife go on the dole. He didn't even know their address, except that they lived in Noremburg.

I suggested that Keumer had probably got his fee in advance and sent it home, as Lenden had done himself. Lenden didn't think it likely.

"He was so damn casual," he said. "He wouldn't have bothered about it . . . I don't know what to do."

He said that Keumer used to take snapshots of the aerodrome and of the town and send them home to his wife, with long letters. He said that he had an album full of photographs of his wife and children, and of his house and of his garden, that he used to show round upon the least encouragement.

"You see," said Lenden, "we were more or less the same sort, and keen on the same things. I'd have had a place like that myself . . . one time."

"I don't know what to do," he said.

That part of it, at any rate, was none of my business. I left him, and went over to the house. Lady Arner was at home, so it was no part of my duties to go to church that Sunday morning. She liked some representative of the family to be there; on occasions when the family were away it was my business to attend, presumably to ensure that the Padre read the lessons right. This morning I was free, and I went over to the gun-room to see if I could find the Sunday papers.

There was a copy of the
Scrutator
there, and one of the
World's News
. I opened the
Scrutator
first, and glanced at the political news. There was nothing to add to the situation as I already knew it in regard to Russia. I skimmed through the remainder of the news on the chief page, and idly turned the lesser pages before abandoning it.

And there, in among the motor-car advertisements, I saw an article that brought me up with a jerk. It was headed:

THE ARGENTINE AIR SURVEY

(BY OUR AERONAUTICAL CORRESPONDENT)

There was a column and a half about it. It was all about grids and traverses and rectifying cameras, with a little about aeroplanes thrown in. I didn't read it all through in detail. It was clear from the space devoted to the paper in the
Scrutator
that the lecturer was no slouch at the game, and that on air survey he must be regarded as a leading authority. That was certainly interesting; but what concerned me far more than the technical ability of the lecturer was the fact that Lenden's old friend and employer of the Honduras affair was in England, and accessible.

I turned to the
World's News
, and idly glanced through the scandalous, indifferently printed pages. And there, dovetailed in between a murder and a rape, I came upon the reverse of the medal.

AIRMAN IN THE DOCK

CONSTABLE'S GRAVE CHARGE OF ASSAULT

It didn't strike me as amusing at the time. I sat there for a little in the gun-room, thinking it over, and then I went back again to my house.

Lenden had dragged out an old atlas from the litter on the floor beside the safe, and had opened it on the table at a map of Germany. He turned to me as I came in, and put his finger on the page.

"That's it," he said. "Noremburg. It's right in the middle."

I sat down on the edge of the table by his side. "Are you going out there?" I asked.

He looked up at me in perplexity. "I don't know what to do. I never thought of anything like this."

There was a little pause. "You'll have to let that go," I said gently. "You've got yourself to think about. There's no possible way of finding out about his family short of going out there yourself. And you can't do that if you're going back to Russia."

"I believe I could find the house if I was out there," he said vaguely. "I know the look of it quite well, because he was always showing me the photos he had. It's out in the suburbs, up on a little hill. There's a water-tower near-by. That ought to make it easy to find.

"You see," he said, "somebody's got to go and tell them about it."

I began to see his point. If things were left as they were, that German family would never even know that Keumer
[Pg 104]
was dead. The Russians would never do any notifying of that sort, especially in the circumstances. All that Keumer's wife would ever know would be that the letters would stop coming, and the money. And then things would begin to run short—half-rations, as they used up their little funds and waited for the letters and the remittances that didn't come. And for news.

"They'd think it was the post for a bit," said Lenden. "It's not very regular."

I stirred uneasily on the table. "You'll have to leave it till you get back to Kieff," I said. "You'll be able to get his address from the Russians then. And maybe you'll be able to get the money that he ought to have had for the job, and get it sent off to them."

He shook his head. "They'll freeze on to that."

There was a silence, and then he said: "I don't know what to do. Not much catch going back there, now. It'll be rotten out there without old Keumer. And if there's going to be a war, or anything like that. . . ."

I nodded slowly. I began to see it now. Keumer had been the only real friend he had in Russia, and now Keumer was dead. I hadn't realised before that that might affect Lenden's decision to go back.

I waited for a minute or two, and then said: "Your pal Sam Robertson's in London." And I told him what I had seen in the papers.

He was only mildly interested. "He's doing damn well on that survey," he remarked absently. "They all say so. He asked me to go in on it with him, but I couldn't. I expect he's come home to buy machines."

"Any chance of a job with him?"

He looked up quickly, and stared at me across the table. It was quite a new idea, that. "There might be. Most likely he's all fixed up, though. Still, it'd be damn good fun to get with Sam again."

"It sounds worth trying," I remarked.

He dropped his eyes on the map. "I can't leave this infernal business like this," he said morosely.

[Pg 105]
I left him to think it over then, and went off to the farm to have a look at that foal I hadn't seen in the morning. There was nothing to be done until he had made up this mind, if that were possible for a man of his temperament. Whatever way he went now, he couldn't do much harm to Sussex, and that was what I was chiefly concerned about. What worried me now was the man himself. I didn't want to see him make a muck of things, and I didn't in the least want to see him cut off back to Russia. I'd got to like him quite a lot. And yet, if he decided to go I didn't see how I was going to stop him.

At lunch-time he asked me a whole lot of questions about the political situation. I told him all I knew, which was precious little. Things were very uncertain, and there was every chance of our turning out the Soviet. What would happen if we did so—I couldn't tell him.

He thought that over for a bit. It was very evident that he was scared of getting caught in Russia if there was going to be a breach with England.

I left him again after lunch, and went down to the office. I was tired and upset, and I had a whole stack of work to get through before the Quarter Day. I thought that if I settled down to clear some of it off it might stop me havering about this other business, and I got out my files and ledgers in the intention of making an afternoon of it.

I never touched a pen. It was quiet in the office. The only sounds were the clicking of the footsteps and the giggling of the couples on the pavement below, and the church clock chiming the quarters. I sat there idle from a quarter-past two till four, leaning forward on the desk, my head in my hands. My work was spoilt, and to the best of my knowledge I was thinking of nothing at all. After all, I'd been up most of the night.

I say that to the best of my knowledge I had been thinking of nothing at all. But at four o'clock I reached out for the telephone and put in a trunk call to the Phalanx Club, in Knightsbridge.

It came in ten minutes or so.

[Pg 106]
"I want to speak to Captain Robertson—Sam Robertson, of the Argentine Survey. If he's in the club."

"Just one minute, please." There was a pause.

In a little while he came to the instrument. "This is Robertson speaking. Who is that?"

It was an unusual voice, very soft and husky and deep. I put him down at once as a thirteen-stone man, and leaned forward to the instrument, prepared to lie confidently.

"My name is Moran," I said. "Peter Moran. Good afternoon, Captain Robertson."

"Afternoon." There was a hoarse laugh. "I'm real sorry, Mr. Moran, but I'm afraid at the minute I can't place you."

I laughed in return. "Dare say not. But you'll have heard of my brother. Jack Moran, of Stevenson and Moran, in Buenos Ayres. Shippers. Grain trade—you know them? I represent them on the Baltic."

"I know." He was doubtful, but making the best of it. "Never done any business with them myself, but I know of them. Glad to meet you, Mr. Moran."

"Yes. I'm very sorry to disturb you on Sunday afternoon. I've got a long cable here from my brother that I want to come and talk to you about. It means fixing up quick transport between Buenos Ayres and a place up in Santiago, where Stevenson's got an interest."

He grunted. "We run pretty frequently to Rosario. Is it near there?"

"Madreguello," I said, and for the spur of the moment I think that was a pretty good effort. "I'm not sure where it bears from Rosario."

"Is this just occasional trips?"

"That's right. Now look here, when can I come and see you?"

"Sooner the better, when it's business. I'm free all day to-morrow, but for lunch."

"Ten o'clock too early?"

"Not a bit, Mr. Moran. I'll drop round to your office, if you like."