Thank you for correcting the text in this article. Your corrections improve Papers Past searches for everyone. See the latest corrections.

This article contains searchable text which was automatically generated and may contain errors. Join the community and correct any errors you spot to help us improve Papers Past.

Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image

"CRASH!"

COPYRIGHT.

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

BY

ARTHUR APPIAN.

Author of “Adventure for Two,” “Winning Through,” "Cold Cream,” etc.

CHAPTER XIII. (Continued) Suddenly he felt his controls begin to flop. j.For a moment his mind became a blank, then instinctively lie he pushed his stick forward and dived —position, unknown. Time. 5.42. He saw Peggy walking along the white road —she had not reached Abbeville yet. But she was all right. He saw Colonel and. Mrs Phillipson, Pansy Jones and wispy little Miss Pearkes rattling their tea-cups around the drawing-room fire. He took a long breath, and the air he inhaled was charged with a faint, pleasant smell — Acacia blossom —Peggy? Nothing like it! The sharp tang of the sea. There it was below him —white-capped waves coming up to meet him at a fearful speed. “Looks as if you were for it now, my boy!” he laughed. But if he were, did it really matter? Death was only one of many adventures: the greatest. “You fool! Pull the stick back and get out of the dive!” That was Brooke’s voice. He heard it quite clearly. He glanced over his shoulder, almost expecting to see Brooke sitting in the cockpit behind him. Someone was there, but not Brooke. Of course, Peggy Strong was his passenger now and everything was happening according to plan. She, the plane, and everything it contained were going to glory! From the pocket of his coat he pulled a metal phial, and, holding the stopper with his teeth, began to unscrew it, while his right hand held the stick firmly between his knees. And here were the clouds again—and utter darkness. CHAPTER XIV. Dick wouldn’t let Peggy talk: she was on the verge of a break-down. They wore safe for the moment and that was all that mattered. He took her hat and coat and made her sit down in the armchair, giving her a glass of red wine. "A cigarette please, Dick —I am simply dying to smoke.” "Try one of these,” he said. “I will bring you back some English ones tonight.” She nodded as she inhaled the smoke, which made her' cough. She was glad he didn’t want her to talk for she just wanted to sit quite still, shut her eyes, and forget everything. Her mind was in a mess. At one moment, she was driving through Essex with Michael; next, she was running down that dreadful field, trying to hoist the wind-indicator; then she was crouching in the cockpit of the airplane, the sound of the engine grindnig in her ears; and now the waiter at Abbeville station was telling her about Toulon, violets, mimosa. Why should violets and mimosa make her long for Johnny? Of course, there was always a connection between the South and love and romance.

She opened her eyes and looked at Dick. She felt ashamed of herself because, at the moment of success, she had failed. And it was for her sake he had sacrificed happiness, honour — everything. He was standing in front of the mirror, beside the divan bed, arranging his tie. He looked rather nice in his black trousers and shirtsleeves—not a bit like a waiter.

“You won’t mind being left alone?” he said. “I have got to be at the Toledo Restaurant by half-past nine. We don’t do any business until midnight, but I have to see to everything, and if one is late the ‘patron’ raves. Business is always bad in the winter,” She knew he was talking just to ease her mind. He fastened his waistcoast, and, before putting on his coat, went to a box behind a curtain in the corner and took out clean sheets and a pillow-case: “You will have to make up your own bed on the divan. I can sleep in the camp bed in the next room. My friend Gaston, who shared this flat with me, left for Monte Carlo a week ago. Now I will show you where the bath is and how to work it.” He took her arm and led her into the kitchen: “You see, we wash and cock and keep our food in the same place! If you are-hungry you will find sausages and eggs and coffee.” The bath made Peggy laugh: it looked so quaint stuck up endwise against the wall. When it was in place it practically filled the kitchen. "You boil yourself and the eggs at the same time. I suppose?" she said. How how one empty it?" “I'll do that for you in the morning.”

Dick finished dressing, and told her he would not be back until about five in the morning. "I will creep in quietly. so as not to disturb you." She put her hand on his arm as he opened the door: "I don't much like being left alone—sorry! Of course, I shall be all right. I don’t suppose anyone is likely to come here."

Not a chance! Anyway. 1 will warn the concierge. You will just sleep on tomorrow until I bring .your breakfast, then you can tell me everything and we will make our plans." Kissing her. he closed the door.

At the conciege’s office he said his fiancee had just arrived and would be staying with him for a little while. He slipped a 50 franc note into her hand. "Madame is always so discreet!" The woman smiled, glancing at the note, and her ample bosom expanded: "How coud one help being discreet with M’sieu?" Dick made the expected response. and her laughter followed him into the street. You were always safe in Paris if you had a laugh and a few francs handy! Peggy made her bed. looked at the bath and decided that for once the greater luxury would be to go without one. At least the water in the basin ran hot and a friction with the bathtowel would refresh her. It was no use unpacking—she had nowhere to put her things—but she took out a pair of

pyjamas—a pair that Johnny had

bought her in London, blue trousers and a short yellow coatee. Was it by accident or design that he had chosen her favourite colours? She switched out the light and buried her face in the pillow, trying not to cry. As she listened to the sound of the traffic rising and falling intermittently, she tried to make her mind a blank. It was easy to dismiss everything from it but Johnny. She saw him flying through the night; she saw him crashing in some lonely part of Essex; she saw the aeroplane in flames over the sea. If he wer killed, she would be responsible; he had risked his life for her sake, knowing she was a thief and knowing nothing else about her; knowing nothing about Dick. That was why he loved him. She had let him go without telling him ... Oh, why were women cursed that way—never knowing or never daring to own to themselves that they loved, until the man had gone and it was too late? All sounds from the street had stopped now. Everything was silent—terrifyingly silent. Yet up on the hill Paris laughed and drank and danced. And Dick was there, earing a precarious living in the guise of a waiter. The great bell of the Savoyardo struck one . . . two.

"If you please, madarne, coffee and croissants, and the paper. Will madame be pleased to sit up and take breakfast?” Peggy slowly opened her eyes, stared round the room, didn't know where she was, couldn’t remember what had happened. She looked at Dick and recognised him all right; but he was queer in pyjamas and dressing-gown, with a napkin on his arm and the tray balanced professionally on the palm of one hand. “Madame has slept well!” he said, a smile twisting the corners of his humourous mouth —and that smile on Dick's face made her wide-awake, took her back years, to those wonderful ■days-when she was very young—when they were both very young and very happy. She sat upright, rubbed her eyes, and pushed the hair back from her forehead. “Give me a moment, Dick,” she said, picking up her bag and taking out her powder-puff. “It is rather a shock waking up suddenly and finding myself here. How perfectly ridiculous you look, darling! But I wish you’d let me go on sleeping. I had forgotten everything.” “That's why one sleeps—to forget. That’s why one shouldn’t be afraid of dying —it is just going to sleep.” “Dick, shut up!” she cried. “How can you be so gruesome, talking of death—and at this hour of the morning!” "This hour is 11 o'clock, and if you’d been waiting on corpses all nightcorpses who have never had an honest night’s sleep in their lives —you’d feel a bit gruesome! . . . Peggy dear, your face doesn’t want powdering, and your hair looks perfectly divine when it’s all rough and woofy. If you knew what a blessing it is to see a face that isn’t plastered with enamel, and hair that isn’t permanently depraved, and eyebrows that don’t come off on the pillow! I’m getting rather tired of balancing this tray in one hand. Let me put it down, and pour me out a cup of coffee or I shall begin to foam at the mouth.”

Peggy put her things back in the bag—the bag that Johnny had chosen for her, she remembered, and she wondered if there were any other man who would have thought of fitting it with everything a woman could possibly want. It was not the time to think of Johnny, though, or of anything that had happened —that was why Dick was talking nonsense to her. She smiled at him as she took the the tray and put it between her knees

. . . Dear, brave old Dick! Gosh, she had been a selfish little pig . . . ! “Do you want a wrap?” he asked. “No, it is gloriously warm in here. My room at that dreadful boardinghouse was like an iceberg in the morning.” It wasn’t a bit of good —She would have to tell him everything . . Was Johnny back in the boarding-house yet, she jivondered? She filled the cof-fee-cups: "Dick! I can’t wait —I must tell you all that has happened."

He sat down at the foot, of the bed: "You will tell it much better and more briefly when you have drunk a cup of this admirable coffee—and, my dear, these croissants! Still warm from the oven —or, to be absolutely truthful, the radiator.”

Dick was right; when she had had three cups of coffee and two croissants she felt better, her brain was clear, and there was more courage in her heart. Dick had remembered the cigarettes. She lit one. "I suppose it’s quite safe to talk? I mean, no one can hear us?” "Quite safe —if you arc in the mood. T know how you are feeling—but we mustn’t be emotional. And remember, if the worst happens, it’s my funeral." "I redeemed the pearls on Monday. The pawnbroker seemed a bit suspicious and asked me a few questions. I suppose he remembered a man had pledged them. Anyway, I convinced him it was all right. I took the case back to the boarding-house. 1 meant to seal it up in a package and deposit it at my bank, and in the meantime 1 hid il on top of the wardobe in my room. That night, during our turn at the hotel, Johnny Harcourt—a man staying at the boarding-house—came up to warn me that the police had been making inquiries and were waiting for me. I dared not go back, so I asked him to fetch the case.” "That was risky! How did you know you could trust him?" Dick’s grey eyes hardened. "In love with you, I suppose?”

(To be Continued )

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19391023.2.106

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1939, Page 10

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,974

"CRASH!" Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1939, Page 10

"CRASH!" Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1939, Page 10

Help

Log in or create a Papers Past website account

Use your Papers Past website account to correct newspaper text.

By creating and using this account you agree to our terms of use.

Log in with RealMe®

If you’ve used a RealMe login somewhere else, you can use it here too. If you don’t already have a username and password, just click Log in and you can choose to create one.


Log in again to continue your work

Your session has expired.

Log in again with RealMe®


Alert