Clare said: “Will you teach me to fly?”
He looked at her and smiled and put an arm about her shoulders but did not speak. He wished that she would not so often speak like that, with reference to a future.
The droning of the trainer faded and the sky was silent again.
But only for a moment. “It’s coming back,” Clare said. “Listen!”
Otto shook his head. “That is not the same engine. And it is from the other direction. That is a much more powerful engine.”
She stared at him, and then up into the sky again as the hum turned into roar and a high-up silver-flashing shape sped across the blue strip and was gone.
She laughed a little. “All right,” she said. “All
Otto said: “It is a Lockheed Fourteen—the best plane for millionaires. The pilot has left his licence at home—but he is a bald man.”
She was still staring upwards at the now empty strip of blue. She said:
“It looked like a dragon-fly. Just like a dragon-fly.”
Otto said, very slowly: “There is a British Fighter with wing-tips like that.”
Clare looked at him quickly. She turned and jumped down from the box. She said:
“Get down. Well have stiff necks, craning up like that.”
He shut the skylight and stepped down to stand beside her. His eyes were clouded and distant and there was a frown between them.
“What is it?” Clare said. “Tell me, Nils.”
He said: “I was thinking of British Fighters—and I do not like to think of them.” His voice was heavy and he was not looking at her. “I have not said this to anyone before—but I will say it to you. I was a prisoner in England. I escaped from the camp and was lucky to be able to steal a British plane. I flew over the Channel to France—and on the way two other English fighters met me. They signalled to me. They thought, of course, that I was British. I had found how to work the guns. I shot them both down before they knew. I . . . I was given a medal for that. I did not like having done that the very minute it was done. I do not like now having done it. I wonder all the time if any British pilot would have done that to any enemy. I try to forget it—and I am not able. It is a child’s feeling—but I cannot help it.”
She moved close to him and put her arms about his neck and drew his head down to hers. . . .
The hands upon Otto’s wrist-watch pointed to fifteen minutes after seven, and he knew that outside the quick dusk had deepened to night. He was in the cellar, seated at the little wooden table with the Lüger in front of him, and a piece of rag and a saucer of oil. A candle, alight, was stuck upon the table-top.
He looked at his watch again. Clare should be back at any moment now, with the atrocity of a coat.
He forced himself to consider, for the four-hundredth time, the chances against them from the moment they left this safe, unknown place and began to move. And for the four-hundredth time the dead weight of apprehension laid itself across his chest so that he felt the effort of breathing.
He put down the oil-rag and slipped the clip back into the magazine and set the safety catch with his thumb and slipped the pistol into his shirt and fastened the buttons over it.
He heard Clare’s quick light footstep upon the path of beaten earth by the side door which they used. The sound came clearly through the bolt-hole, and he smiled and the weight was lifted momentarily from his lungs.
He heard the door open and her footsteps upon the board floor. But instead of coming across his head to the passageway and the cellar door, they stopped.
And then he heard her voice—calling him, softly and urgently. It called:
“Otto! Otto!” and then, a little louder and yet more urgently, “Otto—where are you?”
He was on his feet, soundlessly. Clare was calling to him—but she was calling to him when she would not call, and she was calling him by the name which she had never used!
He was taut—and the skin seemed to lift along his back and upon the nape of his neck. His hand shot out and nipped the flame from the candle and the cellar was dark.
He heard another sound—the ghost of a heavier tread than Clare’s, upon the boards nearer than she was to the door.
“Otto!” came her voice again, and there was the faintest quaver in it.
He stood where he was, absolutely without motion. He did not even breathe.
And he heard yet another sound—other footsteps upon the path.
His hand crept to the front of his shirt and pulled open the buttons and of itself closed about the butt of the Lüger.
“Otto!” came Clare’s voice again—very loud.
And then there was a sudden forest of sound. Men’s voices and men’s footsteps—and all unguarded now.
Clare’s voice said: “I . . . I told you! He isn’t here! Don’t you believe me now?” There was terror in her voice, and pleading. The terror rang partially true—but not the supplication; not to his ears which knew Clare.
A man’s voice came then—and a great hand seemed to clutch itself around Otto’s bowels.