Death of an Airman

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Creation of a Corpse

"GOOD MORNING, Miss Sackbut."

"Good morning, Bishop. You look magnificent in your flying helmet. At the same time, I shouldn't wear it when you are not flying."

The Bishop had rather fancied the figure he made in a black helmet. He bowed his head and accepted the rebuke in Christian meekness.

"I'm a little annoyed with George," went on Miss Sackbut. "He's taken XT and he's still up." She waved at a shadow fleeting across the thin clouds. "I don't know why. He knows you are coming. I didn't see him go up or I'd have ticked him off."

"Don't trouble. I can wait." He dropped into a large chair on the club veranda.

Sally called to the red-headed ground engineer.

"Andy! Did Major Furnace say how long he would be up for?"

The ground engineer shook his head. "Just said he'd sweep the cobwebs out of his head, and then took her up. There he goes!"

The frail shadow nosed up in a loop and rolled off the top of it. It seemed speeding straight for the aerodrome when the wings flashed silver in a vertical turn.

Sally snorted. "Getting rid of that morning-after feeling, I suppose! He must have a thick head! If he doesn't come down soon I'll borrow Dolly's kite and wave him down."

"Please, please!" expostulated the Bishop, smiling. "I have all the morning, and this is delightful to watch."

"Oh, you'll be able to do all that after fifty hours," said Sally airily. "Now he's spinning."

Once again the scarlet-and-silver wings flashed and flickered as they had done yesterday, but this time the Bishop was not disturbed.

"I thought the machine was in terrible difficulties yesterday," he admitted. "What a delicate touch it must need to perform those swift evolutions."

Sally laughed. "Good lord, he's not moving the controls! The aeroplane does it automatically."

The Bishop, when she spoke, had turned his head towards her. She looked a little abstracted.

She was nervously tapping the side of the chair in which she was sitting. He suspected that this four-square, self-reliant young lady with the calm eyes and masculine manner was a good deal more nervous than she liked people to suppose. And now there was definitely something on her mind.

The Bishop looked sharply at Furnace's aeroplane again. It had lost a lot of height since they had first seen it. It was flickering down towards a bank of trees. It fell still lower.

The Bishop heard a gasp beside him. Sally jumped to her feet, her face contorted with sudden alarm. "Here, George!" she said in a low, urgent voice. "Don't leave it so late!" Then her face paled. She gave an agonized cry that lived for ever in the Bishop's memory.

"For God's sake use your rudder!"

Separated by thousands of yards of clear air, inhuman, remote, the flickering toy vanished behind the trees. There was no sound, no wisp of smoke, but only the empty air, and the silence....

Sally turned abruptly, without a particle of expression on her face. "Quick, the ambulance!"

But Andy had forestalled her. There was a whir and a clatter, and straight out of the hangar sped the battered olive-green Ford which was at once fire-engine and crash tender.

The Bishop saw the engineer, his face set, clinging on to the wheel as the car bounded over the uneven surface.

The Bishop started to run towards the crash. Sally held him back. "You'll never get there in time. Tommy's with Ness," she said, pointing to the gaudy scarf and huge leather coat of Ness's companion, as the tender plunged across the aerodrome. "They'll get him out. It's no use running and winding yourself. Better come in the car. It's over in front of the club-house."

As they walked hurriedly towards it, the Bishop saw in another corner of the aerodrome a man jump into a low green sports car parked beside a scarlet and yellow hut. The sports car was bumping across the aerodrome almost before the crash tender had vanished behind the trees at the scene of the crash.

"That's Randall, I think," said Sally with forced calm. "He's dashing across in Gauntlett's Alfa-Romeo. He'll know what to do."

The Bishop was not deceived by her matter-of-fact voice. There was a dazed look on Sally's face. It was rigid with self-control. "George, of all people!" she said, as if to herself, in a profound surprise. She looked at the Bishop. "The controls must have jammed," she went on, almost as if asking his reassurance. "It couldn't have happened otherwise, not possibly!"

"It's no good, I can't stay here! I must do something! Come on. We'll go over." They got into her battered four-seater car.

Lady Laura, her face white, came running out of the club-house, and without a word jumped into the back seats.

They tore across the aerodrome, leaping from bump to bump, through a gap in the hedge that was a rutted cattle track, over more fields, down a long steady slope, until at last they came to rest beside the Ford.

The Bishop saw the golden head of Captain Randall bowed over an outstretched figure beside which he was kneeling. Standing beside him, their heads also bare, were Andy and Tommy Vane. Tommy's hands were bleeding unregarded over the saw he held in them, the saw with which they had extricated Furnace....

Randall placed his handkerchief over the dead man's head. As Sally came towards them he met her and put his hands on her shoulders. There was a deep pity in his regard.

"He was killed immediately, Sally," he said gently. "The safety-belt must have broken on the impact, and his forehead was thrown against the dashboard." His eyes met hers. "He must have died instantly," he repeated. "Almost before he knew what had happened."

They put the limp figure in the ambulance....

"If any of us could choose the manner of our death," said the Bishop gravely to Sally a little later, "I think it would always be to die in the calling one had chosen— the sailor on the sea, the farmer at the plough, the pilot riding the air he strove to master."

IT WAS Tommy who dashed into town to get Dr. Bastable. Tommy returned in a dangerously short time, the tyres of his little red sports two-seater screeching as he drew up alongside the hangars.

"Bastable's out on a case. I've left a message," he said. "Perhaps I'd better get another fellow though? I could go over to Market Garringham for Murphy."

"No, we'd better wait for Bastable," answered Sally wearily. "He's a member of the club and a pal of Furnace's. I'd rather he did everything. Not that there's anything to be done, anyway."

Time passed, but the doctor did not appear. At last he sent a message saying that he was still waiting for a future citizen of Baston. Sally tacitly acknowledged that the claims of life were more important than those of death.

The Bishop, after an hour of this, thought Sally looked dreadfully tired and drawn. But she resolutely kept her vigil, and it was not until the afternoon that the Bishop could persuade her to give up her place and get something to eat.

Then the Bishop passed into the darkened room where lay the mortal remains of George Furnace. Sally rose as he came in, and a moment after the Bishop was left alone. He lifted the sheet which hid the face of the dead man and looked at it silently. In his twenty years of priesthood he had seen too many of the spent cases of human souls to be much perturbed by the sight of sudden death. But he felt that to gaze on what had once been the mirror of that soul, and still retained its impress, might bring him more closely in touch with the personality that was gone.

Death had been gentle with George Furnace. There was indeed a ghastly wound on the temple, but the scar whose contrast of colour had disfigured the living features now mingled with the livid hues of death. The Bishop bent closer. Was it a trick of the light? No. Death had frozen on the face of the dead man an expression not of horror, or fear, but of melancholy, despairful reproach.

"Strange," said the Bishop. He meditated for a while, not replacing the sheet. Uncontrollably his thoughts went straying from the inspiring phraseology that should have occupied his mind to more questionable matters. The Bishop was by calling a clergyman, but because of the variety of duties that had fallen to his lot as a clergyman in lonely parishes in Australia, he was by way of being also a physician. And something in the tension of the features, as well as their expression, instantly aroused his curiosity.

At last he leaned over, raised the dead man's hand vertically, and let it fall. It curled limply on to his chest and slid to his side again.

The Bishop felt a thin shadow of horror, as if for a moment the forces of evil had invaded the room. Reverently he replaced the sheet, covering the dead man's face. The deepening shadows of the room found a more than answering depth in the sombre reflection of the Bishop's countenance.

More hours passed. Evening fell. Outside the Bishop heard Bastable's hearty tones, modified by professional concern. "Dreadful, Miss Sackbut! George, of all people! Such a fine pilot. I am so sorry I could not get here before. But he was killed instantaneously I understand, poor fellow!"

Dr. Bastable glanced at the Bishop without speaking, and gave a perfunctory peer at the forehead of the dead man. "Tut-tut! Most certainly instantaneous! Well, well!"

The Bishop walked quietly out.

Chapter 3Inquest on an Airman

THE GROUND Engineer's Evidence.

"I am a ground engineer. My name is Andy Ness. I have been employed by the Baston Aero Club ever since it began ten years ago. I hold Ground Engineer's Licences A, B, C, and D. I passed out the aeroplane XT after its annual overhaul for a Certificate of Airworthiness five days before the accident. Of course I examined the control cables. They had been renewed during the overhaul, and were in perfect condition. The aeroplane had been flown for ten hours after the overhaul by various people without complaint.

"I knew Major Furnace well. No, I know nothing of his home life. I mean I saw a lot of him at the club. I hadn't noticed anything unusual in his manner lately. He seemed quite cheerful before he took XT up. He only took her up to amuse himself for a few minutes, I thought. He often did that first thing in the day. He said it cleared his head. He never allowed his pupils to do acrobatics low down, and I never saw him stunt low myself. I did not actually see him crash. I was working on the tender and had the engine running when Mr. Vane (who was due for a lesson, after the Bishop) rushed in and said Major Furnace had crashed the other side of the aerodrome. We both jumped in and tore straight across. I cannot say what happened. Major Furnace was a first-rate pilot, one of the best. I can't understand it. I don't know any pilot I'd rather fly with. I am sure the cables or the rudder-bar did not jam. I've never heard of such a thing with this type of machine. It's in use in about a hundred clubs and schools, and is considered the best of its kind for all-round safety."

Captain Randall's Evidence.

"My name is Arthur Randall. I am a pilot. Yes, I knew Furnace well. He was one of our best civil pilots; a better pilot than I am, although he is less known. He ought to have had a much better job, but competition for the good test pilots' jobs was keen after the war. He often said to me, 'Randall, I suppose my trouble is I can't shoot a good enough line about myself.' And that certainly was his trouble— modesty. No, his lack of success didn't seem to worry him much, but it was difficult for anyone else to guess what he was thinking at any time. He might have been a little depressed these last few weeks, but it may have been just a passing mood.

"I should describe him as a most careful pilot. I simply can't imagine why the machine did not recover from the spin. It was too far away to see if he was trying to correct it with the rudder, but a pilot of his calibre would do this instinctively at the slightest danger. The type he was flying has never shown any vice in the spin to my knowledge. I was sitting in the office of Gauntlett's Air Taxis when it occurred. Directly I saw him crash I ran out and got into a car. But I had to go back for the ignition key, and by the time I got there Ness and Vane had done all that could be done and had got him out. It was good work, because one of the longerons had to be sawn to free him, and Vane hurt himself doing it. Furnace must have been dead before they released him, however. His safety-belt had parted and he must have slumped forward against the dashboard. It had penetrated his forehead and killed him. The throttle was closed, but the engine was not switched off. Yes, that is what one would expect if a pilot span into the ground without realizing it. I can't understand Furnace making such an error. The visibility was quite good— about two miles I should say. His death is a great loss to aviation. Furnace isn't replaceable."