That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
"Would you jump down my throat if I asked you to let me finance you?"
she pleaded, an eager hand in the depths of the receptacle. "Why not?"
"Because I'm a decent man!" If he had been previously crimson he was
now scarlet as a boiled lobster. "Thanks all the same, though! I can't
wait here, even to catch Davis.... I must bike back to Drancy, where
I've left the Bird--the machine--in the German's shed... Not a soul to
keep an eye on her! ... My heart's in my mouth when I think of what
might hap--" He bit off the end of the sentence and went on: "But if
you'd be so awfully kind as to take charge of this, in case you ...
There's a message written on it...." He offered her a soiled, bent
card.
"I understand. If I should chance to come across your Davis.... A
little man ... looking like a Welshman.... But you haven't told me
whether he's dark or fair!"
"Black as a crow," he told her. "Not dressed like me!" His well-cut
mouth began to twist upwards at the corners.
"Quite a swell, in a silk-faced frock-coat, white vest and striped
accompaniments. A silk hat, too, rather curly brimmed, but still, a
topper. I suppose a friend of the lady's rented Davis the kit."
"Of the lady's? ..." She remembered. "Yes, yes! Of course! ... The
German's appendage.... Why! ... Look! ... Those two people who have
just passed the turn-stile at the other end of the Promenade.... If
there's anything in description, here comes Davis with the goo-goo
girl!"
"By--gum! You've nailed me the pair of them." As the aviator's long
strides bore him down in the direction of the little sallow,
black-avised mechanic in the capacious silk-faced frock-coat, and his
high-bosomed, florid, flaxen-haired enchantress, and before the
moustached guardian of the Promenade could renew his indignant protest,
Patrine had dropped the little sovereign-purse in his deep, rapacious
hand. And at that instant the music ended with a crashing succession of
barbaric chords. The Sao Paulo dance was done.
"_Merci millefois, Madame!_ ..."
Patrine turned from the hireling's thanks to see the high head and
powerful square shoulders of von Herrnung forging towards her, towering
above the polyglot, variegated crowd. He hailed her with:
"So you met a friend? Is that why I found myself deserted?"
She answered coldly:
"I did not desert you--and I did not meet a friend."
His face, still suffused with a purplish flush, pouched and baggy about
the eyes, told of the maelstrom of unhealthy excitement the dance of the
jaguars in the jungle had set whirling in his brain. She guessed that
he had taken advantage of their separation to descend into the
ball-room, and that as one of the spectators in the front rank he had
revelled in the final thrill. He persisted:
"_Was_? But what means it? I have lost you.... I think you must have
gone down into the ball-room after your friend.... I follow and you are
not there. I come back to find you.... Who was that dirty bounder I
saw you talking to?"
"He wasn't a dirty bounder!" His rudeness enraged her. "He was a nice,
clean, first-class, top-hole, plucky English boy!"
He sneered:
"'_Boy_' ... Men of forty are boys, in the mouths of you English ladies.
You borrow the term from women of the street-walking class."
"Then I'll call him a man. The best kind of man going! English--from
the top of his nice head to the very tips of his toes."
"How can you tell if he was not a friend of yours? What do you know of
him?" He fixed his eyes compellingly on hers.
She answered:
"Nothing but that he flew the Channel yesterday--with Davis--to test his
invention--and he has got to be on the wing for home at four."
"So! He has told you all this, and you do not know his name, even?
Perhaps it is on that card you hold in your hand?"
She started, and the card fluttered from her twitching fingers to the
carpet.
"Allow me...." Von Herrnung stooped as though to retrieve the bit of
pasteboard. "Curious! It has gone! ... It is not there!" he said.
"I think you have your foot on it." Her eyeballs ached, she felt weary,
and flat, and stale. "Please lift up your foot and let me see if it is
there," she urged, and grown suddenly obtuse, he lifted up the wrong
foot. She was trying to explain that he had done so when they were
rejoined by Courtley and Lady Beauvayse.
"Say, did you see she wore a head-band with a rubber mouth-hold at the
back of her neck? And waist-fixings under her frillies so's Herculano
could swing her around his head. My land! that man has jaw-power to
whip Teddy Roosevelt, and she's got vim enough for a nest of
rattlesnakes.... Used up, Pat? ... If you aren't, you look it!" The
speaker yawned prettily: "I'm about ready to be taken back to by-by,
though it's only two o'clock."
Von Herrnung escorted the wearer of the green bird of paradise as they
went through dark alleys and illuminated avenues back to the archway
with the blazing crowns and stars. Courtley accepted the offer of a
lift back to the hotel. The German declined, saying that he preferred
to walk, as the car was closed.
"Pardon! ..." His voice had arrested Morris on the point of starting
the Rolls-Royce. His handsome face had appeared in the frame of the
car-window. "Excuses! but this belongs to Miss Saxham!" His cuff shone
white in the semi-darkness, the great magpie pearl on his little finger
gleamed maliciously as he dropped the missing card upon Patrine's lap,
and drew back, uncovered and smiling, as the car moved away. Later on,
when she was safe in her room, she looked at the card, and read upon it
in plain black lettering:
+-----------------------------------------------+
| |
| ALAN SHERBRAND, |
| |
| PILOT-INSTRUCTOR AND BUILDER OF AEROPLANES, |
| FANSHAW'S SCHOOL OF FLYING. |
| |
| THE AERODROME, |
| COLLINGWOOD AVENUE, |
| HENDON, N. W. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------+
Something was scrawled in violet pencil on the upper blank space. Being
a girl with notions about squareness, Patrine would not at first read,
remembering that it was his private message to Davis, whom Chance had
brought within his master's reach. But later still, or earlier, when,
after a brief interval of silence, the traffic of Paris began to roll
over the asphalt, principle yielded to impulse. She switched on the
electric light above her pillow and read:
"_This Sarajevo business spells War. Must get back at once to Hendon.
I trust to your Honour not to fail me. You know what this means to_
"_A. S._"
So the young Mercury in gabardine and overalls was a professional, a
teacher; a pilot who helped men to qualify for the certificate given by
the Royal Aero Club without breaking too many bones. She had seen the
big painted sign in the Collingwood Avenue, Hendon, that advertised
Fanshaw's Flying School.
"_I trust to your Honour_," he had written to his mechanic. The word
would have seemed big, and awful, and imposing, spelt like that, with a
capital "H," if the writer had been a gentleman.
Disillusioned, she tore the card into little pieces and sank into a
heavy sleep before the broad yellow sunshine of Monday outlined the pink
velvet brocade curtains unhygienically drawn before the open windows.
And she dreamed, not of the magic wind that had blown upon her that
night, nor of the Mercury-like figure in the suit of Carberrys, but of
the supple bodies that had bounded and whirled, and of the gleaming
panther-fangs that had clashed in mid-air. Then the dominant figure
became that of von Herrnung. Again the red mouth under the tight-rolled
red moustache alternately flattered, insulted, and cajoled. Again she
felt that violation of her virgin flesh, its moist, hot touch upon her
naked shoulder. Its kiss bit and stung.
She awakened late from those poisoned dreams to a riotous blaze of
colour and a breath of musky fragrance. On the coffee-stand beside her
bed lay a great sheaf of long-stalked roses; deep orange-hearted, with
outer petals of ruddy flame. She plunged her face deep into the
flowers. The corner of a large square envelope thrust from amongst them.
She caught it between her teeth and pulled it out.
It was from von Herrnung, written on paper bearing the device of the
Societe Aeronautique Internationale in the Faubourg St. Honore. It was
brief enough.
"_That I offended yesterday, Isis will pardon. The address I promised
is--'Atelier Wiber, 000, Rue de la Paix.' The good Wiber demands no fee
for making Beauty yet more beautiful. All has been arranged._
"_Devotedly,_
"_T. v. H._"
*CHAPTER XVII*
*INTRODUCES AN OLD FRIEND*
Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., M.V.O., Consulting Surgeon to St. Stephen's and
the Hospital of St. Stanislaus and St. Teresa, sat busily writing at the
big leather-topped table in the consulting-room, that, with the
well-stocked library adjoining, occupied the rearward ground-floor of
the Harley Street corner house.
The hands of the table-clock pointed to eleven A.M. Since nine the
doctor had sat at the receipt of patients, the crowd in the waiting-room
had melted down to half a dozen souls. Fourteen years had gone by since
Saxham, late Temporary Captain, R.A.M.C., attached Headquarters Staff,
H.I.M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, had taken over the lease and bought his
practice from the fashionable physician who had been ruined by the war
slump in South African mining-stocks.
The broken speculator's successor had struck pay-reef from the outset.
Society had taken Saxham up and could not afford to drop him again. He
was harsh and unconciliatory in manner--a perfect bear, according to
Society--but quite too frightfully clever; and as yet no speedier rival
had outrun him in the race.
Now as the July sunshine, its fierceness tempered by the short curtains
of pale yellow silk that screened the wide-open windows, came streaming
in over the fragrant heads of a row of pot-grown rose-trees, ranged on
the white-enamelled window-seat, it shone upon a man to whom both Time
and Fortune had been kind. The admirable structure of bone, clothed
with tough muscle and firm white flesh, had not suffered the degrading
changes inseparable from obesity. Nor had the man waxed lean and grisly
in proportion as his banking account grew fat. His scholar's stoop
bowed the great shoulders even more, disguising the excessive
development of the throat and deltoid muscles. The square, pale face,
with the short aquiline nose and jutting under-lip, was close-shaven as
of old. The thickly growing black hair was streaked with silver-grey
and tufted with white upon the temples. His loosely fitting clothes of
fine silky black cloth were not the newest cut, neither were they
old-fashioned. They were suited perfectly to the man.
While Saxham minutely copied his prescription, the patient who sat
facing the window in the chair on the doctor's left hand had not ceased
from the enumeration of a lengthy catalogue of symptoms, peculiar to the
middle-aged, self-indulgent, and tightly-laced. At the close of a
thrilling description of after-dinner palpitations, she became aware
that her hearer's attention had strayed. Following up his glance she
ran him to earth in one of three tinted photographs that stood in a
triptych frame upon his writing-table, and glowed with an indignation