Hammond Innes - Air Bridge

I started to explain Else’s presence and then I stopped. That wasn’t what she had meant. Lying across the back of a chair was a heavy, fleece-lined flying jacket. Else had seen it, too. I turned to the Kleffmanns. They were standing quite still, staring towards the dark line of the stairs. From above us out of the silence of the house, came- the sound of footsteps. They were coming down the stairs.

Else gripped my arm. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

I couldn’t answer her. My gaze was riveted to the stairs and all the muscles of my body seemed frozen in dread of the thing that was in my mind. The footsteps were heavy now on the bare boards of the landing. Then they were coming down the last flight. I saw the boots first and then the flying suit and followed the line of the zip to his face? ‘Saeton!’ The name came from my lips in a whisper. God! I’ll never forget the sight of his face. It was grey like putty and his eyes burned in their sockets. He stopped at the sight of us and stood staring at me. Eyes and face were devoid of expression. He was like a man walking in his sleep.

‘How’s Tubby?’ My voice was hoarse and grating.

‘He’s all right,’ he answered, coming on down into the kitchen. ‘Why did you have to come here?’ His voice was flat and lifeless and it carried with it a terrible note of sadness.

‘I came to get him out,’ I said.

He shook his head slowly. ‘It’s no use now.’

‘What do you mean?’ I cried. ‘You said he was all right. What have you done to him?’

‘Nothing. Nothing that wasn’t necessary.’

I started towards the stairs then, but he stopped me. ‘Don’t go up,’ he said. And then slowly he added, ‘He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ The shock of the word drove me to action. I thrust past him, but he caught me by the arm as I started up the stairs. ‘It’s no good, Neil. He’s dead, I tell you.’

‘But that is impossible!’ Frau Kleffmann had retreated towards her chair by the fire. ‘Only this morning the doctor is here and he say he will be well again. Now you say he is dead.’

Saeton pushed his hand across his eyes. ‘It — it must have been a stroke — heart or something,’ he muttered uncertainly.

‘But only this evening he is laughing and joking with me,’ Frau Kleffmann insisted. ‘Is not that so, Frederick?’ she asked her husband. ‘Just before you come. I take him his food and he is laughing and saying I make him so fat he live up to his name.’

‘Where is he?’ Else whispered to me.

‘Up at the top of the house. An attic. I’ll go up and see what’s happened.’

I started up the stairs again, but Saeton blocked my way.

‘He’s dead, I tell you. Dead. Going and looking at him won’t help.’

I stared at him. The blackness of the eyes, the smallness of the pupils — the man seemed curled up inside himself and through the windows of those eyes I looked in on fear and the bitter, driven urge of something that had stepped out of the world’s bounds. In sudden panic I flung him aside and leaped up the stairs. There was a small lamp on the landing and I picked it up as I turned to climb to the attic.

The door of Tubby’s room was ajar and as I went in the lamplight picked out the photographs of Hans lining the walls. My eyes swung to the bed in the corner and then I stopped. From the tumbled bedclothes Tubby stared at me with fixed and bloodshot eyes. His face had a bluish tinge even in the softness of the lamplight. There was a froth of blood on his puffed lips and his tongue had swollen so that it had forced itself between his teeth. He had struggled a great deal before he had died, for in the wreck of the bed his body lay in a twisted and unnatural attitude.

Avoiding the fixed gaze of his eyes, I crossed the room and touched the hand that had reached clear of the bed and was hanging to the floor. The flesh was still warm.

Else came into the room then and stopped. ‘So! It is true.’ She looked across at me with a shudder. ‘How does it happen?’

‘Perhaps it was a stroke. Perhaps-’ My voice trailed away as I saw her eyes fasten on something that lay beside the bed.

‘Look!’ She shivered slightly, pointing to the pillow.

I bent and picked it up. It was damp and torn and bloody at the centre where Tubby had fought for air. The truth of how he had died was there in my hands.

‘He did it,’ she whispered. ‘He killed him.’

I nodded slowly. I think I had known it all along. Tubby’s wasn’t the face of a man who had died a natural death. Poor devil! Alive he had threatened the future of Saeton’s engines. Because of that Saeton had come all the way from Berlin to kill him, to smother him as he lay helpless on the bed. The force that had been driving Saeton all along had taken him to the final and irrevocable step. He had killed the man without whom the engines could never have been made, the one man whom he’d thought of as a friend. If one man stood between me and success, I’d brush him aside. I could remember how he had stood in the centre of the mess room at Membury and said that — and now he had done it. He had brushed Tubby aside. I dropped the pillow back on to the floor with a feeling of revulsion.

‘I think he is mad.’ Else’s horrified whisper voiced my own thoughts. And at that moment I heard slow, heavy footsteps on the stairs. Saeton was coming back up to the attic. I wasn’t prepared to face him yet. I reached for the door, closing it, my action unreasoned, automatic. I slid the bolt home and stood there, listening to the footsteps getting nearer.

‘Come away from the door,’ Else whispered urgently.

I stepped back and as I looked at her I saw she was scared.

The footsteps stopped outside the door and the handle turned. Then the thin deal boards bulged to the pressure of the man whose breathing I could hear. The room was very still as we waited. I think Else thought he would break the door down. I didn’t know what I expected, all I knew was that I didn’t want to talk to him. The silence in the room was heavy with suspense. Then his footsteps sounded on the stairs again as he went slowly down.

I opened the door and listened. There was the murmur of voices and then the side door closed with a bang. From the window I saw Saeton, looking big and squat in his flying jacket, cross the farmyard and go out through the gate by the barn. I felt relieved that he had left. It wasn’t only that I didn’t want to talk to him. I was scared of him. Perhaps Else’s fear was infectious, but I think it would have come, anyway. The abnormal in its most violent form is a thing all sane men are afraid of. The initiative lies with the insane. It’s that which is frightening., I turned back to the door. ‘I’ll get Kleffmann,’ I said. ‘We must get his body down to the truck and take it back to Berlin.’ Tubby’s sightless eyes watched me in a fixed stare. I turned quickly and went down the stairs, conscious of Else’s footsteps hurrying after me.

The kitchen looked just the same as when we had entered it. Frau Kleffmann sat huddled in her thick dressing-gown by the fire. Her husband paced nervously up and down. There was nothing in the warmth and friendliness of that room to indicate what had happened upstairs in the attic — only the tenseness. Frau Kleffmann looked up quickly as I entered. ‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Is he dead?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’s dead.’

‘It is unbelievable,’ she murmured. ‘And he was such a nice, friendly man.’

‘Why did that other man — Herr Saeton — leave so quickly?’ Kleffmann demanded.

I could see that he was suspicious, but there seemed no point in telling him what had happened. ‘He was worried about his plane,’ I said. ‘Will you help me get Carter’s body down? We are taking it back to Berlin.’