"AFRICA FLIGHT"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 February 1940, Page 10

"AFRICA FLIGHT"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

VAL GEILGUD.

(Author of “Announcer’s Holiday,” “Beyond Dover,” Etc.

CHAPTER XVIII. On the verandah outside the window of the French commandant in the fort of El Fayoum, Rupert Larrimore and Carol Manson faced each other across a small wicker-work table. Above their heads the tricolour flapped lazily against the cloudless sky. Across the sunbaked earth that stretched away to the crenellated parapet at the far side of the barrack square, a half company of native troops were being drilled by an elderly white corporal under the somewhat languid supervision of a youthful lieutenant in a drill uniform of improbably startling immaculacy.

“When shall we know?’’ asked Carol, for perhaps the twentieth time that morning. It was thirty-six hours since they had staggered, more dead than alive, through the gateway of the fort, and, queerly enough, it was the girl, who, after a night’s full sleep and the limitless hospitality of the courteous and bearded Commandant, seemed to have stood that desperate journey best. In a clean white shirt —loaned by the delighted subaltern —Carol presented an astonishing picture of loveliness, of the incredible resilience of youth. On Rupert Larrimore’s face were lines that nothing short of death would ever wipe away. His eyes were still sunken in their sockets. His lips twitched from time to time uncontrollably, so that he could hardly smoke his cigarette.

“It oughtn’t to be much longer,” he said soothingly. “They sent out two planes. Unless anything fantastic has happened, we ought to see the others within an hour or two now.” “The others,” Carol repeated.

And with those two words it seemed to Larrimore that the ghost of Antony Sothern rose like Banquo’s, to make an uninvited guest in the chair which the Commandant had quitted ten minutes before.

Carol said nothing more. Larrimore gave no expression to- the apprehensions that were growing in his mind. Yet each of them was thinking the same thing; that Sothern’s fate must sometime, somehow, find explanation; that there must be a reckoning. It had been possible, almost necessary on that march to husband breath as well as precious water. It had been comparatively easy for the girl to allow her natural horror on hearing Larrimore say “Sothern’s dead —poor beggar!” to dam at source any instinct of exact inquiry into the wherefore and the why. But with the return of civilisation, of leisure, of comfort —with the return imminent of the other members of the party, and of Janet Manson in particular it would be a very different story.

Explanations would be more than desirable; they would be imperative. Yet the longer she looked at Larrimore’s drawn face, and reddened eyelids —the more in detail she remembered of the staggering, heart-breaking courage with which he had wrenched (there was no other word to describe it) both of them to safety from the closing jaws of a desert grave, the more impossible it seemed to her that she would ask him point blank how Antony Sothern had died. And for a hideous moment, she almost welcomed the horrible thought that perhaps the others would not be rescued by those searching French planes; that no explanation would necessarily be called for after all.

That thought was thrust aside as swiftly as it had -crept loathesomely into her imagination. But it was to be replaced by another equally menacing to her happiness. Somehow this dreadful conspiracy of silence between Rupert and herself must be broken. For otherwise, hour by remorseless hour, it was building between them a barrier of fear, of imagined horror, that must inevitably destroy their love . . . That last thought was equally uppermost in Larrimore’s mind. He was no longer the man of action. He had done his job. He had got through. He had saved Carol. He had almost certainly saved the others. As for Sothern, his conscience was crystal-clear. No one but humanitarian sentimentalists with no knowledge of the facts could blame him. It had been expedient that one man should die to save others. That was all.

But Antony Sothern had been Carol's friend —more than her friend. Could he admit to her in so many words that he had Sothern’s blood on his hands? Without inevitably losing her love? Yet, without the admission, he too knew that that sinister barrier was being raised between their hearts, shutting out perfect faith which must be of the very essence of love.

He leaned back in his chair, exhausted, tormented baffled by this problem of the emotions as he had never been by difficulty or danger. .And seeing the infinite tenderness in her eyes, the beauty of her profile against the rough white wall behind her, the grace of her attitude as she leaned with one elbow on the table, the sheen on her hair—even after that ghastly march — where the sunlight caught it through the tattered awning, he felt he could bear neither to take the risk of telling her the truth and losing her at once, nor to lose her inevitably in the future when suspicion had poisoned the wells of happiness. He threw his half-smoked cigarette away, and, watching it smoulder on the ground below the verandah, had the overwhelming instinct that it was his own life which he watched drifting, a little unregarded smoke, upwards against that fierce sun-drenched sky. I Then Carol gave a cry, and pointed) northwards. Two little specks had ap-l peared high up in the blue, accompanied by the growing hum of motors. Next instant the girl was out of her

chair, and running through the french window behind her. Larrimore did not move. But his shoulders squared slightly as he sat in his chair and a little gleam came back into his tired eyes. At least the problem was upon him now in the concrete. Something had to be done about it. He could, cope with anything so long as it did not imply merely thinking desperately and hopelessly in circles. When the plane landed, he was standing three paces behind Carol. They knew already that the party was safe. Waving handkerchiefs from the leading plane’s cockpit had told them so much. And perhaps ten minutes of embracing, hand-shaking, saluting and expressions of pleasure by the Commandant occupied the time so exaggeratedly and completely that no one of the newly rescued seemed to remember that three had gone before them, while only two stood there in the sunshine to welcome them back. It was in fact Otto Flesch, who, standing rather apart from the others, asked in his guttural voice whether the journey had been too much for Antony Sothern.

“Just lazy as usual,” said Janet Manson. “To lazy to come out in the sunshine and meet us.” “No!” said Carol. And to herself it seemed that her voice sounded curiously unreal. “What do you mean, Carol?” asked her uncle. And her aunt peered at her sharply. Her ears were excellent, and she noticed an unusual quiver in the girl’s voice. But it was Larrimore who answered, and Janet Manson saw her niece’s cheeks whiten, and her hands jerk, as he spoke.

“I’m sorry to have to spoil our reunion with baa news,” said Larrimore deliberately. “But—Sothern’s not with us. He—he couldn’t make it.” There was a little horror-stricken silence.

“Not make it?” cried out Janet Manson, sharply “I don’t understand.”

And she looked at Carol. But again Larrimore answered:

“Sothern’s dead,” he said quietly. “And we owe nim our lives —Carol and I. So incidentally do you all.” “I don’t understand,” said Hubert Manson, fiddling with his spectacles. “Tell us what happened, Larrimore. This is quite dreadful.”

“Yes —tell us, Mr Larrimore,’ said Janet Manson. And there was that in her tone which brought Carol’s attention, focussed with a hideous intensity upon Larrimore, upon her aunt. “I shall have to write to his poor mother,” added Hubert helplessly. Larrimore jerked up his chin.

“He died for his friends,” he said. “As I'd feared, the water we carried with us wasn't enough to bring the three of us through. I suppose Sothern felt in a way responsible for the fact that three of us, not two, had started. Anyway, we had a discussion — quite inconclusive—as to what must be done. During the night that followed Sothern was on guard. I woke and couldn’t see him. Then I did see him, moving away from the little oasis where we were camped that night. I followed him. I think he must have seen me. Anyway, before I could catch up with him—well, he had the pistols with him.” “You mean he killed himself?’ “To let me take Carol on unhampered and with enough water —yes,” said Larrimore, firmly.

“I was asleep,” said Carol, hurriedly, vdry conscious of her aunt’s eyes upon her. “I heard the shot —I was terrified.”

“Magnificent!" murmured Hubert Manson. “A gallant fellow!” “A gallantry typical of your countrymen,’ said the French Commandant, his hand to his kepi. “One of our planes shall make a search for his body. Meanwhile, if 1 might advise you, you should not stand here in the sun after your trying experiences. And I must send a message so that cables may take the news of your safety to England.” He led the way towards the gate of the fort. But Carol was conscious of two things: that the barrier between Rupert and herself had now taken concrete shape and hardness: and that her eyes were fixed steadily upon Larrimore's shoulder-blades, as he walked ahead, as though seeking to penetrate the inner secrets of his heart. A little more than two months later.

and a trifle after five o'clock in the evening, Sir George Manson was walking up and down his office. His expression was—or would have been to any onlooker —discouraging, if not actually moody. Three times during the last half-hour he had stretched out a finger which would have pressed the buzzer to summon Cynthia Wright from the outer office. Three times he had not pressed it. and returned to his gloomy pacing to and fro. He was thinking savagely. And yet, as he asked himself, pausing for a moment to stare out at the dusk falling over the river outside his windows what the devil was there really for him to worry about?

It was true of course that the great—and perhaps unduly-boomed—flight, of the “Star of the East" had ended in failure. But there had been certain compensating factors: any awkward tendency on the part of the Press or the public to inquire into the merits of the crashed machine —and as a result into the standard of general accomplishment of Associated Airways) Limited —had been most satisfactorily distracted by other happenings, with an obviously more popular appeal. No one was likely to wish to read a dry-as-dust technical report, when there were to be., had. for the reading in the columns of every daily the ac-

count of Larrimore’s heroic desert march in the company of the even more heroic—and good-looking —girl, whom he was now announced as about to marry. While oven the glamour and headlines of that engagement had in turn palled beside the sacrifice of Antony Sothern, who had “laid down his life for his friends." The lonely suicide in the desert had taken its place in the gallery of popular heroes beside the lonely figure of Captain Oates staggering out into the Antarctic blizzard. In fact Sir George had to admit — and would in fact have cheerfully admitted —that in publicity the expedition’s failure had achieved more than could have been secured by the most, spectacular and blazing of successes in the shape of record-breaking flights . .

And yet he walked to and fro in his office, frowning, muttering to himself, and conscious only of a sense of the most profound disquiet. ■ (To be Continued.) i