AFRICA FLIGHT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23115, 13 August 1938, Page 17 (Supplement)

AFRICA FLIGHT

Bv VAL GIELGUD Author of "Announcer's Holiday," " Beyond Dover," etc,

I CHAPTER I. AN IDOL Clt ASHES TTENDON—and high summer! The sun blazing down out of cloudless sky; glittering on the hundreds and hundreds of ranked cars, parked together for the occasion of Empire Air Day; setting off to the best possible advantage the new London season's hats and frocks. Thousands and thousands of people crowded together, their faces intermittently turning skywards from the stands, Young Antony Sothexn pushed his exquisite grey hat back from his forehead and mopped that same forehead with a grey silk handkerchief. Tho expression on his good-locking face was definitely petulant, while tho single glass jammed over his right eye added affectation to what might otherwise have passed for mere foppishness. Not that young Sothern was an idler or a wastrel. True, ho was an Honorable. Truo that his hair curled naturally, that he drossed too well, that ho spoke with an Eton and Oxford voice and declined to be ashamed of doing so—having been at Eton and Oxford. But he had come down with the best scientific degree of his year. And in tho normal course of events lie worked 10 hours a day in the capacity of private secretary to Professor Hubert Manson, the 'celebrated archaeologist, and worked exceedingly hard. Something of his petulance could at the moment be ascribed to tho fact that Antony would have infinitely preferred to have been at tho British Museum than at Hendon. "I don't know why on earth you wanted to come out to such a god-for-saken sort of jamboree!" he grumbled. "I just wanted to come," said Carol Manson. And in that little phrase she revealed to anyone who might have been listening the principal motor-musclo of her existence to date. Carol Manson was Professor Manson's niece, which accounted for Antony's release from his day's work. Motherless since tho age of seven, the only child of Sir George Manson, chairman of Associated Airways, Limited, and blessed with good looks far above the ordinary, Carol Manson had seldom had even to argue about getting her own way. On the occasion of Empire Air Day she was just threo weeks past her 19th birthday, blonde, grey-eyed, slim and as well-dressed as a girl can bo in England. There was an understanding—not an. engagement, because Sothern had no money apart from his job, and because she was still so young —between her and her uncle's secretary. Carol sometimes wondered what motivo she had had for coming to that understanding, apnrt from curiosity. This was one of the times Mien that wonder was acutely emphasised. Carol liked Antony Sothern a great deal. She liked his looks, the perfection of the pose with which ho faced tho world, tho seriousness with which he took his job, his undoubted affection for herself. But sho did not love liini, and she knew it. At least, did she know it? Love was so far to Carol Manson a book firmly closed. She had longed to open it. She had come to that "arrangement" with Antony just because she hoped to open it in tho company of someone she knew well and liked. But she had been disappointed. And she realised that it could not bo very long before Antony would have to bo told. She felt that when she told him he might be tiresome. He could be very tiresome in his own essentially gentlemanly way—he was being tiresome now. "But why did you want to come, Carol?" Antony persisted. They were sitting in Sir George's newest car—a huge black sports twoseater, which Carol drove with a certain desperate brilliance. Few of the passers-by failed to glance twice at the exceptionally good-looking young couple in the exceptionally large and expensive car. More than a few recognised Carol Manson, who was a favourite with press photographers, "I should havo thought you'd havo had all the aeroplanes you wanted in the home." said Antony Sothern. "T didn't come to see 'planes," said Carol, who seemed entirely occupied in focussing a pair of field-glasses. "Then what did you come to see?" "Did you ever hear a proverb, Antony, about curiosity killing the cat?" Sothern lighted a cigarette. "Of course, if you get a kick out of making a mystery!" lie muttered. But Carol kept licr temper, rather surprisingly perhaps. "I'll tell you, if and when X spot him," she sdd. "Him?" "Rupert Larrimore, Tony." "And who the deuce is Rupert Larrimore?" Carol dropped the glasses into her lap and faced him. "Arc all scientists quito such dumbbells?" she demanded, less of Sothern than of the world at large. "I take it," pursued Sothern, quite unaffected, "that Mr. Larrimore has something to do with flying." "Yon take—not only it, but tho cake, the doings and the. works!" said Carol. "Don't you really remember, Tony? Tho man who was tho first to fly the South Pacific solo from Valparaiso to Sydney? The man whose stunt exhibitions sent the States crazier than any man since Lindbergh?" "I think I do remember tho name, now you mention the details." "You can't got mo down, Antony, however hard you try. Rupert Larrimore is about the only romantic figure left in the world. I'm mad about him. T think he's marvellous! It was simply foul the way the dreary old Air Ministry went and pulled him hack into the service after that American tour.

(COPYRIGHT)

A etory of high courage and adventure with a golden thread of love in its fabric.

He was doing a darned sight more for British flying by that sort of thing than he can be by being a flight commander or whatever ho is at this moment out there!" The girl made a gesture toward the huge arena of tho flying ground. "And where did you meet him?" inquired Sothern, a shado less languidly than usual. He was used to Carol's blazing vitality and enthusiasms for this and that new thing. But he never heard her speak in such terms of any man before, and he felt a vague sense—not of alarm, that was absurd —of disquiet, oven apprehension,. "I've never met him," said Carol. "I wish I had." "I see." "I bet you don't, Antony! I don't believo you go in much for hero-worship, or anything half so adolescent." "Perhaps not. So you dragged us out here on this diabolically hot day to see the hero perform? Well, I only hope the performance is worth it!" ! By this Carol refused to be drawn. She had picked up her glasses again, and was scanning the aeroplanes, and the tiny figures moving about them in the distance. Sothon leaned back in his seat, smoking gloomily, and reflecting that while it had been the devil of a job gotting to Hendon, it was going to bo infinitely worse trying to get away. Why did he love the girl beside him, as love her ho did? Antony knew that they had frighteningly little in common apart from social background. Ho knew that Carol had no passion for him. Ho suspected that she never would have. And yet he adored her, from tho waves of her shiny head to the tips of her elegant shoes. A fantastic unsatisfactory business, this love—for a scientist grotesque! And yet he couldn't help it. And as far as ho could see, there was nothing to be dono about it. A sudden roaring in the sky, which seemed to be echoed back in a sort of thrilling murmur from the crowd, dragging him out of his reverie. Ho realised that Carol was standing up in tho car, her glasses glued to her eyes. A squadron of high-speed fighters had taken off for an acrobatic display. Sothern was frankly unimpressed as a rule by action. The deciphering of a papyrus thrilled him infinitely moro than the finest feat of athletics or sport. Ho could watch the hardest game of polo, or the toughest motor race, without so much as a tremor to his eyeglass. But even he found himself gripping the wind-screen of the car in his excitement, as tho 'planes hurtled past out of the sky, keeping perfect alignment and distance; spun, and looped, and climbed, and slid sideways like falling leaves; till it was almost impossible to believe that they were not sentient in themselves, or that wood and metal could stand the strain. Once agin the squadron hurtled earthwards, as though out of the heart of the sun, this time flying in pairs, their wing tips seemingly not more than a foot apart. They flattened o*it perhaps twenty feet above tho level of tho ground, flew past the stands, climbed in a great triumphant arc —climbed —all but the last two machines. Sothern felt a desperato clutch tighten on his arm, as tho last two 'planes flattened out. "One of 'em's tilting!" came Carol's voice, oddly shrill and at the same time toneless. "There'll be a smash, a ghastly, screaming smash!" Sothern saw her whip the glasses, held in her other hand, away from her eyes. And on the instant it happened. The wing-tips of tho two fighters touched, almost with the gentle precision of a kiss. There was no sound breaking the steady roar of the engines —but suddenly the fighter further away from the stands seemed to stand sideways, stagger drunkenly, and slide into tho ground. There followed an explosion, a burst of flame, and a mercifully concealing cloud' of black smoke. Every human being on the ground was on his or her feet, their faces blanched, as tho ambulances tore out toward the # wreck, followed by the fire-engine, staring, muttering, indulging in hysterics. . . . Carol, determined to look anywhere, but at the wreck, and frightened to stop looking for fear she might be oldfashioned as to faint, looked steadily at the second fighter. Following on the disaster, its pilot had flown in a halfcircle, and now he landed not fifty yards away from where Sothern and Carol sat in the big car. llg climbed out of the machine, and i'or an instant stood still beside it. Carol looked/at him through her glasses. It took her a minute or so to steady her shaking hands. Then she drew in her breath sharply. "What is it, Carol ?" "Antony! It's Larrimore!" "Oh, rot!" "I. tell you it is! I'd know him anywhere—l haven't had a picture of him for two years for nothing!" "But I thought you hadn't met him ?" "I never have. I cut it out of an illustrated weekly after his Pacific flight! Antony, how awful —it might havo been him!" Sothern took his glasses and focussed them in his turn. He saw a man leaning against the aeroplane. To judgo of his figure in tho swathings of clumsy flyiftg kit was impossible. But Sothern was looking at Rupert Larrimore's face, and wondering how he could describe it. It was a long, lean face, with an arrogant nose and a decisive chin; a face that somehow seemed all bone. The eyes were deep-set the cheek-bones high. The general impression was of an almost waxen pallor, broken by deep, hollowed, patches of shadow. A queer, violent, uncomfortable face, now smeared and grimy and contorted. . . "Well?" said Carol. "Think you'll know him again?" Sothern nodded, and handed back tho glasses. "I should judge," ho said in his precise fashion, "that your friend was engaged in cursing fnto for not having lot it bo him, contrariwise to you." Carol Manson stared, but said nothing. And she and Antony drove away from Hendon in silence. In such wise did those three —Carol Manson, Antony Sothern, and Hupert Larrimore—whoso fates were to be so curiously interwoven and resolved, meet for the first time. (To be continued daily.)