Randall hesitated. But Saeton was standing over him and there was something compelling in the quietness of the man, the whiteness of his face. Randall glanced up once and then the pen was scratching at the paper Carter had thrust in front of him.
As soon as Randall had signed it, Saeton took it from him, glanced at it quickly and then slipped it into his pocket. ‘And now for God’s sake get Reinbaum off the airfield before I murder the little bastard.’
Randall stood up, hesitating as he faced us. I thought for a moment he was going to say something, but the hostile silence was too much for him. He turned away and we watched him go, heard the door click shut, and then we were alone in the hangar. Saeton pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his face. ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect to come out of that with the company still intact.’ His gaze came round to me. ‘About the luckiest thing I ever did was to tell you you could stay on up here.’ He rubbed his hands and his voice was suddenly cheerful as he said, ‘Well, that leaves us short of the necessary three directors, Tubby. I suggest, therefore, as an acknowledgment of our gratitude to him for saving the company in its hour of need, we invite Mr Fraser to join the board.’ Relief had brought a hint of laughter to his voice. ‘Will you second that, Tubby?’
Carter glanced quickly across at me. I was conscious of a fractional hesitation, and then he said, ‘Yes. I second that.’
Saeton came over and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘You’re now a director of Saeton Aircraft Ltd, entitled to a yearly salary of £2,500.’ He gave a quick laugh. ‘It’s never been paid yet.’ And then he added, ‘But some day — soon now-’ He stopped. His voice had become serious. ‘Fraser, I can’t thank you enough. God knows why you did it, but’ — he gripped my hand — ‘I can’t tell you-’ His voice broke off as though the words he sought were inadequate and he just stood there, wringing my hand. ‘Why did you do it, eh? Why?’ He was suddenly laughing. ‘I can’t forget little Reinbaum’s face when you asked him for that receipt.’ He laughed till the tears ran down his face. Then, with a quick change to brusqueness: ‘Well, why did you do it?’
‘I don’t quite know,’ I answered awkwardly. ‘I wanted to, that’s all.’ I turned away, embarrassed by the sudden emotionalism in his voice.
There was a moment’s silence, and then he said abruptly, ‘Well, let’s get back to work.’ The sense of purpose was back in his eyes now and it gave me an odd feeling of closeness to him as I went over to my lathe and picked up the half-completed piston.
But somehow I couldn’t concentrate. Randall’s words came between me and my work. I’d been caught out in a racket once and I didn’t want any more of it. If they were smuggling foreign patents.…
I switched off the lathe and went over to Saeton. He was seated on a stool, working on the armature again with the fierce concentration of a man who holds the future in his hands. He looked up at me as I stood over him. ‘Well, what is it?’ he asked impatiently.
‘I want all the cards on the table,’ I said. ‘I don’t like working in the dark — not any more.’
He stared at me, his jaw clamped shut, an angry frown creasing his forehead. I watched the thick hand lying on the bench slowly clench into a fist. His eyes had hardened and narrowed with the clenching of his hand. I was looking at the man who had hit me two nights ago in the woods on the edge of the airfield.
‘Well?’
I hesitated. But I had to know where I stood. The hours I had spent working at that lathe had given me a new sense of confidence in myself. ‘Come on, man, let’s have it,’ he snapped. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘This aero engine of yours’ — I nodded to the gleaming bulk standing against the wall on its wooden chocks — ‘you didn’t design it, did you?’
‘So that’s it. You think I’ve filched somebody else’s design, do you?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ I answered, feeling suddenly uncertain under the cold anger of his gaze. ‘I simply want to know whether you designed it.’
‘Of course I didn’t design it,’ he snapped. ‘You’re not a fool. You know damn well I don’t know enough about engineering to design an aero engine.’ He had risen slowly to his feet and was standing in what seemed to be a characteristic attitude, legs slightly straddled, head thrust forward. ‘I suppose, now you’ve bought your way into the thing, you think you’re entitled to throw your weight about.’ The violence died out of him and in a milder tone he added, ‘If you must know, it’s a bit of wartime loot. One day I’ll tell you the whole story. But not now.’
‘Who owns the patent?’ I asked.
‘I do,’ he snapped. ‘The prototype was never completed. For a man in your position, you’ve a devilish sensitive conscience.’ He sat down abruptly. ‘For God’s sake let’s get on. We’ve wasted enough time already.’
I had barely got back to my lathe when there was a knock at the door of the hangar. ‘See who it is, Fraser,’ Saeton said. ‘If it’s Randall I won’t talk to him.’
But it wasn’t Randall. It was Diana, and with her was a girl in a faded brown smock. I knew her at once. She was the girl who had been talking with Saeton in the hangar that first night I had come to Membury. She had recognised me, too, for she caught her breath and stared at me as though I were something unexpected, and her broad forehead contracted in a frown that gave her pleasant, quiet features a brooding look.
‘She wants to see Bill,’ Diana said.
I pulled open the door and they came in, the girl hesitating over the sill as though she feared a trap. Then she was walking down the hangar, her head erect, her shoulders squared.
? Saeton looked up, saw her and jumped to his feet. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ His thick eyebrows were dragged down, his body tense.
The girl didn’t flinch. Her eyes roved quickly along the bench. They were wide, intelligent eyes, and they seemed to miss nothing. Finally they came to rest on the completed engine and their expression seemed to change, to soften.
‘Did you bring her here, Diana?’ Saeton’s voice was harsh.
‘Yes. She wanted to see you.’
‘I don’t care who she wanted to see,’ he stormed. ‘Get her out of here.’ He got control of himself and turned to me. ‘Take her outside and find out what she wants. I won’t have people walking in and out of this place as though it were a railway station.’ But almost immediately he changed his mind. ‘All right. I’ll talk to her.’ He strode down the hangar. The girl hesitated, her eyes lingering a moment on the litter of the work bench, then she turned and followed him.
‘That’s a queer girl,’ Diana said to her husband. ‘When Randall was here she hung around the quarters like a cat on hot bricks. After a time she went out on to the airfield, and the next I saw of her she came flying through the woods, her face white and her eyes wet with tears. Had she been in a concentration camp or something?’
‘Her father died in one,’ Carter answered. ‘That’s all I know.’
Saeton came back then, his face angry, the muscles at the side of his jaw swollen with the clenching of his teeth.
‘What did she want?’ Diana asked.
He didn’t appear to hear her question. He strode straight past her and seated himself at the bench again. ‘Will you bring lunch for the three of us up here at one-thirty,’ he said.
Diana hesitated. But his manner didn’t encourage questions. ‘All right,’ she said and left the hangar. I turned back to my lathe, but all the time I was trying to remember the scrap of conversation I’d overheard that night in the hangar.
Twice I glanced at Saeton, but each time his expression stopped me from putting the question that was on the tip of my tongue. At length I said, ‘Who is that girl?’
His head jerked up. ‘That was Else,’ he said.
‘What was her father’s work?’
His fist crashed down on the bench. ‘You ask too many damned questions,’ he shouted.