Mysterious Aviator by Nevil Shute

at me. “How did you know?”
    “Why,” I said simply, “he told me.”
    “Why was Poddy Armstrong going to shoot at him?”
    I took a long time over answering that question. “Perhaps they’d had a quarrel,” I suggested in the end.
    She was about to say something to that, but checked herself. I knew that I had hurt her. In the end she smiled at me. “I know it’s not my business,” she said. “But one can’t help being curious.”
    “Neither yours nor mine,” I said. “It’s his own affair. He’s been in a good bit of trouble lately, one way and another. He told me some of it last night, when we didn’t go to bed. Did he say anymore?”
    She considered for a little. “No. Only one funny thing happened. He woke up at about three o’clock, and we gave him a drink of barley water. He was quieter then, and he seemed so hot. We thought it’d be a good thing. He asked for you. And I said that you were away, but you’d be back presently. And then he said a funny thing.” She eyed me steadily. “He said you played the
Spring Song
at him.”
    “Is that all he said?”
    “That’s all. It didn’t seem to make sense. He just rolled over and went to sleep when we’d given him his drink. I think he’s sleeping still.”
    I sat there staring at the last gleams of sunshine upon the radiator thermometer of my car. It wanted polishing.
    “Did you?” she inquired.
    I turned to her. “I don’t play at people,” I replied. “I play because I want to. Lenden’s a sick man, and sick men have fancies. You mustn’t pay any attention to them.”
    The sun was just disappearing behind the down; in the fading light the soft brown hair clustered about her neck was all streaked and shot with gold. I had loved her for two years, and I had given up being hurt by things like that.
    There was silence for a moment. Then I pulled my gauntlets farther on to my hands, leaned over, and slipped the catch of the door. It swung open by its own weight.
    “Would you care for a lift home?” I said. “I must get back.”
    She got in without a word, and I started off for the Hall. That was a silent drive. It wasn’t till I had driven into the yard and stopped the engine of the car in the coach-house that we spoke again.
    “Of course,” I said as the engine came to rest, “he’s a man who’s had a pretty rough time of it. You can see that for yourself.” I paused, and chose my words. “He may even have got himself into trouble. If that were so, it would be a pity to remember anything that he may have said in fever, when he wasn’t himself.”
    She glanced up at me in surprise. “But he didn’t say anything that he need be ashamed of. Rather the opposite.”
    “No. But he may have said things that he’d rather not have talked about.
    “In fact,” I said, “he did.”
    There was a long silence after that. Finally she stirred, and got out of the car. “I knew it was something like that, of course,” she said, and sighed. “It’s a pity, because he’s a nice man.” She turned away. “All right, Mr. Moran, I’ll not give him away. And I’ll see Mrs. Richards.”
    She left the coach-house, and went walking across the yard towards the mansion. I sat there in the car staring after her for a little, wondering how much she knew.
    Lenden was asleep when I got back to my house, and a maid was sitting in the adjoining room. I sent her back to the mansion and went in and had a look at him. I stood in the door for a while, staring moodily at him as he lay in bed. He was sleeping fairly quietly, though there was an odd, flushed look about him; his head was tousled and unshaven. There was a glass of barley water on the table by his side, and a few biscuits. Clearly the sleep was doing him a world of good; in view of the life that he had been leading during the last few days, that was hardly a matter for surprise. I stood there in the doorway for a long time staring at him, and wondering what the devil was going to happen